Cherished author Sandra Chastain offers readers a searing story of love and promise, danger and desire.
Dr. Nikolai Sandor has sworn off caring for patients. It’s all research, all the time for him now. But after taking a call he can’t ignore, Niko finds himself at the bedside of a woman who had attempted to take her own life . . . and now refuses to wake from her twilight state. Niko is drawn to the angelic woman, to her peaceful face. When he touches her hand and whispers to her of love and passion, he senses she is aware of his presence. He must wake her—even if it means believing in a romance that might never begin.
Karen Miller doesn’t want to wake up. She wants to be alone with her pain, in the darkness of her deepest sleep. But she can’t ignore that voice, low and seductive. Who is this man, this tempter at her bedside? Is he real? His sensual whispering has penetrated Karen’s safe haven, creating an intimacy she’d never known before. But if she opens her eyes, will she ever be safe again?
Includes a special message from the editor, as well as excerpts from these Loveswept titles: Flirting with Disaster, Taking Shots, and Long Simmering Spring.
Release date:
June 10, 2013
Publisher:
Loveswept
Print pages:
224
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When the phone rang, Mac closed the journal he’d been writing in and slid it into the desk drawer. He’d had a disquieting feeling since he’d awakened at dawn. Now he sensed that he was about to learn its source.
He lifted the receiver. “Yes.”
“Mac, this is Avery Marsh, administrator at Mercy General Hospital in New York. Sorry to call so early. I may be chasing shadows, but you’re my last hope.”
“What can I do for you, Avery?”
“We’ve got a comatose woman here at Mercy who won’t let herself wake up. There’s no reason for her to die, but she seems to have her mind set on it. I know you’re in the business of creating special miracles, and it’s gonna take one to bring her back. Can you help?”
Mac studied his angel assignment board. He didn’t have anybody in the complex available for a medical rescue assignment. “What’s her name?” he asked, racking his brain for a prospect.
“Karen Miller.”
Karen.
Mac let out a sigh of relief and reached for a new computer disk. He had his angel. “You still have Nikolai Sandor on your staff?”
“Niko? Sure. When he came here six years ago, he stirred up a storm and settled like lightning in the middle of it. He’s an institution now, the resident sinner of the research department. But I don’t know about Niko. Mac, since his sister died, he has absolutely refused to deal directly with patients.”
“The resident sinner of the research department, huh?” Mac laughed. “Sinner or saint. In my line of work, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. Let me handle it. I think Niko may be just what your patient needs.”
Suddenly Lincoln MacAllister felt a new energy come to life and begin to build. His smile widened as he pulled up Niko’s face on his computer screen. Yep, Karen Miller needed a reason to fight, and it was time for Dr. Sandor to come back to the land of the living.
A Gypsy, a woman, and the perfect lure—a sinner and a saint. Danger and desire.
ONE
Friday the 13th—Mercy General Hospital—10:00 A.M.
Karen’s dream came again.
The woman stood on the English moor in the damp fog of the late afternoon and waited. He’d come, as he’d promised. He’d put his arms around her and her heart would soar. Then, after he’d teased away her fears and worries, they’d climb on his white stallion and ride off into the night. He had always come before.
But this time he was very late. Growing colder, the woman began to fidget. What if he’d changed his mind? She couldn’t go back. She’d already closed the door on her past by running from the man to whom she’d been promised, the man who’d kill her for what she’d done.
Glancing around, she felt the finality of her action begin to gnaw at her. What would she do if he didn’t come? Where would she go? No. Her black-eyed Gypsy wouldn’t do that to her. He’d promise to keep her safe. No one would think to look in the Rom camp, he’d said. Everybody knew that no respectable woman would ever take up with those thieving vagabonds.
She rubbed her chapped hands together in growing despair. Resigned to accepting the monotony of her life, she’d never expected to take a lover. But from the first day he’d arrived at her back door, black eyes snapping, dark hair curling at his threadbare collar, she’d understood her life would never be the same.
Now she waited.
The fog swirled in, covering the heather, leaving her hair glistening with moisture and the ground spongy beneath her feet. She was having more and more difficulty seeing through the mist. Not even sound penetrated the curtain of gray. Their time to meet had long since passed, but still she waited.
He would come.
He had to.
But he hadn’t.
The dreamer let out a sigh. In her mind everything was a blur of reality and dreams. She didn’t know where one ended and the other began. The only constant through it all was the loneliness. It had become personal. The dreamer and the woman she dreamed about were the same. Now both were afraid.
Dr. Nikolai Sandor stood in the doorway of the glass-walled cubicle inside the intensive care unit studying the sleeping woman.
Even in her condition, Karen Miller was exquisite. Her silver-blond hair and alabaster skin made her look like some ice princess from a child’s fairy tale. She needed to be wearing ermine and snowflakes, riding in a Russian sled across a frozen lake with her eyes flashing, her hair loose in the wind. Instead, she lay cold and still.
Niko was surprised to feel a sudden awareness, a connection between them. Was it that he was tired? Was it because she was beautiful and her name was Karen, the same as his sister? He didn’t like the way he was responding to her. He didn’t want to feel anything. He didn’t want to be there.
But most of all, he didn’t like coincidences. The one thing he’d carried away from his life as a Gypsy was an understanding that everything in life was preordained. If something was meant to happen, a man didn’t fight it.
Niko Sandor fought every obstacle that threatened his chosen future. He hadn’t always won, but he’d never given up.
He’d also never given in to flights of fantasy. Niko had forced himself to become a logical, organized person above all else. Such instant physical awareness of a strange woman was unsettling, even for a Gypsy who’d fought the lure of mystery all his life.
Hold on, Sandor. The woman is a patient, he told himself. He was there because she’d had a blow to her head, causing trauma. Now the temporary swelling of the brain was gone. The case was proceeding normally, except for one thing.
Karen Miller remained comatose. Her refusal to come back to the world had brought him to the treatment wing of the hospital for the first time in years.
“Tell me about her,” he commanded the nurse, who seemed awestruck at the presence of such a legend.
“According to her application to the library where she works, she’s twenty-nine—”
“I mean her medical history,” he snapped. “I read the chart, walk me through it, please.”
The attending doctor appeared in the doorway and answered instead. “Nothing unusual. She apparently stepped in front of a taxi four days ago. Got knocked into the curb. Hit her head. Brain swelled. Intensive care.”
“Family?”
The nurse said, “None, apparently.”
“Friends?”
“Same story. Acquaintances, but nobody close.”
Niko swore. “Sometimes that’s the best way to reach them. Often they’ll come back for someone they know.”
“I think we’ve lost this one,” the nurse’s tired voice said. “And I’m always the optimist.”
“And I’m always the pessimist,” the younger doctor said sharply. “Wake up, woman. We need this bed. And you need to get out of here. Go back to your life.”
“Well, we haven’t tried that treatment,” the nurse admitted. “Telling somebody we need her bed is a novel approach, but I don’t think it’s working.”
Niko studied the chart. At this rate they’d have to go with a feeding tube. She’d lose weight, muscle tone, the ability to function. “Why in hell isn’t she waking up?”
The doctor on duty glared at his watch. “Beats me. I told you. We’ve done everything according to the book. She isn’t alive, but she’s not dead either. She seems to be caught somewhere in between.”
Niko slammed the chart against his hand. “You don’t call being in a coma dead? I do. And the longer she stays, the less likely she is to wake up.”
Niko knew he was being unnecessarily sharp, but six years earlier he’d watched another patient in a coma, another patient who didn’t want to live. In spite of all his efforts, she’d gotten her wish. She’d died.
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