by Sarah Morgan
Tasha stood stiff as a board. ‘Really?’
‘You were crazy about him.’ Josh dropped the letter in his in tray. ‘Are you embarrassed to face him again?’
‘No! Of course not! I just—have better things to do with my time, that’s all. I’m a paediatrician. I need a job in paediatrics. I need to think of my CV.’
‘Because it’s just that it occurred to me that you did flirt with him a lot.’
I want it to be you, Alessandro. I want you to be the first.
Tasha felt as though she’d been plunged head first into a furnace. ‘I was a teenage girl. I flirted with everyone.’ Why was she reacting like this when it had happened almost ten years ago? Get over it, Tasha.
But humiliation wasn’t so easily forgotten. Neither was Alessandro, which was crazy because she probably wouldn’t even find him attractive any more. It had just been the whole prince thing and her impressionable, romantic teenage brain.
She knew better now.
Tasha leaned against the wall, forcing herself to breathe slowly. Unfinished business, she thought. He’d walked away and left her wounded. She’d never had the opportunity to defend herself, to tell him how much he’d hurt her.
Anger flashed through her, sharp and bright.
There was no way she could nurse him through a broken ankle. She was more likely to break the other one for him.
Tasha opened her mouth to turn her brother down and then a thought flitted into her brain. Shocked, she shook her head. No. She couldn’t do that. It would be juvenile. Shallow. It would be …
Fun?
Satisfying?
It would teach him a lesson.
‘This nursing job …’ Her lips moved and she heard herself speaking. ‘Does it involve moving in with him?’
‘Yes, of course. He needs someone there day and night for a month or so. Maybe a bit longer.’
Day and night.
That was plenty of time to drive a man out of his mind.
To make him sorry.
She’d show him that he no longer had any effect on her and at the same time she’d finally purge him from her mind. The spectacular man in her head was the product of a teenage fantasy. Living with the reality would cure her of that once and for all. And it would give her a chance to restore her dignity.
Josh put his pen down slowly. ‘You’re thinking about it? A moment ago you were telling me he was arrogant and full of himself.’
‘He was young. He’s probably changed.’ She didn’t believe it for a minute. A man like Alessandro would never change. Looks, wealth and influence were welded together. ‘It would be great to see him again. I’d like to help him.’ Tasha tapped her foot on the floor as she considered the various forms that ‘help’ could take.
‘You’re sure you won’t find it awkward? You were crazy about him.’
‘Awkward? Gosh, no.’ She told herself that whatever awkwardness she was going to feel would be eclipsed by his. And she’d be so dignified and mature about the whole thing, that would make him feel even worse. The plan grew in her head. ‘I have to warn you, I’m not much of a nurse, Josh. I’m good with kids but moaning adults with man-flu drive me up the wall. I just want to tell them to pull themselves together.’
‘It isn’t man-flu. His ankle shattered and so far he’s been back to Theatre four times. On top of that he has a couple of broken ribs and countless bruises.’
‘So you’re saying he’s pretty much helpless?’
Better and better …
‘Completely helpless. That’s why it’s important that we find the right person. He doesn’t want to find himself trapped with someone who doesn’t understand him.’
‘Right. Well, that’s good because I do understand him.’ She understood him perfectly. He was a rich, handsome playboy who treated women like flashy accessories. His idea of permanency was two dates.
‘It’s important that whoever looks after him knows what he needs.’
Tasha looked sympathetic. ‘I know exactly what he needs.’
A wake-up call. A lesson in how to treat women properly. He was used to fawning women treating him with deference. And she needed to finally prove to herself that Alessandro Cavalieri was well and truly in her past. ‘I’m very good at persuading patients to take their medicine, so I think I’m just the woman for the job.’
‘I’m sure you are. You have good instincts and you’re not scared of him. The staff here are intimidated by his status and afraid to tell him what he needs to do. He’s walking all over them.’
‘That can’t be good for his broken ankle,’ Tasha said lightly. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t let him walk over me.’ Not this time. This time she was going to be the one doing the walking.
