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He lifted her chin and looked down at her. ‘I’ve had a wonderful evening, Claire. I want you to know that this past month has been one of the happiest times of my life.’
She waited to hear the rest, wondering why it sounded awfully like a dismissal.
‘And of course we’ll carry on seeing each other, though it’s not going to be easy—with your hours and my being on call so much.’
‘I know.’ She gazed at Luke’s mesmeric eyes, so grey tonight, wanting to lock the memory of them firmly away for ever.
‘I want you to know . . .’ his voice faltered a little. ‘You mean so much to me, Claire, but . . .’
‘Luke . . .’
He shushed her gently. ‘Listen, my darling. You’re still so very young. You’ve your whole life in front of you, and it has only been a month. We must neither of us make any promises which we may not be able to keep. Do you understand?’
Claire nodded numbly.
Dear Reader,
One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.
There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.
I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia to escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100th story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”
So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?
I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.
Love,
Sharon xxx
Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.
SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…
www.millsandboon.co.uk
For Don, Joan and
Eileen
CONTENTS
Cover
Dear Reader
About the Author
Title Page
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
HER ROOM in the Nurses’ Home was small and cramped. She still found it hard to believe she was where she was; sometimes she would hover in the warm half-world between sleeping and waking, blinking in surprise when eventually her eyes opened.
The walls had once—unbelievably—been painted in a dark olive green emulsion, she knew this because great murky patches showed through the present light green colour, which was peeling off in handfuls. But Claire didn’t care, the gloomy surroundings didn’t matter—even they could not quell the enthusiasm which had been bubbling up inside her for weeks now and was threatening to spill over at any time. As she pinned the brand new fob watch on to her uniform, the sunlight caught the glass and it flashed brilliantly—a symbol of the bright new future that lay ahead of her.
She rubbed her finger along the inside of the unfamiliar stiff, starched collar and surveyed her image in the mirror, really starting to believe for the first time that she was now Student Nurse Scott. The girl who stared back at her was no longer the leggy, successful top model, whose wide professional smile for the camera concealed a growing awareness of her shallow life-style, but one of the general public’s very own ‘angels’.
Her copper curls—once her most bankable trademark—had been tied and tamed, and now only their colour appeared riotous beneath the white linen cap. She wore a white starched apron over the pale blue striped uniform dress, and the white belt which covered her waist marked her out as one of the Introductory Block, or ‘new girls’ as they were known at St Anthony’s. The fine black stockings and neat shoes accentuated her slim ankles and shapely legs. She had been in the School of Nursing wearing mufti for almost twelve weeks, but today was to be her first on the wards proper.
She could hear echoing sounds of laughter and chattering outside her room, presumably in the direction of the canteen. She had just drunk a cup of tea which she had made in her room earlier—she knew that they served a variety of breakfasts from as early as six a.m., but she felt far too excited to eat anything.
She glanced at her fob watch for the twentieth time. She still had over ten minutes before she should start out for Belton Ward, and just for a moment she allowed herself to think of him. Luke Hayward. She would not be standing in a nurse’s uniform if it were not for him. Her whole life had changed direction and Luke Hayward had been the catalyst, and she knew about him—what?
Practically nothing really, she mused as she gave the regulation black shoes a final flick with a cloth. Except that he had seemed dedicated to his work, and very caring. And that he had intelligent grey-green eyes, firm lips, a strong jaw and hair which was a curious mixture of golden and brown. Which was little more than she knew when she had first seen him from across the other side of a crowded restaurant . . .
It had been a fashionable fish restaurant in North London and he had been sitting with three women, including a slim woman with pale hair who had been smiling up at him lazily. Claire had been dining with Simon Saunders—he had been asking her out for months and eventually she had agreed to have supper with him.
She had been aware that her colleagues would have been envious if they had known that she was out with the tall, shaggy-haired photographer, but she had been bored by his gossipy comments about the other models he worked with. It seemed that he was as superficial as most of the other people she usually hung around with.
Claire had looked up, vainly trying to stifle a yawn, when she had found herelf staring into a pair of very amused grey-green eyes, and he had raised his glass to her and smiled, with a kind of elegant old-world courtesy which had charmed her, and she had blushed.
That had been all, but the questioning look in those eyes had planted a seed of doubt in her mind, causing her to begin to analyse the quality of her whole lifestyle—never realising that at their next meeting he was to help her change it irrevocably.
