by Annie O'Neil
‘Why would they do that?’
‘To see if it made her uncomfortable.’
‘Couldn’t she just eat the peas?’
He laughed. ‘Yes, she could. But the peas were a test.’
‘What for?’
Lia’s eyebrows rose.
‘To find out if she was a real princess.’
‘How could a pea know if she was a real princess?’
‘It would be proof,’ Oliver said, about to explain that it would prove how sensitive she was, because princesses had supernatural sensitivity.
But then, catching Lia’s slight flinch as she defensively crossed her arms, he swerved from the original fairy tale. From everything he’d seen, Lia was made of strength, and she was the only one who didn’t see it.
‘The fact she could feel the pea was not only proof she was a princess—it was proof she was an extraordinary princess.’
‘How was she extraordinary?’ Élodie asked.
‘She had a heart as big as the kingdom she’d promised to be loyal to. It was hard, sometimes, having a heart that big. There were days when she felt like hiding away from all those feelings, but then a stranger came into her life.’
‘A handsome stranger?’
He smiled. ‘Terrifically handsome. But he was also very wise. He admired the Princess for her brains as well as her beauty. And all he wanted to do was to protect her, and her beautiful heart, and all those feelings that came with it that made sleeping on peas so very difficult.’
Lia swept a tear away from her cheek.
‘And the handsome Prince could tell all of that from a pea?’ Élodie’s eyebrows arrowed up into a confused peak.
‘Oh, he wasn’t a prince.’
Élodie crinkled her nose. ‘What was he? A frog?’
Lia stifled a giggle, swiping at another tear.
‘Sort of. He was a duke. Not as fancy as a prince, but it did mean he understood the Princess and the world she came from.’
‘And he’s covered in warts?’ Élodie said earnestly.
‘Yes. Absolutely. All over.’
‘Does he love her?’
Lia uncrossed her ankles and looked away, as if seeking an immediate escape route.
‘He’s falling in love with her,’ Oliver said, his eyes just managing to catch Lia’s. ‘He thinks she’s amazing, and he’ll do everything in his power to make sure she knows how special she is.’
Lia’s hands flew to her chest. He wondered if the same knot of emotion coiling at the base of his throat was coiling in hers.
‘So will he eat the pea?’ Élodie asked, clearly much more focused on the fictional Princess’s discomfort.
‘Yes, he will. He’ll eat all the peas he has to in order to keep her happy. And he’ll also go to bed once story time is over.’
After a few more minutes of wrapping up the story, and promising he’d be in first thing in the morning to see her, Oliver gave Élodie’s hair a light rub and switched off her bedside light.
When he came out of the room Lia didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Her eyes were still glistening with tears as she took his hand.
‘Hungry?’ he asked.
She shook her head.
‘Shall we go and get some sleep?’
She nodded, her grip on his hand tightening.
But when her eyes met his, lit with a passion he’d not yet seen in them, he knew that sleep was the last thing on her mind. Which suited this particular frog prince perfectly.
CHAPTER NINE
‘HERE YOU GO.’ Lia handed Oliver a cup of coffee, her body tingling at how pleasurable the everyday gesture was. Maybe because it wasn’t everyday to her. It was all deliciously new.
‘Mmm...thanks. Smells good.’ Oliver gave Lia’s cheek a light kiss, took a sip of the coffee, then rearranged himself in the bed.
She liked seeing him in her bed, propped up against the pillows, with the morning light shifting through the curtains when the light breeze blew them inwards. The sexual attraction they shared was still popping and fizzing between them, but there was a new dimension to the energy they shared. Trust.
The most fiercely protected piece of her heart...and Oliver had won it.
She was amazed at how much that shared moment last night with Élodie had made her feel. It had added a new level of intimacy she had never experienced. Made something click in her psyche that she’d not known she was waiting for.
Sure. They’d said they were a team. That they’d ‘battle through’ the palace’s wedding plans together. But who wanted to battle through something that was meant to be joyous?
