The GP's Royal Secret
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Traci Douglass
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CHAPTER ONE
PRINCE DAVIAN MICHAEL JULIAN HENRY CONSTANTINE DE LOROSO had planned all the details of this trip so carefully for his father, the King of Ruclecia, right down to the ports they would visit on their impromptu two-week-long Mediterranean cruise to the selection of crew members. Everything should have been perfect. Unfortunately, it was anything but—starting with the contrary disposition of the chef he’d hired. The chef who was currently arguing vehemently in French with the chief steward, a congenial American named Noah, as Davian intervened. He’d mastered three big D’s in his life—diplomacy, determination, and becoming a world-renowned doctor. Davian refused to add defeated to the list because of one irate chef.
“Listen to me,” Davian said to François, the chef in question, summoning his most placating tone. The same one that he used to soothe the overblown egos of some surgeons when he taught them cutting-edge techniques to improve their skills. “Please put down the meat cleaver. Let’s remain calm.”
“Non,” François said, pointing to Noah with the cleaver. “Not until he leaves my galley.”
The galley in question was on board the Querencia, the mega-yacht Davian had hired for this trip. She had recently been refitted with updated technology and security features, as well as amenities, making her the obvious choice for a quick escape from a recently developing threat in their tiny island nation. Normally on yachts, even the mega ones, the kitchen facilities could be smaller and cramped. But not so with the Querencia. At one hundred and eighty feet, the Querencia was bigger and better than anything else on the sea and that went for her galley too. Sparkling tile floors, sparkling top-tier stainless-steel appliances, sparkling utensils and equipment. No expense had been spared. Nothing but the best for the royal family of Ruclecia.
At least those in line for the throne. As the spare to the heir, Davian had been regulated to second-tier status, like a built-in advisor and assistant to his family rather than a titled prince, obligated to do his duty but not overshadow those above him in the line of succession. Even so, he’d managed to carve out a life he loved for himself. He’d never wanted the power, and the headaches that came with it. He was more than content to follow his own ambitions and dreams, to help those who needed his skills as a doctor and surgeon and make the world a better place. And today, that started with keeping the peace of his well-chosen crew.
“Chef François, put down the cleaver and please explain what our chief steward said to upset you so,” Davian tried again. “Was it about your menu?”
“He said my fines ravioles potagères au consommé ambré looked like vomi anémique!”
A long stream of invectives hurled in rapid-fire French followed. Davian closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Even if Davian hadn’t spoken six languages, the fact that each curse was punctuated by a slam of the cleaver into the wooden carving board made it abundantly clear his highly regarded, three-starred Michelin chef was deeply offended by what was probably an offhand comment by the chief stew.
Davian had gone to medical school in America and done most of his residency there, so he understood their humor. François, on the other hand, obviously did not. Heat from the galley prickled Davian’s face and neck. It had to be close to triple digits in there, with all the cooking and shouting happening. And even all the portholes being open didn’t help. Most likely because they’d set off from Gibraltar earlier that morning and August in the Mediterranean had been the hottest month of the year so far.
“That’s not what I said,” Noah said from behind Davian. “I said perhaps they needed a bit more color before we served them to the King and Queen.”
“Bâtard! Tu mens!”
“Stop!” Davian said, giving each man a stern stare. Both men had been hired because of their impeccable résumés and skills. He didn’t want to fire either. Just keep them from killing each other for the duration of this cruise. Davian looked down at the plates of food ready to be delivered upon his parents’ arrival and sighed. They did look a bit...bland, but then bland was what his father’s health required at present. After a major heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery the previous year, King Phillipe was on a strict diet for the foreseeable future to keep his risk factors for another cardiac event low. Another reason they were on this impromptu cruise. Whispers of assassination threats tended to raise one’s blood pressure considerably. Especially when the Ruclecian royal family had already lost one member to a bullet. Davian sometimes still dreamed about the day his beloved grandfather had been shot...
Another whack of the cleaver into the cutting board jarred Davian out of his memories and back to the present situation.
