gave a single nod. “Just so long as we understand each other. Duty calls, Catherine. Duty calls. And you, my dear, shall answer.”
She wanted to leave. She wanted to run. But she couldn’t get her feet to move. The whole world felt as if it were collapsing in on her. What was wrong with her? Yvonne couldn’t wait to get married. Couldn’t wait to produce a gaggle of royal babies. She didn’t need love, it seemed. In fact, Yvonne had been quite happy with the man their father had chosen for her.
So why was she so resistant?
Catherine dashed away the hot tear of frustration. She didn’t know why she continued to be defiant. She just felt she had to. And no amount of kingly commands was going to change that.
What she’d like to do was just run away. Go somewhere fun and exciting. Crawl out from under the burdensome von Husden name and all the royal responsibilities that went along with it and enjoy a little purely naughty fun.
But that was impossible.
Duty calls, Catherine. Her father’s chilly reminder caused a shiver to course across every inch of her skin. And you, my dear, shall answer.
Her jaw firmed, and she wanted to mutter, “Duty be damned.” But she held her tongue.
“Is there anything else?” Her father asked, looking up from the paperwork he’d been reviewing.
“I need some time,” she blurted.
“I thought we had already concluded that your time had run out.”
“Please, Father.” She stopped. Swallowed. Took a deep breath. Allowing panic to overwhelm her would be a mistake. She had to make a rational argument. She tried again, “Father, I need some time to get used to the idea of…” She refused to voice the phrase marrying Étienne, so instead, she said, “the idea that my life will soon be changing. You’re asking a lot of me—”
“I’m asking no more of you than I am of your sister.”
“I need some time,” she repeated. Alarm began to erode her self-control. She had to say something that would make him agree to give her what she needed. “I’m not asking for the world here. Just two weeks.” Then an idea came to her out of the blue and she exclaimed, “To buy a trousseau!”
The straight line that had been his mouth softened.
“It wouldn’t look very good if I didn’t have all the things I needed to begin—”
“Two weeks, you say?”
“Yes,” she told him, relief flooding her.
Prince Wilhelm sighed. “You’ll take your sister along?”
Risking more disapproval, Cat shook her head slowly. “Yvonne is very upset with me. I doubt she’d be very much help.”
He glanced down at the papers on his desk. “Well, you can’t very well go alone.”
“I’m not a child. I want to go alone. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t. I’ll go as Catherine Houston.”
When each of his children had turned twenty-one, Prince Wilhelm gifted them with a credit card and bank account under an assumed name. Traveling incognito was the perfect way to deflect the barrage of reporters whenever they took mini holidays or went shopping on Oxford Street in London. When your family owned the bank that backed the credit card—when your family owned the whole darned country—you could pretty much do whatever you wanted.
Her father sat down in his overstuffed leather chair. “Where will you go?”
Anxiety had her tossing up her hands. “I don’t know. I haven’t decided.”
“But—”
“This will be the last trip I take as a single woman,” she said, a terrible sinking feeling twittering her stomach. “Would you please just give me a little space?”
For a long moment, he stared. And finally he murmured, “You may have two weeks. Two.”
One
I f the monotony of this job didn’t kill him, Dr. Riley Jacobs thought, then the paint fumes would. Taking over the running of Portland General Hospital’s new Healthy Living Clinic hadn’t been where he’d expected to put his extensive ER training into practice; however, the position had turned out to be a necessary rung on the ladder to where he wanted to go—and he had every intention of reaching his ultimate goal.
Riley thought of himself as a late bloomer, being thirty years old and having just completed his residency at Portland General Hospital. However, he’d received rave reviews from the ER chief of staff, and he’d truly expected a job offer. But instead Riley had been asked by the head honcho, himself—the hospital director—if he would become acting director of the Healthy Living Clinic. It seemed that things had gone quite awry here recently. And Riley had been told if he could set the mess right and keep bad publicity at bay, then a job would be waiting for him over in the hospital’s emergency room. He’d promised to do his best.
The perfunctory knock on his office door had him calling out, “It’s open.”
Faye Lassen secured a small stack of patient files in the crook of one arm. The thirty-two-year-old woman with a Ph.D. in nutrition and psychology wore her hair pinned up in a neat ’do, and wore a crisp white lab jacket over a navy knee-length skirt. One look at her and the word professional popped into one’s mind.
“Hi, Riley,” she said. “Busy?”
“Just reading through all this paperwork so I’ll be ready for our meeting. We should get over to the hospital soon, shouldn’t we?”
Anxiety clouded her blue eyes. At least, he thought her eyes were blue. He couldn’t be sure since they were hidden for most part behind the iconic, huge-rimmed glasses she wore.
“I don’t believe I’m going to be able to make it,” she told him.
“What’s wrong?”
“I was just alerted that one of my nutritionists has called in sick and I’ve got a client waiting. If I’d been told ahead of time, I’d have called her and rescheduled her appointment.”
Riley set down the papers he’d been holding. “But I need you in that meeting with me. You know more about this place than anyone. You’ve been here since the clinic opened. You know what’s been happening around here, whereas I’ve just stepped into the job.”
“I know, and I hate to let you down,” she said, “but I have no choice. Also—” she pushed the door closed behind her and approached his desk “—I have some information about Dr. Richie. And it’s not good news.”
He went still. The springs in Riley’s chair creaked when he sat up straight, waiting.
“I was approached by Detective O’Callahan. He told me he was suspicious of Dr. Richie. I’d have told you about this sooner, but I didn’t want to spread mere rumor. I told the detective I needed proof. Well, after doing some background research, the detective discovered that, although Dr. Richie excelled in some areas of study during his college years, he didn’t do so well in chemistry. Detective O’Callahan has offered hard proof.”
Even as he took the manila folder Faye handed him, Riley thought of all those small bottles the staff at the clinic had been handing out to clients right and left. A topical weight-loss oil, NoWait had been the invention of Dr. Richard Strong, the man who had been Chief of Staff of the clinic until a woman proclaiming to be his ex-wife had disrupted his standing-room-only seminar with loud and angry accusations that had caused him to run for the high hills. Dr. Richie—as the famous health guru was known by everyone in the Pacific Northwest—hadn’t been seen in the clinic since.
The commotion had taken place a week ago, and although Riley hadn’t been around to witness the incident, it had everyone abuzz, clients and staff alike, and he’d heard