Royal Treatment (Royals of Danovar 2)

1

Prince Eric Augustus Calumn Magnus Bishop whistled under his breath as he broke into the medical laboratory’s front office.

Broke into was a strong term. It conjured up images of padlocks and guard dogs and handcuffs—and not the comfortable padded ones that had been involved in some of Eric’s more adventurous liaisons, either. But he wasn’t actually breaking into this room, he assured himself. More like accessing without permission, using keys he’d borrowed from the lab’s front desk while the receptionist had been too busy fluttering her eyelashes at him to notice.

He twirled the key ring around his finger, opened the door, and strode into Dr. Anna Fernstone’s office with a wide grin. It wasn’t like the good doctor had left him any other option. If he tried to set up another appointment with her, she’d probably just cancel it at the last second or duck out early claiming she’d eaten bad shrimp again. She’d practically forced him to take these extreme measures. He had no clue why. He was trying to fund her research, not kick her out of his country. Although technically Danovar was his brother King Phillip’s country, not his. Thank God.

He flicked the lights on, sat in her chair, put his feet up on her desk—careful not to wrinkle any papers or get dirt on the beautiful cherry wood surface—and waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

By the time an hour had passed, Eric was getting fidgety. He’d already doodled on her calendar, folded a few of her sticky notes into origami animals—a massive failure by any measure, but entertaining anyway—and tried to nap, also without success. Wasn’t she normally here by eight o’clock sharp? He took his notebook out of his pocket and flipped to the pages dedicated to Anna. Yep, he’d written it right there after they’d first met at his brother’s Summer House Party a few months ago: gorgeous but uptight, and punctual as the Grim Reaper. Had the receptionist tipped her off that Eric was looking for her?

He stood up with a frustrated sigh. He’d thought offering to fund her breast cancer research would be a slam dunk. Dozens of labs across the country were chomping at the bit for the prestige, publicity, and of course money that came with royal approval. But Anna kept stonewalling him, and the clock was ticking. Eric needed her to sign on the dotted line if he was going to get his very first bill through Parliament.

He shuddered as he buttoned his suit jacket back up. If anyone had asked him a few months ago whether he would be willing to make headlines for anything other than going on a bender and accidentally proposing to the very married Duchess of Canterborrough (who’d nearly said yes, he was certain of it), he’d have laughed them out of the room. But things had changed, and now that his big brother had scandalized the country with his tradition-flaunting American wedding, the royal family could no longer afford for Prince Eric to be the nation’s favorite playboy. Instead, he’d been tasked with cleaning up his family’s image, a job for which he was arguably the world’s worst possible candidate. Still, he thought he’d risen to the challenge nicely. He was sponsoring a new healthcare bill, one that would revolutionize several outdated and cluttered Danovian laws. But if he didn’t get good press for it soon, the public would ignore it or even turn against it, and he’d be laughed out of Parliament.

Which was where Anna came in. Or where she was supposed to have come in. He would fund her research, the press would laud him for it, and he’d get the chance to tout his new bill on front pages across the nation. He would be able to explain what a win/win situation it was if she would sit down with him for longer than five minutes.

He tugged at his collar, which suddenly felt too tight. It had seemed like a good idea to dress up for this meeting—he knew he looked good in a suit, plus Anna seemed like she might appreciate the effort—but now the damn thing was trying to asphyxiate him. Either that, or the thought of failing at his first serious venture into politics was making it hard to breathe.

A voice echoed in the hall. Making a snap decision, Eric strode toward the door. He’d find out where Anna was, or failing that, locate a strong cup of coffee. How did Anna manage to get up and be productive this early every morning? Although now that he thought about it he supposed she was the type to be in bed, herbal tea consumed and flannel pajamas on, by nine p.m. sharp. Which might account for why he had a pounding headache and she was curing cancer.

He opened the door and popped his head out. “Hi there!” he called to the lab assistant who’d just walked past the office.

The man, who was wearing black scrubs and hot pink Nikes, turned and then did a double-take

. “Your Highness,” he said, an appreciative note in his voice as he gave Eric a slower up-and-down perusal. The man bowed, and if Eric wasn’t mistaken he whistled a quick catcall under his breath before he came back upright. “What can I help you with, sire?”

Eric smiled and put his hands in his pockets. If the assistant had read pretty much any Danovian tabloid in the last decade he’d have to know the prince was straight, but he looked like the type of guy who’d appreciate a little harmless flirting even so. “I’m interested in the work this lab is doing and happened to be in the area,” he replied. “You look like just the man to give me the full tour.”

The assistant quirked an eyebrow at the open door behind Eric. “You happened in the area…of my boss’s office? Which was supposed to be locked?”

Eric leaned against the doorframe and shrugged, pulling the borrowed keys out of his pocket and tossing them casually in the air. “It would seem so. What can I say? I’m a bad boy.”

Unable to hold a straight face at that ridiculous line, the assistant snorted.

“Come on,” Eric coaxed. “I’ve got all kinds of juicy stories about the private lives of Danovian nobility. How about I tell you one, and you show me around?”

He needed to get into the back, the part of the lab that was restricted to the scientists and their assistants. If Anna wasn’t in her office she was probably back there, and his borrowed key ring could only get him so far—the restricted area was set on fingerprint locks.

The assistant hesitated. “I was on my way to do some calibrations on the new MRI machine,” he said.

Eric tossed him the key ring as a show of good faith, then loosened his tie. “Perfect!” he said. “I’ve always wanted to try out one of those things, see what all the fuss is about. I have to take my shirt off, right?”

The assistant grinned. “Oh yes,” he said, “you absolutely do.”

Thirty minutes later Eric was shirtless as promised, lying flat on his back and waiting for the tubelike machine to start up around him. There was one already on in the room across from his, and he could hear it thumping loudly even through the wall. “Is mine going to be that loud?” he called, but the assistant didn’t answer. He was already in the other room, fiddling with the controls. He’d told Eric to lie as still as possible while he got the MRI ready to go, but had only mentioned that Eric should expect “light tapping,” not what sounded like a herd of elephants line-dancing on his neighbor’s roof.

The intercom beeped. “Hold still please, Your Highness.”

Eric sighed and tried to stop fidgeting. As part of the process of drafting his healthcare bill, he’d interviewed quite a few patients to get a better idea of what they went through, and many of them had mentioned their fear of this machine even as they expressed eagerness to get its results. He could certainly understand the former. It was a good thing he was too sleepy to be claustrophobic, because this thing was narrow as hell. Maybe he could do a PSA or something to make them seem less scary.

Through the intercom, he heard a door open. “Morning, Anderson,” said a woman’s voice. There was a brief pause, then: “Holy Moses, you’ve got a live one for me today, huh? I could wash my panties on those abs.”

Eric smothered a smirk. The assistant must’ve accidentally left the intercom on. He had no idea who was speaking, but she sounded brash and also kind of cute in a dorky way. Who even said Holy Moses?

The man laughed. “I know, right? He’s all yours, Dr. Fernstone.”

Eric pulled his head up so fast he nearly hit it on the top of the machine, then remembered he was supposed to be lying still. Over the intercom, the door closed, meaning Anna was now alone in the control room. He’d finally found her. And she could hardly duck out of this meeting, not with him stuck in one of her very expensive machines.

“Hello!” he called.

She didn’t answer. And now that he thought about it, the assistant hadn’t answered his question about the thumping earlier either.

Great. He’d finally found the woman he needed to charm into accepting his funds, and the intercom was stuck on its one-way setting. On top of that, he was now awake enough to get well and truly claustrophobic.

Well, if she wouldn’t respond to shouting, he’d just have to get a little more inventive.