Midwife's Longed-for Baby & the Prince's Cinderella Bride & Bride for the Single Dad (9781488022142)

by Anderson, Caroline; Berlin, Amalie; Taylor, Jennifer

  “None.”

  “And not hungover, I see.”

  “Just on sweet, sweet lovin’.”

  She laughed again. “Perhaps still a little drunk.”

  “Just on sweet, sweet—”

  Clapping a hand over his mouth was the only sensible way to stop this silliness, but nothing could stop her smiling. “Slept well then?”

  Behind her hand, he nodded, his eyes merry.

  “Have a plan for the day you’re eager to get going with?”

  Wrapping one hand around her wrist, he pulled her hand free. “Hungry. We’re having breakfast in bed, but not until you’re no longer naked.”

  Winking, he slid off her, leaving her aware that he was actually dressed—if pajama bottoms counted as dressed. He certainly wasn’t naked.

  She sat up and he tossed a tee shirt at her, which she dutifully whisked over her head and stuffed her arms into. “I wouldn’t want to come between you and your oatmeal.”

  “Eggs. Bacon. Fruit. No oatmeal.” He opened the door of the bedroom and gestured; she heard a rolling cart and tucked the blanket around her legs so she didn’t look naked save for Quinn’s desert camouflage tee.

  “And after you eat?” She should bring up what she’d meant to say last night before she’d ended up throwing herself at him in the courtyard.

  He said quiet thanks to the lovely person who’d brought them food, then wheeled to the bed to join her. “After I eat, I’m going to sit with Grandfather.”

  She’d plucked up a slice of crisp bacon and had it to her mouth before his quiet words registered. The subject. With it came understanding, though she’d mostly worked it out last night. “How bad is it?”

  “Ten.” He lost the bright playful spark from only moments before, and his shoulders came down just a little. “Ten on a scale of ten.”

  “Is it…? Are you…?” The words refused to take shape. It seemed traitorous somehow to ask how long before the King died. Even phrasing it as grandfather to a grandson who loved him and couldn’t be bearing up well against the coming end.

  “He’s stable right now, but his kidneys have failed and he’s too old for a transplant.” Over the next few minutes, and in as few words as he could get away with, Quinn outlined the severity of his grandfather’s illness, the reason he’d not been at the party and how soon after the wedding they might be having a coronation.

  “He’s usually awake late morning, early afternoon, so I visit with him then and go to see Ben after.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Pathetic words.

  Corrachlean had been lucky with her monarchs; they’d had it good for so long that each new king came to the throne with the respect and love of his people as a starting position. No need to win the people over or prove himself. No matter how things had gone with her marriage, and they had never gone well, that loyal and even loving feeling for King Thomas had never left her. “You could’ve told me before now. You told me about Ben.”

  “At first I didn’t because we were at odds. Then I didn’t because you’ve already been stressed over our courtship. Last night, I regretted not telling you before you were in a position to notice he wasn’t around, but by then I didn’t want to put a damper on an evening already filled with things you dislike: drinking and more drinking.”

  She looked at the plate she’d been munching from, but abandoned it in favor of a strong cup of tea. “Would you like me to come with you this morning? I brought a change of clothes with me. I could make myself presentable. But if he wouldn’t want me to, please don’t feel like you can’t say no.”

  “He actually already asked to see you yesterday at our visit. I was working up to telling you.” A tiny smile followed the admission.

  She leaned over to kiss him, doing all she could to avoid bringing up their past relationship and trying not to think about how it would resume. “I probably won’t say much; I don’t want to interrupt your visit.”

  “No, I mean he wants to see you privately, love. I’ll take you down, but after that I’m not invited.”

  “Why?”

  “He said he wanted to talk about some things.”

  “That’s not at all ominous…”

  She liked that she didn’t need to explain why it made her nervous.

  “It’ll be fine. You’re not being called to task by the headmaster. He’s not…” There, words seemed to fail him and he shook his head. “He’s different. You’ll see.”

  * * *

  If things hadn’t felt real at the party, standing with Quinn outside the King’s private quarters did.

  King Thomas had been the hardest sell to their marriage. Anais hadn’t been so foolish as to be surprised by this, but she’d thought he’d come around when he saw how much she loved his grandson. He hadn’t.

  But, to be fair, he had an unruly, uncontrollable grandson whose behavior jeopardized royal stability, and she’d been a huge example of that.

  He’d never been unkind exactly, but always disapproving. Disapproving enough to make it abundantly clear that she’d never fit into the family. Never be acceptable. Accepted. She’d even imagined him gleeful when he’d finally ordered their divorce.

  Illness changed people, and Quinn had said as much. The best she could do would be to approach him as if she’d never known him, pretend there wasn’t a difficult history there. Let him reject her afresh!

  Holding Quinn’s left hand, she walked behind him into the room after the little knock announced them.

  “Grandfather?”

  A stately leather wingback faced the morning sun streaming through open French windows, the only source of light in the quiet room. A hand lifted, indicating where he sat, right where Quinn apparently expected him to be—they were already heading in that direction.

