by Sarah Morgan
‘Not even for sick children? They might be watching from the window.’ She batted her eyelashes but Alessandro didn’t flinch.
‘If they’re watching from the window, they can’t be that sick.’
‘I just want you to make an entrance.’ As she spoke she slid off her coat and Alessandro almost swallowed his tongue as he saw what she was wearing.
‘What—?’
‘How do you do, Your Highness? I’m the Princess Tasha.’ She beamed at him and gave a quick twirl. The shimmery pink dress swirled and floated around her slender frame. Still smiling, she reached into the bag and pulled out a tiara. Ducking down to look in the wing mirror, Tasha slid it into her hair and adjusted it. ‘Just need to fit the crown jewels. There. Perfect. How do I look?’
Alessandro ran his tongue over his lips, grateful for the cloak.
When he didn’t reply, she frowned at him. ‘Do I look like a princess?’
‘No.’ His voice came out as a hoarse croak. ‘At least, you don’t look anything like the ones I’ve met.’ And he’d met a few. Too many.
Her face fell and she took another sneaky look in the mirror. ‘I thought I looked cute.’
‘You do look cute. But princesses don’t generally look cute. In my experience they’re usually hard and cynical.’ He gave a crooked smile. ‘Comes from having contact with too many wicked princes, I guess.’
‘See? That’s why I’d never want to be a princess. If I can’t be the fantasy version, I’m not interested.’
He loved her energy and her sense of fun.
He loved the fact that she treated him the same way she treated everyone else.
Alessandro dragged his eyes away from the twist of hair that had come loose from the tiara and decided that the sooner she went back to work as a doctor, the better for his sanity.
He wondered what would have happened if Josh hadn’t arrived in the house when he had. Would either of them have stopped?
‘Let’s go. I don’t want to stand around wearing a velvet cloak and a crown for longer than I have to. If the press sees me, I’m never going to live this one down.’
‘You’ll be accused of being typecast,’ Tasha said cheerfully, dropping the car keys into a silky pink bag and waiting while he balanced himself. ‘Do you want a hand?’
‘No, I’ve got it.’ Leaning on the crutches, Alessandro struggled into the hospital and onto the children’s ward.
Balloons were tied in huge clusters and a red ‘carpet'—a long piece of scarlet fabric—stretched along the corridor to a brightly painted playroom.
‘Welcome, Your Highness.’ A nurse in a long flowing dress swept a deep curtsey and Alessandro was about to say something flippant when he saw a little girl in a wheelchair, watching him with tears in her eyes.
Disconcerted, he watched her cautiously.
Great. He’d been here less than five seconds and already he’d made someone cry. Suddenly he wished he hadn’t interfered. He should have let Josh do it.
Tasha reached for his arm but he shrugged her off and limped across to the child. He’d volunteered for this so he was going to do it. Without help.
‘Hey, there—that’s a very pretty dress you’re wearing.’
Her face turned the colour of a tomato. ‘Are you a real live prince?’
‘I am.’
‘Is that a real crown?’
Alessandro remembered that Tasha had said you should always be honest with children so he shook his head. ‘No, it’s plastic. Fake. The police get jumpy if I walk around Cornwall wearing a real crown.’ Seeing her face fall, he searched his brain for inspiration. ‘But I do have a real one. At home.’ Leaning forward, he whispered in her ear. ‘If you ever visit my country, I’ll give you a private tour of the state jewel collection.’
‘You will?’ Her eyes went huge. ‘Do you have alarms and guard dogs and stuff?’
‘All of that. And bodyguards.’ Seeing how thin she was, Alessandro felt his heart twist. Suddenly he felt guilty moaning about breaking his ankle. Yes, he was bruised and broken but he was basically fit and healthy, whereas this child … ‘How long have you been in hospital?’
‘This time? Three weeks.’
‘There have been other times?’
‘I come in a lot. Sometimes my blood goes wrong.’ Her tone was matter-of-fact and she reached out and stroked his cloak. ‘The other kids thought it would be an actor or one of the doctors dressed up. You know, like Father Christmas. They always say it’s Father Christmas but really it’s just a fat man in a beard. They’re not going to believe you’re a real prince. Do you have proof?’
