Royal Treatment

by Leslie North

  “No, you misunderstand. I’ll buy you a new MRI machine. Although I’ll spring for some coffee too. I have a pounding headache, which your monstrosity of a machine did nothing to help.”

  She blinked at him. “What?” was all she could manage as she attempted to parse that statement.

  He leaned forward. His biceps tensed at the motion, which she steadfastly refused to notice. “I know you’ve been dodging me,” he said earnestly, “but there’s really no reason to. I want to help you.”

  “No, you want to help yourself,” she declared hotly.

  “I want to help us both. You need money. I need good publicity for my healthcare bill, which my country needs enacted. Everyone can win here. All you have to do is say yes. Have you even looked at the offer I mailed you?”

  She hadn’t. She’d stuffed it deep into the very bottom of her least-used desk drawer, where it had been collecting dust bunnies for a week. “Thank you for the consideration,” she said stiffly, “but I want to keep my data clean of bias, and having my sister’s new in-laws fund my research wouldn’t look good.”

  It was already bad enough that she had to do her dissertation work in her home country of Danovar rather than in America, where she’d been spending most of her time lately. Well, technically it wasn’t bad—the medical research laws here made for less red tape, after all—but to her mind, it had felt like taking the easy way out when she’d decided to return here to do her testing. Accepting money from a biased source would only make matters worse.

  But Eric hopped off the gurney and shook his head, reaching out to grab her shoulders. “Dr. Fernstone, that’s not true,” he argued, and it took her a moment to process his words because she was too busy not focusing on the way his strong fingers curved gently around her arms, and the way his thumbs felt resting at the edges of her collarbone. It almost made her wish she’d worn a tank top instead of her normal turtleneck, so she could feel his skin against hers. And that he would grip her just a little tighter, move just a little closer, maybe let her put her hands on his bare shoulders—

  She shook herself, slapping his hands away. She was a scientist, not some panting teenager. Stupid libido. It made her wish, not for the first time, that she wasn’t a virgin. Maybe if she’d gotten all this sex stuff out of her system back in college instead of studying night and day, she’d be able to concentrate on the argument she was supposed to be constructing against him right now…instead of fantasizing about him pushing her up against the wall, holding her down with those gorgeous, strong hands, and having his way with her. They were in a research facility, for crying out loud. She tugged at her tight braid, trying to refocus.

  “…you would get publicity as well as the money,” he was saying when she managed to tune back in. “Wouldn’t that be good for getting the news out about what could potentially be a huge breakthrough toward a cancer cure? If your research wasn’t properly funded and taken seriously enough by those with the power to actually develop this drug one day, wouldn’t that be much worse than your source of funding potentially looking biased? And anyway, if you do a quality job, no one will have any grounds to question whether there even is a bias. Which there isn’t. I don’t care who your sister is. I just happen to think your research is the most promising thing out there right now that fits the needs of my planned publicity campaign.”

  She licked her lips. He made a certain amount of sense. “Still…” she hedged.

  He saw her wavering and went in for the kill, sweeping up her hands in his, which gave her tingles in all the right places. Damn, he played dirty. “Please, Dr. Fernstone,” he said. “Just say yes.”

  Anything to get him out of her lab, so she could stop thinking about all the other, even better places he could be touching her. “Maybe,” she managed.

  He grinned, triumphant, and the expression lit up his whole face. Her traitorous knees went a little weak. “Excellent!” he said. “I’ll be in touch.” He grabbed his shirt and pulled it back on, which was both a relief and a terrible, terrible pity, and headed for the door—probably trying to escape before she could change her mind.

  By the time she remembered his offer to buy replace her coffee, he was gone. She groaned, grabbed some paper towels to mop up the mess on the floor of the control room, and tried not to wonder if she’d just sold her soul to the devil.

  3

  Eric rubbed his temples, staring at the guest list in his lap. His mother was planning a “small” gala to celebrate the opening of the royal family’s new medical funding program—so why was he holding five pages full of names? Could there really be this many scientists in the whole of Danovar?

