by Amy Ruttan
Zac grinned and then winked. “I do.”
They exchanged rings.
“Then, by the power vested in me by the State of New York, I now pronounce you husband and wife. And about time too.”
Zac leaned forward and kissed her, instantly chasing away the cold that she had been feeling as she stood in a snowstorm on the rooftop of Manhattan Mercy. There was an eruption of applause as the kiss ended.
“I love you, Ella,” Zac whispered.
“I love you too.”
They held hands and ran back down the aisle. Their families were happy for them, but also doubtless happy to get out of the cold.
Once they were inside Zac summoned the elevator and they got on.
“Aren’t we going to wait for everyone?”
Zac shook his head. “We’ll see them at the Ritz-Carlton. We’re going to have a carriage ride together.”
“That was wonderful!” Ella said. “Thank you.”
Zac kissed her again. The elevator let them off in the emergency room, which was quiet for the moment.
Dr. Jen Lynne and Dr. Ryan Trace, who were now no longer residents but now attendings, wished them well as they left through the ambulance-bay doors, where the carriage was waiting for them. As they stepped outside, a small honor guard from Zac’s old unit were standing in their naval uniforms, waiting. They raised their swords over Zac and Ella’s heads and they walked underneath them.
“What in the world...?” Zac said as he saw them.
“They were my doing,” Ella whispered. “I contacted your commanding officer in Annapolis and he felt it was only right to send off their former captain and naval surgeon right. They’ll be at the reception too.”
Zac kissed her hand as they walked under the swords at the ambulance bay. “Thank you.”
“I love you and you’re not the only one full of surprises, Dr. Davenport.”
She had a very big surprise she’d tell him about when the moment was right.
Zac helped her up into the carriage and once they were both seated it took off for Central Park again.
“How long will this carriage ride last?” Ella asked as she snuggled down next to Zac’s overcoat to keep warm.
“As long as we want. We have to let the others have time to get to the Ritz-Carlton. I thought we could go past Rockefeller Center and see the tree all lit up.”
“That sounds nice. You’re a bit of a Christmas convert, aren’t you?”
Zac grinned. “Look who’s talking. Are you cold? Do you want to just skip the lights and head to the reception?”
“We could skip the reception altogether,” Ella suggested. “We could stay here.”
He grinned and kissed her. “I think your mother and my mother would lose their minds if we did that. The reception is the only part of the wedding they’ve been able to control.”
Ella sighed. “You’re right. We’d better go.”
“Would you like a glass of champagne?” Zac asked as he began to root under the blankets.
“No,” she said.
He was surprised. “No? I got your favorite bottle of champagne too.”
“I appreciate that, but I can’t.”
“Why?” And then it dawned on him. “Are you serious?”
“How do you feel about that?”
Zac answered her with a kiss. “How do you think I feel about that? I’m so happy.”
“Are you? I know with everything that happened last year...”
He kissed her again. “I know and the thought terrifies me to my very core, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over this past year and dealing with my post-traumatic stress disorder it’s that life is too short. You have to keep on living, because there might not be a tomorrow and I don’t want to look back and regret not living the life I wanted because I was too afraid about what might happen. I’m truly happy. When are you due?”
“July. Summer in the Hamptons is out, I guess.” She grinned wickedly, because she’d loathed summers at her parents’ place in the Hamptons. She’d rather go somewhere else for her summer vacations.
Now she could spend the summer in the city, because she had an excuse.
Zac laughed. “Well, it looks like we’re staying close to Manhattan Mercy next summer.”
“It would appear so.”
They didn’t say anything else. They just held each other and enjoyed the sight of the snow falling against the brightly lit city of New York. They enjoyed the Christmas lights and the calm of Central Park, while the rest of the city rushed past them. A busy city on Christmas Eve.
And they dreamed of their future together and all the magical Christmases to come.
* * * * *
Welcome to the CHRISTMAS IN MANHATTAN six-book series
Available now:
SLEIGH RIDE WITH THE SINGLE DAD
by Alison Roberts
A FIREFIGHTER IN HER STOCKING
by Janice Lynn
THE SPANISH DUKE’S HOLIDAY PROPOSAL
by Robin Gianna
THE RESCUE DOC’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE
by Amalie Berlin
CHRISTMAS WITH THE BEST MAN
by Susan Carlisle
NAVY DOC ON HER CHRISTMAS LIST
by Amy Ruttan
Keep reading for an excerpt from CHRISTMAS BRIDE FOR THE SHEIKH by Carol Marinelli.
