Nurses secret royal flin.., p.1
Nurse's Secret Royal Fling, page 1
Clara froze, her jaw dropping.
It was him from last night. Naked VIP Guy. And he was looking at her as if he’d expected their paths to cross.
Clara snatched her eyes away, fury and confusion knocking the air from her lungs.
“No pulse,” he said, his gray-blue gaze landing on Clara’s. “Are you okay to continue compressions, Nurse Lund?”
She nodded, tired but not yet spent.
Clara restarted the chest compressions, acutely aware that the man with the body of a Greek god and haunted eyes was now watching her every move while they tried to bring back Mr. Engman.
How dare he ambush her this way. How dare he be a doctor and not the diplomat she’d assumed.
How dare he be so calm and collected, as if he had no recollection of last night’s knee-buckling kiss.
Only Clara’s shame was amplified by how out of character she’d acted last night, how easily duped she’d been, flirting outrageously with and then kissing a sexy gloriously naked stranger who’d clearly deceived her about his true identity.
What had she been thinking?
Dear Reader,
In writing Nurse’s Secret Royal Fling, I was totally swept along in the magic and sparkle of my hero’s royal world and the mountainous principality of Varborg. Giving Prince Andreas Cronstedt such a grounded and cynical heroine in nurse Clara Lund led to lots of juicy tension, which was offset by their red-hot romance! I hope you enjoy reading about the medical emergencies that bring them together as well as the passionate love story that unfolds.
Love,
JC x
Nurse’s Secret Royal Fling
JC Harroway
Lifelong romance addict JC Harroway took a break from her career as a junior doctor to raise a family and found her calling as a Harlequin author instead. She now lives in New Zealand and finds that writing feeds her very real obsession with happy endings and the endorphin rush they create. You can follow her at jcharroway.com and on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Books by JC Harroway
Harlequin Medical Romance
A Sydney Central Reunion
Phoebe’s Baby Bombshell
Gulf Harbour ER
Tempted by the Rebel Surgeon
Breaking the Single Mom’s Rules
Forbidden Fling with Dr. Right
How to Resist the Single Dad
Her Secret Valentine’s Baby
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
To the wonderful and talented editors who helped create this story. To Jo Grant, who believed that Andreas and Clara’s story deserved to be told, and to Charlotte Ellis, who encouraged me to take my characters on an emotion-packed journey to their HEA.
Praise for JC Harroway
“JC Harroway has firmly cemented her place as one of my favourite Harlequin Medical Romance authors with her second book in the imprint and with wonderful characters and a heart-melting and very sexy romance set in the beautiful Cotswolds.”
—Goodreads on How to Resist the Single Dad
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM FINDING FOREVER WITH THE FIREFIGHTER BY LOUISA HEATON
CHAPTER ONE
CLARA LUND NEEDED this prestigious job. However delicate the situation awaiting her behind the intimidatingly vast timber door in the guest wing of Varborg’s winter palace, she could handle it.
Straightening her crisply ironed nurse’s uniform, she pressed the intercom button beside the door. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end on her first shift: no welcome tour of the palace; no explanation of her night-nurse duties; no pointers on royal protocol for when she finally did meet her patient, Prince Henrik, Varborg’s ruler. When the intercom remained silent, Clara pressed the button again, for longer this time.
‘Yes, yes. Please enter,’ a disembodied male voice, deep and cultured, barked brusquely.
Rude... But at least he’d said ‘please’.
The automatic locking system disarmed with a click. Clara pushed her way inside the suite and closed the door, focussed on her salary rather than the occupant’s apparent sense of entitlement. It seemed, by working for Varborg’s royal family, she’d have to get used to demanding VIPs. But this second salary would increase Clara’s contribution to paying off the mortgage on her family’s home and hopefully ease the perpetual worry lines around her mother’s eyes.
Bypassing the ridiculously opulent fresh flower arrangement on the reception table, Clara set off in search of the grumpy-sounding guest. The suite boasted wall-to-wall luxury disguised beneath understated Scandinavian elegance. Were her feet not so deeply embedded in the concrete of reality, she might have spared a moment to be impressed.
Except each room was empty.
‘Hello...?’ she called out as she stepped into the deserted bedroom.
A splash of water sounded from the en suite bathroom.
‘In here,’ the owner of the rich baritone said from behind the half-open door.
‘Are you okay, sir?’ she asked, mostly keeping the exasperation from her voice. The guest sounded younger than she’d first assumed—and mildly irritated, as if she’d kept him waiting. ‘I was led to believe that there was some sort of emergency.’
If his ‘delicate situation’ had been that urgent, someone would have called an ambulance.
The stranger sighed. ‘The situation is urgent to me.’
‘I did buzz. Twice,’ she pointed out, his manner ruffling her usually unflappable feathers. He sounded perfectly healthy.
‘I’m aware,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m sort of...stuck.’
Clara rolled her eyes. She wasn’t a maid. An experienced nurse with her training—which included a Master’s degree in Advanced Clinical Practice—was surely above reaching for the soap for some entitled visiting dignitary or foreign ambassador? Except patients, like customers, were always right.
