Romancing the Crown Series

by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)

  Obviously her father hadn't passed along her message on the day she left California, and no one at the clinic was being forthcoming. That didn't surprise Sarah all that much. Warren had a way of asking questions mat made peoples' hackles rise. What did surprise her, though, was that Warren didn't sound at all relieved to hear her voice after not knowing where she was all this while.

  "You shouldn't have worried about me," she said.

  "I wasn't worried, Sarah. Don't be so dramatic. I just couldn't locate you." He sounded so calm and unconcerned. He sounded...well...just like Warren Dill.

  "And that didn't worry you?" she asked.

  "No. Of course not. Why would it?"

  It seemed like such a logical question, but all of a sudden Sarah wasn't feeling logical. Usually she adored Warren's calm disposition and cool logic and total lack of passion. That was one of the reasons she was going to marry him, for heaven's sake. Those were the qualities she wanted in a mate.

  Except not right this minute. Right this minute she wanted somebody who really cared about her. Somebody who went overboard. Beyond the pale. Crazy.

  "Well, why the hell didn't you worry, Warren?" she snapped. "What if I'd been dead in a ditch somewhere? Or kidnapped? Or wandering around Chinatown with amnesia?"

  Her fiance snorted. "Don't be silly, Sarah."

  She wasn't. She was being deadly serious even as she was being melodramatic. How dare he not worry about her? How dare he not track down her father, grab him by the lapels or put a pistol to his head, demanding to know his daughter's whereabouts?

  "Sarah? Have you been drinking?" he asked now. "You know how you get."

  Yes. She got all warm and comfy with glass or two of red wine. She got irrepressibly sexy with just one sip of champagne. She got horny as hell after two margaritas. That's how she got.

  "Sarah?"

  "I can't talk right now, Warren. I'm too angry."

  "All right." He sighed. The soul of indulgence. The patience of Job. The passion of a "Call me back when you calm down. But, please, not before seven in the morning. Goodbye, sweetheart."

  He hung up.

  Just like that.

  And Sarah sat listening to the dial tone for what seemed like half an hour. It was stupid, she thought,to feel so lost when she knew exactly where she was. It didn't make any sense...to be suddenly angry at Warren for the very qualities she prized in him, and at the same time drawn to Nick by the qualities which she disdained.

  "Sarah?"

  Nick rapped gently on her bedroom door.

  "Sarah?" he said again, a little bit louder.

  "Yes?" Her voice sounded farther away than merely the other side of the door.

  "I'm back from the hospital. I just wanted to let you know."

  "Thanks."

  He waited a moment, thinking she might say something else, before he asked, "Shall I take you out for dinner? There's a wonderful cafe" not too far from the palace, and we could..."

  "No. Thanks anyway, Nick. I'm just going to read for a while and then I'll probably fall asleep."

  Frowning, he looked at his watch. Fall asleep? It wasn't even six o'clock yet.

  "Are you all right?" he asked.

  "Fine. Just a little tired. Too much sun, probably."

  "Anything I can do for you? Would you like me to—"

  She cut him off with a "No, thanks. I'll be fine. See you in the morning."

  "All right, then. Good night." He stepped away from the door, but turned back. "I'll be close by if you need anything."

  "I'm fine. Good night, Nick. Sleep well."

  Right.

  He just might.

  After a cold shower. After half a bottle of cognac.

  For an instant, he was tempted to kick in her door like some barbarian, the way his father might have done. To sweep Miss Sarah Hunter up in his arms. To tell her he hadn't felt this way in years. If ever. To tell her...

  What?

  To tell her that despite his bone-deep worry about his son, he'd still been able to have salacious thoughts about the boy's therapist? To confide that his back was sunburned because he'd had to spend far too much time lying on his stomach at the Lido this afternoon, to avoid exposing his obvious need? Or to confess that a randy teenager was better able to control his ardor, for God's sake?

  The trouble was, Nick decided, he'd allowed his aunt's romantic notions to invade his brain. He'd gone five years without a woman, and he'd had every intention of going another forty or fifty years in the same unfettered fashion.

  He had his work. His Aunt Honoria was the only woman he really wanted or needed in his life. Most of all, he had Leo.

