Taken by the Prince Page 7

  Ash said I brought the magic back to Trisea. He said the sunsets were more beautiful, the land more plentiful, and the people were happier because of me. But I said it was all because of him. This was his nation and his magic. I only let him see it more clearly.

  I don’t remember a single thing about our wedding day. It was a blur of happy tears, processions, and cheering Triseans. Luckily, the event was televised worldwide, and Serene sent me a copy of the footage that same night.

  She’d also been able to get me out of my contract with Paramount without paying them a single cent. In fact, her lawyers found that my management company and Paramount had mishandled payments on my backend earnings, that is, money I earned based on how well the movie did at the box office. So, not only did I not have to pay to get out of my contract, Paramount ended up paying me.

  “So, Princess Charlotte, where would you like to go on your royal honeymoon?” Ash asked me after all the press coverage and photos were taken and we’d actually had a minute to ourselves.

  My mouth fell open. “In all the planning and organizing a royal wedding, did we really forget to plan our honeymoon?”

  Ash smiled at me, his Trisean royal dress uniform glinting in the candlelight of our bedchamber. “We did. But I’m sure we can think of somewhere to go.” He eyes burned with desire as he slid the strap of my wedding gown off my shoulder.

  I smiled back and kissed him. “Ash, there is no place better than here. No place I’d rather be. Nowhere I’d rather spend my honeymoon than in our castle.”

  He grinned at me and ripped the gown off my body. We made love in our own bed as husband and wife, Prince and Princess, and future King and Queen of Trisea.

  We came together, as one, writhing and moaning each other’s name.

  Then we did it again.

  We stayed in the bedchamber for days, only leaving when the staff brought a meal to our living quarters and even then, we didn’t leave our personal suite for two weeks. When we did emerge from our honeymoon cocoon, Ash gave me a small, delicately wrapped box.

  “It’s a belated wedding gift,” he said as I opened it. Inside the box was a leather book, about the size of a standard checkbook. “It’s a ledger, my love. Look at the balance.”

  It was far too many zeroes. “Ash, wha—I don’t understand.”

  “That’s yours, my Princess, to do whatever you’d like. But I thought you might like to start your own charity with it.”

  Tears rolled down my cheeks as I threw my arms around Ash’s neck. “I could start a hundred charities with this.”

  Ash pulled away. “Then start a hundred, Charlotte. Start a million and save the world. Do whatever you’d like with it, as long as it makes you happy, my sweet.”

  I laughed, tears still welling. “Ash, I couldn’t be any happier than I am right now.”

  He gave me a devilish smile. “Oh, but you will be, Charlotte. This is but a taste of the happiness I plan on giving you.”

  Epilogue

  Ash

  Charlotte was the best decision I ever made.

  For me and for Trisea.

  She was the one who brought the magic back to this land. She was the one who convinced me to open up Trisea and supplement the nation’s economy with tourism. No more were we a secret nation, and because of it, Trisea’s GDP has never been higher.

  We never fought. We never even disagreed on anything of importance. We always made time for one another, no matter how busy our schedules or charities became. And we always, always made love like we’d climbed mountains to get to each other.

  I would have three children with Charlotte, two boys and one girl. The boys favored her in appearance and temperament, both loving redheads who rushed headlong into every part of their lives. The girl, whom we named Claire, was the spitting image of me.

  When my parents grew older and infirm and Charlotte went from the Princess of Romance to the Queen of Trisea, she stepped into her role as a monarch with dignity, grace, and every bit of panache I’d grown to love her for.

  And we ruled our beautiful nation as one for many, many long and happy years.

  Holiday Studs

  Halloween with the Hunk

  Cass and Landon’s Story

  Thanksgiving for Three

  Jeannie, Noah and Nick’s Story

  Christmas Crush

  Duchess Serene and Jeffrey’s Story

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  Sneak Peek of Claimed by the Prince

  Nathaniel

  “Good morning Mr. Hawthorne. How’s your pain today?” asked the chipper young nurse who’d said the same thing with the same intonation every day since I arrived here. She went about checking my vitals, jotting them in the chart she’d taken from the end of the bed which was both too narrow and too short for me to lie in comfortably.

  “It’s a steady five unless I move wrong. Then it’s an eleven.”

  She nodded, noting that in the chart as well. “Do you mind if I take a peek at your bandages?”

