Saved by Doctor Dreamy Read online

  An undeniable attraction...

  In search of her independence, Dr. Juliette Allen’s time in Costa Rica was meant for chasing adventure...not facing the constant temptation of her sexy, arrogant new boss, Damien Caldwell!

  Damien can’t understand why gorgeous, fiery Juliette would hide herself away in the jungle but quickly learns not to underestimate the quiet strength of this auburn beauty. And when tragedy strikes Damien finds himself on an unexpected mission—to open Juliette’s heart and convince her to take a chance on love!

  “That’s it?” His face melted into a smile. “You’re confessing that you didn’t follow my orders?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Should I fire you?” he asked.

  “That’s an option. Or, you could go help me do it now.”

  Damien laughed. “In spite of my bad mood and your naivety, we’re pretty good together, aren’t we?” He stepped toward her, reached out and stroked her cheek, then simply stared at her for a moment. A long stare. A deep stare.

  For an instant, Juliette thought he might kiss her and, for that same instant, she thought she might want him to. But he didn’t. He simply smiled, stepped back, then walked away. And she was left wondering where a kiss might have taken them.

  Dear Reader,

  Thanks so much for coming back to read another of my books. This story, Saved by Doctor Dreamy, is set in one of my favorite places—Costa Rica. As a former nurse, it interests me because the health care system deals with modern medicine as well as traditional medicine, which is very much a part of the culture. In my story, Juliette and Damien have to meet in the middle of both medical worlds to find out what’s best suited to them.

  I read an article about nursing practices in the 1800s and I added some of these elements to Saved by Doctor Dreamy. Medical conditions around the world vary, and what’s modern in one society is primitive in another. We see that in the little hospital in which my characters work. They face harsh conditions because they have no other choices, and make tough decisions based on what they have.

  I love writing about difficult hospital conditions, and I’ve incorporated that theme into several of my previous books, because what better way is there to bring two people together than when facing a hardship?

  Again, I appreciate you reading Saved by Doctor Dreamy, and I’ll be back shortly with another book.

  As always, wishing you health and happiness.

  Dianne

  SAVED BY DOCTOR DREAMY

  Dianne Drake

  Books by Dianne Drake

  Harlequin Medical Romance

  Deep South Docs

  A Home for the Hot-Shot Doc

  A Doctor’s Confession

  A Child to Heal Their Hearts

  Tortured by Her Touch

  Doctor, Mommy...Wife?

  The Nurse and the Single Dad

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  Praise for Dianne Drake

  “A very emotional, heart-tugging story. A beautifully written book. This story brought tears to my eyes in several parts.”

  —Goodreads on P.S. You’re a Daddy!

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  EXCERPT FROM PREGNANT WITH THE BOSS'S BABY BY SUE MACKAY

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE NIGHT WAS STILL. No howler monkeys sitting up in the trees yelling their heads off. No loud birds calling into the darkness. Damien doubted if there was even a panther on the prowl anywhere near here. It was kind of eerie actually, since he was used to the noise. First, the city noise in Seattle, where he grew up. Then Chicago, Miami, New York. Back to Seattle. And finally, the noise of the Costa Rican jungle, where he’d come to settle.

  Noise was his friend. It comforted him, reassured him that he was still alive. Something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. And when it surrounded him, it was home and safety and all the things that kept him sane and focused on the life he was living now.

  When Damien had come to the jungle he’d been pleasantly surprised by the noisiness of it all. It was as loud as any city, but in a different way. He’d traded in people for animals and honking cars for wind rustling through the vegetation. Now that he was used to the sounds there, he counted on them to surround him, to cradle him in a contented solitude. But tonight was different. He felt so...isolated, so out of touch with his reality. So lonely. Alone in the city—alone in the jungle. It was all the same. All of it bringing a sense of despair that caught up with him from time to time.

  This despair of his had been a problem over the years. People didn’t understand it. Didn’t want to. Most of the time he didn’t want to understand it either, because when he did he’d overcompensate. Do things he might not normally do. Like getting engaged to someone he wouldn’t have normally given a second thought to.

  But Daniel understood this about him. Daniel—he was the only one, and he’d never ridiculed Damien for what other people thought was ridiculous. Of course, he and Daniel had the twin-connection thing going on, and that was something that never failed him.

  Damien and Daniel Caldwell. Two of a kind—well, not so much. They looked alike, with a few notable exceptions like hair length and beard. Daniel was the clean-shaven, short-haired version, while Damien was the long-haired, scruffy-bearded one. But they were both six foot one, had the same brown eyes, same dimples that women seemed to adore. Same general build. Apart from their outward looks, though, they couldn’t have been more different. Restlessness and the need to keep moving were Damien’s trademarks while contented domesticity and a quiet lifestyle were his brother’s. Which Damien envied, as he’d always figured that by the time he was thirty-five he’d have something in his life more stable than what he had. Something substantial. Yet that hadn’t happened.

