by Janice Lynn
Madison just smiled as she made a mental note of Mrs. Cline’s systolic and diastolic numbers so she could record the numbers into her computer record. “Dr. Fielding tell you that?”
“Me and every other person who was within hearing range and at his mercy.” The woman gestured to the various lines and equipment hooked to her. “All us poor helpless souls who aren’t able to escape are subjected to his extolling of your virtues.”
Madison laughed. “Was he that bad?”
“Worse,” Karen chimed in, stepping into the room and shaking her smiling head. “He’s making all my nursing staff sick.”
Stifling a laugh, Madison rolled her eyes at her soon-to-be maid of honor. “I’ll talk to him. Again.”
“You see that you do that.” Karen winked conspiratorially at Mrs. Cline, who smiled even wider. “’Course, I think most of them are just sick that he’s off the market.”
“Definitely off the market,” Mrs. Cline added. “Never seen a man so in love.”
“Actually,” Karen said, coming over to stand by Mrs. Cline’s bed, “that’s what I was coming to tell you.”
Madison’s heart rate picked up speed. Levi was on the medical floor? She hadn’t expected him until later in the evening. “Oh?”
“Don’t play dumb with me either,” Karen warned, rolling her eyes indulgently. “He’s here.”
Madison’s heart sang with happiness. “Okay, no playing dumb.” She smiled at Mrs. Cline, patted the woman’s hand, then turned to her best friend. “Where is my fiancé?”
“Right here.”
Madison’s breath caught just as it did every time she saw Levi. Just as she imagined it always would whenever she saw him.
He took her breath away.
Time wouldn’t change that.
Wouldn’t change her love for him.
His eyes met hers, shone with love. That might always take her breath away, too. That he loved her. Really deep-down loved her.
When she looked into his eyes, into his soul, she knew time wouldn’t change the way he loved her either.
Except possibly that with each day that passed they’d grow to love each other more and more.
“What are you doing here?”
“Exactly my thoughts,” Karen interjected, frowning and waving something in front of Levi.
Madison looked closer. “Hey, that’s my shirt.”
“Yeah, it is. Somebody…” Karen cleared her throat “…was supposed to wait while I came and gave this to you for you to put on.”
Madison glanced from Karen to her Woodstock-covered scrub top to Levi. “Oh?”
Levi grinned. “I got tired of waiting.”
Karen gave another eye-roll. “I wasn’t in here two minutes. Lord save us from couples in love.”
Madison and Mrs. Cline watched Karen and Levi quip back and forth.
Mrs. Cline laughed. “Y’all are better than all my soaps put together.”
“Just another day at Angel Creek Hospital.” Karen sighed. She motioned to Madison. “Go put this on, then go with him. I’ll finish up here if that’s okay with Mrs. Cline.”
Mrs. Cline seemed to consider a moment. “Okay with me, although I’d prefer if y’all just rolled my bed into wherever they’re going. I have a feeling the rest of the show is going to be really good.”
Madison smiled. Yeah, she had that feeling too.
Levi’s fingers closed over the velvet box in his pocket.
He’d gotten Karen to help him set the stage.
The stage that really was a bit late, considering, but still something he wanted to do for Madison.
Something he wanted her to have when she looked back on their pre-marriage time together.
When their kids asked how he’d proposed, he didn’t want her to say, “Well, we thought I was pregnant and he blurted out that we were getting married. Then, later, in his bathroom floor, I told him I wasn’t pregnant but he said he wanted to marry me anyway.”
Nope, that wasn’t what he wanted her to remember when someone asked about how he’d proposed.
He wanted her to have romance.
He’d fallen for her at first sight, right down to remembering what she’d worn, something he usually didn’t pay attention to with women.
He’d wanted to re-create the moment, to get down on his knees, and ask her to marry him properly.
He’d considered proposing at the lake.
After all, what was more romantic than an evening spent at the lake in privacy? It’s where they were getting married, where they’d be spending the first part of their honeymoon in the small lake house. The second part was a surprise.
She’d mentioned one night that she’d always wanted to see the Grand Canyon. He’d finagled a hotel room overlooking the canyon where they could lie in bed and watch the sun rise. Plus, if he got her alone at the lake, he might get distracted by the fact they were alone and then he might forget to propose. He doubted it, but when alone with Madison, he seemed to have a one-track mind and it involved seeing how quickly he could put a look of ecstasy on her face.
Pretty darned fast.
“You need me to wipe the drool off your chin, lover-boy?”
“Nah, Karen.” He grinned at the charge nurse. “You’ve helped enough, thanks.”
At that moment the bathroom door opened and Madison stepped out wearing her cartoon-covered scrub top. He smiled. Perfect.
She was perfect.
Perfect for him.
Made for him.
And the moment was perfect. Just as he’d hoped for.
They were in the same room they’d first met. She was wearing the same top. Only this time, when he looked at her, he knew what that crazy beating in his chest was.
Placing his hand over his heart, he dropped to one knee.
Madison’s eyes widened. Her lips parted in surprise. “Levi?”
