stethoscope around his neck and a chart in his hand, was definitely medical. And definitely someone to avoid.
Too bad. Something else on her list of things to avoid was becoming involved in another relationship. Two so far, and all she’d done had been to prove what a miserable failure she was. She’d had two wonderful men in her life and the best she’d done in both relationships had been to fail them. Miserably.
So what was the point of even looking, when that’s as far as she’d let it go? Honestly, buying one of those brightly colored plastic gecko lizards the tourists all seemed so thrilled over didn’t seem like such a bad idea for a relationship. At least she wouldn’t let a chunk of red, yellow and green plastic down.
Or kill it.
Well, she wasn’t sleeping. Trying hard to pretend she was, perhaps, but he knew better. In spite of her attempt to even out her breathing, her eyelids were fluttering—a dead giveaway that she was awake and faking sleep.
Michael chuckled as he returned to his office. Something big was bothering her, but he wasn’t going to guess what it was. Wasn’t even going to pry. He was a doctor whose commitment to his patients was only as long as this two-week cruise. He took care of their physical woes while they were on the ship, then said goodbye to them as he welcomed aboard a new bunch. That’s all he was here for—to treat them and leave them—which suited him just fine. So if there was something about Sarah Collins that needed figuring out other than a case of hypoglycemia, he’d leave that puzzle to someone else. Lord knew, he was the last one to figure out anybody…especially himself.
“Repeat a finger-stick in about five minutes,” he instructed Ina Edwards, one of the ship’s nurses. “And let me know what it is.”
“You OK, Mike?” she asked him. “Your leg? Can I get you something?”
Old enough to be his mother, Ina doted on him. And while she meant well, and he appreciated the concern, it annoyed him. He was fine. Perfect. Just dandy. Except people didn’t want to believe that. One war injury and a couple of years later so many pieces of his broken world still weren’t back in place. But he didn’t take it out on those who cared about him. He merely smiled his way through it. People cared. They wanted to show compassion he didn’t deserve, though, considering what he’d done.
Sighing, Michael faked a smile at Ina. “I’m fine, thanks. Just not prepared to start duty so early into the cruise. Normally they don’t start coming in until after the first round of bon-voyage parties. Hangovers and all that.”
“Well, I can go fix you a cup of tea,” she offered, not to be put off. “I brought my own special blend on board again. The one you like.”
It was bitter. Harsh in his belly. He hated it, and usually poured it out when she wasn’t looking, but Ina was hard to refuse. Sometimes he wondered if she was in cahoots with the other women in his family who wanted to over-mother him. “I’d love a cup,” he lied.
“Cream?”
Cream did it no earthly good, and it was a waste of good cream. “I’d love cream,” he said, still forcing a polite smile.
That was all Ina needed to be pleased, as she rushed away to brew up her hideous potion, leaving Michael to take Sarah Collins’s blood test. Well, that didn’t matter, did it? It was a simple finger stick. Took ten seconds. But there was something about her…something that bothered him. Maybe it was the way she’d clung to him when in the elevator, or the little tingle he’d felt when they’d touched.
Or maybe it was the haunted look in her eyes. He knew that haunted look on a deeply personal level. Saw it in his own mirror sometimes.
Yes, that had to be it. Someone afraid. Someone numbed. He didn’t often think about the battlefield these days, or all the wounded men he’d treated during those months on active duty. Grueling hours, hideous wounds. Another life altogether that he didn’t allow to spill over into this one. What was done was done, and he wasn’t going back. Now he worked on a cruise ship, drank insufferably bad tea with an overly protective surrogate mother and spent his off-duty hours in the lounge on the Lido deck, listening to bad karaoke and drinking diet cola.
“This won’t hurt,” he said to Sarah, as he pressed the barrel of the lancet device to the index finger on her left hand, then pushed the button to let the lancet prick her.
She flinched involuntarily, turning away her head when he squeezed a drop of blood from her finger and smeared it on the test strip. Probably squeamish, he decided. “Are you on this cruise with someone else?” he asked, as he counted down the seconds for the results to register. “Friend, family member, group tour?” Spouse?
“Alone,” she said. “It’s the best way to travel. You get to go where you want, do what you want. No compromises, no one impinging on your time.”
Spoken like a true cynic, he thought. Or somebody badly burned by life. “One hundred and one,” he pronounced. “I think you’re good to go, so long as you don’t overdo it.”
Sitting up, then swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she said, “Believe me, I never overdo it.”
“If anything, I suppose you could say that you underdo it. Which is why I’d like to have you check in here three times a day so I can do readings. For a couple of days anyway. And since there’s always food available, I’d like to see you eating five or six times a day.”
She laughed over that. “What you’d like to see and what I’m able to do are two entirely different things, Doctor. I’ll take better care of myself until I get off the ship. That’s a promise since I don’t want to bother you again. But I’m afraid that doctor’s orders are falling on deaf ears otherwise. I can’t eat that many times a day.”
“Small meals,” he said. “Constant fuel for your body, so your blood sugar doesn’t fluctuate so much.” Was that a small spark of defiance flickering in her eyes now? Did the lady have a little challenge in her? “Unless you like being a patient in here. Because if you don’t take better care of yourself, we’re bound to meet under these very same circumstances again.” Not that it would be a bad thing, the part where they met again, anyway. But he surely didn’t want it to be under these circumstances. And now that he knew Sarah Collins was here, on the ship, all alone…
No! He didn’t do that. Hadn’t even been tempted before. He knew others of the crew indulged in little shipboard flings, but he didn’t. Even though the emotional scars had long since healed from his last try at something more enduring than a casual fling, he didn’t indulge at all now, and he was surprised that Sarah had brought out that little beast in him, especially with the resolution he’d made. Well, time to put the beast away. Michael Sloan was off the market, didn’t look, didn’t touch. Didn’t anything! Not until he knew what came next for him.
“OK, so maybe you’re right. But I don’t like your prescription, Doctor, so here’s my compromise. I’ll eat my three meals a day, maybe have a small bedtime snack, but that’s still up in the air, depending on how I feel at bedtime. And I’ll stop in here once a day to have my gluco…blood-sugar level checked. Not the three times you wanted.” She smiled sweetly at him. “That’s my final offer.”
“Most people don’t defy doctor’s orders.” He liked it that she did.
“And most people don’t go on a cruise to avoid social interaction, which is why I’m here, Doctor. To avoid social interactions, or even professional ones such as yourself. Once I get myself
