Surgeon Prince, Cinderella Bride

The thought ran on a loop in Dr. Sara Greer’s head as she limped from the bus stop through slush and snow toward her home.

It had been one of those days, starting from when she’d got up to find her roommate’s dog, Diefenbaker, had torn the insoles out of her shoes. The right one was salvageable. The left one, not at all. And who knew there was a metal bar just above the soles? She hadn’t until she’d seen it for herself. With no time to stop and buy an insole, she’d put two socks on that foot and, planning to run out at lunchtime and buy new shoes, hoped for the best.

That idea went out the window when her sister, Mariah, turned up before the clinic even opened.

“I need your car,” she said, making it a demand, rather than a request. “I have an appointment at ten on the other side of town.”

“Use Mom’s, or Dad’s.” Yet, even as Sara tried to be firm, she knew it was probably a losing battle. “I have stuff I have to do at lunchtime.”

“Dad’s gone to Clinton to work, and Mom has some errands to run, so I need your car.”

Sara’s heart sank. Although her dad was a semi-retired farrier, “going to Clinton” usually meant more drinking beer than actual work, especially on a Friday during the London harness racing season. Not to mention the fact that Dad was notoriously horrible about getting people to settle their accounts. Even if he did work, he’d probably never see a dime.

And despite their perennial need for money, Mom didn’t have the heart to nag him about his lack of financial acumen.

Mariah turned from demanding to wheedling. “I’ll get it back to you before lunchtime. This is really important. A job interview.”

“You could take the bus, you know. There’s plenty of time.”

“Not when I have to go home and change first. I’d need to take two buses, and it looks like it’s going to rain. I’d be a mess when I get there, and it might cost me the job.”

The thought of one of her sisters being gainfully employed was a heady one, given their propensity for drifting along, doing as little as possible to get by.

“Okay.” Even as she capitulated, Sara knew she shouldn’t. “But, seriously, I need it back before lunch. I have to get new shoes, and I promised to check in on Nonni too.”

Mariah wrinkled her nose, one corner of her lip curling.

“I don’t know why you bother. Aunt Jackie is there all the time with her, and she was always so mean to you. You shouldn’t waste your time on her.”

Sara hadn’t argued the point. Mariah was right about how cruel their maternal grandmother had been to her adopted grandchild, but whatever Sara did for the now senile old woman had nothing to do with Nonni. She was helping her aunt and mother, who had given her nothing but love and acceptance her entire life.

“I promised I’d go, so make sure you bring the car back on time, okay?”

“Sure, sure,” was her sister’s response but, up until the time Sara’s shift ended at four, she still hadn’t returned it.

Then Cyndi, their younger sister, had started calling and texting at about eleven, as usual wanting Sara to intervene in one of her interminable arguments with their mother.

“She won’t listen to me, Sissie.” Sara knew there was nothing but trouble ahead when Cyndi used that particular nickname. “I can’t get into the culinary course on time if Mom and Dad won’t pay for it now.”

“I’m not getting involved, Cyndi. Sorry.”

“But if you tell Mom it’s a good idea, she’ll listen.”

Sara actually didn’t think it a good idea for Cyndi to sign up for yet another course, when she’d failed to finish either of the other two she’d started over the last three years. Yet her saying so would only make Cyndi dig in her heels.

“Listen, why don’t you save up some money and take the course the next time it’s offered? That way you don’t have to depend on Mom and Dad to be able to do it.”

Cyndi didn’t even dignify that suggestion with an answer, just moved on to the next plan of attack.

“Couldn’t you lend me the money? It’s only two thousand dollars.”

Only? What world was Cyndi living in that two thousand dollars wasn’t a lot of money?

“Firstly, I just made my student loan payment,” Sara told her. “I don’t have any cash to spare. Secondly, saying you want to borrow it really doesn’t fly, since I don’t see how you’d pay it back.” Not wanting a protracted argument, she finished up with, “I have to go back to work. Talk to you later.”

Undeterred, Cyndi sent so many texts, the tone increasingly desperate, that Sara had ended up turning off the ringer on her phone.