  I moved the thin hospital sheet off my left leg, exposing the thick band of gauze and medical tape encircling my thigh. The blonde nurse, whose light gray scrubs hung on her body as if she’d borrowed someone else’s, carefully peeled away the tape and cotton. I broke out in a sweat as the fibers stuck to the wound, gritting my teeth against rising nausea and daring a peek at the through-and-through gunshot wound which miraculously only hit muscle and minor blood vessels.

  A few inches higher and I’d have bled to death on the street. A few to the right and the bullet would have hit my femur—a minimum six-month recovery. I was very lucky.

  “This new course of medicine doesn’t seem to be making a dent in the infection. I’ll ask the doctor to change you to a broader antibiotic,” she said as she re-taped the bandage.

  I sighed and refocused out the window to the lovely view of the east wing of the hospital.

  “I know it’s frustrating, Mr. Hawthorne. I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you.”

  I was lucky, and yet, so angry, I wanted to yell. I wanted to ask the pretty nurse who was only doing her job if she really understood the devastation of lying in a hospital bed for almost five weeks and not be any closer to going home. I wanted to scream about how this has been one complication, one set back, one awful infection after another. I wanted to throw things and cause a scene and get security called on me. It probably would have done me good—letting it all out might have been cathartic.

  But I did none of that. This wasn’t her fault, and I couldn’t bring myself to take it out on her. I stared out the window and sank deeper into the dark well of self-pity.

  “I’m also going to see about getting you a different physical therapist. Steve is great, but they assigned you to him because you’re a big guy. I think Pilar might be able to help you process this better. She’s our big gun, Mr. Hawthorne.”

  So they were calling in the big guns for me. I probably needed it. My gaze found its way to the ugly east wing of the New York Presbyterian Hospital again—steel and glass and perfectly appropriate for New York, but the building only reminded me how far I was from home.

  “I’ll be back in a few hours with more pain meds. If you need anything, just push that button,” she said, scrawling notes in my chart as she left the room.

  I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to press the loneliness and homesickness from my mind. Memories of that night barged into my awareness uninvited. Diving in front of my boss the instant I heard gunfire, the fear in his new bride’s eyes when my blood splattered across her dress, and the white-hot pain tearing through my leg as the slug shredded its way through my thigh. It had been weeks since the shooting, weeks of one step forward and two back, but those memories were burned into
the my mind and played back with crisp photorealism anytime I let my guard down.

  The shooter, still unaccounted for, had been an awful shot. That was the only thing that kept me alive. But there were days I wished I had died right there on the pavement. Days when the pain drove me mad. Days when I couldn’t stand the thought of being in this bed a moment longer. Days when my skin crawled, begging to be set free of this sterile, pine-scented prison.

  Today was one of those days.

  Looking forward to something helped. At first, I looked forward to the day I left this place. But that quickly turned into torture as one busted stitch led to an infection, which led to antibiotics that made me break out in hives and my airways close, which led to a seizure which opened up the leg wound, and all the progress I’d made to that point was gone. Now, I had a new infection which didn’t want to go away, and instead of looking forward to being healthy again, walking on my own two feet, and getting back to work, I looked forward to daytime TV and green jello.

  Hell, at this point I didn’t even know if I’d be able to get back to work. My leg had been through so much, Steve, my physical therapist didn’t think I could get it back to a hundred percent. I couldn’t very well be the Crown Prince of Trisea’s first security officer with a ruined leg.

  I didn’t like to think about it, but that didn’t keep me from doing so. On the bad days, I’d wonder who I was without that job. I’d wonder if I could ever be whole again if I didn’t have full use of my leg.

  Fortunately, today wasn’t one of the really bad days. Today was a numb day. Today, I looked forward to The Price is Right.

  Pilar

  I swiped a thin line of the blackest black liner known to man across my lash line. The mirror in the women’s locker room wasn’t the greatest, but I’d spent a bit too much time in the shower this morning, putting me behind, and there was no way I could do my job without my “battle armor.”

  People who work in hospitals go down one of two paths. They harden themselves against the atrocities they see daily, or they don’t, and eventually, it wears them down. They leave broken and hurting and never the same.

  But the thing about hardening yourself was that the moment you do, you stop caring. When the horrible things didn’t make an impact anymore, it meant you’d lost your edge. I couldn’t afford that. I needed every advantage I could get to do my job well. So I painted on a happy face with waterproof, long-wear makeup. The process had become a ritual of sorts, preparing me to face the day, shielding me from the pain inherent to the job. Not so much that I stopped caring, but enough that I didn’t go home and cry myself to sleep every night.

