“Have you been here all night?” It seemed incredible that he would have stayed with her ever since her surgery. She noticed then that the blood-pressure cuff was wrapped around her upper arm, and fear renewed itself within her. There had been problems! Big problems! She swallowed around the tightness in her throat. All night she’d teetered on the brink of death, and Sam had stayed with her and fought for her very life. For hours her fate had hung by a delicate thread, and this man had valiantly battled to save her.

“What happened?” Her question was hoarse, revealing a hundred doubts.

“Nothing,” he answered crisply. “All surgeries should be such a breeze.”

“Nothing went wrong?”

He frowned, puzzled. “Nothing.”

“But…the blood-pressure cuff…And you stayed with me all night. Why?”

His frown deepened, marring his smooth brow with three nearly straight lines. “Because I said I would. You needed someone.”

Guilt fell heavily upon her shoulders. She certainly hadn’t meant for him to do this. He must have gone without sleep the entire night, and all because of a few silly words she’d uttered in the throes of panic. “But I didn’t—”

“Hey, don’t worry about me,” he interrupted quickly. “I’ve got the day off.”

“I suppose you golf on Wednesdays?” she asked.

“I don’t play golf.”

Marjorie feigned shock. “You don’t golf? Just what kind of doctor are you? No one told me that before I made my first appointment with you.”

“Count your blessings, Majors.”

“Oh?”

“I could charge by the hour.”

The effort to smile was painful, but holding back her amusement would have been impossible. “Hey, don’t make me laugh—it hurts.” She groaned and placed her hand over her abdomen. “How soon will the pain go away.”

“In a few days.”

“A whole lot of good that’s doing me now.”

“Stop being so impatient.”

He spoke with just enough of a challenge for her to quit arguing. She would grin and bear it.

“I’ll get the nurse,” Sam informed her, smiling. “Cal left instructions for you to sit upright once you woke.”

Marjorie snapped her mouth closed and pressed her lips together to smother a protest. Dr. Johnson didn’t actually expect her to move, did he? She couldn’t—not yet. If breathing hurt this much, she could only imagine the agony that sitting up would cause. Great! Sam and his friend had grabbed her from the jaws of death, only to let her die a slow, torturous death from pain.

From the moment she’d met Dr. Sam, Marjorie had been looking for some imperfection. Anything. He was much too wonderful to be real. Now the flaw stood out like a fake diamond under a jeweler’s eyepiece. Clearly, she decided in her still-drugged state, Sam Bretton enjoyed watching people suffer.