She looked down at her trainers and wished she was wearing heels.
Josh was watching her. ‘You’re not going to fall for him again, are you?’
Tasha’s laugh was genuine. ‘Absolutely no chance of that.’ She wasn’t that stupid, was she? ‘The only thing on my mind is my next job.’
‘Ok. Good—so you’ll do it? Nag him about his physio and make sure he doesn’t sneak women into his bed when he’s supposed to be resting? Take care of him? That’s great. Why don’t you pop and see him right now? He’s in a private room. I can give you directions.’
Right now?
Tasha’s smile faltered. Her heart trebled its rhythm. No, not right now. She’d just lost her job. Well, not exactly lost it as such—she’d thrown it away. The last thing she needed was to heap on the humiliation. Facing Alessandro took serious preparation. She needed to get her head together. She needed to look her best.
Aware that Josh was looking at her, Tasha breathed slowly and tried to slow her pulse rate. If she said no, her brother would ask questions. And the longer she waited, the more the anticipation would eat into her. And the advantage of doing it right away was that Alessandro wasn’t forewarned. He wasn’t expecting to see her.
Tasha strolled to the mirror in the corner of the office and stared at her reflection. Green eyes stared back at her. Green eyes that showed lack of sleep and stress. Doctor’s eyes.
Apart from the shadows and the obvious exhaustion, she didn’t look that bad, did she?
Mouth too big, she thought. Freckles. Dark hair that twisted and curled over her shoulders. All wrong. As a teenager, she’d been horribly conscious of her gypsy looks. She’d envied the girls with sleek blonde hair and china-blue eyes.
Insecurity crawled through her belly and she glared at her reflection, refusing to allow herself to think like that. At least she had a brain, which was more than could be said for most of Alessandro’s women.
But there was no doubt that there was work to be done before she faced her past. Alessandro Cavalieri spent his time with the most beautiful women in the world. Facing him with confidence required more than an emergency repair job, but it would have to do.
With a sense of purpose, Tasha pulled her make-up case out of her bag.
‘Poor Alessandro.’ She darkened her lashes and added blusher to her cheeks. Not much. Just enough to help the ‘natural’ look. ‘He must be going crazy, stuck in bed. You’re right. What he needs is personal attention.’
And she was going to give him personal attention.
By the time she’d finished with him, a shattered ankle was going to be the least of his worries.
She was going to make him writhe with guilt for crushing her dreams so brutally. It was time he realised that women had feelings.
Josh was watching her in bemusement. ‘Why are you putting on make-up?’
‘Because I care how I look and because I want to look professional.’ Staring into her bag, she selected a subtle gloss lipstick. ‘Last time we met, I was a teenager. That’s how he’s going to remember me. I need to look like an adult—like someone capable of taking care of him.’
‘You look very happy all of a sudden for someone who has just lost their job. A few moments ago I thought you were going to cry.�
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‘Me? Cry? Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t worry, Josh. I’ll take good care of your friend.’ Tasha tugged at the clip and her hair tumbled long and loose around her shoulders. Smiling to herself, she gave her head a shake. ‘I’ll take extremely good care of him.’
Alessandro Cavalieri had taken her fragile teenage heart and ground it under his feet.
Payback time, she thought as she added the high-shine gloss to her lips.
It was going to be her pleasure to give him exactly what he deserved.
And maybe, just maybe, once he’d given her a big, fat grovelling apology, she’d be able to put the whole episode behind her.
CHAPTER TWO
‘YOUR Highness, you can’t use your phone in the hospital.’
Alessandro turned frustrated dark eyes onto the nervous nurse, his temper reaching combustion point. ‘Then get me out of hospital,’ he said silkily, and watched as she bit her lip nervously.
‘I’m really sorry but I don’t have the authority to do that. You have an infection, Your Highness, and—’
‘Stop calling me Your Highness.’ The snap of the words was accompanied by a rush of guilt. She was just a kid. It wasn’t her fault that he wanted the rank and title about as much as he wanted a badly smashed ankle and bruised ribs. ‘I apologise,’ he growled. ‘Being stuck in here hasn’t done much for my mood. I’m used to being active.’ And lying in bed gave him too much time to think about things he spent his life trying to forget.