Caught off guard, Alessandro glanced at Tasha. ‘Do I have proof?’
‘Absolutely. I brought the proof with me and I have it right here.’ Throwing the little girl a dazzling smile, Tasha reached into the bag on her shoulder and pulled out a scrapbook. ‘Have a look at this. Here’s Prince Alessandro at a royal function at the palace … And he …’ she pointed ‘… he’s opening a hospital. Just look at those crowds!’ It seemed she’d thought of everything, and as she turned the pages for the child, Alessandro stared at the pictures of himself at various royal events.
Something shifted inside him. Somehow he’d managed to hide his feelings in front of the cameras.
‘Wow. Everyone wants to take your picture. Is this your horse?’ The little girl pointed to a photograph of him playing polo, and Alessandro nodded.
‘He’s my favourite horse. His name is Achilles.’
‘Do you wear a cloak when you ride him, like Prince Charming?’
‘Er—no. I wear pretty standard stuff—breeches and boots.’ He gave an apologetic smile and she beamed and took his hand.
‘What happened to your leg?’
‘I fell off my horse.’
‘Ouch.’ She peered at the cast. ‘You need people to write on that. It’s very clean. You need messages and pictures and stuff.’
‘You’re right, I do.’
‘I can help you with that. Can I wheel my chair down the red carpet with you?’
Alessandro looked at the flimsy strip of red fabric and wondered if it would survive. ‘Sure. Let’s give it a go.’
Who would ever have thought he was so good with children?
Tasha watched as Alessandro handed another little girl a pen so that she could draw a pony on his cast.
Here, in the relative privacy of the children’s ward, she saw a different side of him. He was patient, natural, amusing and, most of all, interested.
She’d expected him to try and keep the encounter as short as possible. Instead, he’d settled down amongst the children in the playroom and seemed intent on giving them as much time as they wanted.
‘It was generous of him to dress up and play the part.’
Tasha turned to see a young doctor watching her.
The woman smiled. ‘I’m Dr Phillips. Megan Phillips.’
Tasha dragged her eyes from Alessandro and stood up quickly, hand outstretched. ‘Hi. I’m Tasha O’Hara.’
‘Yes, I know. You’re Josh’s sister.’ Something in the way she said it drew Tasha’s full attention.
‘Josh mentioned you.’ She noticed the other woman tense slightly. ‘I told him I’d love to talk to you about working in NICU.’
‘Oh—right.’ Visibly flustered, Megan gave a brief smile. ‘Well, I love it.’ She went on to detail the pros and cons and Tasha stared at the other doctor, noticing the dark shadows under her eyes. Shadows uncannily similar to the ones under Josh’s eyes.
With a woman’s intuition, Tasha sensed that Megan and her brother were a great deal more than just colleagues. She wondered whether the beautiful, fragile-looking doctor was the woman causing Josh stress.
‘Well—it’s great to meet you, Megan. Thanks for the inside info.’ She decided to do some digging. ‘So, how long have you known Josh?’
‘A while. We first met at university.’ Megan avoided eye contact. ‘Not that we hung out together or anything. Josh was Mr Cool—but
you know that, being his sister.’
Tasha certainly knew Josh had broken a lot of hearts. She wondered whether Megan’s had been one of them.
‘If you were at university with Josh, then you must know Alessandro, too.’
Megan gave a brief nod of her head. ‘I knew him by sight, that’s all, because he was part of Josh’s group. I didn’t exactly move in their circle. I certainly didn’t know he had such a way with children.’ The insistent sound of a bleep had both women reaching into their pockets.
Tasha spread her hands in apology. ‘It’s you, not me—I can’t get used to the fact I don’t carry one any more.’ And it felt strange, being in a hospital and not working.
‘I’d better answer this—I slipped off the unit so that I could catch you.’ Megan checked the number. ‘I expect we’ll bump into each other again soon. Maybe we could grab a coffee or something.’