To make it all worse, the freezing cold January rain and ice mix Mariah had predicted had waited to start until Sara was standing at the bus stop. With the exception of her jacket, all the rest of her winter gear—boots, gloves and toque—was in her car. After all, she hadn’t expected to have to take the bus or walk to get home.

Really, though, she shouldn’t be surprised. Her family, sisters in particular, seemed to feel it was Sara’s responsibility to do whatever was necessary to make their lives more comfortable, and Sara let herself be a pushover.

She remembered when Mariah had been born. Sara had already been seven when her mother had got pregnant, despite the doctors saying it would never happen, and she’d been so excited to go from lonely only to big sister. When the baby had come home, she’d eagerly helped her mother and father, and somehow it seemed she’d never stopped.

It often felt there was no time for herself, to work toward her own dreams and goals. Being viewed as an easy mark was one thing, but when you added being caught in a tug of love between Cyndi and her mom, and looking after Nonni, it often felt like too much. The emotional strain and financial pressure had stressed her to the point of a functional gastrointestinal disorder. Sometimes just seeing one of her family members’ numbers pop up on her phone made her stomach roil and burn, her teeth clench.

That wasn’t something she shared with her family, though. Since childhood everyone had commented on how independent and reliable she was, and, as she finally opened her front door, Sara reflected that there were far worse ways her family could think of her.

Her relief at finally getting home evaporated when, calling out to the French bulldog jumping up and down in the kitchen, she saw the note from her roommate.

Sara, going to be late. Walk Dief for me.

Not even a “please” or a “thank you.”

But it wouldn’t be fair to take out her bad mood on the dog by refusing to walk him when he’d been locked up by himself all day.

“Well, Dief, since I’m already wet, we might as well go for that walk now.”

And she had to giggle when, hearing her say “walk,” the dog danced on his hind legs, turning in circles.

After changing into a pair of dry sneakers, Sara let him out of the kitchen and hooked his leash to his collar.

“Walkies,” she sang, loving the way he pirouetted on the way back to the front door. “Walkies,” she sang again, as she pulled the door open...

And walked straight into the man standing on her doorstep.

The air left her chest in a whoosh, and when she gasped to inflate her lungs again her head filled with the most delectable male scent she’d ever encountered. Firm fingers gripped her upper arms, steadying her as she wobbled.

Quickly stepping back and pulling a now barking Diefenbaker with her, Sara looked up.

And lost her breath all over again.

Dark yet somehow cool eyes stared down at her from a face too pretty to be traditionally handsome and yet too roughly hewn to be beautiful. Toffee-toned skin stretched over an undeniably masculine bone structure. Midnight-black hair waved back from a wide forehead, which was balanced by a strong jawline and ever so slightly hooked nose. And his unsmiling but deliciously shaped lips made her legs suddenly weak.

Her heart started racing, not in fright but with the intense sensation of recognition firing through her body, making her head spin. Although she could swear she’d never seen him before, something in his inscrutable gaze, the set of his head, the scent still lingering in her nostrils called to her primal, feminine core.

Then common sense returned.

Snapping her gaping mouth shut, she tugged Dief close to her side. Looking down at the dancing, yapping Frenchie gave her welcome respite from staring at the man before her.

“Diefenbaker, enough. Sit.”

Giving her a doleful glare, the little dog did as she commanded, his barking replaced by little rumbles in his throat.

Steeling herself, Sara looked back up and stuttered, “C-can I help you?”

Great. Not only was she a bedraggled mess, but she couldn’t even speak to the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen without sounding like a dork.

“Dr. Sara Greer?”

It was only nominally a question. His deep, accented tones made it more of a haughty statement, and Sara just stopped herself from shyly dipping her chin. Instead, she forced herself to look directly into his eyes.

“Yes?”

“My name is Dr. Farhan Alaoui.” He paused almost expectantly, his gaze watchful. “Crown Prince of Kalyana.”

For a long moment the words sounded like gibberish. Of course she’d heard them loud and clear, but they made no sense to her on an intellectual level.