The darkness licked at the edges of his mind threatening to engulf him. With a huge effort of will, he pushed it back.
Not now.
The nurse stood rigid, clearly overawed by her royal patient. ‘The Chief Executive of the hospital called while you were with the consultant and asked me to tell you that he’s increased security so that there’s no repeat of yesterday’s fiasco—he apologised profusely, Your Highness. We have no idea how that journalist managed to climb up the drainpipe to your room.’ She all but curtseyed but this time Alessandro kept his temper on a tight leash. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to be able to behave naturally with him, and he’d encountered that all too often in his life to be surprised. No one behaved naturally with him. Everyone had an agenda.
‘I’m used to journalists climbing drainpipes and crawling through the windows. It’s a fact of life.’ He reached for a glass of water, gritting his teeth against the agonising pain that shot through his body.
‘Let me help you, sir.’
‘I can manage.’ Alessandro growled the words just as his shaking hand deposited most of the water over his chest. He switched to Italian, his native tongue, and swore long and fluently while the flustered nurse quietly removed the glass from his white fingers, refilled it and handed it to him.
She stared at his T-shirt, now clinging to his chest. ‘Do you want me to—?’
‘No. I’m fine.’
Dragging her eyes away from his muscles, the girl swallowed. ‘Your senior adviser called, sir. He wanted you to call him urgently.’
Alessandro leaned his head back against the pillow and suppressed the urge to laugh out loud. That was the one good thing about this mess—his advisers were climbing the walls. The wicked side of him revelled in the chaos his accident had caused. ‘I can’t call him,’ he drawled. ‘You’ve just told me I’m not allowed to use my phone.’
‘There’s a phone by your bed, sir—Your Highness.’
For God’s sake—'You can call me Alessandro. And I think we’ve both just established that I can’t reach anything that’s by my bed.’
‘There were a few other calls, Your Highness.’ She gave him a nervous glance. ‘Five journalists and four—er—women. None of them left their names. And Her Highness Princess Eleanor called when you were in the bathroom. She said not to bother calling her back but she left you a message.’
‘Which was?’
‘She saw on the news that the hospital is besieged by journalists and she asked that you be discreet about what you say to them.’
Alessandro gave a humourless smile.
The dull ache inside him turned into a dark black hole that threatened to suck him down.
So his mother had finally called.
Not when his accident had been announced as a newsflash and no one had known his condition. Not out of concern when he’d been rushed into Theatre for emergency surgery. Not to ask how he was or send love. No, his mother had called because she was worried about his image. Or rather she was worried about her image.
You have to think about how you present yourself, Alessandro. It affects all of us.
Wiping the cold, disapproving tone from his head, Alessandro sought distraction. The nurse was pretty, he realised, and he hadn’t even noticed. Which said a great deal about his current state of mind. He had a wicked impulse to drag her to the window and kiss her senseless in front of the crowd of hopeful photographers.
But that wouldn’t be fair on the girl.
Or on Miranda.
Thinking of Miranda was enough to kill his mood.
He was going to have to make a decision. They couldn’t go on like this any longer. It wasn’t fair on either of them.
‘I don’t suppose I can bribe you to smuggle me out of here?’ He tried to look as non-threatening as possible. ‘I own a home up the coast. Incredible views from the master bedroom.’
The nurse flushed scarlet and her eyes met his. He saw the excitement there and the way her lips parted as she caught her breath. Unfortunately he could also read her mind, which was busy spinning dreams ending with ‘nurse marries Prince'.
Thinking of his parents’ dutiful, entirely loveless marriage, he felt suddenly cold.
He had no idea why marriage was the ultimate goal for so many people. To him it seemed like the road to hell. He’d rather be trampled by a whole herd of horses than commit to one woman for the rest of his life. Especially a woman whose only interest in him was the fact he had royal blood.