Think about the money... Think about the money...
‘I have no desire to waste your time,’ he continued in that commanding voice she found both objectionable and inconveniently appealing. ‘Could you please enter so we can get this...situation over with?’
‘Okay—are you decent?’ While she’d seen it all before, she didn’t want to barge in and embarrass the owner of that attractive voice.
‘I’m naked, if that’s what you mean,’ he replied, his voice now tinged with amused challenge. ‘But, rest assured, I have no immediate plans to flash you.’
Clara stifled a snigger. A sense of humour helped when patients were forced to concede their dignity and ask for assistance.
‘That’s good,’ she quipped, pressing her lips together to contain her smile. ‘We don’t want a sexual harassment incident on my first night, do we?’
When her only reply was a dry chuckle that filled her belly with inexplicable flutters of excitement, Clara pushed the door fully open and poked her head inside.
Any trace of humour drained from her like water down a gold-plated plughole. There was nothing laughable about the modern-day Viking reclining regally in the generous bath, which looked as if it could happily accommodate two adults with ample room for fun and games.
Clara’s mouth instantly turned dry, her pulse speeding as he arched one golden brow, his bold blue-grey stare defiant and full of questions.
‘Um...hello,’ she croaked, stepping from behind the door.
To her utter alarm, her face warmed. Every spirited retort deserted her, while the shocking heat of instant attraction set her entire body aflame, as if she’d rolled naked in a bed of nettles.
‘You’re a nurse,’ he said with surprise, a frown slashing his outrageously handsome face as he looked her up and down.
Her body heated in every place his eyes landed. How could he do that? And was it her imagination, or was he vaguely familiar? She rarely watched TV, was too busy for social media and had no time for VIP-spotting.
‘Well observed,’ she said dryly, looking away. Not because he was naked, concealed only from the waist down by what she suspected was a dwindling foam of bubbles, but because, trapped or not, he dominated the luxurious marble bathroom like some sort of powerfully virile mountain-man.
She exhaled slowly, grateful for that modesty layer of suds. His voice alone was sexy in a bossy kind of way, but the entire package seemed to have triggered a rush of hormones—no mean feat considering that Clara deliberately avoided noticing members of the opposite sex. Relationships weren’t worth her while. Even sex, the one time she’d done it, had been underwhelming, leaving her vulnerable and humiliated.
But she’d have to be anaesthetised not to notice this man.
‘The east wing steward sent me,’ she said, casually scanning the room for signs of blood or trauma, while she willed her body to revert to normal. ‘But I’ll happily leave again if you were expecting someone else. A plumber, perhaps...?’
He laughed, another dry chuckle that rumbled up from that deliciously broad chest. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had found her funny or made her laugh in return. Absurdly, Clara searched for other amusing things to say.
Except this was work. She was a professional. She wasn’t here to spar with him, no matter how carefree and giggly he made her feel.
‘Are you hurt?’ she asked sharply, pointedly glancing at the watch pinned to her pocket before scrutinising his well-defined chest, which was covered in manly hair with the barest hint of reddish gold. His shoulders were wide, his upper body ripped and bronzed. While she desperately tried not to envision herself as the second occupant of that giant bath, Clara’s gaze skimmed the ladder of his abs until she reached the modesty layer of suds, frustrated to have her view cruelly interrupted.
‘Don’t mind me,’ he drawled, snapping her to her senses. ‘Have a good, long look.’ He relaxed his arms on the edge of the bath as if in invitation.
‘As you pointed out,’ she blustered, mortified to be caught ogling the sexy, naked VIP, ‘I’m a medical professional—I was assessing you for injuries.’
‘Is that right?’ He raised his eyebrows, a knowing smile tugging at one corner of his sensual mouth, which was surrounded by a close-cropped beard of dark facial hair flecked with similar golden tones to his body hair.
‘Indeed.’ Clara tilted her chin, hot shame in her veins that she’d temporarily forgotten she was there to help him; that it was her job, one she couldn’t afford to mess up. ‘And I’m pleased to find that you seem fine.’
If ‘fine’ denoted the kind of wildly rugged male beauty that brought to mind log cabins in the snowy mountains, fur pelts on the floor, a crackling fire...
Where the hell had that ridiculous and unwarranted fantasy come from? His raw, edgy sex appeal was as irrelevant as his VIP status. She wasn’t about to undo the past eight years of struggle and heartache for something as frivolous as sexual chemistry.
From the age of sixteen, when her father had left his wife and two daughters and done a runner, Clara, the eldest, had worked part-time to contribute to the family income. At nineteen, while Clara had also been studying for her nursing degree, her mother, Alma, had developed breast cancer and hadn’t been able to work for months on end while undergoing treatment. Clara’s income had kept the roof over their heads and the bills paid with no help from her absent father. The emotional toll of caring for Alma, while also taking on financial responsibility for her family, had cured teenaged Clara of the foolish romantic aspirations of most of her peers.