Once you stripped away the title and the gold monograms and the tiaras, she was just like any other woman. One who sought multiple layers of personal fulfilment. Professional pride. A family of her own. To love and be loved in return.
Her hand swept over her stomach, her thoughts organically shifting to the tiny baby growing inside her. The child she and Oliver would love and cherish, even if its inception had been unexpected and their marriage was sanctioned rather than spontaneous.
A thought occurred to her as she poured herself a cup of herbal tea. Maybe she’d needed the nudge. It wasn’t as if she had family or friends she went to when she was tied up in knots, wondering which direction to take her love life. Nor did she have any examples of a healthy, happy marriage. If there hadn’t been a crown to answer to, would she have done what she had when things had got too tough in Karolinska? Moved thousands of miles away?
It had been her gut response. And then she’d written a list of facts, in preparation for speaking to the palace. She’d met an amazing man and had accidentally fallen pregnant. She was going to have the baby. She didn’t think he felt the same way, so she’d move and save him the trouble of rejecting her.
It was about as Princess Elsa as it got. ‘Solving’ the problem by removing herself from it.
Fear didn’t just make for self-protective behaviour. It also made her myopic. Unable to see what was glaringly obvious. True happiness only came from finding the courage to love, even if that love came with vulnerability.
A wash of guilt churned through her. Was that what her mother had gone through? A loss of control because her father had been raised to believe whatever path he chose was the right one, to the exclusion of his wife’s hopes and dreams?
‘C’mon over, gorgeous.’ Oliver patted the space beside him on the bed, then put on a grand voice. ‘Prepare yourself for my great oratory!’
She took a seat in the small eggshell-blue armchair across from the bed. ‘I’m ready.’
‘What?’ he said in mock despair. ‘Is my morning breath too horrible to be near?’
‘No.’ She laughed, her conscience giving her a sharp sting as it pierced through to a deep layer of guilt.
Her ‘vows notebook’ was still embarrassingly blank. She hadn’t been able to nail down what she wanted to say yet. How could she, when everything between them was so fresh and changeable? When she’d not yet been able to tell him she was falling in love with him?
‘I’ve got a better view of you from here.’ She gave him her most erudite look. ‘Seeing as you’ve worked so hard on it, I want to...you know...give what you’ve written room to breathe.’
‘That’s very generous of you.’ He gave her a curious look.
She tried to mimic his lofty, regal tone. ‘It’s how we at the royal palace like to receive and disseminate information...from a distance.’
She’d meant it humorously, but something dark flickered through Oliver’s eyes. Wariness.
‘Sorry.’ She grimaced, pressing her hands together into a prayer position over her heart. ‘I am genuinely interested. More than interested. This is important. I’m just—I haven’t written anything yet, and if what you’ve done is even close to what I want to say, but don’t kn
ow how to...’
The muscles in Oliver’s torso stretched and grew taut, as if he were bracing himself for a blow. His bare chest was distracting. It was all manly and tanned and begging for her to touch it.
She swallowed, and very possibly made a tiny whimpering noise. In a rush, she blurted, ‘And if I don’t sit over here I’m going to have to rip off your boxers, and you know where that leads, and then we’ll both be late for work, and that would be a bad thing. The vows are important. You’re important.’
They stared at each other. Lia’s breath was coming in quick bursts, as if she’d just been running or...slightly more accurately...having athletic sex.
‘It would be a very bad thing. Being naked. Together. Before work. Not listening to your vows. Right?’ Her tongue swept across her lips.
The atmosphere between them sparked, charged with that delicious shared sexual sizzle. Oliver’s shoulders rolled back in a proud, leonine move that gave her a jolt of pride. She’d brought that on. Her desire for him had ignited his.
His eyes flicked to the clock. ‘We have twenty minutes.’ His blue eyes darkened. ‘You can do a lot of things in twenty minutes.’
