A WEEK LATER, Clara was working a shift at Nordic Care, well and truly thrust back into reality. She checked the vital signs of her frail, elderly patient, Mrs Kaase, noting her most recent blood pressure on the chart. Needing a second opinion on the case, she’d summoned the registrar for advice.
Despite speaking to Andreas daily, she hadn’t seen him since that magical day at the hunting lodge. They’d worked opposite shifts at the hospital, and whenever she’d worked at the palace he’d been busy with his increasing workload of royal engagements. He’d been furious over a leak to the press on the state of Prince Henrik’s health, warning Clara that the palace had been forced to issue a public statement announcing his diagnosis. The story, complete with a video clip of Andreas arriving at a prominent children’s charity for which he was patron, flooded the media.
Clara had watched it a hundred times just to see a glimpse of his dazzling smile. But watching his life unfold from afar, like the rest of the nation, made him seem so untouchable, they might as well have been strangers again. The absence of him served as a timely reminder: no matter how close she felt to Varborg’s heir, he didn’t belong to her.
Just then, the door to Mrs Kaase’s room opened. Clara looked up, expecting the new registrar, Dr Nilsen.
But it was Andreas.
Their eyes met. Clara’s skin tingled, as if imprinted with his every touch. If she’d known he was working today, she’d have applied mascara and the perfume he liked. Before she could fully register the heat and hunger in his stare, she realised he wasn’t alone. Sister stood possessively at his side, casting Clara a disapproving look.
Clara forced her expression into something appropriate. ‘I called Dr Nilsen.’
Ignoring her body’s instant response to the sight of Andreas, she glanced nervously at Sister.
‘Dr Cronstedt is very busy, Nurse,’ Sister said, as if protecting him from predatory females. ‘There’s a film crew arriving soon to interview him.’
‘Yes, thank you, Sister,’ Andreas interjected. ‘I have plenty of time to review Nurse Lund’s patient.’ He held Clara’s stare, as if conveying a secret message with his eyes. ‘I’m not supposed to be working today, but I was missing my favourite nurses here at Nordic Care.’
He winked at Sister, who flushed with delight. When he looked back at Clara, his expression innocent, his sinful lips twitched.
She swallowed, lightheaded with lust. She recalled the feel of those lips against every inch of her skin, especially between her legs. Disgusted by her weakness for him, she looked away. One day in his bed, and she was ready to forget her professionalism and hurl herself at him at work. But her need for him was a choice, not a necessity. She could kick the habit any time.
‘So, what’s bothering you, Clara?’ He glanced at sleeping Mrs Kaase and stepped closer, reaching for her chart.
Desperation to touch him curled tightly inside Clara like an over-wound spring. Okay, maybe for now she was hooked, but just because he’d taught her that sex could be phenomenal when it was with the right person didn’t mean she should act all starry-eyed. Even if they’d been alone, they had work to do.
‘I’m concerned about Mrs Kaase’s increasing breathlessness,’ Clara said, conscious that Andreas most likely had a hundred other things to do rather than investigate her clinical hunch.
‘Is that all?’ Sister asked. ‘Maybe you should have run this past me before calling the doctor.’
‘I’m here now, Sister.’ Andreas said, staring at Clara encouragingly. ‘Go on.’
His observation lit her up as if she were made of electric currents, every one of them connected to the pleasure centres in her brain. But on closer inspection there was a tightness around his mouth, fatigue in his eyes. He seemed...distracted. He had so much going on. She was the least of his priorities, and that was fine with her.
Except this was about their patient. ‘She’s seven days’ post-right ventricular myocardial infarction,’ she continued, undaunted.
‘So you’re thinking right heart failure?’ he asked, his confidence in her clinical acumen obvious from the impressed approval shining in his eyes. Most doctors wouldn’t have asked for her opinion.
‘Yes...’ she said, hating the hesitation in her voice.
She shouldn’t doubt herself or her powers of observation and critical thinking just because they’d slept together. Was it just the presence of the sour-faced sister, who assumed Andreas the heir was too busy to care about his patients, when Clara knew better because she knew him? Or was it the things they’d shared about their respective fathers? He’d pretty quickly shut down her suggestion that he speak to Prince Henrik, letting her know when she’d crossed the line, and she’d had to pull him up on his thoughtless assumption that he was the only one with a complex father-child relationship.
But Clara didn’t need his approval to do her job.
‘She has worsening peripheral oedema and weight gain,’ she continued, pressing home her argument. ‘She’s also complaining of non-specific abdominal pain.’
