The Doctor She Always Dreamed Of

Dear Reader,

I’m thrilled to be back with two brand-new Medical Romances about Kira and Krissy Peniglatt—two very special sisters who work hard to care for and give to others without expecting anything in return.

In The Doctor She Always Dreamed Of Kira is a no-nonsense professional, working on the business side of nursing. Rather than enjoying the glitz and glamour of New York City, she divides her time between her job as Director of Case Management at a large insurance carrier and caring for her severely brain-injured mother. With no time to spare, she gave up on finding love a long time ago. But she’s never met a man like Dr Derrick Limone—a man willing to do anything to spend time with her.

In The Nurse’s Newborn Gift Krissy is a laid-back travelling nurse who’s in the process of changing her carefree life to keep a promise to her dead best friend—a soldier killed in the war. Having his baby, giving his parents the gift of a grandchild they can dote on and love in his absence, may seem extreme to some—but not to Krissy. She’s waited five years, and she’s ready to do it all on her own. But Spencer Penn, the baby’s godfather, has other ideas.

I hope you enjoy reading Kira’s and Krissy’s stories as much as I enjoyed writing them! To find out about my other books visit WendySMarcus.com.

Wishing you all good things,

Wendy S. Marcus

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to my cousin, Justine De Leon, in honour of her becoming a US citizen.

We love you and we’re so happy you’re here!

With special thanks to Barbara Kram for helping me run through some HMO insurance fraud scenarios.

Any errors are my own.

Thank you to my wonderful editor, Flo Nicoll, for always pushing me to do my best.

And thank you to my family, for supporting me in all that I do.

WENDY S. MARCUS is an award-winning author of contemporary romance who lives in the beautiful Hudson Valley region of New York, where she spends way too much time indoors on her computer. Writing. Really! Okay … more like where she spends way too much time on Twitter and Facebook! To learn more about Wendy, and the books she’s managed to write in spite of her social media addiction, visit WendySMarcus.com.

Contents

COVER

Dear Reader

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

“I WANT TO speak to the man in charge.”

Kira Peniglatt closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’ve reached the woman in charge,” she told the angry older gentleman on the telephone who’d been yelling at her and making unreasonable demands for the past ten minutes. “I’m the Director of Case Management here at We Care Health Care.”

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she regretted them. When talking with disgruntled customers, must remember to use WCHC instead.

“We Care Health Care,” he mimicked. “What a crock!”

If she had a dollar for every time she’d heard that or something similar over the past five years, she’d be a wealthy woman, retired at the age of thirty, living by a lake or a beach, somewhere far away from the crowds and smells of New York City. This job she now hated, her tightwad boss, and harassing phone calls from angry people would be nothing more than a distant, unpleasant memory.

“You don’t care about me,” the husband of client Daisy Limone went on. “And you sure as hell don’t care about my wife or you’d be sending someone to help me take care of her. I can’t do it all by myself. Three days in and my back is aching from all the lifting, my knees are swelled up from all the bending, and my hips are on fire from running up and down the stairs all day.”

Kira wanted to scream, “You brought this on yourself you ornery old man, now deal with it!” But she’d always prided herself on her professionalism, regardless of the challenging circumstances. Lately circumstances had become quite challenging.

By pulling his wife—she glanced at her computer screen: Primary diagnosis: cerebrovascular accident with residual right-sided hemiparesis and expressive aphasia. Secondary diagnoses: hypertension, osteoporosis, and hypothyroidism—out of an inpatient rehabilitation facility, against medical advice, nine days into an authorized twenty-eight-day stay, he’d assumed full responsibility for her care. Before the patient’s stroke she’d filled out a Health Care Proxy designating her husband as her health care agent, giving him complete control over decision-making should her doctor determine she was unable to act on her own behalf—which she wasn’t. As a result, there’d been nothing the hospital staff could do.

“Mr. Limone, your wife wasn’t ready to come home.” He’d underestimated the amount of care she would require, despite being warned—according to hospital documentation—by the case manager, the social worker, a head nurse, and the patient’s physical and occupational therapists. “Research shows, after a stroke, patients who attend independent rehabilitation facilities for intensive rehabilitation, before returning home, show much more improvement than those who don’t.”