He knew his love for her shone in his eyes, on his face, that she could probably see the wildly beating pulse at his throat, that she could probably see the banging of his heart against his ribcage. He knew she loved him, knew she’d already agreed to be his wife, yet still he could barely breathe. Reminding himself that he had this in the bag, that she wasn’t going to refuse him when her love for him shone just as brightly in her eyes, he pulled the box from his pocket, popped it open, and took her just as unsteady hand into his shaking one.
“I love you, Madison, with all my heart and all my being and all that I am.” He’d never spoken truer words. Never. “Will you do me the honor of spending the rest of your life with me as my partner, my everything, my wife?”
Not knowing he’d planned to propose here, in front of them, Karen and Mrs. Cline ahhed collectively.
Tears shimmered in Madison’s big green eyes—eyes he loved to stare into, to watch light up with pleasure at his touch, to watch shimmer when she orgasmed. “Levi, what are you doing? You know you don’t have to do this.”
“Not the answer I was looking for,” he prompted, but couldn’t quite keep the smile from his face, couldn’t quite keep from thinking he was the luckiest man in the world to have this woman’s love.
“Let me try again.” He cleared his throat dramatically, causing Karen and Mrs. Cline to let loose with another sigh. “Without you, Madison Swanson…” Okay, so maybe he was laying the sappy romance on a little thick, but he wanted to give Madison sappy romance, wanted her to bask in the glow of his feelings for her, and with the number that nut job Simon had done on her, she needed to be wrapped in the security of his love, needed to have her friends acknowledge how crazy he was about her, needed Madison to know how much he really did need her in his life, to balance out the quirks from his own past. Simply, he needed her. “I’m lost, wandering vacantly through life without real meaning or purpose. Marry me, Madison.”
Happiness glowed on her face, her eyes glazed over with emotional tears. “Oh, yes, Dr. Fielding. I’ll marry you.”
“Good, because this is non-refundable,” he teased
as he pulled the diamond ring from its box and slid it onto her finger.
A perfect fit for his perfect bride-to-be.
“You’re crazy,” she whispered, admiring how her ring caught the light, sparkling brilliantly as she moved her hand back and forth.
“Crazy about you.”
And he was. More crazy than he’d have dreamed possible.
So crazy that he was willing to risk loving and losing because a single moment in time spent with Madison was worth anything life threw at them, was worth taking any chance.
Because Madison made him a better man. Made him a man he liked when he looked in the mirror in the mornings. Made him a man who knew what true happiness was.
To love and be loved.
EPILOGUE
MADISON stretched lazily in the king-sized bed overlooking the Grand Canyon. Not a place most probably wanted to visit on their honeymoon, but she couldn’t think of anywhere she’d rather be than lying here watching the sun set with her husband. Her husband.
She smiled, running her fingers through his thick dark hair, letting her gaze travel over his muscled shoulders. He lay close beside her, using her breasts as his personal pillows, tracing his fingers over her belly.
How she loved him!
How she trusted him!
He raised his head, propping his chin against her sternum. “Hmm?”
Touching the strong planes of his face, she just smiled.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, returning her smile.
“How happy I am. How much I love you.”
“The feeling is mutual, Mrs. Fielding.” He propped himself up on his elbow and began tracing a delicate pattern on her belly. “You think you are?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
Certainly, with them spending every spare moment together over the past two months, pregnancy was a possibility. A very realistic possibility since Levi seemed bound and determined to make love to her as often as possible.
After the pregnancy that they’d both admitted they’d hoped was real, they’d decided they wanted to start a family immediately, wanted a baby that was a blend of the two of them.
He leaned down, kissed her lower abdomen just below her belly button. “I hope you are, Madison.” He rubbed his cheek against her belly. “I want a little girl with big green eyes and blonde curls.”
Her heart swelled with love for the man lying on her.
“Hmm,” she mused, wiggling beneath him. “I was hoping for a boy with hot fudge sundae eyes and his father’s mischievous grin.”
Levi’s lips lowered to her belly again, but this time, rather than the reverent kiss from before, his kiss was hot, seductive, meant to light fires only he could put out. “Guess we’ll just have to keep trying till we both get what we want.”
Madison knew exactly what she wanted. Exactly what she needed.
“I think I need to be inside you again.”
She smiled, stretching her arms out above her head and enjoying the feel of his mouth against her skin. “You think?”
“I know,” he corrected. His hands cradling her hips, he pressed yet another hot kiss to her belly.
“Good, because I’m in need of being rescued again.” How she’d managed to catch the diamond solitaire, she wasn’t sure, just that her finger was definitely stuck in her hair. “Ouch. Help me.”
Levi raised up, grinned at where she tried to free her ring from the hair tangled around it. “That’s what I love best about you. Always making me look good.”
“Making you feel good, too,” she promised, reaching for him the moment he’d freed her, knowing that as long as she had him to rescue her, she didn’t mind being a damsel in distress.
Because she was his damsel in distress and he’d always come to her rescue.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0620-5
THE DOCTOR’S DAMSEL IN DISTRESS
First North American Publication 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Janice Lynn
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