Had she fallen on the way home, hit her head and lapsed into some kind of concussed dream? That seemed more likely than a man claiming to be a crown prince standing on her doorstep.

“Wh-who?”

Obviously sensing her rising anxiety, Dief stood up and growled. Sara bent to scoop him up. The little dog was trembling—or was it her shaking that way?

“Dr. Farhan Alaoui. Crown Prince of Kalyana,” he repeated, tipping his head back so he was looking down that impressive nose at her, and enunciating every syllable as though speaking to a child.

“D-don’t b-be ridiculous.” She could hardly catch her breath, between the pounding of her heart and rising nausea. “Is this some kind of joke? Who put you up to this?”

Her mind was spinning as she tried to figure out what was going on. There were only three people she’d shared her DNA results with, all trusted family members. Would any of them play such a cruel hoax on her?

“No joke, Dr. Greer.” The corners of his lips twitched downward, reminding her of her least favorite lecturer at university. The one for whom she could do no right. “I’ve come to offer you a job.”

“A job?” she repeated, still trying to sort through the chaos in her head. She peeked around his broad-shouldered frame, expecting to see Cyndi or maybe Mariah behind him, holding a camera and giggling. “A-as what?”

His lips tightened, and she actually heard him inhale before he said, “My wife.”

CHAPTER TWO

OF COURSE SHE thought he was crazy, although she was intrigued enough to put aside her skepticism and at least listen to what he had to say.

If even two months earlier someone had said her roots lay in the small kingdom of Kalyana, she wouldn’t have had a clue where they were talking about. After getting her DNA results she’d had to look it up online.

Lying on her bed, computer on her lap, she’d fallen in love with the pictures of the country and the faces of the people. A chain of thirty-plus small islands in the Indian Ocean, it was a melting pot, she’d learned from her research. A mixture of Indian, Arab, African and European, which lent her DNA breakdown credence.

The need to understand where her ancestors came from had been growing inside her for a long time, and had become a compulsion. It wasn’t anything she could discuss with her adoptive parents or younger sisters. How could she explain, although they were her family, the yearning to have a biological connection to other people, to an ancestral home, was overwhelming? Although they knew she’d looked up her birth parents’ names and had done the DNA test, it wasn’t something they’d talked about much, as though it wasn’t that important.

Her parents had a commendable, egalitarian outlook on life.

“Everyone’s the same, under their skin,” was one of her mom’s favorite sayings, but knowing that hadn’t helped Sara when she’d been a kid, going to school, trying to field questions about her origins.

With her burnt-caramel skin tone, thick, kinky black hair, dark brown eyes and plump build, she’d stood out, especially when compared to her tall, thin, fair-skinned, blonde sisters. There had been a few other children of color in the schools she’d gone to, but the difference had been that they had all known what their roots were. Sara never had.

It had left a hole inside; empty spots in her soul.

Crown Prince Farhan seemed able to fill in some of those blanks, although she found it difficult to comprehend what he was saying.

“Explain it to me again,” she said.

Sitting in a slightly seedy coffee shop down the road from her house, she was supremely aware of the man across the table, and the avid stares of the other early evening customers. Who could blame them for being curious?

With his beautifully fitting coat, even in jeans and with a silk scarf looped informally around his throat, there was nothing casual about the overall effect Crown Prince Farhan projected.

Everything about him, from his aura of wealth to the bodyguard, who he’d introduced as Kavan, sitting at an adjacent table, was beyond Sara’s, and no doubt the other patrons’, ken.

It made her aware of the slightly rundown aura of her blue-collar neighborhood. Heightened her discomfort and confusion.

With exaggerated patience he replied, “In a nutshell, you’re part of the Kalyanese royal family. A part that was thought to have died off.”

“But I looked at my adoption records. My father was Brian Haskell, not this...”

“Bhaskar Ahuja,” he helpfully supplied.

“Right. Him. So I can’t be who you think I am.”

“According to the DNA results, you’re definitely the granddaughter of Queen Nargis, and Bhaskar was her only child. Ergo...”

She shook her poor befuddled head.

“This is crazy. And how does any of this relate to your proposition that we marry?”