  And suddenly, missing his son incredibly, Nick reached for his wallet and the number that his in-laws had left in case of an emergency. As far as he was concerned, this was an emergency of the highest order.

  He carried the phone out to the terrace and punched in the endless series of numbers, beginning with the country code for France, hoping the hotel operator spoke English because he wasn't in the mood to use his less-than-fluent French. At last, and in English, the operator connected him to the Davis-Finchs' suite, and it wasn't until his mother-in-law, Edith, picked up the phone that he realized the utter futility of the call.

  His son couldn't speak.

  Ah, God.

  "Edith, it's Nick. I was just calling to check on Leo."

  He could actually hear the frost suddenly chilling the edges of her voice when she responded, "He's wonderful. Such a sweet boy. We're all having a lovely time."

  Nick waited a moment, hoping she would expand with a few more details about their day at Disneyland, but she didn't. Her breathing sounded increasingly impatient, even perturbed.

  "Good," he said. "Well, I'm glad to hear that. I'd like to say hello to him, Edith."

  There followed a brief but stony silence. "He's sleeping right now, Nick. He's had a long day, bless his heart. Perhaps you could call back tomorrow?"

  He's my son, goddammit, Nick wanted to shout. And his mother would still be alive if she'd been honest with me about her condition. I could have saved her. I could have saved them both. Damn her, and damn you for thinking otherwise.

  "All right. I'll do that. I'll call tomorrow. Has Leo spoken at all while he's been with you and Roger?"

  "No," she said, icily, the implication being that Leo's silence was as much Nick's fault as Lara's death.

  "Tell him I love him, will you, please, Edith?"

  "Naturally," she snapped. "Goodbye, Nick. It was good of you to call."

  After she broke the connection, he sat listening to the empty space between San Sebastian and Paris. Leo seemed so terribly far away.

  It wasn't the first time he'd been separated from his son. He'd had to be away from home numerous times during the past five years for seminars and medical conferences. Why did it bother him so much this time?

  Nick shut off the phone. Well, he had a choice, didn't he? He could sit out here and glower at the sunset, feeling morose and sorry for himself, or he could go inside and pour himself three fingers of something one hundred proof, then sit inside and glower at the furniture while feeling morose and sorry for himself.

  Self-pity was always better accompanied by a snifter of cognac, so he decided to go inside.

  Avoiding her problems was one thing, but by nine o'clock that evening Sarah wasn't able to avoid the relentless growling of her stomach. She closed the psychiatric journal she was reading, slipped on her robe, then stood at her bedroom door, listening—for what, she wasn't sure. Footsteps. Signs of life. Him. When the coast sounded clear, she tiptoed into the kitchen.

  She flipped on the overhead lights just in time to see Nick Chiara with a brandy snifter in one hand and an egg in the other. Apparently he'd just cracked the egg on the rim of a mixing bowl, but when the sudden lights surprised him, the egg oozed out onto the counter rather than into the waiting bowl, and Nick was left with two halves of an empty eggshell in his hand and a look of disbelief on
his face.

  For a second, elegant Sir Dominic looked so gorgeously flummoxed, so completely adorable, that Sarah couldn't help but laugh even as she apologized.

  "Sorry for startling you. I didn't know you were in here. Let me wipe that up."

  She snapped a paper towel off a roll and began to sop up the yellow mess while Nick stepped aside and dropped the broken eggshell into the trashcan.

  "Ah, well. I really didn't need that third egg, anyway," he said, his voice just a bit on the slurry side. "Too much cholesterol."

  Too much something, Sarah thought. She peered at the snifter and wondered just how much brandy he had drunk. Enough, obviously. If she had an ounce of brains in her head, she'd turn around and go back to her room posthaste, hungry or not. In her experience, a gorgeous guy on a full tank of brandy wasn't the most trustworthy creature in the world.

  But like an idiot, instead of exiting stage left, she heard herself saying, "I make a pretty mean omelet. Why don't you let me take over here?"

  "Spoken like a true heroine," he said, lifting his glass in her direction, grinning over the rim, swaying a few degrees from east to west. "What can I do to help?"