She sighed as she gathered up the scarlet-lined woollen cloak and a slight frown appeared between the dark brows which framed slanting eyes of hyacinth blue. She was longing to see him again, longing to tell him that she had thrown caution to the wind and had taken his advice.
She took a final glance around the room as she opened the door—it really was tiny; the expression ‘no room to swing a cat’ might have been invented for the nurses’ accommodation at St Anthony’s Hospital!
A narrow bed and rather scratched bedside locker had somehow been squeezed in. In the corner of the window stood a large old-fashioned white enamel wash-basin. At least the view made up for it—the rather Gothic architecture of Hampstead contrasted dramatically with the unexpectedly wild sweep of green which was Hampstead Heath.
It had been drummed into the nurses how lucky they were to be training in North London, since apparently at another famous London hospital, the Nurses’ Home backed on to a very large prison!
Mrs Haynes, her tutor, had explained that they liked the Introductory Block to live in the Nurses’ Home for the first twelve weeks—partly to get to know each other and partly to become fully integrated into hospital life.
‘I have no objection to your living out in a flat after that,’ she had told Claire in her first week. ‘Although I do think that you might find it a bit of a trek to get here on time from Notting Hill, especially on an early duty. Why not move closer?’
Claire had taken her at her word, had put her old flat on the market, sold it almost immediately, and was due to move into her new flat in Primrose Hill that weekend, only a couple of miles from St Anthony’s.
She set off for the main hospital building, which was a short walk away. Today was an important day. Today, as Mrs Haynes had joked to the class, they were about to be let loose on the patients! They were each to spend the Friday morning on their allotted wards, as a kind of gentle grounding before they started on the wards full-time next week.
Claire was to report to Sister Thompson on Belton Ward at seven-thirty a.m. She felt excited yet slightly apprehensive as she carefully smoothed her spare apron over her arm, trying not to crease it.
Mrs Haynes had warned them that the first day on a new ward was often a baptism of fire. ‘Some are smitten, others take longer to like it, while some can’t stand it and come straight to my office with their notice written out.’
Claire hoped fervently that she wouldn’t be amongst the last group. She had enjoyed her time in the School of Nursing tremendously, but the wards were a different story completely, with different demands. She prayed that she would find them a challenge rather than daunting.
At least in class she had already found herself a friend. She had found herself sitting next to a small, dark girl with an infectious grin, called Mary Wells. The two girls had shared an immediate bond as they had both worked at other jobs before starting nursing. The other twenty-four in the class had all come straight from school, and to Claire they seemed much younger.
As she walked towards Belton, she could see huge silver trolleys being trundled down the main corridor by the catering staff, with hot breakfasts on their way to each of the wards.
She had been a student nurse for eleven and a half weeks, but in all that time she had not had the opportunity to speak to Luke Hayward. The School of Nursing was quite separate from the main hospital building, and she had never seen him at lunchtime in the canteen.
She could of course have had him bleeped and arranged to meet him, but what on earth would she say? She could hardly blurt out, ‘Hello, Luke—it’s Claire Scott. I’m the girl you saw in the restaurant and then we met briefly in Casualty—remember? And you gave me some advice and I took it, and here I am. Oh, and by the way, I feel I can trust you more than anyone I’ve ever met, even though I hardly know you.’ A small smile crossed her lips as she tried to imagine his reaction to such an outburst.
In fact, she had seen him only once since she’d been at the hospital, and that had been from a distance. A group from her set were being shown around the Pharmacy and were just about to leave, when suddenly about five doctors all tore past the door, their bleeps shrilling in a relentless high-pitched tone.
And one of them was Luke, Claire had noted dispassionately.
At that moment a voice on the tannoy began repeating, ‘Cardiac emergency—Casualty. Cardiac emergency—Casualty!’
A hush had fallen over the chattering group of student nurses, and the pharmacist had quietly explained that the Medical Registrar, the anaesthetist and any spare doctors would be needed to try to resuscitate a patient whose heart had stopped.
Claire had stood back with the others and watched them retreat to the end of the long, wide corridor. She had thought she detected a murmur of approval as he dashed past them, running like an athlete, a shaft of sunlight turning his hair into molten gold, his face tense with concentration.
She hadn’t mentioned him to anyone, not even to Mary, but then again—what could she possibly say about him? That she had seen him once in a restaurant, and had been besotted by him, like a schoolgirl? Or that she’d seen him almost in a professional capacity, when he had gently eased her out of shock that day? And that she’d told a complete stranger secrets close to her heart?