“Right. Well, I think these dishes look très bien,” he told François. “And since I am your employer, my opinion is the only one that matters.”
That seemed to appease the chef, since François slowly lowered the cleaver back down to the counter, where Davian quickly claimed it. Used to handling scalpels, he found the cleaver’s weight was a bit unsettling. Still, there was no way he was letting François get his hands on the thing again. Not right now, anyway.
“Merci, Chef,” Davian said to François then turned to Noah, who still stood behind him, his expression stoic with an undercurrent of antipathy. The relationship between a chef and a chief stew was always fraught with a bit of that, Davian had learned from his years on board his father’s yachts.
Almost like siblings, he thought.
Heaven knew Davian and his older brother, Arthur, had their share of issues with each other.
And while Davian had been sent to the same schools and traveled to the same places over the years as his older brother, it was always made clear that they were different. Arthur would one day become King. Davian would only ascend if something awful happened to his father and his brother, and any male children his brother might have. The royal guard and Ruclecian security forces worked day and night to make sure that never happened. Not that Davian wasn’t important in the system though. He had other uses. Like playing travel agent, or diplomat, or even fiancé, when needed, only to be quickly shoved aside when the need no longer existed.
As an accomplished man with goals and dreams of his own, he was sick of it.
He’d disrupted his own life more times than he could count for his family and enough was enough. After this cruise was over and the assassination threat had passed, Davian planned to sit down with his parents and tell them he was done. No more neglecting his life and his medical career for the sake of his royal duties. He’d been through a lifetime of putting his family needs and obligations ahead of his own and now he was done. He just had to get through this last cruise first.
“Noah, once my parents and their guests have arrived and settled in, please have your staff take these plates up to them in the main dining room,” Davian said in the voice he used in his operating rooms, the precise one that brooked no argument. Then he turned back to the chef. “And François, carry on with dinner preparations. No more comments from either of you on the other’s performance. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Noah grumbled, stepping forward to grab three plates while his second stew did the same.
“Oui,” mumbled François.
“Good.” Davian then started out of the galley in the opposite direction, toward the stairs leading up to the private cabins, where he’d been headed when this whole debacle started. He made it up two steps when an announcement crackled over the yacht’s PA system from the captain.
“All medical personnel to the bridge stat. All medical personnel to the bridge for an emergency.”
With a curse, Davian changed directions and sprinted back through the galley and up a different set of stairs to the bridge, adrenaline pumping again. Seemed his work was never done on this cruise.
“Mommy, what’s that?”
Dr. Cate Neves gazed over at the huge limestone promontory near the southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula and smiled. “That, Adella, is the Rock of Gibraltar.”
The five-year-old frowned, scrunching her nose up. “It’s really big.”
“Yes, it is.” Cate chuckled then crouched beside her daughter on the deck of the Querencia, the luxury mega-yacht she’d been hired to act as assistant physician on for this voyage. She then turned her daughter around to face the opposite shoreline again, resting her chin on the little girl’s shoulder while keeping an arm around her waist to hold her close as the wind blew around them. “See that land there? That’s Morocco.” Then Cate turned with Adella in her arm to face the opposite direction. “In Africa. We’re currently between two continents.”
“What’s a continent?” Adella asked. She was full of questions these days. Same as Cate had been at that age. “And where are we going?”
“A continent is a large landmass.” Cate straightened and took her daughter’s hand. They’d be on board this yacht for the next two weeks and she intended to make the most of it, showing her daughter all the amazing things you could see and experience while traveling. “And we’re sailing the Mediterranean for Mommy’s work, remember?”
“Who do you work for, Mommy? And why do you work on a boat?” Adella tugged free and ran over to sit on one of the outdoor sofas on the Querencia’s uppermost deck with her new favorite stuffed animal, a monkey named Fred. She was at that age where everything was an endless stream of “why” questions.