‘Yes. I’d like that.’ Tasha watched the other woman hurry away from the ward and made up her mind that they were definitely going to meet again. There was something about Megan’s pallor that tugged at her heartstrings.
She looked like someone who needed a friend.
Tasha turned back to Alessandro, to find him being swarmed over by children.
Remembering the bruising on his ribs, Tasha strolled over and gently lifted one over-eager toddler onto the cushions. ‘Don’t climb on the prince. You might damage him and then he won’t be able to slay dragons.’
‘She doesn’t weigh anything.’ His tone gruff, Alessandro rescued a little girl in a fairy costume who was about to tumble onto the floor. ‘Who were you talking to? She looked familiar.’
‘That’s because you were all at university together.’
‘Really?’
‘That’s Megan Phillips. Do you remember her?’
‘Not the name, but I know the face from somewhere. Can’t think where. I met a lot of people at university. Are you going to draw on my plaster?’ Gently, he lowered the child onto the cushions and handed her a pink crayon. ‘Go ahead.’
Tasha frowned. ‘She knew you.’
‘Without meaning to sound conceited, a lot of people know me.’ He shifted his leg to give the children better access to his cast. ‘It doesn’t mean I know them.’
In other words, women always flocked to get close to him because of who he was.
‘She knew straight away that I was Josh’s sister,’ Tasha mused, ‘which means she must know Josh pretty well. I can’t imagine he exactly spends his time waltzing around the hospital talking about me.’
‘They work together. They probably chatted in the hospital restaurant over a stale chicken sandwich.’
‘Prince Alessandro?’ A small girl with her hair in bunches and wearing thick glasses squinted up at him. ‘It’s time for our story. Will you read it?’
Tasha watched as Alessandro smiled and scooped the child onto his lap.
He was a natural. And he possessed exactly the right combination of strength and warmth.
Strength.
Meeting his eyes, she stared at him for a long moment, wondering what would have happened had Josh not arrived when he had.
She and Alessandro would finally have slept together.
Tasha swallowed. She didn’t know whether to feel regret or relief.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘REALLY, we should have invited the press. It would have been a perfect photo call. Even your mother would have approved.’ Tasha kept her tone light but underneath she was shaken up. His gentleness with the children didn’t fit with the image she had of him as an arrogant playboy.
‘If I’d invited the press then I would have been accused of being manipulative.’ Alessandro hobbled through to the kitchen, propped himself on one crutch and grabbed a cold beer from the fridge. ‘I don’t want to be in the newspapers at the expense of some poor family who is going through hell. Neither do I want an innocent child’s private trauma broadcast to the world. I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that we should all know everything about everyone.’ He slammed the fridge door shut, snapped the top of the bottle and drank while Tasha stared at him in amazement.
‘What’s got into you?’
He lowered the bottle slowly. ‘How do you do it?’ His tone was savage. ‘How do you go there day after day and work with those poor kids? Doesn’t it break you apart, seeing them sick?’
She was stunned by the emotion in his voice. ‘Yes, sometimes. It isn’t always easy, but it’s almost always rewarding. And the reason I go in there and work with those kids is because most of the time I make a difference. I’m not saying I can cure them all—’ her own voice shook slightly ‘—but I do everything I can to make a horrid experience better. Some doctors think it’s just about throwing the right treatment at a child, but they’re wrong. How you treat the child is almost as important. Say the wrong thing and suddenly they’re twice as scared and anxious.’
Alessandro drained his beer and thumped the empty bottle down on the shiny surface. ‘I’m never complaining about my ankle again.’
‘Actually, you haven’t complained. Not once. Even when you’ve been in agony,’ she muttered. ‘You’re brave.’
‘Brave?’ He gave a humourless laugh. ‘Brave is that little girl who is never going to walk, or that boy who’s on his tenth operation. They humble you, don’t they? I mean …’ he licked his lips ‘… we adults moan about the slightest thing. We moan about the weather, our workload, our family, but those kids—they’re stuck in bed when they should be out playing with their friends and not even thinking about the way their bodies work, but they don’t complain. They’re smiling and getting on with it. That sweet little girl without the two front teeth—’
‘Hattie?’