He was right. You could. If you put your mind and your body to the task at hand.
A hot, fast, and utterly sinful session of lovemaking followed. They devoured one another as if it were their first and last time together.
Screaming when she climaxed wasn’t an option, because she could hear the clinic’s gardeners just beyond her cottage, but the added frisson leant an even sexier edge to their utterly carnal session of hungry kisses and fingernails scraping down the length of each other’s back.
A fierce, possessive entry into her most feminine essence forced Lia to stem yet more cries of pleasure by biting down on Oliver’s shoulder. Hard. A move which accelerated his powerful thrusts of connection until their bodies united in climax.
As their breathing steadied, Lia ran her fingers through Oliver’s hair, still sitting astride him. She revelled in the sensation of feeling both exhausted and exhilarated. Ready to take on the day, but just as excited for nightfall, when once again they would be in one another’s arms.
Oliver kissed her shoulder, then shifted her so that she was snuggled up close beside him.
‘There,’ he said smugly. ‘I knew I could get you to sit beside me.’ He winked, then grabbed his notebook. ‘We have seven minutes left, my beautiful bride-to-be. Now...what do you think of this?’
He put on a comically thoughtful expression, then began sonorously, ‘Roses are red—’
She laughed to hide the sting of disappointment. She’d thought he was going to tell her that he loved her the way she loved him.
She supposed she couldn’t blame him for his jokey tone. She didn’t know how to put what she felt for him into words. I love you didn’t seem a big enough statement to encapsulate everything he’d come to mean to her in such a short period of time. And You stopped me running for the hills wasn’t exactly the most romantic thing in the world, was it?
‘I think it’s a very promising start,’ she said finally.
He scrubbed his hand through his hair, then turned the paper. It was blank.
Oh. He really hadn’t written anything.
He lifted up the printout of suggestions the palace had sent. ‘These all seem a little bit dry.’
‘As the Sahara!’ she agreed, so as not to betray her genuine hurt.
But her response had clearly lurched into the ‘too emphatic a response’ territory, because Oliver’s expression turned serious.
He tucked a finger under her chin and gave her a feather-soft kiss. ‘Hey... We’ll nail these vows. We’ll write something that’s personal to us and easily approved by the palace.’ He dipped his head so he could catch her eye. ‘Trust me?’
She wanted to. More than anything, she wanted to. That was what truly loving him would mean. Trusting him with all her heart.
She sought his eyes for one solitary sign that what they were doing was a bad idea and couldn’t find one. Perhaps the pregnancy hormones were also making her paranoid.
A swelling of hope and wistfulness filled her chest as he pulled her close, his warm, citrussy scent surrounding her. ‘I wish we were getting married like normal people,’ she said.
‘We’re normal people,’ Oliver insisted.
‘Not really.’ She snuggled in under the comforting weight of his arm. ‘I mean...it’s not like the gardens in the palace are awful, or anything, but...there’s no spontaneity. Not when we have to do everything with a spotlight on us.’
‘Like what?’
She shrugged and said the first thing that came to mind. ‘What if you want to have a stag do?’
He snorted. ‘Get drunk and ride jet skis? No, thank you.’
‘I’m pretty sure that’s not the only thing men do on their stags. Go on. World’s your oyster. What would you do?’
She pulled the sheet around her a bit and twisted her hips so that they were facing one another.
He thought for a moment. ‘You know, this probably won’t sound very macho, but I’d love to bring some of the kids from the local orphanage down to Turtle Cove to go snorkelling. Have a blow-out picnic. Maybe get some of the other doctors to come down and play some footie. Bring Élodie along. You know...’
She finished his sentence for him. ‘Act like the fathers they’ll never have?’
The tiny crinkles alongside his eyes deepened as he checked an emotional breath. ‘Yeah...’
‘Like the father you never had?’ she guessed.
The crinkles deepened again. This time he just nodded.
