The Prince's Cinderella Bride

As soon as she got the belt moving, she increased the speed until she had to push herself to keep up. Not a sensible way to exercise but, no matter how determined she was to remain in the new job that allowed her to stay in Corrachlean with her mother and the quiet life they’d built, every minute she was at Almsford she felt the need to run. It built over the day, faster when she wasn’t busy helping patients than when she sat alone in her office with just her memories.

Anais had more or less died the moment she’d left Prince Charming, Quinton Corlow, second son of Corrachlean. Without her husband, she’d had no title—something she’d never cared to have anyway—but she’d also lost her country, her home, for the last seven years.

Almsford Rehabilitation Center now belonged to Corrachlean’s soldiers, people who wanted her there. People who welcomed her, maybe in even greater proportion to how unwelcome she’d been the last time around. The people made it possible for her to set foot in the grounds. The physical changes to the building made it possible for her to stay, but running in one place kept her from running away.

Protective sheeting covered the stained-glass window running along the top half of the twenty-foot western wall in the ballroom-turned-gymnasium, adding another little barrier to her past, to keep those soul-crushing memories from overwhelming her.

To let her—almost—put it all away.

Laughter, warm and masculine, danced up the corridor that branched off the gymnasium to the first-floor patient rooms.

A sparkling sensation, like the meeting of a million tiny kisses, sprung to life at the top of her head and spilled in a cascade down her back, tickling across her neck and over her shoulders, all the way to her thighs, effectively wiping every thought from her head.

Everything but the thrill, everything but the smile she felt over the thrum of her muscles and the murmur of the machine.

Somewhere inside, part of her soul sat up, and a surge of excitement blossomed in her belly. Images of silk sheets and a field of daisies filled her mind, the brush of green leaves tickled her bare calves as she half ran, half danced through them...

She knew that laugh.

Oh, God.

She stumbled and would’ve fallen off the treadmill if not for the safety bars.

Not him. Not here.

She wrenched herself from the machine and careened backwards, her legs boneless and quaking.

Quinn’s voice came from some distance away, but he might’ve been walking down the corridor towards her. She could poke her head out to check and smack straight into those famed dimples.

Which way? Gardens?

Too exposed.

How awkward would it be if Corrachlean’s beloved, rascally soldier Prince came waltzing down the hallway and saw her there after seven years of self-imposed exile? She’d done her best to change her appearance, even beyond the ways the world and their divorce had changed her. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize her, at least long enough for her to skirt past him?

The patients hadn’t recognized her, and she’d stayed away from anyone who’d known her except for Mom.

He wasn’t supposed to even be in the country—the last she’d heard he was still on tour. At the very least, he should be in another country, castle, the palace or somewhere, with a svelte model on his arm, if gossip rags were to be believed... And why wouldn’t they be? They’d been right about their marriage spiraling down the drain, no matter how painful and horrible it had been for them to publicize it in increasingly callous ways.

She’d been back four weeks. It might be a small island nation, but she should’ve been able to avoid him for a year at least. But one month? Four weeks? Thirty measly days?

Anna shouldn’t have any feelings about Prince Captain Quinton Corlow one way or another. Maybe—if she followed the pattern of most of the heterosexual women who encountered the caramel-haired devil—she should swoon at his movie-star looks if he happened by. Swooning involved paling, so that could seem legit.

But she definitely should not be breaking out in a cold sweat and considering whether her heart rate had reached a fast enough pace to require cardioversion.

Before she could muster the courage for a mad dash to her office, another blast of his voice ricocheted up the corridor, cutting escape from her mind.

Not laughter.

Not words spoken with joy. His voice trembled with alarm and the hoarse expletive that followed either shook her or the building.

A breath later came a terrible bellow for help.

“Quinn...”

Her heart lurched, and by the time her thoughts caught up with her body she was running again, down the long hallway.

He’d sounded far away, but she couldn’t tell how far. As she pounded past each open door, she slowed down to peek inside for signs of distress, then spent time dodging people as they limped and rolled out of their rooms.

The residents turned further down the hallway, and she relied on their reactions to direct her.

Three rooms from the far end on the right-hand side, a door stood open and people were gathering around it, forcing her to wiggle through.

“Sorry. Sorry...” she said in passing, and didn’t stop until she was through the door.

Even from behind, even despite the changes seven years as a soldier had made to the breadth of his shoulders, every atom in her body recognized him, crouched over someone on the floor.

Her Quinn. Her husband.

No. Once, maybe. Not anymore. As she absorbed his presence, the rest of the room came into focus.

The bed sat upended and had a raggedly cut bed sheet tied to the bars of the headboard.

Hanging.

She moved around Quinn and crouched over the patient on the floor. His skin was still tinged cyanotic.

“Lieutenant Nettle?” She said his name and reached to check the pulse of his carotid, narrowing her focus to the most urgent place: her patient, not her ex-husband.

Before she could count ten seconds, a large hand clamped onto her wrist, yanking her gaze from her watch’s face to Quinn’s.

The shock of recognition blazed across his heartbreakingly handsome features, made only more devastating by the years that had passed. His caramel hair, once short and smart, had begun to grow out, but it was his stormy gray eyes that slapped her like an accusation.

She forced her gaze away, down at the patient, mentally scrambling for what she should be doing.

“Don’t.” She said the only word she could wrench from her mind and, seeing pink returning to Nettle’s face, pulled her arm away and stood back up. “I want him off the floor.”

“I want his neck stabilized first,” Quinn bit back, but the incredulous way he looked at her said he was having as hard a time navigating this sudden overlap of two realities as she was.

But he was handling it better. Of course Nettle should be stabilized first. “I’ll... I’ll get a brace.”

In contrast to the way her body had responded to his laughter, what dug its talons into her now was far darker even than that rise of panic that had bid her run.

Guilt. Sorrow. Anger. Fear.

Nasty beasts that tore at her competence, her professionalism.

* * *