  “Good morning.” Quinn took his grandfather’s translucent hand and gave it a little loving jiggle before ushering her into his line of sight. “I brought her. Don’t give her too much grief. I still have to get her to the altar. No scaring her off for another week.”

  He reserved a wink for her, driving home the notion that he was teasing, but he still kissed her cheek and all but put her into a chair opposite the King so she couldn’t run away.

  “Good morning, Your Highness.” She never knew how to address the man. In her eleven-month marriage, she’d never made any attempt to come closer than formal titles.

  Pale gray eyes met hers and she managed a smile, even as her training kicked in and she began taking inventory of his symptoms. It gave her a controlled center to start from when she didn’t know what else was coming at her.

  Flushed.

  Weak.

  Tired.

  Quinn closed the door behind him, leaving her alone with her monarch.

  “My son tells me you’re to be wed at week’s end. I regret that I won’t be there to see either of my sons marry.”

  The words tilted in her mind a little. Quinn and Philip were his grandsons. Was that a symptom? Or was this a shorthand way of referring to the true state their relationship had grown into after the death of their father, the King’s actual son?

  “That’s what I’m told too.” She chuckled. “I’ve not been involved in any of the plans. Quinn said there are wedding planners who are seeing to everything, and they’ve had such short notice. I’m sure I’ll be more than impressed with whatever they manage. The gown I know is far too beautiful for me to do justice.”

  “Nonsense, Mireille, I’m sure you’ll look more beautiful than even Nicholas could imagine.”

  Mireille and Nicholas—Quinn’s parents.

  Symptom.

  “I’ll do my best and, if I fail, he’ll still humor me.” She stood up and slipped over to his side. “May I kiss your cheek, King Thomas?”

  He tilted his head back, pale
eyes smiling. Permission, even if he thought her someone else. Anais pressed her lips to his cheek and felt the heat that explained the flush and his confusion.

  “You’re warm,” she said as clearly as she could, crouching down beside him in the light spilling through the windows. When she had his eye, she saw the instant the fog lifted and he recognized her. Right behind it, he realized his earlier confusion.

  “Oh, dear, Anais, I thought…” His voice trailed off as his mind caught up.

  She took his hand and smiled despite the tears she felt in her eyes again. “You have a fever, sir. You’re not losing your senses. It’s the fever. May I look at the port? I want to make sure it’s not inflamed.”

  Although he would never have allowed such familiarity before, he squeezed her hand, then rolled up the long sleeve on his pajamas to reveal an AV graft in his upper arm. She didn’t need the bright sunshine to see how red the skin was.

  “Does it hurt right now, sir?”

  “It’s tender,” he admitted and then laid his head back. “I asked you here to apologize for the way your marriage was received. You two acted on blind love, and I only saw breach of protocol and tradition, another instance where my grandson bent to impulse and whimsy. But once it was done…”

  “You’re not to blame for that.”

  “We’re all to blame for it, I expect. That’s how these things go. People don’t fall from a single mistake; they fall from many.” He reached up and patted her cheek and her heart fisted up, so tight she almost choked on it. Couldn’t even name the flood of emotions that traveled with the tears in her eyes.

  Sympathy? Worry for him? For Quinn? Gratitude at his sudden acceptance? All of it.

  “He’s going to need you, when the time comes.”

  Words that sounded like his blessing.

  She twisted her mouth to the side, keeping it together long enough to offer words of comfort and gratitude, then a promise to look at his medical record and see what antibiotics would help.

  No longer able to control the tears threatening, she kissed his cheek again and excused herself.

  Quinn had told her what another infection would mean. And now she had to tell him.

  Even had it been the longest hallway in the palace rather than the shortest, she couldn’t have stopped crying before she got there.

  * * *

  “What do you mean he’s in and out?” Quinn nearly shouted, then realized his volume. With a deep breath, he rolled his shoulders and eased down into the chair he’d abandoned with Philip on the business side of the King’s desk.

  Her red-rimmed eyes were clarification enough, but he couldn’t accept it.

  “He’s experiencing moments of confusion,” she said gently. “It’s not dementia. It’s probably the fever, but it’s also possible he needs another round of dialysis sooner than expected. Toxins that build up in the blood can cause confusion. But he realized it; I didn’t correct him when he called me Mireille and Quinn Nicholas. Then he recognized me.”

  “Mom?” Philip asked. He’d been looking far too calm for this conversation, but alarm edged into his voice upon hearing their grandfather had called his granddaughter-in-law by the name of his long-dead daughter-in-law.

  “We’ll just have to talk him into another placement,” Quinn said. “Or will antibiotics clear it up?”

  “I’m honestly not sure. I think once they get infected, it’s hard to treat them without moving.”

  Her voice was so gentle it made it all worse. She was preparing him for the worst; every note of sympathy in her voice drove him that much closer to losing it.

  “They’ve done three now?” she asked, looking at his grandfather’s medical record. “Did they not want to try a fistula? They take a while to mature for use, but they don’t get infected as often as grafts.”

  Philip reached for his phone. “They tried that initially, but it wasn’t maturing as they needed it to.”