She wondered what Mary would say if she knew that if it hadn’t been for Luke Hayward’s casual suggestion, coming as it did like a bolt out of the blue, she wouldn’t have been standing here in her brand new uniform, but would probably have been yawning her way through yet another photo session.
As she passed the Pharmacy, down the same wide corridor, she reflected on how much she had enjoyed the Introductory Block, and how she had taken to studying again like a duck to water.
Contrary to what her mother had told her, she had positively thrived under all the new intellectual demands. The uninterested pale student of her schooldays, still reeling from her parents’ divorce, had blossomed into an eager consumer of all this new, scientific knowledge. She had found the anatomy and physiology fascinating—it was like the most marvellous detective story she had ever read, to discover how the human body worked. Mrs Haynes was an enthusiastic teacher, and covered some basic bio-chemistry and pathology in her lectures.
‘It isn’t strictly necessary for a nurse to know any of the chemical pathologies. But no knowledge is ever wasted, and the broader your education, then the better nurse you’ll be for it,’ she had told them.
Claire walked briskly up the stairs to the first floor corridor, her new black shoes shining brightly. At the ward entrance she stood peering around, feeling for a moment very young and inexperienced, and then she spotted a sign saying ‘Sister’s Office’ and, clearing her throat nervously, she tapped softly on the door.
A voice called out ‘Come in’ and she stepped inside.
The Ward Sister, distinguishable by her dark navy dress and elaborately frilled cap, sat at her desk, a coffee cup in front of her and a set of notes by her hand. She looked to be in her late thirties, was very plump, and had the kindest face that Claire had ever seen.
‘Hello there,’ she said. ‘Nurse Scott, isn’t it?’
Claire nodded. ‘Yes, Sister.’
‘Good! Nice and early, that’s what I like to see. Now, I’m just about to get the night report from Sister, so I’ll get Nurse Hunter to show you where to hang your cloak, and what’s where, and then you can all come in for report after you’ve given out the breakfasts. Nurse!’ she called in a loud voice from the door, and a nurse as tall as Claire appeared. She wore her thick black hair tied back in a bun and looked at Sister inquisitively.
‘Show Student Nurse Scott where to hang her cloak and around the ward, will you, Hunter?’
‘Yes, Sister. Follow me.’
Claire trotted off obediently behind her. The blue belt she wore identified her as a third-year.
‘This,’ announced Nurse Hunter, ‘is Belton Ward.’
It was an old-fashioned Nightingale ward in design, with rows of beds on either side of a central aisle. At the far end was the patients’ day-room and the four bathrooms. Sister’s office, the clinic-room, doctors’ office, kitchen and sluice were nearest the ward entrance.
‘You’ll soon get to know where everything is,’ the older nurse advised Claire. ‘Come on, we’d better get a move on.’
Then began the busiest morning that Claire had ever known. She scarcely had time to draw breath as they tipped cornflakes into bowls, poured teas and dolloped spoonfuls of marmalade on to the sides of plates. And all the time Nurse Hunter kept up an astonishingly fluent commentary which had Claire’s mind in a spin, wondering if she would be able to remember any of it.
‘That’s the sluice over there, but you don’t keep going in and out of there at mealtimes, not unless you absolutely have to—or Sister’ll have your guts for garters. Morning, Mr Atkins! Pleased to be going home, are you? Mr Atkins has been with us nearly three months, haven’t you, Mr Atkins?’ she asked him cheerfully.
‘Yes, Nurse. Looked after me good and proper, you ’ave.’
Nurse Hunter beamed and piled two heaped teaspoonfuls of sugar into his tea. ‘Always try and learn whether your patient has any special dietary needs,’ she confided. ‘I’ll never forget on my first ward when I asked a diabetic patient if he wanted sugar!’ She burst into laughter at the memory, the smile lighting up her rather sallow face.
After they had finished serving out the breakfasts, she showed Claire where the clinic-room was. ‘That’s where we draw up injections and get out dressing trolleys ready,’ she explained. ‘And never take a dirty dressing trolley back in until you’ve cleaned it down properly, or Sister’ll be after you!’
Sister sounded formidable, thought Claire, although Nurse Hunter seemed to speak of her quite affectionately.
‘Let’s just strip this bed before report,’ she stopped by a rumpled empty bed. ‘Mr Fellowes is always first into the bathroom. Then he goes down to the day-room for a smoke.’
Claire looked surprised. ‘Are they allowed to smoke, then?’
The other girl pulled a face. ‘Not really, but some of the old boys have smoked for so long that they just can’t give it up. Sister lets them have one or two if they’re desperate.’