‘I agree. It sounds like right-sided failure,’ he said. ‘Let’s examine Mrs Kaase.’
He gently placed a hand on the patient’s shoulder to wake her. ‘Mrs Kaase, I need to have a listen to your heart and lungs, okay?’
The patient nodded sleepily, and Clara helped her into a sitting position. With his auscultation complete, Andreas looped his stethoscope around his neck and palpated the patient’s abdomen, encouraging Clara to do the same, particularly focussing on the right-upper quadrant, where she felt an unmistakeable liver edge that indicated hepatomegaly.
‘The jugular venous pressure is elevated,’ he said to Clara, indicating the distended vein in the woman’s neck. ‘I’ll site a central line to monitor the central venous pressure and order an echo.’
He addressed the patient. ‘Nurse Lund and I are a little concerned that your heart isn’t pumping very effectively.’
The elderly lady reached for his hand. Andreas wrapped his large, capable hands around Mrs Kaase’s frail one and something in Clara’s chest jolted. The medical profession would lose a great doctor when Varborg’s heir became ruler. But the hospital’s loss would be the nation’s gain. Just like the older brother he admired so much, Andreas would excel at anything.
If only he could resolve his issues with Prince Henrik. If only he’d talk to the man before it was too late. If he fully embraced the role that was his by birth, rather than seeing himself second choice, he’d not only be good, he’d be incredible.
Her stomach swooped with the realisation that soon they’d no longer be working together. It shouldn’t bother her, but maybe she was getting too close. Maybe that was why she was so invested in his happiness, why his praise and collaboration affected her so deeply... But she couldn’t become reliant on him.
‘I’ll speak to the High Dependency Unit and organise her transfer,’ he said. ‘Is she on diuretics?’
Clara nodded, handing him Mrs Kaase’s drug chart. ‘I’ll set up a central line tray.’
Grateful to escape for a moment, she left Andreas to explain the minimally invasive procedure to the patient, while she collected the portable ultrasound machine and the equipment he would need to site the central venous catheter. Her hands trembled as she gathered wrapped sterile syringes and dressings. Just because professionally and intimately Andreas treated her as his equal didn’t mean she should forget her hard-won autonomy. If she wasn’t careful, if she confused amazing sex and professional camaraderie for other feelings, she could so easily be hurt, given her lack of experience with relationships.
Feelings made a person vulnerable. She’d seen that in her parents’ marriage; had seen her mother’s tendency to forgive her neglectful husband again and again in the name of love. Clara had no intention of falling into the same trap.
Assisted by Clara, Andreas skilfully sited the central line in the internal jugular vein in Mrs Kaase’s neck before accompanying Clara and the patient to the HDU. After handing over their patient, they left the ward together, an awkward silence descending.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said finally.
The stark need, heat and restraint in his eyes all but sent Clara bursting into flames. Gone was the dedicated doctor and the regal prince. In his place stood the stripped-back man—a complex and flawed man she now knew intimately. But she needed to be careful.
‘Me too,’ she whispered, her entire body molten-hot.
His eyes sparked with triumph, his sexy mouth tugged in a knowing smile. Despite her warnings to herself, she ached for him. She’d do almost anything to feel his lips on her skin, to hear him groan her name, to feel him fill that empty place deep in her core. But this physical dependency to him was linked to Andreas’s skills as a lover. It certainly didn’t mean that she was emotionally dependent.
‘Come to me—tonight.’ It was an order, pure and simple, filled with sensual assurance.
She dragged in a breath, desperate to agree, every inch of her clamouring for the pleasure behind the promise. But she hesitated. They paused outside Clara’s ward. He leaned against the wall, his head cocked in challenge, awaiting her answer. They stood a perfectly professional distance apart, but the air between them was thick with pheromones. She might as well be naked and wrapped around him, so intense was his invisible force field drawing her in.
Clara glanced down the corridor, horribly torn. Her body was fully on board but her head couldn’t shake off the words of caution. Maybe it was the ticking clock. Maybe it was Sister’s reminder of his importance, of how he was regarded public property, how he would soon be promoted to the ‘top job’. Maybe it was that pesky reality of hers.
‘What if someone sees me at the palace when I’m off-duty?’ No one could know.
‘We’ll meet somewhere after dark,’ he said, his eyes sparkling with excitement, making a pulse thrum between her legs. ‘We’ll leave your car and I’ll smuggle you into the palace in mine. I’ll text you an out-of-the-way meeting place.’
Clara swallowed, adrenaline a wild rush in her veins, her stare obsessively glued to his sexy mouth. She wanted him too much, the longing also a reason for hesitation.