  "Sit," she said, hoping he'd do precisely that before he keeled over. "Chat me up while I chop. What do you like in your omelet? Onions? Peppers? Cheese?"

  "Anything." He sighed almost gratefully as he took a seat at the table, twirled his snifter a moment, then said, "Hundred-year-old brandy has a way of sneaking up on a person."

  "I can see that." Sarah spoke as she rummaged through the refrigerator for more eggs and accompaniments.

  "I'm glad you're here, Sarah."

  "Hmm," she murmured, pulling a green pepper and a few limp scallions from the vegetable bin. "I'm glad to be here, too."

  "No. I mean I'm really glad you're here. You know. Not here as in the kitchen, although God knows I'm glad enough for that. But here in Montebello. What I mean is, I'm glad we've met, even if it is under such damned sorry circumstances." He chuckled deep in his throat. "I'm glad you're beautiful and shapely and smart, instead of some hatchet-faced, wild-eyed psychobabbler who..."

  Sarah turned. He was several more sheets to the wind than she'd imagined. "Hatchet-faced, wild-eyed psychobabbler?"

  He nodded, apparently quite pleased with himself and his choice of words. His smile slid a little more to the left.

  "You're not on call tonight, are you, Dr. Chiara?" she asked, praying that he wasn't, but wondering if she should get a pot of strong coffee brewing just in case.

  He shook his head. "No. Not on call. I'm on extended leave, actually. On holiday."

  "That's good," she said, breathing a small sigh of relief as she closed the refrigerator door, dumped her stash of vegetables onto the counter, and pushed up the sleeves of her robe. "Well, okay then. One major omelet, coming up."

  While Sarah began to chop a fat green pepper, she could feel Nick's dark gaze on her back, or wherever he was looking—probably lower—while he sat behind her. "So, tell me," she said over her shoulder, "when was your last encounter with a hatchet-faced, wild-eyed psychobabbler?"

  "I wasn't casting aspersions on your profession," he said. "I meant it as a compliment."

  "A compliment." Sarah rolled her eyes. "Oh, I get it. The same sort of compliment as if I said I was glad you aren't some arrogant, concrete-jawed quack."

  When he failed to respond, Sarah looked over her shoulder, wondering if she'd gone too far with her comment and made him angry. Doctors, as she well knew, often considered arrogance one of their most valuable qualities and she didn't know anybody who liked being called a quack. If Nick Chiara was angry, though, his grin certainly concealed his temper.

  "Yes," he said. "That was what I meant." His brow furrowed. "More or less."

  "Well, then, you probably shouldn't compliment me anymore," she told him.

  "No. I won't. At least not while you're holding a knife."

  Now it was Sarah who grinned. "Good thinking.You're a lot smarter than I imagined, Dr. Chiara," she said.

  "So are you, Ms. Hunter. So are you."

  He pushed back his chair, grasped the edge of the table to steady himself, and then stood. "And in light of your intelligence, I'm going to go take a good, long, cold, and very sobering shower. You deserve better than to spend the evening with someone who's having a difficult time focusing on you." He chuckled again. "Both of you."

  He winked then. Well, it wasn't a wink exactly. It was more of a slow and sexy descent of his right eyelid and thick lashes, enough to cause Sarah's heart to slide south a rib or two.

  "I'll be right back."

  "Take your time."

  Sarah returned her attention to the green pepper she'd been in the process of cutting up. Take a couple hours. Take all night. With any luck, Nick would pass out somewhere between here and the shower.

  And with a little bit more luck, she wouldn't chop off a fingertip or two while she waited, stupidly hoping for him to return.

  This was a first, she had to admit. A pleasantly pickled man volunteering to sober up in order to be better company for a woman. Pleasantly or not-so-pleasantly pickled men, in her experience, were more likely to suggest that a woman join their boozy state, a preamble to joining them in bed.

  Bed. Hmm. She wondered... Whoa.

  Where did that come from? She was going to lose a whole lot more than a finger if she wasn't careful.

  After his shower, Nick stood in front of the sink, naked, shivering from his stint beneath the ice-cold water, blinking back eye drops, slicking back his wet hair.