  It’s too quiet tonight, Damien scribbled into a short letter to his brother. It feels like it’s going to eat me alive. He’d seen Daniel a few months ago. Gone back to the States for Daniel’s wedding. And it was a happy reunion, not like the time before that when he’d been called home to support his brother through his first wife’s death. But Daniel had moved on now. He had a happy life, a happy family. Lucky, lucky man.

  The work is good, though, bro. It keeps me busy pretty much all the time. Keeps me out of trouble. So how’s your new life fitting into your work schedule?

  Daniel’s life—a nice dream. Even though, deep down, Damien didn’t want strings to bind him to one place, one lifestyle. Rather, he needed to do what he wanted, when he wanted, with no one to account to. And space to think, to reevaluate. Or was that another of his overcompensations? Anyway, he had that now, although he’d had to come to the remote jungles of Costa Rica to find it. In that remoteness, however, he’d found a freedom he’d never really had before.

  And remote it was. Isolated from all the everyday conveniences that Costa Rica’s large cities offered. Not even attractive to the never-ending flow of expats who were discovering the charms of this newly modernizing Central American country.

  Most of th
e time Damien thrived on the isolation, not that he was, by nature, a solitary kind of man. Because he wasn’t. Or at least didn’t used to be. In his former life, he’d liked fast cars, nice condos and beautiful women. In fact, he’d thrived on those things before he’d escaped them. Now, the lure of the jungle had trapped him in a self-imposed celibacy, and that wasn’t just of a sexual nature. It was a celibacy from worldly matters. A total abstinence from anything that wasn’t directed specifically toward him. A time to figure out where he was going next in his life. Or if he was even going to go anywhere else at all.

  In the meantime, Damien didn’t regret turning his back on his old life in order to take off on this new one. In ways he’d never expected, it suited him.

  Say hello to Zoey for me, and tell her I’m glad she joined the family. And give Maddie a kiss from her Uncle Damien.

  Damien scrawled his initials at the bottom of the letter, stuck it in an envelope and addressed it. Maybe sometime in the next week or so he’d head into Cima de la Montaña to stock up on some basic necessities and mail the letter. Call his parents if he got near enough to a cell tower. And find a damned hamburger!

  “We need you back in the hospital, Doctor,” Alegria Diaz called through his open window. She was his only trained nurse—a woman who’d left the jungle to seek a higher education. Which, in these parts, was a rarity as the people here didn’t usually venture too far out into the world.

  “What is it?” he called back, bending down to pull on his boots.

  “Stomachache. Nothing serious. But he wouldn’t listen to me. Said he had to see el médico.”

  El médico. The doctor. Yes, that was him. The doctor who directed one trained nurse, one semiretired, burned-out plastic surgeon and a handful of willing, if not experienced, volunteers.

  “Let me put my shirt back on and comb my hair, and I’ll be right over.” A year ago his world had been very large. Penthouse. Sports car. Today it was very small. A one-room hut twenty paces from the hospital. A borrowed pickup truck that worked as often as it didn’t.

  Damien donned a cotton T-shirt, pulled his hair back and rubber-banded it into a small ponytail, and headed out the door. Being on call 24/7 wasn’t necessarily the best schedule, but that was the life he’d accepted for himself and it was also the life he was determined to stick with. For how long? At least until he figured out what his next life would be. Or if he’d finally stumbled upon the life he wanted.

  “I wanted to give him an antacid,” Alegria told him as he entered through the door of El Hospital Bombacopsis, which sat central in the tiny village of Bombacopsis.

  “But he refused it?” Damien asked, stopping just inside the door.

  “He said a resbaladera would fix him.”

  Resbaladera—a rice and barley drink. “Well, we don’t serve that here and, even if we did, I’ve never heard that it has any medicinal benefits for a stomachache.”

  Alegria smiled up at him. She was a petite woman, small in frame, short in height. Dark skin, black hair, dark eyes. Mother of three, grandmother of one. “He won’t take an antacid from you,” she warned.

  “And yesterday he wouldn’t take an aspirin from me when he had a headache. So why’s he here in the first place, if he refuses medical treatment?”

  “Señor Segura takes sick twice a year, when his wife goes off to San José to visit her sister.”

  “She leaves, and he catches a cold and comes to the hospital.” Damien chuckled.

  “Rosalita is a good cook here. He likes her food.”

  “Well, apparently he ate too much of it tonight, since he’s sick at his stomach.”

  Alegria shrugged. “He’s hard to control once you put a plate of casado in front of him.”

  Casado—rice, black beans, plantains, salad, tortillas and meat. One of Damien’s favorite Costa Rican meals. But he didn’t go all glutton on it the way Señor Segura apparently had. “Well, casado or not, I’m going to check him out, and if this turns out to be a simple stomachache from overeating I’m going to give him an antacid and tell Rosalita to cut back on his portions.”

  “He won’t like that,” Alegria said.