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Christmas Bride for the Sheikh
by Carol Marinelli
CHAPTER ONE
I PROMISE I’LL be good.
Florence Andrews lay on her side beneath the sheets, with a heavy male arm pinning her, and promised that if the powers that be could possibly reverse the mistakes made last night then she would be good for the rest of her life.
‘Morning,’ he said sleepily, and she felt the morning swell of him on the back of her thigh. It was so insistent he might just as well have been prodding her to get up.
She said nothing, deciding it was far safer to feign sleep.
Flo was all too used to getting it wrong with men.
Petite, with blonde hair and china-blue eyes, Flo had found that she attracted a rather specific type of male—ones whose names began with a B and ended with a D.
Bad.
Bastard.
Either would fool her.
The last man she had dated had practically had to come with written references before she’d even agreed to go out with him, yet he had turned out to be just like the rest
.
A louse.
In fact, even thinking of him had Flo screwing her eyes more tightly closed in shame.
She’d sworn off men, so it had been an awfully long time since she’d gone out with anyone.
Not that she and Hazin had ever been out. It hadn’t even been a date.
She opened her eyes and the view of a cold, grey London in autumn was as stunning as it had been last night. Big Ben let her know it was just after eight and from the dizzy height of the presidential suite it looked like a black and white photo, except for the rain hitting the vast windows.
Flo knew she had outdone herself in the rake stakes this time.
Sheikh Prince Hazin al-Razim of Zayrinia came with warnings attached rather than references.
She knew his title, not because he had told her but because of her friend.
Well, she had actually known of him before Maggie had got mixed up with his brother. Scandalous photos of Hazin were plastered over the Internet. His handsome face and naked body—with a generous black rectangle covering the necessary—appeared from time to time in the trashy magazines that the mothers read on the maternity ward where she was a midwife.
They would sometimes even giggle with Flo about him.
His reputation was appalling. Hazin was completely irredeemable; in fact, he was bad to the bone.
Yet he was adored by all.
And last night he had been, without a shadow of doubt, the best lover of her life.
Hazin had either fainted from a lack of blood to the head or he was asleep again, because the arm that had been pulling her back was loose now on her stomach and his breathing was even.
It gave her a pause.
How long the peace would last, she could not be sure.
Did she tell him she knew who he was and explain how their seemingly chance meeting had come about?
Would there even be conversation, given all they had between them was sex?
How the hell had she got into this mess? Flo wondered as she lay there. She was supposed to have been helping out her friend!
* * *
Flo had no intention of going out this evening. Maggie had texted and asked if Flo could stop by at the café where Maggie worked. Her friend had brought a souvenir home from her backpacking trip around the world—she was six months pregnant.
By Crown Prince Sheikh Ilyas of Zayrinia!
‘I have to tell him.’ Maggie said as they lunched. ‘But I don’t know how to.’
Privately, Flo wasn’t too sure that Maggie did have to tell the father.
Oh, she was all for parental responsibility, but her friend was her main concern and she was pregnant by a future King, no less!
The baby was due just after Christmas. But as well as that, Maggie had recently found out she was having a little boy, and Flo was concerned how that might impact the situation.
Still, it wasn’t for Flo to decide and so she told Maggie what she knew.
‘His brother will be at Dion’s tonight.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because he gets kicked out of there every Friday. Hazin is the reason they’re so popular now!’
Flo knew all about where the rich and beautiful gathered.
Dion’s was a bar set within a very plush hotel. It had once been a sedate place to gather for pre-theatre drinks and dinner.
It was old-fashioned and had become oddly trendy, a sort of retro fifties-style bar that people now lined up to get into.
‘You could go there tonight and tell Hazin that you need to speak with his brother.’
‘Just walk in and tap him on the shoulder?’ Maggie rolled her eyes.
‘Get talking.’ Flo shrugged. ‘Flirt a little...’
‘I’m nearly six months pregnant by his brother!’
‘Oh, yes, I see your point.’
‘And I doubt Hazin would be particularly pleased to see me. I caused an awful lot of trouble for him. No doubt he thinks I was involved in the plan to set him up.’
Maggie had been unwittingly used in a plan to stitch up Hazin and bribe the Palace. She had ended up in Hazin’s cabin aboard his Royal yacht where a camera had been hidden overhead.
But whoever had assumed that Maggie would drop her bikini bottom for Hazin had not known her.
Maggie and Hazin had done nothing but have a conversation.
Not that the Palace had known that at the time. Ilyas had kidnapped Maggie to find out what had happened aboard the yacht.