“Well, on this cruise I work for Dr. Will.” With a sigh, Cate walked over and joined her daughter, sinking into the plush royal blue cushions and staring out at the horizon. It was around noon now and the mist was finally burning off. The Spanish locals here called it levanta and it was common most days, what with the water and air temperatures between the colder Atlantic and the warmer Mediterranean. The sun and wind would drive it off soon enough.
Cate had learned a lot about sailing over the past five years, first by working on board cruise ships as a doctor and now in locum tenses support positions on private vessels like the Querencia. This was the first time, however, she’d signed on without knowing anything about the primary clients on board. They’d made her sign all sorts of nondisclosure agreements and privacy clauses. A formality, Dr. William Bryant had said. Nothing more. And the pay for this voyage was incredible, so she couldn’t say no. Not if she wanted to start her own practice once she got back to the States after this last cruise. She’d been squirreling away funds since she’d graduated from Stanford medical school five years ago to make her dream come true and now it was finally so close she could taste it. And the fact that this whole job had appeared basically out of the blue... Well, it seemed like fate.
So, with just a general reassurance from Will that this cruise was above board and did not involve any mafia or oligarchs or anything, plus with the agreement that she could bring her daughter, Adella, with her, Cate had signed on the dotted line. Still, Cate couldn’t help wondering who could afford to charter a ship like this, plus pay all the crew and expenses that went along with running it.
“Mommy? Do we have to go back downstairs again? I like it up here.”
“I like it up here too, sweetie.” She ran her fingers through her daughter’s long black hair, left loose today to hang down her back in a riot of curls and clipped on the side with two rainbow barrettes. “But Mommy needs to finish stocking her clinic and you need to have some lunch, so yes. We must go back downstairs soon.”
She’d taken a quick break and come up and seen the Port of Gibraltar from the uppermost deck. It was one of her favorite things since she’d first started sailing. So pretty and peaceful. Except when the wind picked up and the water got choppy, like now.
After they’d restocked supplies and fuel here at Gibraltar and the rest of the guests arrived, they’d continue into the Mediterranean, stopping in Marseille, and Monaco, before finishing in Sicily. A short, relaxing trip. And after the past five years, struggling to survive as a single mother, Cate deserved this hopefully relaxing break. Not that she wasn’t working. She was. But most of the time, the worst she dealt with on these luxury trips were the occasional stomach ailment or migraine. Every so often, there’d be something more serious though, like heatstroke or cardiac issues—like the primary guest on this cruise had, according to the brief overview she’d been given by Will earlier—but hopefully, this trip would fall more on the easier side.
After one long, last glance at the gorgeous scenery, Cate stood and smoothed a hand down the front of her white shirt and pants, standard medical uniform on board the Querencia, before reaching for her daughter’s hand. “C’mon, sweetie. Time to go.”
The little girl sighed, then slid down off her seat, staring up at Cate with the same blue eyes as her father. A man she hadn’t seen in five years. By choice, since he’d lied to her about who he was and left her when she’d need him most. Cate had grown up with a father like that already and didn’t want or need more of that in her life now. “Can we visit that big rock while we’re here, Mommy? I’d like to climb it.”
Cate smiled as they started downstairs toward the crew cafeteria. “Not this time, sweetie. But maybe we can come back someday, just you and I, and spend some time here. What do you say?”
“I’d like that.” Adella grinned, making Cate’s heart pinch. That grin she remembered too. In fact, she remembered everything about the man who’d deceived her about everything. But then if it wasn’t for him, Cate wouldn’t have her daughter, so she couldn’t regret it entirely.
Adella whispered something to her stuffed monkey then said, “Fred likes it here too. And he’s hungry. Can I have fruit for lunch, Mommy?”
“We’ll see what the chef put out today.” The yacht not only had all the amenities for its passengers, but they also had a great setup for the crew as well with the chef-prepared buffets for each meal for them. And between the stewards and the deckhands, she always had someone to watch Adella for her when Cate couldn’t. She knew most of them from working together on previous cruises and considered them friends. After getting fruit for her daughter and eggs and a cup of much-needed coffee for herself from the buffet, they settled at a table near the wall to eat quickly. Cate had just sat down when the call came over the PA system.
