Falling for Her Army Doc Read online

  She’s helping him rediscover his memories...

  Can she also mend his heart?

  After an injury in Afghanistan, Mateo Sanchez finds himself in an amnesia clinic in Hawaii. Struggling to piece together how he arrived on the gorgeous island, Mateo may not be the easiest patient, but no-nonsense doctor Lizzie Peterson is determined to help the brooding ex-army doc. Only, as Mateo begins to recover, they discover a bond and a temptation that’s so very hard to resist...

  “You really can’t let down, can you?”

  “It’s not about letting down, Mateo. It’s about all the things that are expected of me, the least of which is taking care of you since I’m the one who brought you here.”

  He reached over and brushed a stray strand of hair from her face.

  “I’m not going to let anything hurt you or your reputation,” he said, his voice so low it was almost drowned out by the noise level coming from the rest of the people at The Shack. “I know how hard it is to get what you want, and keep it, and I wouldn’t jeopardize that for you, Lizzie.”

  This serious side of him...she hadn’t seen it before. But she knew, deep down, this was the real Mateo coming through. Not the one who refused treatment, not even the one who partied with her on the beach. Those might be different sides to his personality, but she’d just been touched by the real Mateo Sanchez, and she liked that. Maybe for the first time liked him. If only she could see more of him now.

  Dear Reader,

  I was married in Hawaii, in a garden overlooking the ocean, and it was such a lovely place to exchange vows. When I was thinking about Lizzie and Mateo’s story, I wanted them to meet and fall in love in a special place, too, and to me, there’s no place more special than Oahu.

  In my story, Lizzie and Mateo struggle against past problems trying to find the love that was there all along. Mateo has returned home from the war with a head injury and amnesia, and in him Lizzie sees her father, who struggled with dementia at the end of his life. She wants to be in love with Mateo, and to explore that love as fully as possible, but will the memory of her father stand in the way? And Mateo, who wants desperately to be in love with Lizzie, holds himself back because he is so lost in his own world he doesn’t think it fair to drag Lizzie into it. So, how can two people who are meant to be together find their way with so many roadblocks preventing them? Or can they?

  As always, wishing you health and happiness!

  DD

  Falling for Her Army Doc

  Dianne Drake

  Books by Dianne Drake

  Harlequin Medical Romance

  Sinclair Hospital Surgeons

  Reunited with Her Army Doc

  Healing Her Boss’s Heart

  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

  Saved by Doctor Dreamy

  Bachelor Doc, Unexpected Dad

  Second Chance with Her Army Doc

  Her Secret Miracle

  New York Doc, Thailand Proposal

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

  I dedicate this book to Mr. Kahawaii, who took me into his amazing world for a little while.

  Praise for Dianne Drake

  “Ms. Drake has delivered a wonderful and very heartfelt read in this book where the chemistry between this couple was just as strong in the present as it was in the past; the romance was delightful and special because these two are meant to be...”

  —Harlequin Junkie on Second Chance with Her Army Doc

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM HEALED BY THEIR UNEXPECTED FAMILY BY KARIN BAINE

  CHAPTER ONE

  SHE LOOKED BEAUTIFUL, standing outside in the garden, catching the morning light. He watched her every day about this time. She’d take her walk, sit for a few minutes on the stone retaining wall surrounding the sculpted flowers, then return to the building.

  Once, he’d wondered what weighed her down so heavily. She had that look—the one he remembered from many of his patients, and probably even more he didn’t remember. She—Lizzie, she’d told him her name was—always smiled and greeted him politely. But there was something behind that smile.

  Of course, who was he to analyze? It had taken a photo he’d found among his things to remind him that he’d been engaged. Funny how his memory of her prior to his accident was blurred. Nancy was a barely recognizable face in a world he didn’t remember much of. And, truthfully, he couldn’t even recall how or why he’d become engaged to her. She didn’t seem his type—too flighty, too intrusive. Too greedy.

  Yet Lizzie, out there in the garden, seemed perfect. Beautiful. Smart. In tune with everything around her.

  So what wasn’t he getting here? Had he changed so much that the type of woman who’d used to attract him didn’t now? And taking her place was someone...more like Lizzie?

  Dr. Mateo Sanchez watched from the hospital window until Lizzie left the garden, then he drew the blinds and went back to bed. He didn’t have a lot of options here, as a patient. Rest, watch the TV, rest some more. Go to therapy. Which somehow he never quite seemed to do.

  This was his fourth facility since he’d been shipped from the battlefield to Germany, and nothing was working. Not the therapy. Not his attitude. Not his life. What he wanted to know they wouldn’t tell him. And what he didn’t want to know just seemed to flood back in when he didn’t want it to.

  The docs were telling him to be patient, that some memory would return while some would not. But he wanted a timeline, a calendar on his wall where he could tick off the days until he was normal again.

