CAROL MARINELLI - Hot Single Docs - Waiting For You - St Piran's - Prince on the Children's Ward

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 that 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.

‘Thanks, Nurse...er...’ She squinted at the name badge. ‘Carpenter. You’ve taken enough abuse from this patient for one day. I’ll take it from here.’

Nurse Carpenter’s face fell. ‘But I’ve just come on duty and His Highness needs—’

‘I know exactly what His Highness needs.’ The words were a polite but firm dismissal and Alessandro tried to remember whether she’d had that air of command as a teenager. No, definitely not. She’d been full of wide-eyed, barely repressed excitement and optimism. ‘Hopeless romantic’ hadn’t begun to describe her.

The nurse gave Alessandro a final wistful look and melted away.

Tasha closed the door firmly, leaving the two of them enclosed in the private room. ‘Yes, Your Highness, no, Your Highness—it must drive you crazy. Or do you like your women servile?’

She was such a contrast to all the other people he’d come into contact with since he’d crashed into the mud on the polo field that Alessandro found himself laughing for the first time in weeks. ‘Definitely not servile.’

‘Good, because if I have to call you Your Highness every two minutes, this is never going to work.’

Alessandro watched as she strolled across the room. Something about the way she was looking at him made him uneasy. Or maybe it was just the guilt, he thought. It was definitely there, shimmering underneath the surface. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You have to stop eating the nurses for breakfast, Alessandro. They’re all terrified of you.’

‘I’m a pussy cat.’

Her mouth flickered. ‘Right.’

‘Maybe I’m a little cranky, but I’m not good at lying in bed, doing nothing.’

‘Then you’d better get used to it.’ Her gaze was frank and direct. ‘I looked at your X-rays. You won’t be walking on that ankle for a while. You’ve made a mess of your bones.’

‘Not me. The horse.’ But it had been his fault and the knowledge gnawed at him. He’d been distracted. To take his mind off that, he studied her closely. Was she taller or was it the way she held herself? There was a confidence about her that hadn’t been there a decade before. A knowledge of herself as a woman. It showed itself in the way her hips swayed when she walked and the hint of cleavage revealed by the neck of her casual top. Trapped and immobile, unaccustomed to feeling helpless in any situation, Alessandro set his teeth and tried to think cold thoughts. ‘What are you doing here, Tasha?’ He hadn’t seen her since that night—the night when he’d left her sobbing, her make-up streaked over her beautiful face.

He pushed the memory aside, trying to lose it in the darkness of everything else he was trying to forget.