“All medical personnel to the bridge stat. All medical personnel to the bridge for an emergency.”
Cate was on her feet and signaling for one of her crewmates, a third stew named Andy. She and Cate had quickly become close friends on the Querencia. Andy had joined the crew to help her recover after the loss of her wife to leukemia. They’d been together for almost twenty years. Loving and losing left scars. Cate knew that from experience. Her own father had walked out on her and her mother when Cate was just ten. “Andy’s going to watch you until I get back, okay? Mommy needs to go.”
Cate ran down the hall to the clinic and grabbed her medic bag then raced up the stairs to the bridge. She had no idea what she’d encounter once she got there, but she’d seen plenty of emergencies during her residency in California and her work since. So much so that she’d even considered doing that as her specialty rather than general practice at one point. But life intervened and she’d needed the steady work hours being a GP provided to be there for Adella. Now, as she raced toward who knew what, her blood pumped and her heart raced and she relished the urgency.
“Dr. Cate Neves,” she announced as she burst onto the bridge and weaved through the people gathered there, without really looking at them. Her complete focus was on the female crew member on the floor, apparently unconscious. She pulled out her stethoscope to check the woman’s vitals. “What happened here?”
“They were cleaning the artifacts in the case over there,” Captain Stan said. “She’d put on gloves to remove one of the statues and had this reaction. She’s cleaned them many times before, so we thought it was fine.”
Another crew member held up the box and Cate gave a curt nod.
Classic latex allergy. They often developed after repeated exposures and in some cases could become life-threatening, as appeared to be the case here. You never knew when someone might have a bad reaction, which was why Cate never used latex gloves in her practice. But she’d never lost a patient before and wasn’t about to start now.
She focused on the patient again, as she dug into her bag for the EpiPen she always kept stashed there for emergencies. A quick dose of epinephrine into an anaphylactic patient helped them recover much faster. “Someone please call 112 and have an ambulance ready to take this crew member to the hospital in Gibraltar. And does anyone else here have basic medical training to assist me?”
“I do,” a man said, the voice deep and oddly familiar. “I’m a doctor as well.”
He weaved through the crowd on the bridge and knelt opposite Cate. She hazarded a glance up at the new arrival and...
Oh, God! No. It couldn’t be.
And yet, it was. The man who’d disappeared from her life five years ago. Adella’s father.
David Laurence.
At least that was the name he’d gone by during residency.
The name of the man she’d studied with, fallen in love with.
Except it was all a lie. Everything about him had been a lie.
If she hadn’t been so well trained in emergency situations, Cate might have frozen. As it was, her surprise paralysis only lasted a few seconds before she snapped out of it and continued working on her patient. The woman’s breathing had become more labored, and a nasty allergic rash now spread up her arms and neck. Time for the EpiPen. Cate pinched the woman’s thigh and jammed the needle in to administer the lifesaving drug, then checked the woman’s pulse and respirations again. Most times the results were dramatic, stopping the anaphylaxis in its tracks.
“Is the ambulance on the way?” Cate asked one of the crew standing by as she noticed the patient’s breathing had become deeper and more regular already. The rash was going down too. Good signs.
Her gaze flicked up to the man across from her who was taking the patient’s pulse and Cate’s own heart stumbled once more. What in the hell was Adella’s father, the man who’d walked out of Cate’s life five years ago, doing on board the Querencia?
“Ambulance is here, doc,” the crew member said, jarring Cate back to the present. “The medics are bringing in a gurney.”
“Thank you.” Cate glanced up at her ex again to find him scowling in concentration, an expression she recognized from their years of working together. He looked nearly the same as the last time she’d seen him—still tanned, toned and gorgeous. Short dark hair and cerulean blue eyes. Her chest squeezed and she looked away fast as the patient groaned, the woman’s eyelids fluttering as she came around.
“Alice?” Cate patted the crew member’s cheek lightly. “It’s Dr. Neves. Do you remember what happened?”