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” he murmured to his cousin, Simon.

  “What are you talking about?” Simon whispered back. “You love parties.”

  “I do love parties. And parties love me. That’s the problem. How am I supposed to change my old party-boy image by throwing a party for my new image?”

  Across the table from them sat three members of Parliament, upper-house senators who were currently deeply engrossed in an old argument over who was the best public speaker. It had been going strong for the last ten minutes—not to mention the last two decades—so Eric figured he had at least another quarter-hour before they remembered he was supposed to be helping them plan the gala instead of complaining to Simon about it.

  Simon shrugged. “Serious politicians throw parties all the time.”

  Eric snorted. “You would know.” His cousin was the living embodiment of a serious politician. He was a captain in the Navy, a goodwill ambassador to Africa, and even head of the national linguistics council. Eric used to think the guy needed to take a vacation once in a while, but circumstances being what they were now, he supposed he should probably be taking lessons from him.

  He pulled out his notepad, eyeing Simon surreptitiously. No jewelry except for his signet ring. Has great hair but puts too much gel in it, he added. Stock up.

  His cousin raised an eyebrow. “Are you taking notes on me?”

  Eric flashed a grin. “Nope.”

  Simon’s hand snaked out, snatching at the notepad, but Eric was too quick. He pulled it back, smacking his cousin’s fingers away. Not before Simon got a glimpse at one of the pages, though. “Who’s Anna Fernstone?” he asked.

  Eric sighed, unwillingly drawn back to what he was actually supposed to be doing right now. “Someone who needs to be added to the guest list,” he said, and pulled out his phone to text an invitation to Anna and her team. “Though she is not going to like it. She’s the head researcher on the project I’m trying to fund, and I get the feeling she’s not a fan of parties.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  Eric flashed back to Anna in the MRI room, glaring at him. Her brown eyes had that slight cat-eye tilt that made her look both intense and sexy as hell, and the way she’d taken off that lab coat…. “Yeah, I guess,” he answered Simon, trying to sound casual.

  Simon’s lips twitched. “Uh huh,” he said, sounding like he knew exactly how many pieces of clothing Eric had been daydreaming about ripping off Dr. Anna Fernstone. With his teeth. “Someone had better tell the poor woman what trouble she’s gotten herself into,” Simon added.

  “Oh, she’s not getting into any trouble at all,” Eric said mournfully. “I barely managed to get her to agree to consider accepting my money for her research. She’s not going to be dancing on a table in a bikini with me anytime soon.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  “Not as often as you’d think.”

  Simon’s lip twitched again.

  “Okay, about as often as you’d think,” Eric allowed.

  “Prince Eric.” The polite voice cracked across the room like a whip: Senator Burr, turning from his argument to notice the prince and his cousin bantering. “Perhaps you’d care to give us some advice on the merits of extemporaneous versus prepared speeches while fundraising?”

  Eric shuffled his notes and cleared his
throat, caught off guard. His old self would have had some flippant comment about how no one ever listened to the speeches at fundraisers, and if they wanted a crowd-pleaser then they should just serve lobster and all the top-shelf booze you could drink—but the new Eric needed to take things seriously and prove himself. He scrambled to remember the finer points of rhetoric. “The, uh, extemporaneous format does have the advantages of feeling more sincere, but—a prepared speech…”

  Simon covered for him smoothly. “I like to go with a mix of both, myself,” he answered. “Have some speaking points prepared, but don’t memorize the whole thing word for word. That way you keep on point but don’t sound like a robot, and there’s space to read the room and judge whether you should lean more serious or lighthearted.”

  The senators’ faces went from polite masks to impressed smiles, and they nodded, murmuring. Senator Burr rose and buttoned his jacket, adjourning the meeting with a few words as Eric cursed himself. If he wanted his new image to have any chance at success he needed to get his act together.