  “I don’t know what that is.” Quinn knew he should have learned everything about kidney failure too. He could’ve been reading that when he’d sat by hospital beds. And he’d do that after he put a stop to this. “I’m going to talk to him.”

  Anais stepped around the desk and clutched his arm to stop him. “He needs to rest, Quinn. Go sit with him, but don’t fight with him.”

  “That’s all I’ve been doing since I got home, Anais. I’ve spent damned near a month trying, with varying degrees of success, to make two people I love want to live. Three, if you count you.”

  Quinn watched her retreat immediately, first the warmth he always needed from her, then her hands, finally her whole body—she stepped back from him and he didn’t know if it was anger or hurt that propelled her.

  He was being unreasonable, unfair even, to lump her in with Ben and Grandfather when her version of giving up on life was entirely metaphorical compared to theirs. But he couldn’t apologize to soften his stance right now. Fire got things done.

  Pounding back down the hallway with Philip on his heels, Quinn let himself into his grandfather’s room. “You’ve got an infection, Grandfather. We’re going to get the doctor here to schedule you for another graft. And antibiotics.” He looked up at Philip. “You should go call the doctor.”

  “I did it while you were shouting at Anais,” Philip muttered and then sat down opposite the King. “You’re not going to feel better until the infection is taken care of. I think they can do another temporary site while this one heals…”

  “No.”

  Until now, the King had been placidly listening to them both, but when Philip suggested treatment Quinn wasn’t aware of—because he’d been in another damned country—it got a response, but not the right one.

  What would get the right response? With Ben, he’d had Rosalie to use as a motivator, but their grandmother had long since passed away.

  “Temporary access site sounds like a good thing.” Quinn fumbled along to back Philip up. “Infections are a nasty way to die. I don’t…I don’t want you to die like that.”

  His throat closed on the words so that he had to take a few runs at it.

  “I doubt any death is particularly pleasant, sweet boy. I’m just sorry I’m not going to be around for your wedding and to meet my first great-grandchild.”

  That sounded like goodbye. As if he were dying today. Or as if he needed to say things before the fever robbed him of his senses for good.

  Quinn couldn’t accept that. He’d never argued with his grandfather, or hadn’t since his age had ended in teen, but he argued now. “You can be around for that.”

  “It’s not your decision, Quinn.” Philip’s gentle rebuke set his hackles rising.

  He stood and rounded on Philip, every instinct saying fight. “You’re so ready for the crown you’re ready to give up to a little infection?”

  “That’s not fair. I’ve been here…”

  “And I’ve been somewhere I had to fight every day to keep people I love alive. I even had to fight to keep people I hated alive. You expect me to just sit back and let death take him when there are things we can do to prevent it?” He was yelling. He didn’t mean to be yelling. Again. He’d just yelled at Anais…whom he couldn’t find in the room. She hadn’t come with them, wasn’t there to see him losing it.

  “Quinton.”

  His softly spoken name sucked the rage out of him and his strength with it. He felt it in the wobble of his knees and sat back down before they buckled. “Yes?”

  “Philip hasn’t given up at the first obstacle. He’s been here through the other moves. That’s nothing against you, but to you—who has just now been able to come home to us—this feels like the first.”

  He knew that. Logically, he knew it. But the idea of losing someone now that he’d finally gotten them back…

  A dust mote swirled in a
beam of sunshine from the open windows, and he just let himself watch. It was better than watching his grandfather giving up. It even felt kind of applicable—watching it drift into the shadow and invisibility that might as well be nothingness.

  “I can give you one more move if you can give me something.”

  The words were the first iota of hope since he’d awakened with Anais’s soft hair on his skin, and it yanked his attention back. “What can I give you?”

  “Your word that with the next failure you will accept my decision.”

  He froze. Maybe the next time it would last longer. Long enough for Quinn to come up with an argument that would work. Hope was hope.

  How long had the last move held? He should know that too. The King expected his infection to return soon, to not last as long as Quinn needed him to last.

  “If I say no, you let yourself be eaten by this infection now?”

  A nod was his answer.

  There was no choice.

  Despite the cold emptiness opening in his chest, Quinn nodded. It was still a win.

  So why did it leave him feeling empty…and guilty?

  Grandfather forcing bitter terms wasn’t the same as him forcing Anais to say yes to the wedding. They would have a long, great, love-filled life together. Children. Unruly teenagers. Grandchildren. Maybe even great-grandchildren. Good things would come from his act of coercion.

  It wasn’t the same.

  * * *

  God, Anais hated the penthouse, but she’d had a last-minute dress fitting and it was the easiest place to do it.

  Now done, Anais sat alone on his sofa, waiting for Quinn to get home. Her eyes kept skirting to the bedroom where the safe was. She couldn’t remember the combination to the safe, probably the only reason she hadn’t come for those pictures the day after he’d told her about them.

  In days they were getting married, but she was rapidly unspooling. No work now; all she had to do was spend time at home, thinking of all the ways this could come undone. She stayed because she needed Quinn to help her shore up the crumbling walls around what remained of her sanity if they were going to make it to the church.