Yes, kidnapped, Flo reminded her friend. ‘Which, in my opinion, means you’re under no obligation to tell him.’
‘I want to, though.’ Maggie said. ‘Flo, I know I’ve given you an awful impression of Ilyas but he really was wonderful to me.’
He must have been, Flo conceded, because Maggie trusted so few people.
Flo thought for a moment. She didn’t want to go to Dion’s, it was where she had met her ex and he still drank there on occasion.
Maggie didn’t know about that; she’d had enough troubles of her own since she’d returned from Zayrinia, without Flo piling on hers.
That wasn’t the full reason, though. Maggie and Flo were close and usually she would have told her, but the break-up that had happened last Christmas, when Maggie had been away, had hurt Flo deeply.
And Flo was still terribly ashamed.
No, she did not want to go to Dion’s tonight.
In fact, Flo hadn’t really had a night out since last Christmas.
Maggie’s baby was due a week after this one.
She looked at her friend, who had no family and was pregnant and scared, and Flo put on her smile.
She was very good at doing that and keeping her thoughts to herself. ‘I could always come with you to Dion’s after my shift,’ Flo offered.
And so it had been arranged.
* * *
‘I have to go.’ Flo glanced at the time. ‘I’m going to be late.’
She was often late, though not usually for work. It tended to be the other way round—she would stay on at work and arrive late for her life.
Men didn’t seem to like that, Flo had worked out.
At least, not the ones she was used to.
Flo’s shift had been a good one.
She was a midwife on the maternity unit at the Primary Hospital in London. It was a busy, modern hospital but, as much as Flo loved it, sometimes she yearned for more one-on-one time.
She had been rostered to work in Delivery but had instead been moved to the ward. There she had caught up with a mother she had cared for in the delivery unit the previous day. It had been a difficult birth and had ended in an emergency Caesarean.
Tonight, at the end of her shift, Flo had held the outcome in her arms.
Rose.
‘She looks like one.’ Flo had smiled, for Rose was delicate and pink and utterly oblivious to the terrible scare she had given everyone.
‘Thanks for all you did, Flo,’ Claire, the mother, had said.
Flo had smiled as she’d looked down at the tiny baby. Very rapid decisions had needed to be made and the petite, fun-loving Flo had snapped into action and become extremely vocal.
In her private life she did not stand up enough for herself, but at work, when looking out for the mothers and babies, she was very different indeed.
Her job was exhausting.
Quite simply, it was always so busy and it was a constant juggling act to give enough attention to the mothers.
Tonight, though, she had a moment.
Several of them.
At twenty-nine, and with her ovaries loudly ticking, Flo would have loved a baby of her own. Still, she got more than a regular fix of that delicious newborn scent each working day. ‘Your beautiful daug
hter has reminded me exactly why I love my job,’ Flo said.
She popped the sleeping baby back into her Perspex crib and then reset Claire’s IV.
‘Are you on tomorrow?’ Claire asked.
‘No, but I’m back on Monday. You should be about ready for discharge then but I shall do my best to come in and see you both.’
She looked again at little Rose, so peaceful and safe, and then Flo turned at a knock on the door and saw it was her senior.
‘Flo, it’s time to give your handover.’
It was just after nine, and for the first time in a very long time it seemed that Flo might just get away on time.
She did.
Flo raced back to her flat and had a very quick shower. She was used to getting ready quickly to go out.
Or she had been.
Not all men were bad, Flo knew that.
She saw evidence every day that good guys existed. Her parents had just celebrated their thirtieth wedding anniversary and her brothers and sisters were all happily married. At work, she regularly saw fathers support their partners and she worked with an amazing team.
Yes, she knew there were good guys, but she had met the other kind too.
Flo grabbed a sheer, grey dress and high-heeled shoes and then quickly set to work on her hair and make-up.
She put her hair up and quickly did her eyes, followed by a slick of neutral colour on her lips. She was about to add earrings when her hands paused over her jewellery tray.
It was a testimony to her disastrous love life. Flo knew she had been too easily appeased by bling.
She had thought the more expensive the gift, the deeper the commitment.
Flo knew now she could not have been more wrong.
And so she left the earrings off and raced for the underground, firing Maggie a quick text on the way.
Ten minutes
It would be more like twenty, Flo knew, but she also knew Maggie would be terribly nervous and looking for an excuse to walk away.
Flo was more than a little concerned at the predicament her friend was in. Maggie had been raised in foster and care homes and had no family to advise her. As a midwife, Flo was well versed on single mothers who were facing difficulties alone. She wasn’t exactly trained, though, in advising women who were pregnant by a future King.