  “Don’t worry, Your Highness, that wasn’t a bad answer,” said Senator Burr on his way out, “considering you probably can’t remember the speeches from most of the galas you’ve been to, eh?” He winked.

  Eric spread his hands in a what can I say? gesture, but dropped his smile as soon as the senators were gone. If Burr didn’t take him seriously, would the other members of Parliament follow suit? If he couldn’t get them on board with his bill, it would be dead in the water, and they wouldn’t believe in the bill if they couldn’t believe in him.

  Simon noticed his expression. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he advised, staying behind to gather up his own notes. “Burr just gets a kick out of embarrassing people who outrank him. You’re great at public speaking out there in the real world. Everyone always thinks you’re charming.”

  “Yeah,” Eric muttered. “I’m good for a good time.” Not that that would help him much in a gala full of scientists.

  “Why is being a good time suddenly such a terrible thing? You should use that perception to your advantage. Your family and friends know the real you—why does it matter if everyone else thinks you’re fun?”

  “Because science isn’t fun,” Eric replied. “People take their health seriously. I need to take it seriously too.”

  Simon frowned at him. “I know volunteering in that cancer wing left an impression on you, but even there, I bet people felt better when you put a smile on their faces.”

  That was true. It had made Eric feel better, too. The month he’d spent at the hospital in one of the poorest districts of Danovar had changed him, given him new purpose. It was why pushing this new bill through Parliament was so important to him now, beyond just restoring his family’s reputation.

  The ding of a text message saved him from having to contemplate Simon’s words further. He checked his phone and grinned in victory; Anna had agreed to come to the gala. This party would be his second chance, his Hail Mary. He’d show Dr. Anna Fernstone and the world that he could be a serious politician. He’d push his funding through, shout her research and his bill from the rooftops, and finally prove that he was good for more than a good time.

  4

  Anna was one gin and tonic into the night and her hand was already itching for her smartphone.

  To her left, Senator Something-or-other guffawed at a joke her assistant had told him. Anderson not-so-subtly elbowed her, and she managed to bare her teeth in an expression that probably resembled a smile. Why had she agreed to come to this party? It wasn’t even half over and she was already fantasizing about being home in her sweats, a bottle of wine in one hand and a nice fat pile of research in the other.

  Anna eyed her sister, Daphne, who was flirting with a royal guard at the other end of the room. Her gaze zeroed in on Daphne’s clutch, a cute little black thing that was holding Anna’s smartphone hostage “for her own good,” or so her sister had claimed. Something about breaking out of her shell, meeting new people, interacting with society, yadda yadda yadda. For Daphne’s sake Anna had agreed to try, but if she had to stand here and listen to one more of the senator’s vaguely misogynistic anti-science jokes, she would claw out her own eyeballs. And then his.

  Her smart watch dinged. Another incoming notification from the scientific community, or maybe an update from the research facility. She wouldn’t know because she had no way to actually read the message, since her poor innocent phone had been kidnapped.

  She sucked down the rest of her gin and tonic and squared her shoulders. Enough was enough. She’d given Eric’s gala a chance but now it was time to end the charade. She was going to ditch the heels, the jewels, and the bias-cut sheath dress and then hijack her sister’s clutch. Surely it couldn’t be too hard. All she had to do was find some reasonably good-looking man and throw him into Daphne’s line of view, then rescue her phone while she was distracted.

  She scanned the crowd, searching for the right specimen. There was a scientist on the dance floor doing something that looked like the hokey-pokey, if she squinted just right. He was good looking, she supposed, but maybe a little too goofy for Daphne’s tastes. There—a young senator in a black power suit. He’d do. Anna lifted her chin and marched toward him across the crowded dance floor, “accidentally” stepping on toes and apologizing perfunctorily. She collected a lot of dirty looks, but it was much faster than taking the long way around, and she’d already spent way more time in this stuffy ballroom than she wanted to.

