by Leslie North
Great. He’d finally found the woman he needed to charm into accepting his funds, and the intercom was stuck on its one-way setting. On top of that, he was now awake enough to get well and truly claustrophobic.
Well, if she wouldn’t respond to shouting, he’d just have to get a little more inventive.
2
Anna took another gulp of her double-shot mocha as Anderson left the room. Her normal tea-and-flannel-pjs routine had failed her yet again last night, and she was running on about four hours of sleep. It was all Prince Eric’s fault. The royal family’s prodigal son had never taken anything seriously in his life as far as she could tell, but he’d suddenly done an abrupt about-face and was now chasing her down for meetings on a daily basis. The whole thing was making her anxious. She was half convinced he was doing it on purpose, too—dangling his funding in front of her like it was a cat toy that she was supposed to jump at without question, then punishing her with his incessantly cheerful emails and phone calls and in-person ambushes when she dared to turn him down.
She made a face, popping the lid off her coffee to lick the whipped cream off the top. The problem was, his funding would help her research. It would be so easy to let him set up a meeting, to accept the money, to not need to spend hours of her precious work time writing applications for more grants. If only her stepsister wasn’t the new Queen of Danovar, Anna would happily accept any funding the prince wanted to throw her way. But as things stood, she couldn’t accept the funds without all of her colleagues thinking she’d cheated by using her royal connections to further her research. And if there was anything Anna couldn’t stand, it was people thinking less of her work. She’d spent far too much effort to get approval to use this research facility and complete her study to let Prince Eric’s money taint it.
But at least she had the gorgeous specimen in the MRI to distract her. And testing a new patient would be the perfect excuse to continue avoiding Prince Eric, who the receptionist had mentioned was looking for her again. Anna was a little surprised this volunteer was a man, since her research was on the topic of breast cancer—but the disease affected men too, and it was exciting to have a more varied sample of patients from which to draw her results. If she could support her dissertation’s theory by showing initial proof of a drug capable of isolating and destroying a common type of breast cancer, she’d be able to take her pick of rich benefactors wanting to fund her research for the whole rest of her career.
She pressed the intercom button. “Okay, sir, I’m about to turn on the MRI. Let me know if you have any questions before we get started.” She let go of the button, but it stayed a glowing red. She frowned and pressed it a few more times. Weird. She’d have to get Anderson to check it later.
A furious banging interrupted her thoughts, making her jump and spill her precious coffee all over her lab coat. She yelped, then squinted at her monitors. The patient was banging his fist on the side of the lab’s very expensive, brand new MRI machine. Why the hell hadn’t Anderson strapped the patient down?
She set what was left of her coffee on the counter, allowing herself a half-second to mourn the whipped cream that she was now wearing, and hurried for the door—then paused. The banging had a strangely familiar rhythm to it. Was that…the Danovian national anthem?
She frowned, yanked open the door, and darted into the MRI room. “Stop it!” she shouted. “Do you even know how much that machine cost?” She smacked a button, and the gurney slid out. As it did, she caught a glimpse of a tattoo on the patient’s chest: a gorgeous griffin, its wings spread wide across the man’s even more gorgeous pecs.
Wait a second. She knew that griffin. From the front pages of every Danovian tabloid a few months back, when Prince Eric had showed off his new tattoo to the press.
“Hell’s bells,” she cursed, tempted to give the gurney a good kick and then run away before her arch-nemesis emerged from the machine. But she was too late. The man she’d been avoiding for weeks sat up and grinned at her, that ridiculously sexy grin that crinkled the corners of his crystal blue eyes, and the best she could manage in the face of it was a mild glower. Good Lord, those abs really should be illegal. Though now that she was getting a close-up look, she had to say that his forearms might be even better.
Come on, Fernstone, get it together. Who gets turned on by forearms?
She shook herself and dug deep for her righteous anger, using it as a shield. She crossed her arms and sharpened her glower. “What are you doing? Do you know how much money you would’ve wasted if I’d turned that thing on? I barely have enough grants to get this study done as it is! How hard did you hit it? You could’ve damaged it, plus you made me dump my coffee all over myself.” She peeled her lab coat off, muttering.
Eric took a moment to respond, following her motions as she took off the coat, then his grin cranked back up to full wattage. “I’ll buy you a new one,” he said with a shrug.
“Oh no you won’t, there’s no way I’m going anywhere with you, not even to the nearest coffee shop.” He’d find some way to stretch the time, to use it to wheedle her into considering his offer. And she would not consider his offer.
“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.