The patient tried to sit up, but Cate placed a hand on the woman’s chest to keep her from moving.
“N-no,” Alice said, her white ship’s uniform rumpled from the collapse. “Wh-where am I? Why is everyone staring at me?”
“You had an allergic reaction to the latex gloves you were wearing. Has that ever happened to you before, Alice?” Cate pulled an IV kit out of her medical bag and began swabbing the woman’s arm while she waited for an answer.
“N-no. I don’t have any allergies, that I’m aware of.”
“Well, now you do.” Cate tossed the alcohol pad she’d used into the trash then opened the IV kit. Best to put it in now so the medics could give Alice fluids on the way to the hospital. “I’ll be sure to fill the medics in on what happened here so your doctor at the hospital can go over it all with you. I’m going to put another needle into your arm, Alice. You’ll feel a quick stick and that’s it. Okay?”
Alice nodded and Cate hit the vein on her first try then taped the cannula into place. “All done.”
“Wh-why can’t I remember anything?” The woman blinked up at Cate, tears forming in her eyes. “Wh-what’s happening to me?”
“Disorientation is normal after an episode like yours. Don’t worry, Alice. Rest now. You just had a bad reaction to the latex gloves you were wearing, but I’ve given you a shot of epinephrine and you should make a full recovery. We’ve got an ambulance here now to take you to the hospital for an all clear, just to be on the safe side.”
Behind Cate, the medics arrived and brought the gurney in. She moved out of the way, giving the medics the rundown of the incident and the patient’s current vitals as they got Alice started on IV fluids then prepared to take her out to the ambulance. David stayed by Cate’s side, his arm occasionally brushing hers in the crowded bridge area, making a rush of unwanted awareness shimmer through her nervous system. It had always been like that between them.
Instant connection. Prolonged hurt.
Alice groaned again. “Where are they taking me?”
“To the local medical center in Gibraltar, ma’am,” one of the medics said. “We’ll take good care of you, I promise.”
“Pulse is back in normal range and so is her b/p,” the other paramedic said. “Good response to the EpiPen. Dr. Neves.” The man’s gaze flicked to David and widened slightly before he bowed. “And you, Your Highness.”
Cate’s hackles rose and she forced her tense shoulders to relax. Yes, her ex, David Laurence, had turned out to be none other than Prince Davian de Loroso of the tiny, wealthy European island nation of Ruclecia. Just one of the things he’d lied to her about when they’d been together in college, making Cate believe he was only a young, ambitious medical student like herself, working his way through school to follow his dreams. None of it was true, of course, but she’d been so naive and in love, she’d bought it hook, line and sinker, until it was too late. Even now, anger buzzed inside her, mainly at herself. Seeing what her own mother had gone through, raising Cate on her own and dealing with the heartbreak of being left behind, Cate had sworn to never be taken in like that again. It was the main reason she’d stayed on her own so long. If you didn’t put yourself out there, you didn’t get hurt.
“Stay calm, Alice. You’re doing great. Once you get those IV fluids in your system, you’ll feel a lot better and be back on board before you know it.” Cate patted the woman’s hand in sympathy, noting the rash on Alice’s arms was nearly gone now too.
“I’ll go with her to the hospital,” another crew member said, stepping forward. “To make sure she makes it back before we leave port.”
She waited until the patient was gone before she stooped to repack her medical bag. Davian crouched beside her to help.
“We should talk, Cate,” he said, his blue gaze locked on Cate’s green eyes. A myriad of emotions flitted there—shock, confusion, hurt, hesitation—though he kept his stoic facade in place the same as Cate. But it was still unsettling to find the same blue eyes her daughter Adella had inherited staring back at her now after all these years. “I... I never expected to see you today.”
“That makes two of us,” Cate hissed, keeping her voice low to avoid the other crew on the bridge hearing. She shoved the last items into her bag and zipped it up before straightening. “I need to get back to my clinic now.”
Cate turned and left without waiting for a response from Davian. As far as she was concerned, the fact he’d vanished into thin air five years ago without even a goodbye said more than enough already.
