The Royal Doctor's Bride. Jessica Matthews

sort of leader would I be if I didn’t?” he countered. “You see, Gina, I don’t like surprises.”

      After today, neither did she.

      Ruark spent what remained of the morning observing the work flow of the department. Fortunately, no other traumas arrived, which left him free to talk individually with the staff regarding everything from scheduling to ordering supplies. He would have preferred Gina acting as his guide, but she often disappeared in other directions—“to take care of patients,” she’d said.

      It was only an excuse. The whiteboard indicating room assignments and diagnoses plainly showed nothing that the physician’s assistant couldn’t handle. However, he was willing to cut her some slack today. She clearly wanted space to digest the information he’d given her, although little did she know he’d barely scratched the surface. The rest would come this evening, when he outlined their families’ proposed plan in complete detail.

      When his father had first approached him and he’d read the dossier on Gina that had been compiled by the palace security team, he’d been resigned to fulfilling his obligations. After meeting her, talking to her, watching the way she handled a difficult situation, he’d become more…hopeful? about the long-term success of the scheme they had devised. Doing his duty to restore his family’s honor wouldn’t pose a hardship at all.

      In fact, if he’d come to Belmont without any ulterior motive or agenda, if he’d only arrived as a physician who merely intended to use his medical skills until the next career move presented itself, Gina still would have captured his attention. Her elfin features, willowy frame, tawny-colored hair and special smile charmed him more than he’d imagined possible. After he’d touched her soft skin, seen the damage done by the shard of china and her blood staining his white handkerchief, he’d wanted Bill Nevins’s head. For a man who prided himself on his control, his reaction amazed him.

      He was almost tempted to pull rank and follow as she went about her business, to compare what he learned about her firsthand with what he’d gathered from her file, but he had to be patient. If she felt threatened and he couldn’t win her over tonight, then the next few weeks wouldn’t pass by pleasantly.

      To his surprise and delight, he’d learned more interesting things about Gina and Belmont’s emergency department from Gina’s colleagues than he would have learned from her. More often than not, he heard what had fast become a familiar refrain.

      “Dr Sutton takes care of that.”

      “Dr Sutton completes those reports.”

      “Dr Sutton always talks the supply department into giving us what we need.”

      “Dr Sutton is a stickler for continuing education,” one nurse said proudly. “We’re the only department in the hospital where all staff certifications are current.”

      At first, he’d wondered how it could be possible for one woman to accomplish so much in a given day, until he stood at the nurses’ station and merely watched her go from one task to another. She might deny her heritage, but she still possessed the innate grace and regal bearing of her ancestors.

      “If you’re waiting until she has a free minute to talk to her, you’ll be waiting a long time,” Lucy warned.

      He pulled his attention away from Gina and his thoughts at the sound of the nurse’s voice. “Excuse me?”

      “If you ever want to catch Dr Sutton, you have to do like the rest of us and just interrupt,” Lucy commented. “She’s in constant motion. The only time she sits down is when she’s at her desk or at lunch, which she takes on a hit-and-miss basis. Sometimes just thinking about everything she does makes me tired. I don’t know how she has the energy to run at full speed all day, but she does.”

      “I assume she stays past her shift,” he said before he caught a glimpse of Gina slipping out of one exam room and into another.

      “All the time,” Lucy told him bluntly. “The woman doesn’t have a life. She’s here at 6:00 a.m. and stays until eight or nine at night, five days a week. I keep telling her she’s going to burn out, but she only laughs. If you ask me, Bill Nevins took advantage of her good nature.”

      Ruark suspected as much.

      “To be honest…” Lucy cast a sidelong glance at him “…we’d hoped that when Bill decided to retire, Gina, er, Dr Sutton would take over.”

      “Did you?” he replied mildly.

      Lucy raised her chin. “She’s done a lot for us. The staff are intensely loyal to her.”

      Ruark locked his gaze on hers, but she held her ground. “Is this a warning?”

      “Not unless it needs to be.”

      He grinned at her tart tone. “Dr Sutton’s place remains secure,” he assured her. “Although I would appreciate it if, when Dr Sutton is relieved of some of her duties, the staff will understand it isn’t because she hasn’t done an excellent job. As head of Belmont’s emergency department, I don’t intend to follow in Bill Nevins’s footsteps and shirk my own responsibilities.”

      “They’ll understand,” she promised, a smile returning to her face. “I’ll see to it myself.”

      Certain he’d gained the head nurse’s co-operation, which meant everyone else’s would follow, he pointed to the schedule taped to the counter’s backsplash. “Other than Gina, I rarely see the same doctor’s name twice in a week.”

      “Because it doesn’t take long for most doctors to get fed up with being overworked and underpaid, so they leave. When Gina assigns the shifts, she relies heavily on locums, friends, or previous on-staff physicians who just can’t say no.”

      She sighed. “Then again, none of us seem to be able to say no to her. It’s impossible to refuse someone who works harder and more hours than you do. She takes up a lot of the slack herself.”

      He thought about Frank Horton. “What about residents? Shouldn’t a surgeon be available all the time?”

      “Belmont only has a few residents,” Lucy mentioned. “An OB-GYN who spends most of her time on the maternity floor and a neurology fellow who’s usually in ICU or Rehab.”

      “And Frank?”

      “Oh, don’t let him hear you call him anything but a board-certified physician,” she warned. “He’s hired as a hospitalist and is assigned to our department, but he only drops by when we call him.”

      “He’s allowed to do that?”

      She shrugged. “Who’s going to stop him? Gina’s tried, but without having the authority she didn’t get very far.”

      “Why didn’t Nevins stand behind her?”

      “As long as Frank responded in a ‘timely’manner…” she emphasized the word with quotes in the air “…Bill wasn’t going to force the issue.” She glanced at him slyly. “If you’re looking for quality improvement ideas, you should start with that one.”

      After dealing with cases she could have handled blindfolded, Gina had silently begged the fates to send a patient with something more complicated than shingles or an ingrown toenail. After suffering two major personal surprises today, with the arrival of both Prince Ruark and a letter from a grandmother she’d never met, she suspected the upcoming evening would have more surprises in store. Already her imagination was running rampant with possibilities of what a famous radio commentator liked to refer to as “the rest of the story”. Rather than waste her time worrying or second-guessing what Ruark would tell her, she needed a case that required her full attention.

      Fortunately for her, twenty-one-year-old Janice Myers arrived, complaining of abdominal pain.

      Gina flipped through the latest lab and radiology reports. In spite of all the tests she’d run, she still couldn’t pinpoint the woman’s problem.

      She