  A slow waltz started up and Anna groaned, having to move faster to dodge the influx of moon-eyed couples—until someone grabbed her elbow, swept her to the side, and kissed her hand.

  “Dr. Fernstone,” said Eric, still bowed over her hand, grinning up at her playfully. “It would seem you have a talent for stepping on toes. I’d be happy to lend you mine, if you would join me for this dance?”

  She narrowed her eyes, trying to focus on his words instead of the way his fingers felt curled around hers. And, dear God in heaven, the way his lips had felt on her hand. “Are you implying I can’t waltz?” she managed.

  “Are you implying you can?”

  She huffed, but after a single longing look at her sister’s clutch across the room, allowed herself to be swept into the dance. If there was one thing she couldn’t resist, it was a challenge. Lingering at this god-awful party for the length of a single dance would only delay her purse-snatching plans by a few minutes, anyway.

  And also, Prince Eric looked pretty damn hot in a tux.

  She counted the steps in her head while they danced, one-two-three, and imagined a square on the floor so she would remember where to put her feet. She forced herself to ignore the warmth of his hand at her waist so she could concentrate.

  “I concede,” Eric said cheerfully after a minute. “You’re the very embodiment of grace, and I am an insufferable fool for ever believing otherwise. My toes are still available for stepping on, should you wish revenge for my insult.”

  She pressed her lips together against a smile. How did charm come so easily to him? A moment ago she’d wanted nothing more than to escape, but in the span of a handful of sentences, he’d somehow made this stifling party feel almost fun. “My mother made me attend finishing school,” she admitted. “I also know far too much about salad forks, should that come in handy.”

  Eric shuddered. “Me too. My brother and cousin and I all had the same tutors growing up, and I have no idea how those two ever managed to stay awake in our sessions. Lucky for me, I was just the spare, so my attention wasn’t quite as vital.” A strange, brooding expression flickered across his face for a moment, there and then gone so quickly she wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been watching closely.

  She frowned at him as the waltz ended, then glanced over at her sister, who had moved a few feet to the left to make eyes at the bartender. “Are you okay?” she asked Eric reluctantly, willing to delay her escape by perhaps just one more minute.

  “O
f course I’m okay,” he answered, twirling her into the next dance. “I’m at a party. This is my scene.” His tone sounded subdued, very unlike him.

  Something was off. He was distracted, or upset. But why would he be upset at his own gala? She formed a hypothesis: this was about the funding. He must think her escape attempt earlier meant she intended to turn him down, thereby ruining his publicity plans.

  She tested her hypothesis. “I haven’t decided on the funding yet, you know,” she told him, having to raise her voice to be heard above the upbeat song.

  “What?” He looked confused for a moment, then his expression cleared. “Oh, that’s okay. I wasn’t expecting a final answer tonight.”

  Hypothesis disproven, then. What else could the prince possibly have to be upset about? She hadn’t gathered enough data yet to form any secondary hypotheses, and she didn’t know enough about him to be able to dig much deeper without risking offense. Not that she normally cared all that much about offending people, but somehow the idea of offending Eric felt different—and anyway, she had no idea how to dig deeper. She’d always been socially awkward to say the least, and she wasn’t sure what most people would do at this point in the conversation. Should she ask more questions? Compliment his tux?

  Comment on the party, she was pretty sure people did that. “This is a nice gala,” she said, then reconsidered. “Although actually, the speeches earlier really did take forever. If they wanted a bunch of scientists to enjoy themselves they should’ve just put on some TED talks and stuffed us full of lobster and expensive booze.”

  Startled, he gave her a strange look and then laughed out loud, and she smiled at the sound of it. After a moment, though, he went broody and quiet again, and she glanced over at Daphne, frustrated. Maybe she should just guide Eric in that direction, use him to distract her sister while she reclaimed her phone and her night. And then she pictured Daphne flirting with him, dancing with him, laughing at his jokes—and Anna jerked Eric in the opposite direction during their next spin so hard that he stumbled a bit.