  He reached up and felt the tiny scar on his head. Whatever normal was. Right now, he didn’t know. There was nothing for him to hold on to. No one there to ground him. Even Nancy hadn’t stayed around long after she’d discovered he didn’t really know her.

  In fact, his first thought had been that she was a nurse, tending him at his bedside. She’d been good when he’d asked for a drink of water, even when he’d asked for another pillow, and she’d taken his criticism when she’d told him she couldn’t give him a pain pill.

  This had gone on for a week before she’d finally confessed that she wasn’t his nurse, but his fiancée. And then, in another week, she’d been gone. She wasn’t the type to do nursing care in the long term, she’d said. And unfortunately, all she could see ahead of her was nursing care, a surgeon who could no longer operate, when what she’d wanted was a surgeon who could provide a big home, fancy cars, and everything else he’d promised he’d give her.

  So, he knew the what and the when of his accident. What he didn’t know was the annoying part. As a surgeon he needed to know all aspects of his patients’ conditions, even the things that didn’t seem to matter. It was called being thorough. But for him...

  “Giving you the answers to your life could imprint false memories,” his neurologist Randy always said, when he asked. And he was right, of course. That was something he did remember. Along with so many of his basic medical skills—the ones he’d learned early on in his career.

  The more
specific skills, though... Some of them were still there. Probably most of them. But in pulling them out of his memory he hesitated sometimes. Thought he remembered but wasn’t sure of himself.

  Wait a minute. Let me consult a textbook before I remove your gall bladder.

  Yeah, right. Like that was going to work in surgery.

  He looked up and saw Lizzie standing in his doorway, simply observing him. Probably trying to figure out what to do with him.

  “Hello,” he said, not sure what to make of this.

  She was the house primary care physician—not his doctor, not even a neurologist. Meaning she had no real reason to be here unless he needed a vaccination or something.

  “I’ve seen you watch me out in the garden. I was wondering if you’d like to come out with me for a while later...breathe some fresh air, take a walk?”

  “Who’s prescribing that?” he asked suspiciously.

  “You are—if that’s what you want to do. You’re not a prisoner here, you know. And your doctor said it might be a good idea...that it could help your...” She paused.

  “Go ahead and say it. My disposition.”

  “I understand from morning staff meetings that you’re quite a handful.”

  “Nothing else to do around here,” he said. “So, I might as well improve upon my obnoxious level. It’s getting better. In fact, I think I’ll soon be counted amongst the masters.”

  “To what outcome?”

  He shrugged. “See, that’s the thing. For me, there are no outcomes.”

  “If that’s how you want it. But I’m not your doctor and you’re not my problem. So, take that walk with me or not.”

  “And tomorrow? What happens to me tomorrow?”

  “Honestly? I’m a one-day-at-a-time girl. Nothing’s ever guaranteed, Mateo. If I get through the day, tomorrow will take care of itself.”

  “Well, I like seeing ahead. And now, even behind.”

  “To each his own,” she said nonchalantly.

  “Which implies what?” he asked, feeling a smile slowly crossing his face. Lizzie was...fun. Straight to the point. And challenging.

  “You know exactly what it implies, Mateo. In your effort to see ‘behind,’ as you’re calling it, you’re driving the staff crazy. They’re afraid of you. Not sure what to do with you. And that false smile of yours is beginning to wear thin.”

  “Does it annoy you?” he asked.

  “It’s beginning to.”

  “Then my work here is done,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

  He wanted clothes—real clothes. Not these blue and green things that were passed off as hospital gowns. Those were for sick people. He wasn’t sick. Just damaged. A blood clot on his brain, which had been removed, and a lingering pest called retrograde amnesia. That kind of damage deserved surfer shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, seeing as how he was in Hawaii now.

  “And my work has nothing to do with you. I was just trying to be friendly, but you’re too much of a challenge to deal with. And, unfortunately, what should have been a simple yes or no is now preventing me from seeing my patients.”

  She sure was pretty.

  It was something he’d thought over and over about Lizzie. Long, tarnished copper hair. Curly. Soft too, he imagined. Brown eyes that could be as mischievous as a kitten or shoot daggers, depending on the circumstance. And her smile... It didn’t happen too often, he’d noticed. And when it did, it didn’t light up the proverbial room. But it sure did light up his day.

  “And how would I be doing that? I’m here, wearing these lovely clothes, eating your gourmet green slime food, putting up with your hospital’s inane therapy.”

  “And by ‘putting up with,’ you mean not showing up for?” She took a few more steps into the room, then went to open the blinds.

  “In the scheme of my future life, what will it do for me?”

  “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.”

  “No vagaries here, Lizzie. Be as specific as I have to be every time I answer someone’s orientation questions. ‘Do you remember your name?’ ‘Where are you?’ ‘What’s the date?’ ‘Who’s the current President?’”