Her heart squeezed tight and she silently admonished herself for ever doubting him. So what if he hadn’t written his vows? He’d had the same emotionally strangled upbringing she had. One in which you simply didn’t express how you felt as it would more often than not be dismissed as ‘inappropriate’.
She laced her fingers through his and sat back against the headboard with a sigh. ‘I don’t have a clue what I’d do if I were having a hen do.’
‘No?’ His smile was soft and sincere.
‘I probably wouldn’t have one.’ She gave a weak smile. ‘Atleast it would please the King and Queen.’
‘Go on...’ Oliver gave her a nudge. ‘What would you like for your fantasy hen do? Tutus? Pin the tail on the paediatrician? Sky’s the limit!’
She laughed, flushed a bit, then sheepishly admitted, ‘I’d want the equivalent of a twelve-year-old’s birthday party.’
He hooted, then clapped his hands, looking both delighted and bewildered. ‘What? Why? Didn’t you have one?’
‘Yes, but it involved more of this...’ she did a regal wave ‘...than this.’ She waved her hands in the air as if she were wielding a pair of pom-poms. She glanced at the clock. ‘Crikey. We’ve got to get hopping. I’ve got surgery soon.’
‘Tell me?’ he asked, pulling her up out of bed and towards the shower. ‘Tell me exactly what twelve-year-old Amelia would have done for her birthday if she’d been in charge?’
And somehow, over the course of him soaping her naked body and helping her dry off, and eventually managing to get each other into their scrubs for a day at the clinic, she did.
* * *
Lia finished extracting the surgical camera from the viewing tube. ‘Right. Looks like we can close.’
‘Hand it over, honey. I don’t want you dropping that thing in your excitement.’ Grace’s quiet cackle made it clear she was teasing.
Lia hadn’t seen Oliver for a few days, and even their dinner date today had been provisional. Tourist season had a way of being crazy season in the clinic and the hospital, and this summer was no different.
Grace held out her hand as Lia just stood there. She knew she looked like a numpty, grinning behind her mask at her lovely fiancé. Even so,
she couldn’t help a slightly miffed, ‘I’d never compromise a patient’s safety.’
‘I know. I’m just saying...’
Grace made one of her I see everything noises which, over the three weeks since she’d first met Oliver, had shifted from protective and judgmental to quietly approving. Oliver had noticed the shift too, and had lately taken to bringing Grace small boxes of her favourite coconut sweets, which were only available in Williamstown.
Lia handed over the camera, her smile still hidden behind her surgical mask. To be honest, it had been nice having Grace go all ‘Mama Bear’ around her. It was the closest she’d come to having a friendship in years. The closest she’d come to experiencing a mother’s protectiveness.
‘Thank you, Grace,’ she said, and then, to the team, ‘Another job well done.’
Lia asked her number two to close the small incision they’d needed for the operation and kept her walk as casual and relaxed as she could until she hit the changing rooms, when her pace quadrupled. After a quick shower, she was towelling herself off when Grace came in.
‘Lover boy’s outside.’
She grinned. ‘We’re having dinner.’
‘I thought you were going to Florida.’
‘Oh, crumbs!’ Her heart sank. ‘I completely forgot.’
She had a consultation with a prospective patient who refused to travel to St Victoria without a meeting on her ‘home turf’ first. She was a grand dame of the Orlando resort scene, if the rumour mill was anything to go by. One with a brain tumour that other doctors had deemed impossible to remove.
Her shoulders drooped. ‘Got any good Whoops, I messed up lines?’
Grace raised her eyebrows and gave her a mysterious look. ‘I’m sure you’ll figure something out.’
When Lia came out of the locker room she was surprised to see Oliver with an overnight bag slung over his shoulder and one of her wheelie bags by his foot.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Don’t you worry, Your Highness. All your dreams will come true where we’re heading.’
She winced. ‘Oliver, I can’t. I’m going to see a patient.’