  This was a first, he thought as he gazed into the mirror. For sure, he'd had to sober up fast when faced with medical emergencies, although that hadn't happened very often in the past. But when had he ever voluntarily shrugged off the lovely, languid, lingering mists of an ancient and expensive brandy simply to focus better on a woman? What was it about Sarah Hunter that had him taking cold showers and thinking hot thoughts and praying she didn't take him for an inebriated fool in addition to an inept father?

  While he dressed he called the hotel in Paris again, in the hope that Leo had awakened from his nap. This time there was no answer at all in the Davis-Finchs' suite. Nick looked at his watch. They'd gone out for dinner, no doubt, followed by fireworks and ice cream and other magical treats to make a child's eyes light up and fill his face with wonder. He made a solemn promise to himself that he was going to take Leo back there next summer, if not before.

  Or, better yet...!

  No. She'd never...

  But perhaps she would...

  Well, it couldn't hurt to ask.

  He finished buttoning his shirt, and then without bothering to tuck it in or to find shoes, he headed back to the kitchen, where Sarah was plucking two slices of bread from the toaster.

  "There's an eleven-fifteen flight to Paris," he said. "Why don't we go to Disneyland? Us. You and I."

  Instead of answering, she dropped the hot toast on a plate, reached for a knife, and began slathering butter on each piece. Was she ignoring him?

  "Sarah? Did you hear what I said?"

  "Uh-huh. I heard you."

  Her gaze remained fixed on the toast, as if the bread itself held some weird sort of fascination for her. He could only see her profile, but it was enough to tell that there was a tiny smile playing at the edge of her mouth. Nick took that for a positive sign.

  "Well?" he asked. "What about it? What do you say? Shall we go? Tonight?"

  "Well, give me just a minute, okay? I'm thinking. I'm trying to come up with a response that will humor you."

  "Humor me? Why?"

  "Because," she said, turning to lean against the counter now, pointing the butter knife at him, while seemingly trying to suppress her laughter. "Well, let's see. For want of a better word, if you're not drunk anymore, then you're just plain crazy, Nick."

  She twirled her index finger beside her head to emphasize her meaning. "Crazy. You know? Nuts. Bananas. A couple of screws loose.
That isn't necessarily a professional diagnosis, mind you. Just a personal opinion. But one offered after quite a bit of close observation."

  She turned back to her toast, slathering it with even more butter than before while she shook her head in... In what? Nick wondered. Disgust? Amusement? Complete dismissal of him?

  "So, that's a no, then?" he asked, disappointed but admittedly not surprised. It was a crazy idea, the two of them flying off to Disneyland.

  "Yes," she said.

  Nick blinked. "It's a yes?"

  "No!" She whirled around, the knife still in her hand. "You just don't understand. I'm a psychologist. I'm a very good psychologist. I'm not in Montebello on vacation. I came here to work with Leo. Not to...to..." Her voice faltered.

  "To what?" he asked, believing he already knew the answer. At least, hoping he knew the answer— that she was as insanely attracted to him as he was to her—and suddenly unable to suppress a grin in anticipation of it.

  "I really don't want to talk about it," she said, but the words were hardly out of her mouth before she contradicted them. "We really need to talk about this."

  "All right."

  She aimed a glare and the point of the knife in the direction of the table. "Sit," she said, then said it again, louder, when Nick didn't move fast enough to suit her. "Sit."

  After Sarah planted herself in a chair across the table from him, she dragged in a long breath, stiffened her shoulders, and lifted her chin. When she finally started speaking, Nick quickly realized where the expression "spilling the beans" came from.

  "Okay. It's really stupid not to talk about this and to clear the air. I've always thought of myself as an exceptionally rational person, someone who doesn't avoid the truth, but meets it head-on, however unpleasant it might be. I mean, uncovering unpleasant truths is part of my job. Well, not that this truth is so terribly unpleasant, but it certainly is complicating the current situation."

  While she paused to take a breath, Nick crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, trying hard not to look anything but seriously attentive even as he was fighting the urge to shut her up with a kiss. He had a brief glimpse of the scene in one of the Indiana Jones movies where the bad guy made a great show of brandishing his lethal scimitar, only to be casually and quite summarily plugged by Indy's .45.