Especially after Alma discovered her father, Lars, had re-mortgaged the house to fund one of his get-rich-quick schemes and had then ended up in prison for fraud. Now, at twenty-four, with her parents’ unequal marriage as a warning, Clara’s only goal was lifelong financial and emotional independence. She’d never be any man’s puppet, wild mountain-men and Vikings included.
‘I need to get back to work,’ she said in her haughtiest voice, willing her eyes to steer clear of his ripped physique. ‘So unless you’re bleeding to death...’
She paused expectantly, faking indifference to the inconvenient attraction that, for a moment, had caught her off-guard.
‘No blood. Sorry to disappoint you.’ His lips twitched with playful amusement other women might have found charming.
No doubt he was used to the effect he had on poor unsuspecting women. Only, Clara had seen how love could make one partner, usually the woman, vulnerable. Her mother had excused and forgiven Lars time and time again in the name of love.
Ignoring the heat and speculation in his stare, she smiled sweetly. ‘What a shame.’
‘Next time, I’ll try to provide you with a little more drama,’ he said, his silvery blue eyes sparkling flirtatiously.
‘Let’s hope there’ll be no next time,’ she shot back, unable to resist. Was this the flirty fun she’d missed out on as a teenager because of Lars’s irresponsible approach to raising his daughters?
At that he only stared, amused and revoltingly confident in his nudity.
‘So, what can I do for you?’ She folded her arms across her chest, keeping her eyes on his face and not a millimetre lower. Now that he seemed to have awoken a previously dormant aspect of her womanhood, all she could think about was escape. He was the naked one, but she felt horribly exposed, imagining wildly romantic scenarios when, before meeting him, she’d have sworn that there wasn’t a fanciful bone in her body.
‘While that’s normally the kind of offer I’d love to hear from a beautiful woman,’ he said, his stare playfully daring, ‘We’ve already vetoed sexual harassment, although you might need to stop looking at me as if you’ve been denied the last cookie in the jar.’
His comment drew another uncontrollable blush from Clara. A trickle of fear chilled her blood as if by ignoring the demands of her femininity up to now something vital might be missing from her life and somehow he could tell.
‘You said you were stuck. And I’m not interested in cookies,’ she lied, dragging her eyes away from his chest.
How had they got there again? Was he some sort of sickeningly handsome sorcerer, bewitching her with his hot bod, his sparkly eyes and the sheer force of his unapologetic masculinity?
‘In that case,’ he said, seeming to drop the cocky attitude, ‘I won’t keep you from your other duties any longer.’
‘How generous,’ she snapped, the testosterone fog around him the only excuse for her uncharacteristic attitude. ‘I’d hate to have to attend to a real emergency and leave you...indisposed. I’m sure that bath is getting cold.’
She just couldn’t seem to bite her tongue around him.
He laughed, something like respect flickering in his eyes. Validation shot excitement along Clara’s nerves, lighting her up inside like the million stars in the night sky. She fisted her hands on her hips, furious at her rebellious body’s response to him. If circumstances had been different, if they’d been equals, if she hadn’t needed this lucrative job, she would have turned tail and left him to shiver in his cooling bathwater.
Instead, she clamped her lips together. Her family was one defaulted mortgage repayment away from losing their home.
As if finally done toying with her, the infuriating man sat up. The water swirled around his lean hips in tantalisingly hypnotic currents.
‘Before you leave,’ he said, the amused lilt lingering in his voice telling her he’d caught her watching those currents for a glimpse of what lay beneath. ‘I wonder if you would save me an undignified crawl across the tiles and be so kind as to pass me my leg?’
CHAPTER TWO
CROWN PRINCE ANDREAS CRONSTEDT, heir to the Varborg throne, was rarely surprised by the many people he met. But the enchanting beauty who’d marched into his bathroom with her no-nonsense attitude didn’t bat an eyelid at his rather unusual request.
‘Of course,’ she said, casting big, blue eyes around the bathroom. ‘Your leg; where might I find that?’
Satisfaction spread through the ancient Viking blood in Andreas’s veins like lava. She was spectacular. And obviously had no idea that he descended from a long, ancient line of Scandinavian princes.
‘Try behind you, in the bedroom. Under the curtains, perhaps?’ Andreas indicated the doorway, through which this fascinating and forthright woman had come. ‘I’m quite impressed with myself for making such an improbable shot.’
‘What is it doing all the way over there, when you’re stuck in your cold bath?’ she asked, casting him an unsympathetic look he found thrilling.
Rather than having the desired effect, her taunting reprimand, and the way she looked at him with both interest and astonishment at his stupidity, flooded his groin with heat. Too bad she was a palace employee, one of the round-the-clock nurses employed to keep Prince Henrik in excellent health, and therefore strictly off-limits.
‘I’m afraid I hurled it away, unthinkingly, in a rare fit of frustration,’ he said, gleefully admitting to this intriguing stranger that his current predicament was totally self-inflicted.