‘Yeah—the one waiting for a transplant. Do you know that her mum travels two hundred miles to be with her—then she drives home when little Hattie’s asleep so that she can spend some time with her two teenagers?’ He dragged his hand through his hair and shook his head in disbelief. ‘Then drives back again before Hattie wakes up in the morning. Can you imagine living like that?’
‘Exhausting. Mentally and physically. Which is, I presume, why you offered her the use of your helicopter.’ The generosity of the gesture still shocked her. ‘I saw her mother crying and assumed she’d had bad news or something. Then she told me you’d promised to ferry her backwards and forwards until Hattie is discharged. She was completely overcome.’
‘It was nothing.’ He dismissed his contribution with a frown. ‘It will give my pilot something to do. Do you come across cases like that often?’
‘When parents have to travel a long way? Yes. Especially in a rural area like this. And St Piran’s is a specialist unit so I expect they take kids from a wide distance.’
Alessandro let out a long breath. ‘How long until she gets her transplant?’
‘I think they’re exploring live donor. Her mother was telling me that a cousin might be a match. In the meantime she needs the dialysis to stay healthy.’
‘She seemed so small and fragile.’
‘Yes, well, that’s probably because the kidneys play a role in the metabolism of growth hormone—chronic kidney disease can limit physical growth.’ Tasha helped herself to an apple from the fruit bowl. ‘Not that I know anything about Hattie’s particular case, of course. I’m just talking generally.’
‘If I throw money at it, can I make it go away?’ His rough question brought a lump to her throat.
He cared.
‘No. But you’ve already made it easier. She has her mum with her until she goes to sleep. That’s a really big deal when you’re eight.’
‘You’re wasted here, looking after me.’ He leaned his hips against the counter, his expression serious. ‘You should get out there and use that training of yours.’
‘Are you trying to get rid of me?’
‘No, but I could see how skilled you were with those kids and I know that’s what you should be doing. Have you lost
your confidence? Is that what’s going on here? This whole thing with that idiot you used to work for—has it shaken you up?’
Startled, she felt her breath catch. ‘Maybe,’ she croaked. ‘Just a little.’ It was better to tell herself that than believe that she was there because of him. ‘I’m still afraid no one will want me. But I’ve started looking. There just aren’t that many speciality doctor posts around right now.’
‘What’s your dream? Ultimately you want to be a consultant?’
‘That’s why I worked my butt off in medical school.’
‘What about marriage?’ His voice was gruff. ‘Family? Kids? When you were seventeen that was what you wanted. You wanted the whole fairy-tale. What happened?’
‘I grew up. The whole fairy-tale thing bombed.’ She gave a careless shrug. ‘Anyway, I always thought Cinderella should have picked up her own shoe instead of expecting someone else to pick it up after her. And who in their right mind is going to marry a man she met when she was asleep? If I’d been asleep for a hundred years, I’d want to get out there and party, not walk down the aisle with a stranger.’ Tasha bit into the apple, horribly conscious of him. Even with broken ribs and his leg in a cast he was indecently sexy.
‘Tell me about Hugo.’
She choked on the apple. ‘How do you know about Hugo?’ Looking at his face, she scowled and threw the apple into the bin uneaten. ‘Josh, presumably.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know.’ Irritated, embarrassed, she shrugged. ‘The usual. I fell for a guy. He wasn’t serious. Only that time I learned my lesson.’
‘Which was?’
‘A girl has to be in charge of her own happy-ever-after. And it doesn’t always have to include a man. I discovered that having a career can be every bit as exciting as sex.’
There was a tense silence.
‘If you believe that, maybe you’ve never had really good sex.’
Her heart doubled its rhythm. ‘Or maybe I just have a really great career.’
‘Maybe you do. But shouldn’t it be possible to have both?’
‘Maybe. But there are plenty of broken marriages in my business. Just look at Josh and Rebecca.’