  “And I don’t like having my evening interrupted by a patient who refuses to do what his nurse tells him.”

  “Whatever you say, Doctor.” Alegria scooted off to fetch the antacid while Damien approached his cantankerous patient.

  “I hear you won’t take the medicine my nurse wanted to give you.”

  “It’s no good,” Señor Segura said. “Won’t cure what’s wrong with me.”

  “But a rice and barley drink will?”

  “That’s what my Guadalupe always gives me when I don’t feel so well.”

  “Well, Guadalupe is visiting her sister now, which means we’re the ones who are going to have to make you feel better.” Damien bent down and prodded the man’s belly, then had a listen to his belly sounds through a stethoscope. He checked the chart for the vital signs Alegria had already recorded, then took a look down Señor Segura’s throat. Nothing struck him as serious so he signaled Alegria to bring the antacid over to the bedside. “OK, you’re sick. But it’s only because you ate too much. My nurse is going to give you a couple of tablets to chew that will make you feel better.”

  “The tablets are no good. I want resbaladera like my Guadalupe makes.”

  Damien refused to let this man try his patience, which was going to happen very quickly if he didn’t get this situation resolved. It was a simple matter, though. Two antacid tablets would work wonders, if he could convince Señor Segura to give in. “I don’t have resbaladera here, and we’re not going to make it specifically for you.” They had neither the means nor the money to make special accommodations for one patient.

  “Then I’ll stay sick until I get better, or die!”

  “You’re not going to die from a stomachache,” Damien reassured him.

  “And I’m not going to die because I wouldn’t take your pills.”

  So there it was. The standoff. It happened sometimes, when the village folk here insisted on sticking to their traditional ways. He didn’t particularly like giving in, when he knew that what he was trying to prescribe would help. But in cases like Señor Segura’s, where the cure didn’t much matter one way or another, he found it easier to concede the battle and save his arguments for something more important.

  “Well, if you’re refusing the tablets, that’s up to you. But just keep in mind that your stomachache could last through the night.”

  “Then let it,” Señor Segura said belligerently. Then he looked over at Alegria. “And you can save those pills for somebody else.”

  Alegria looked to Damien for instruction. “Put them back,” Damien told her.

  “Yes, Doctor,” she said, frowning at Señor Segura. “As you wish.”

  What he wished was that he had more space, better equipment, more trained staff and up-to-date medicines. In reality, though, he had a wood-frame, ten-bed hospital that afforded no luxuries whatsoever and a one-room, no-frills clinic just off the entrance to the ward. It was an austere setup, and he had to do the best with it that he could. But the facility’s lack was turning into his lack of proper service, as he didn’t have much to offer anyone. Basic needs were about all he could meet. Of course, it was his choice to trade in a lucrative general surgery practice in Seattle for all of this. So he wasn’t complaining. More like, he was wishing.

  One day, he thought to himself as he took a quick look at the only other patient currently admitted to the hospital. She was a young girl with a broken leg whose parents couldn’t look after her properly and still tend to their other nine children. So he’d set her leg, then admitted her, and wasn’t exactly sure what to do with her other than let her occupy space until someone more critical needed the bed.

  “She’s fine,” Alegria told
him before he took his place at the bedside. “I checked her an hour ago and she’s sound asleep.”

  Damien nodded and smiled. The only thing that would turn this worthless evening into something worthwhile would be to shut himself in his clinic and take a nap on the exam table. Sure, it was the lazy way out, since his real bed was only a few steps away. But his exam room was closer, and he was suddenly bone-tired. And his exam table came with a certain appeal he couldn’t, at this moment, deny. So Damien veered off to the clinic, shut the door behind him and was almost asleep before he stretched out on the exam room table.

  * * *

  “Like I’ve been telling you for the past several weeks, I don’t want a position in administration here at your hospital. I don’t want to be your sidekick. I don’t want to be put through the daily grind of budgets and salaries and supply orders!”

  Juliette Allen took a seat across the massive mahogany desk from her father, Alexander, and leaned forward. “And, most of all, I don’t want to be involved in anything that smacks of nepotism.” Standing up to her dad was something she should have done years ago, but first her schooling, then her work had overtaken her, thrown her into a rut. Made her complacent. Then one day she woke up in the same bedroom she’d spent thirty-three years waking up in, had breakfast at the same table she’d always had breakfast at, and walked out the front door she’d always walked out of. Suddenly, she’d felt stifled. Felt the habits of her life closing in around her, choking her. And that’s what her life had turned into—one big habit.

  “This isn’t nepotism, Juliette,” Alexander said patiently. “It’s about me promoting the most qualified person to the position.”

  “But I didn’t apply for the position!” She was too young to be a director of medical operations in a large hospital. The person filling that spot needed years more experience than she had and she knew that. What she also knew was that this was her father’s way of keeping her under his thumb. “And I think it’s presumptuous of you to submit an application on my behalf.”