‘You understand that this is a purely indecent proposal.’ He shifted his leg, but it did nothing to ease the pain. ‘My house has amazing sea views from every room and a hot tub on the deck. You can scrub my back and give me a private physio session.’
‘This is Cornwall.’ A crisp female voice came from the doorway. ‘If she uses the hot tub in April, she’ll catch pneumonia. Hello, Alessandro. You look as though you’re in a filthy mood. Hope I’m not supposed to bow or curtsey.’
It was a voice he hadn’t heard for more than a decade, but the recognition was immediate and powerful. His body tightened in a reaction so basic, so elemental that he was relieved that he was confined to bed, with all the privacy that afforded. Temptation, he thought, wasn’t something a man easily forgot. And Natasha O’Hara had been temptation on legs. A girl, desperate to become a woman. At seventeen, she’d tried everything to get him to notice her.
And he’d noticed.
Oh, yes, he’d noticed.
Remembering, Alessandro felt his muscles tighten. Sweat dampened his brow. He wasn’t sure whether the pain in his chest was due to fractured ribs or guilt.
He’d treated her badly.
She strolled into the room with a confidence that told him the awkward teenager was long gone. There was no sign of the stiff formality that everyone else displayed around him. She didn’t blush, call him ‘Your Highness', or look as though she was about to bow and scrape at his feet. Her gaze was direct and challenging and he would have laughed with relief if it hadn’t been for the uncomfortable feeling deep inside him. Tasha had always shown guts and intelligence. If someone had told her to bow or curtsey, her response would have been to ask why. One of the reasons he’d loved spending time with her was because she’d treated him as a normal human being.
And in return he’d broken her heart.
He shifted uncomfortably in the bed, but the guilt stayed with him.
Was she the sort of woman who bore grudges? Not for a moment did he think she would have forgotten t
hat summer any more than he had.
‘Are you going to pretend you don’t recognise me?’ Her tone was light and friendly and if she was bearing a grudge there was no sign of it.
Alessandro relaxed slightly. Maybe the guilt was misplaced. She’d been very young, he reasoned. He’d probably barely featured on her adolescent landscape. Everything healed quickly in childhood—broken bones and broken hearts.
Still watching him, she paused beside the bed. Her top was a vivid scarlet and she wore it tucked into skinny jeans, her dark hair tumbling down her back in snaky black curls. She looked like a cross between a gypsy and a flamenco dancer and Alessandro felt his mouth dry and his body harden in an all-male reaction.
The wild child had grown up.
‘You’ve spilt water on your T-shirt.’ She eyed his damp chest and he felt something stir inside him.
‘It isn’t easy manoeuvring with a broken ankle and two broken ribs.’
‘Poor Alessandro.’ Her voice poured over him like honey, soft and sympathetic. ‘So that’s why you’re so cranky. It must be awful to feel so helpless.’
Pain gnawed at his temper, fraying his control. He’d kept his mind off the pain by thinking of ways to get himself out of the hospital, but her presence disturbed his focus. And the way she was looking at him felt wrong. He would have expected her to be angry with him or, if not angry, then at least a little shy? Or maybe embarrassed. After all, he’d—Alessandro moved awkwardly and pain rocketed through him. ‘What are you doing here?’ He ruthlessly ignored the pain. ‘Josh mentioned that you worked at a hospital miles away.’
‘Not any more. I’m …’ she paused and then smiled ‘… in between jobs.’
Their eyes met and held and Alessandro wondered what the hell he’d done to deserve this extra punishment. ‘You’re looking good, Natasha.’ Too good, he thought, noticing in that single reluctant glance that her body had fulfilled its teenage promise. As a girl, she’d been teenage temptation. As a woman, Natasha O’Hara was a vision of glorious curves that made a man think of nothing but wild sex. And thinking of wild sex made him ache in the only place that wasn’t already aching, so he looked away from those smooth arms, tried to block out the image of those slender limbs and told himself that the last glossy mouth he’d kissed had led to nothing but trouble.