Her clothes were in the lounge room, where they’d been flung the night before. She pulled them on quickly, tidied her hair, pinched her cheeks, then paused only to check her reflection in the mirror.
Phew.
She looked completely normal. There was no outward way to deduce how she’d spent last night.
Her handbag was still in the locker room, she realised with a groan, and she’d need it to get into her place. A slight complication, but she’d just have to try not to be seen by anyone who knew her well enough to be familiar with her shifts.
She crept out of the suite, shutting the door behind her as softly as possible, then moving quickly down the plush, carpeted corridor, head bent the whole way.
By some miracle, she managed it. Not only to retrieve her handbag, but also to slip out of the staff doors of theclínicawithout running into anyone she knew. She barely breathed until she’d boarded the bus that would take her within a few blocks of the apartment she was renting temporarily.
As she showered and dressed, her mind kept flashing back to last night. To the way he’d been with her. The way he’d kissed her and touched her as though she were the most perfect, rare, beautiful object in the world.
What a gift, to be able to make a woman feel like that. She’d never known anything like it.
She probably never would again.
She dismissed the thought. She wasn’t thinking about men or relationships right now. God knew, she’d been so badly burned by Christopher, she wasn’t sure she’d ever trust anyone ever again. She couldn’t so much as think of her ex without a horrible, all-consuming sense of shame. That she’d been ‘the other woman’, while he’d been married, got his wife pregnant, seen his first child born, and his second, all the while stringing Phoebe along, treating her like a first-rate idiot. And she had been an idiot, utterly and completely.
He’d been such an accomplished liar, though, it wasn’t really that she was stupid. Just that she’d been alone and lonely and wanted to feel loved, and he’d offered her so much of that.
Memories of Christopher were just the antidote she needed to the swoony feelings Octavio had invoked. All men were bastards, she thought with satisfaction, as she dressed in her other uniform and prepared to return to work.
His first waking thought that day had been born of desire. He’d reached for Phoebe automatically, his arm stretching across the bed, his fingers seeking, wanting, needing, only to connect with the empty sheets. A cursory glance at the suite had shown him to be alone, and his instant reaction had been a visceral sense of disappointment before he’d told himself he should be relieved.
Despite his clarity the night before, there’d been a part of him that had worried she might want more than he was offering, that she might get the wrong idea. She was a cleaner in a hospital and he was royalty—was it possible she harboured some kind of romantic Cinderella notion?
Evidently not.
She’d disappeared, leaving no note, no number, nothing.
Until now. Standing in the foyer of the clinic, he listened as the director spoke gently.
‘As there are no complicating factors, your uncle’s body will be released as soon as you convey your wishes as to the funeral preparations. If you should wish for any further medical information, please—’
At that moment, there was a loud crash. One of his security agents had knocked an enormous vase of flowers to the tiled floor, leaving a cascade of water and stems in disarray.
‘I’m so sorry, Your Majesty. Please excuse me a moment.’
Dr Garcia moved quickly, her heels clacking over the floor, and it was then that he saw her.
Phoebe James.
Phoebe James, who loved to be kissed just above her hip bone. Phoebe James, who had loved being on top last night, her body arching as she took him deep inside, her breasts so perfect and full, he hadn’t been able to stop staring at them. Phoebe James, who’d run her hands all over him and moaned his name at the top of her lungs.
Phoebe James, with huge green eyes that were very determinedlynotlooking at him now, no matter how much he willed it.
Phoebe James, who was being instructed by her boss to clean up the mess his guard had just made.
Oh, for Christ’s sake.
It was her job as a cleaner to clean things, but the sight of her scuttling across the tiles and scooping down, picking up the stems first and then moving on to the broken glass had him wanting to shout something. To force her to stop. The broken vase shouldn’t be her responsibility. And he definitely shouldn’t care this much, he admitted to himself. Not for some woman he’d just met and would never see again. But there was something about her that fired all his protective instincts to life.
So, when Lola, the director, returned to continue their conversation, he directly addressed the broken vase. ‘That should not be your cleaner’s responsibility. My guard knocked it—he will take care of it.’
‘It’s fine, Your Majesty. These things happen.’
Impotence grew inside of him. But how could he argue the point further without revealing something more? He had been worried about his own privacy the night before, but now he considered Phoebe’s job. She had been such a stickler forconvention initially; she hadn’t even wanted to use his first name.