So the practice didn’t always follow the theory, thought Claire as she and Nurse Hunter rhythmically folded each sheet and blanket into three and then turned the bottom sheet over and straightened it. Mrs Haynes would be horrified to think that smoking was allowed!
Sister Thompson appeared at the door of her office, beaming widely down the ward.
‘Morning, gentlemen,’ she cried.
‘Morning, Sister!’ they chorused back at her.
‘Right, girls. Into my office for report, please.’
‘What’s your first name?’ hissed Nurse Hunter as they trooped into Sister’s office behind two yellow-belted second-year nurses.
‘Claire. What’s yours?’
‘It’s Anna—but christian names aren’t allowed on the wards. Don’t forget!’
Claire nodded and sat down next to Anna Hunter, her pen and notebook in her hand, thinking what an awful lot of rules there were to remember.
Sister then began to run through a list of the patients, their age, diagnosis and treatment and whether there had been any change in their condition during the night.
‘You won’t understand much to begin with,’ she told Claire kindly. ‘But don’t worry—by the time you leave us, you’ll be telling me what to do!’
She let out a great thundering guffaw at this remark and the other nurses, including Claire, laughed politely, though she could never imagine knowing a fraction of the conditions which had been mentioned already. Pleural effusion; diabetic keto-acidosis; congestive cardiac failure; unexplained splenomegaly and purpura—the list seemed endless, and she wasn’t even sure that she had spelt them properly!
It was all very well learning the twelve cranial nerves in class by reciting a complicated rhyme:
‘On old Olympus’ towering tops
A fierce and glowering vulture always hops.’
But learning about real diseases was going to prove a lot more difficult.
She realised that Sister was speaking to her.
‘I’d like you to do a blanket bath on a patient who was admitted during the night with acute bronchitis. He’s a bit washed out this morning, poor fellow.’ She smiled at Claire. ‘If you get stuck—just ask. Don’t be shy. Things are always a bit hectic here, especially first thing in the morning, and I have to get ready for Dr Stellingworth’s ward round. But later on I’ll show you round properly.
‘Right then, let me introduce you to your patient.’
She walked swiftly to the second nearest bed to her office. A very thin, anxious-looking man, his face partially obscured by a green oxygen mask, lay gasping against a great heap of pillows.
‘Good morning, Mr Lucas,’ said Sister quietly, bending down to talk to him. ‘I’ve brought one of our new nurses along. This is Nurse Scott and she’s going to give you a bed bath. Then Dr Stellingworth will be coming to see you. All right?’
He gave her the glimmer of a smile. Claire gulped nervously. He looked terribly ill, and what was she supposed to do about his oxygen mask while she was washing his face?
As if sensing her hesitation, Sister Thompson said softly:
‘Don’t worry—Mr Lucas is able to do without his mask for short periods. I’d really liked to have stayed and helped you with him, but we’re so desperately short-staffed this week. Come with me and I’ll show you where we keep the bowls.’
Claire filled a plastic bowl with warm water and drew the curtains around the cubicle, as she had been taught by Mrs Haynes.
It was certainly easier to bath the life-sized plastic doll in the School of Nursing than a real person, she thought, as she gently patted her patient’s face dry. She sensed that Mr Lucas was too breathless to want to chat, so she went about her work gently and silently. She changed the water in the bowl several times, and when she had finished washing him Sister came in and helped change his pyjamas and make the bed.
‘I’d like you to go to coffee with Nurse Hunter when you’ve finished here,’ said Sister.
Claire nodded—she was dying for a cup of coffee, but already she felt twice as confident as she had done when she’d walked on to the ward that morning. She had given her first blanket bath and the patient had come through unscathed!
It was while she was finishing off Mr Lucas’s chin with the electric shaver that she heard a male voice echoing outside the cubicle.
‘Come on, Sister. I haven’t got time to dawdle while you fuss around powdering your nose!’
‘That’ll be the day,’ retorted Sister goodhumouredly, pulling back the curtain. ‘You can go to coffee now, Nurse Scott. Dr Stellingworth is waiting to examine Mr Lucas.’
Luke Hayward, standing by the notes trolley with his house officer, senior house officer and a whole clutch of medical students, heard the name and started involuntarily. Surely it couldn’t be the same Scott?
But then he saw her, coming out of the cubicle, looking like a sweet, seductive angel, her eyes sparkling like jewels and her cheeks pink from her exertions. A single red-gold curl lay on her cheek like a sculpture. She had done it—she had taken his advice!