  That’s how I spent my first year out of school. Crying and eating. None of the professors or instructors ever mentioned how to deal with the stress of seeing people at their worst, of dealing with angry, hurting people who just want to feel better. No one told me how hard it would be trying to get an elderly person strong enough to return home, only to see them back in a few weeks when they fell again.

  They taught me anatomy and effective treatment procedures and massage therapy. But no one taught me how to keep this job from getting to me. So I came up with my own method. Waterproof winged liner and the promise that I’d never take this job home. Whatever happened here, stayed here.

  I checked my reflection one last time and headed to the PT station.

  “Hey,” Jen said when I arrived. “I’m transferring one of Steve’s to you. He needs the ‘Pilar method.’”

  I laughed. There was no such thing as the “Pilar method.” But I didn’t take bullshit or excuses from my patients, and it wore on me. Pushing people beyond their comfort zone and well into their pain threshold could be as hard on me as on them. The angry ones would grit their teeth and call me names, and I would take it because I knew if they could get through one more extension, one more mobility exercise, they’d be that much closer to being whole again, and that was the ultimate goal.

  On the really bad days when I had one angry, bitter patient after another, one insult or racial slur after the next, I tried not to take it personally. I tried to tell myself these people were going through the hardest thing they’d probably ever been through. I did my job, I pushed them hard, and they were better because of it.

  “That’s not a thing,” I said. “But I hope you warned him.”

  “I didn’t. He needs a kick in the ass,” Jen said.

  I glanced up from my charts. “What the hell are you wearing, Jen?”

  The pretty blond nurse who also happened to be one of my closest friends blushed an angry shade of red. “They’re Mark’s scrubs. I stayed at his house last night.”

  “Oooooooooh. I didn’t know you’d gotten that far. You’ll have to catch me up on that after work, all right? I’ve gotta check on Rosalie.”

  Jen smiled at the mention of the elderly woman’s name. “Oh, tell her hi for me, will ya?”

  I nodded and headed down the hall to Rosalie Brown’s room.

  I knocked on the door, waited a moment and let myself in. “Good morning, Rosie. How are you feeling today?” I asked, surprised to see she sat upright in bed and waiting for me.

  “Better than I’ve felt in months,” she said, smiling at me.

  “Just what I like to hear. Ready to do some walking today?”

  “Absolutely, dear. I’ll even wheel my own oxygen.”

  “Ambitious,” I said, watching as she swung her legs off the side of the bed and stood without any help from me. “You’ve come a long way, haven’t you?”

  She nodded, grabbing my waist for support as she took a step toward the door. “I feel much better than I did.”

  Rosalie Brown was admitted four months ago with a serious case of pneumonia she mistook for a chest cold. Because of her age and her already compromised immune system, Rosalie contracted another infection in her lungs that left her unable to breathe without assistance. My job? Getting her back on her feet, comfortable, and mobile enough to return home.

  Rosalie also happened to be one of my favorite patients of all time. She never complained, never felt sorry for herself, and always put as much as she could into her physical therapy. If every patient I had were like Rosie, they’d have to pay me to go home.

  We got to the main corridor, and Rosie regaled me with the highlights of yesterday’s “stories.”

  “Remember I told you last week I thought Nikki was up to something?”

  “I do,” I said. “Oh, and Jen says hi.”

  “Well, isn’t she just the sweetest. Tell her to stop by my room. I finished that scarf for her.”

  “Will do,” I said.

  “Now, what was I about to say?”

  I smiled. “Nikki was up to something.”

  “That’s right. Well, I was right. She planned the whole thing! The wedding catastrophe and the missed honeymoon flight—she was behind it all.”

  “Why?” I asked

  “Well, obviously she wants to get back with Paul.”

  I didn’t watch soaps, and Rosie knew I humored her, but she also knew that walking while talking without getting winded was a sign she could go home. This was her way of telling me she was ready.

  The only problem? Rosie lived alone. She’d lost her husband a few years ago in a house fire. They never had children, and she had no other family. If Rosie wanted to go home to an empty house, she had to prove she could do more than just walk down the hall.

  We reached the end of the corridor, and Rosie started to turn back. “How about we try the stairs?” I asked and nodded toward the stairwell.

  Uncertainty flashed in her eyes. “I’m not sure if I’m ready for that, Pilar.”

  “You’re not, but you will be. I’ll make sure of it. Until then, you get to enjoy my company a little longer.”

  She nodded, disappointment crossing her face briefly before she pushed it aside and focused on the return walk.

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