Just saying the words made her blood pressure skyrocket, bringing a slow-building headache.

“Through your father, you could, if you wish to exercise it, have a claim to the throne. Should certain factions find that out, you may be used as a rallying point for a revolution.”

“I—I don’t want the throne,” she’d said, quite sure it would be the end of the conversation. The craziness.

But Crown Prince Farhan had simply shaken his head.

Apparently, in the worlds of royalty and politics, nothing was that simple. She wouldn’t even have to participate in the rebellion, could denounce it, and that still wouldn’t be enough.

Farhan wrapped long, nimble fingers around the disposable cup half-filled with coffee and leaned closer across the small table. At that distance, in the garish light, she realized his eyes weren’t as dark as she’d thought.

Or as cold.

In the rich brown tones there was, she thought, a hint of sympathy, although what she interpreted as determination took precedence.

“Even though there is no way to connect Brian Haskell with Bhaskar, except through your DNA, some might consider you the true Queen of Kalyana. My father hopes that, should your lineage become public knowledge, uniting the bloodlines through our marriage would appease those inclined to overthrow his reign.”

At least some semblance of her logical brain was still functioning. Not that she knew much about royalty and rights of inheritance, but she did know enough to ask, “But don’t thrones pass from father to son? And if my father ran off rather than take the throne, shouldn’t he be considered to have abdicated?”

He surprised her with the briefest hint of a smile. Just enough to chase the solemn, arrogant expression from his face and create deep, slashing laugh lines in his cheeks. With just that small change his face, already gorgeous, became shockingly beautiful.

Tingles of awareness shot through her veins, and heat settled low in her belly.

“Not in Kalyana. It’s always been the oldest child, irrespective of gender. And there are people who might say Bhaskar was forced to run away by my family, rather than him leaving of his own accord.”

A little chill ran up her spine at his words, and she had to ask, “Could there possibly be any truth to that? And if we’re both part of the royal family, aren’t we related?”

His face tightened, became forbidding, yet he replied, “No, we’re not related and I think it doubtful my grandfather even knew he was next in line, since we’d cut off all contact with the kingdom by that point. My branch of the family had left Kalyana about a century before, and was living prosperously in Australia. By all accounts, my grandfather, his wife and children underwent great upheaval when he agreed to take the throne. And their transition was difficult, because of the suspicion surrounding your father’s disappearance.”

Her mind was going a million miles an hour, and she latched onto a subject that felt distant enough to be tenable. “How old was your father when they moved there?”

His eyebrows rose slightly, as though the question caught him off-guard. “About nine or so, I think.”

“Poor soul,” she murmured, imagining herself at that age moving halfway across the world into a new and hostile environment. She’d had life changes happen at about the same age, and the effects still lingered, even after so many years. “That must have been rough on him.”

Prince Farhan’s eyes widened slightly, then he dropped his gaze to his cup, not replying.

There were too many threads to unravel, but one thing was foremost in her mind.

“Why can’t I just sign a document saying I promise not to try to take over the country? Wouldn’t that work as well?”

He looked up at her again, but it felt as though he’d pulled his mind back to their conversation from somewhere far away.

“The vast majority of the Kalyanese people have no problem with the monarchy. However, even after more than fifty years, the suspicions about my family have lingered, so having you aligned with our side of the family would...should...put all that to rest, once and for all.”

It was too much to take in, and she struggled to contain her anxiety, the panic making her pre-ulcerous stomach burn and her hands shake.

Sara wasn’t impulsive. She’d had neither the luxury nor the inclination to be. In life, and particularly in her job, she was cautious and deliberate, to the point where the manager of the walk-in clinic often asked her speed up diagnosing and treating patients.

And yet here she was, seriously considering his proposition.

It wasn’t just the money, although the lump sum he’d offered, along with an amount he’d called a monthly stipend but had sounded like a yearly salary to her, would definitely be a godsend. More than that, though, the gorgeous man sitting across from her seemed to embody adventure, and offer her a chance to see her ancestral home. He was also dangling a chance to play a fairy-tale role in front of her like the ultimate carrot.