Being smuggled into the palace on her night off seemed way riskier than that day at the lodge, when she’d already had a legitimate work-related reason to be at the palace. What if she was caught in his suite? She wasn’t one of his society sophisticates; she was a normal woman.
With Prince Henrik’s diagnosis public knowledge, media speculation and interest in Andreas had sky-rocketed. If anyone got wind of their...affair...if her family shame of her father’s notoriety, debts and prison sentence came out, not only would she have to relive the humiliation but Andreas would be tainted by association.
She should tell him, before he found out some other way. But not here. Not now.
‘It feels...risky.’ She should return to the ward and her duties. Except he was looking at her the way he’d done when she’d been naked, when he’d moved inside her, when he’d watched her climax...triumphantly confident.
As if tired of her caution, Andreas glanced along the corridor and then sprang into action, taking her hand and dragging her into a vacant treatment room. The minute the door closed, she was in his arms, their lips crashing together, their tongues thrusting, their hands restlessly fisting each other’s clothes.
His powerful body pinned her to the back of the door, the heat of him a stifling inferno. She rubbed her body against his, seeking the friction that would help quench the fire, but her uniform was too tight; she couldn’t open her legs wide enough to have him where she wanted. She clung to him, kissing him back with so much pent-up desire, she would surely leave scorch marks on his white coat.
He growled, pulling back while his greedy hands caressed her hips, her waist, her breasts. ‘Please, sötnos. I can’t spend another night without you. I’m going out of my mind. You are the real reason I came in today.’
Before she could answer, he kissed her fiercely once more, his lips then sliding down her neck, hitting all her sensitive spots, coiling the desire between her legs tighter. Clara tried to cling to the elusive threads of her argument, but her brain was paralysed with pleasure. It was as if that day at the cabin had primed her body to respond to him, only him, on reflex. She was panting, slick heat in her pelvis, her drugged-up mind ready to agree to any liaison he suggested.
‘I can’t think straight for wanting you.’ He stroked her nipple through her clothes and she dropped her head back against the door, exposing her neck to his open-mouthed kisses.
This was crazy. They were at work; this room was regularly used. But she couldn’t seem to stop kissing him, the thrill of his need for her, of finding him hard, making her bold and, oh, so reckless.
She cupped his erection through his scrubs. He groaned against her skin, the scrape of his facial hair sending shivers through her every nerve. But she couldn’t go back to work with stubble rash from his beard. Somehow that thought gave her the strength to shove him back a pace.
‘Okay. I’ll meet you later,’ she said. ‘But the location has to be absolutely safe. If I think there’s a chance we’ll be seen together, I won’t stop.’
He braced his hand on the door over her head, and stared down at her with hooded eyes. ‘Bring your toothbrush; you’ll be staying the night. I need to get my fill of you in case we are forced to spend another week like the last.’
At the thought of spending the entire night in his bed, trickles of elation zapped along her nerves, setting off a series of shudders. ‘I can’t wait. But now I have to go.’
Yanking his neck, she pressed one last kiss to his lips, which were curled in a self-satisfied smile. She ducked away and checked her reflection in the mirror over the sink. Debauched: there was no other way to describe the flush to her skin, the excitement in her eyes and the kiss-swollen state of her lips.
‘Don’t you have somewhere to be?’ she asked, flicking him an accusing stare in the mirror before splashing her face with cold water.
He leaned against the door they’d just utilised, his arms crossed over his chest while he watched her smugly.
‘The interview is in an hour,’ he said, looking as if he might reach for her again. ‘A public relations exercise dreamt up by the palace—let’s show the nation a candid glimpse of the heir doing his day job while he still has it...’
At the defeat in his muttered words, Clara turned to face him. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s fine.’ He shrugged, his stare vulnerable, bewildered by the sacrifices he had to make. ‘But our secret rendezvous will be the only thing getting me through this afternoon.’
Clara nodded, uncertain what to say. Andreas didn’t have to trust her with his feelings on giving up medicine. He’d made it clear at the cabin that her advice that he should talk to Prince Henrik was unwelcome.
‘I’ll let you get back to work,’ he said, carelessly swiping his fingers through his hair. ‘Until tonight.’
He opened the door, turning to wink at Clara before he ducked outside.
Clara rushed back to the ward, her stomach knotted with excitement for tonight which, with everything that was going on for him, could be their last. Either way, he deserved to know her most shameful secret. He deserved to know the risks they were taking with their affair.
She would tell him tonight.