  “Standard protocol, Mateo. You know that.” She turned back to face him. “But you make everything more difficult than it has to be.”

  She brightened his day in a way he’d never expected. “So why me? You’re not my doctor, but you’ve obviously chosen me for some special attention.”

  “My dad was a military surgeon, like you were. Let’s just say I’m giving back a little.”

  “Did he see combat?”

  “Too many times.”

  “And it changed him,” Mateo said, suddenly serious.

  “It might have—but if it did it was something he never let me see. And he never talked about it.”

  “It’s a horrible thing to talk about. The injuries. The ones you can fix...the ones you can’t. In my unit they were rushed in and out so quickly I never really saw anything but whatever it was I had to fix. Maybe that was a blessing.”

  He shut his eyes to the endless parade of casualties who were now marching by him. This was a memory he didn’t want, but he was stuck with it. And it was so vivid.

  “Were you an only child?” he asked.

  Lizzie nodded. “My mom couldn’t stand the military life. She said it was too lonely. So, by the time I was five she was gone, and then it was just my dad and me.”

  “Couldn’t have been easy being a single parent under his circumstances. I know I wouldn’t have wanted to drag a kid around with me when I was active. Wouldn’t have been fair to the kid.”

  “He never complained. At least, not to me. And what I had...it seemed normal.”

  “I complain to everybody.”

  In Germany, after his first surgery, it hadn’t occurred to him that his memory loss might be permanent. He’d been too busy dealing with the actual surgery itself to get any more involved than that. That had happened after he’d been transferred to Boston for brain rehab. Then he’d got involved. Only it hadn’t really sunk in the way it should have. But once they’d got him to a facility in California, where the patients had every sort of war-related brain injury, that was when it had occurred to him that he was just another one of the bunch.

  How could that be? That was the question he kept asking himself over and over. He had become one of the poor unfortunates he usually treated. A surgeon without his memory. A man without his past.

  “You’re a survivor who uses what he has at his disposal to regain the bits and pieces of himself he’s lost. Or at least that’s what you could be if you weren’t such a quitter.”

  “A quitter?”

  Maybe he was, since going on was so difficult. But did Lizzie understand what it was like to reach for a memory you assumed would be there and come up with nothing? And he was one of the lucky ones. Physically, he was fine, and his surgery had gone well. He’d healed well, too. But he couldn’t get past that one thing that held him back...who was he, really?

  Suddenly Mateo was tired. It wasn’t even noon yet and he needed a nap. Or an escape.

  “That walk this evening...maybe. If you can get me some real clothes.”

  Lizzie chuckled. “I should say you’ll have to wear your hospital pajamas, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  “No promises, Lizzie. I don’t make promises I can’t keep, and who knows what side of the pendulum my mood will be swinging on later.”

  “Whatever suits you,” she said, then left the room.

  Even though he hated to see her go, what he needed was to be left alone—something he’d told them over and over. He needed time to figure out just how big a failure he was, medically speaking. And what kind of disappointment he was to his mother, who’d worked long and hard to get him through medical school. The arthritis now crippling her hands showed that.


  There was probably a long list of other people he’d let down, too, but thankfully he couldn’t remember it. Except his own name—right there at the top. He was Dr. Mateo Sanchez—a doctor with retrograde amnesia. And right now that was all he cared to know. Everything else—it didn’t matter.

  * * *

  She was not getting involved. It didn’t usually work. Didn’t make you happy, either. Didn’t do a thing. At least in her case it never had.

  Lizzie’s mom had walked out when she was barely five, so no involvement there. And her dad... Well, he’d loved her. But her father had been a military surgeon, and that had taken up most of his time. While he’d always said he wanted to spend more time with her, it hadn’t happened. So no involvement with him, either, for a good part of her life.

  Then there had been her husband. Another doctor, but one who wouldn’t accept that she didn’t want to be a surgeon like him. He was a neurosurgeon and, to him, being a primary care physician meant being...lesser. He did surgeries while she did cuts and bruises, he’d always say. Brad had never failed to show his disappointment in her, so she’d failed there, too. Meaning, what was the point?

  None, that Lizzie could think of. But that was OK. She got along, designed her life the way she wanted it to be, and lived happily in the middle of it. Living in the middle was good, she decided. It didn’t take you far, but it didn’t let you down, either.

  She wondered about Mateo, though. She knew he watched her in the garden every morning. Knew he’d asked questions about her. But the look on his face...there was no confidence there. Something more like fear. Which was why she’d asked him out for a walk this evening. He needed more than the four walls of his hospital room, the same way her father had needed more.

  But her father had been on a downward spiral with Alzheimer’s. Mateo was young, healthy, had a lot of years of life ahead of him—except he was getting into the habit of throwing away the days. It was hard seeing that, after watching the way her father had deteriorated.