Her. Plain, unremarkable, sensible and reliable Sara Greer, contemplating running off into the sunset with a real life prince to become a princess in her own right?

She must be losing her mind.

As though to distract her, her brain went off at a tangent and she heard herself say, “You sound Australian, but Kalyana is in the Indian Ocean. Have your family kept their accents after all this time?”

Farhan shook his head. “I don’t sound like the rest of my family because I went to medical school and practiced in Australia up until a year or so ago.”

In the midst of all the nonsense, she’d forgotten he was a doctor too. Somehow knowing that made her relax fractionally.

“What is your specialty?”

“I’m a general surgeon. My brother, Maazin, is one as well, although, having trained with the Royal Guard, his experiences have been far more interesting than mine.”

“Do you have a practice in Kalyana now?”

His expression was rueful as he replied, “I keep my hand in, but it feels as though I do more administrative work than actually practicing medicine. I’ve been trying to upgrade the medical systems, which has turned out to be more difficult than I’d imagined.”

“I’d need to work, if I agree to come with you.”

The words fell between them, were followed by a thick silence. Farhan’s eyes narrowed, and Sara knew why.

Despite the ambivalence of the statement, it sounded like capitulation.

Hadn’t she recently been thinking how much she wanted to see the place her ancestors came from? Wasn’t she longing for adventure, for a chance to advance, to make things better?

I’m going to do this.

And it was, as the old saying goes, all over bar the shouting at that point.

* * *

Somehow, before going to Canada to find her, when reading the PI’s report and looking at the photographs accompanying it, Farhan had felt he knew who Sara Greer was. Quiet and serious. Competent medically, but socially withdrawn. Nothing fun or fancy about her.

Yet when she’d tugged open her door before he could knock, and he’d seen her in the flesh for the first time, shock had fired through his system.

Damp and flushed, laughing down at the dog capering around her ankles, the sight had almost made him smile despite the stress he’d been under. But when their bodies had collided and she’d looked up, her gleaming brown eyes widening in shock, all his amusement had fled, replaced with a jolt of desire.

It still simmered beneath his skin, and he found himself taking in her every expression, every gesture, trying to parse them, wanting to understand what each one meant.

Not the most auspicious start to what was supposed to be strictly a business arrangement. This sudden surge of attraction was unwanted, as was the tug of sympathy he felt toward Sara Greer. Even as a child, he’d recognized the subtle danger of allowing himself to feel too much for others. Ali had been the golden son, Maazin the baby. Farhan had felt lost in the shuffle, ignored until he did something wrong. He’d craved his mother’s love, his father’s approval, but their attention had rarely strayed his way. Withdrawing into himself and avoiding emotional involvement had served him well.

A marriage of convenience, especially of a short duration, would suit him perfectly. With his need to serve his country foremost in his mind, he had no time for complications and messy relationships.

And it was time he made that aspect of it absolutely clear.

“What I propose is that we marry, and agree to stay together for at least a year.” Something in the way her cheeks pinked up made his pulse escalate, but he kept his face expressionless, and his voice level. “Obviously, this won’t be a union based on emotion and, while I’m content with that, I doubt you’d want to be locked into such an arrangement long term.”

“How would a short-term marriage help the situation, though?”

“If within the year no one finds out about your lineage, I’d think it would be safe to part ways, and the chances of anyone finding out who your father was are nil. I’m sure if anyone knew Bhaskar was alive all those years, they would have said something.”

The skeptical look she gave him made him impatient. She’d seemed set to agree to his terms, and now he felt victory slipping away.

“Look,” he said, leaning closer over the table, trying to ignore the way the lights made her eyes seem speckled with gold dust, “I’m doing this because my father ordered me to. He’s not been well, and I think he’s trying to wrap up loose ends as best he can, although I suspect he’ll live for many years to come. In his mind, a marriage of convenience is perfectly acceptable and you should be happy to become a part of a wealthy, royal family. He entered into such a marriage, and I knew eventually I would also, but trying to explain to him that modern women, like you, would find it strange and potentially insulting did no good.