Crowned: The Palace Nanny. Marion Lennox

if it meant losing Zoe. Not!

      Who was she protecting here? Herself or Zoe?

      Damn him!

      She should be welcoming him, she thought. Knight on white charger with loaded wallet.

      Not if it meant giving up Zoe.

      To watch them go…

      To watch him go.

      Where had that thought come from? Nowhere. She did not need to think he was sexy. The fact that he was drop-dead gorgeous only added to her fear. She did not need her hormones to stir.

      They were stirring.

      She walked outside, stood on the veranda and stared into the dark.

      Prince Stefanos of Khryseis. Cousin to Zoe.

      A man about to change her life.

      A man about to take her child.

      Fifteen miles across the water, Stefanos was doing the same thing. Watching the moonbeams ripple across the ocean. Thinking how his life had changed.

      Because of Zoe.

      And…Elsa? A barefoot, poverty stricken marine biologist of a nanny?

      He had a million other things to think about.

      So why was he thinking of Elsa?

      It was mid-morning when he arrived and they hadn’t left for the beach yet. There was a tiny seeping wound under Zoe’s arm. It was minuscule but they’d learned from bitter experience to treat small as big. This was a skin graft area. If it extended Zoe could lose the whole graft—an appalling prospect.

      Elsa had found it while she was applying Zoe’s suncream and now she was hovering between wait and see or ring the local medical centre and get it seen to now.

      Only it was Sunday. Their normal doctor would be away. Waratah Cove had a small bush-nursing hospital, manned by casual staff over the weekend. Less experienced doctors tended to react to Zoe’s injuries with fear, dreading under-treating. If she took Zoe in, she’d be admitted and transferred to hospital in the city. Simple as that.

      And they were both so weary of hospitals.

      Her worry almost made her forget Stefanos was coming—but not completely. The sound of a car on the track made her feel as if the world was caving in, landing right on her shoulders.

      She hated this. She just hated it.

      She tugged a T-shirt over Zoe’s scarred little body and turned to welcome him. And almost gasped.

      This was a different Stefanos. Faded jeans. T-shirt. Scuffed trainers.

      Great body. Really great body.

      A body to make her feel she was a woman again.

      She had to do something about these hormones. They were doing things to her head. She’d married Matty. His picture was still on the mantel. Get a grip.

      ‘Hi,’ he said, and smiled at the two of them and Elsa couldn’t resist. She had to smile. It was as if he had the strength to change her world, just by smiling.

      ‘Hi,’ Zoe said shyly and smiled as well, and Elsa looked at Zoe in astonishment. Two minutes earlier the two of them had been close to tears.

      Stefanos’s smile was a force to be reckoned with.

      ‘I thought you’d be at the beach,’ he said, and then he looked more closely—maybe seeing the traces of their distress. ‘Is something wrong?’

      ‘We thought we wouldn’t go to the beach this morning,’ Elsa said repressively. Zoe loathed people talking about her injuries. She’d had enough fuss to last one small girl a lifetime.

      Stefanos had never mentioned her scars. Maybe he hadn’t even noticed. Or…not.

      ‘Why not?’ he said gently, and suddenly he was talking to Zoe, and not to her. As if he’d guessed.

      ‘There’s a bit of my skin graft come loose,’ Zoe said.

      Once again it was as much as Elsa could do not to gasp. Zoe never volunteered such information.

      She’d had the best doctors—the best!—but almost every one of them talked to her and not to Zoe. Oh, they chatted to Zoe, but in the patronising way elders often talked to children. For the hard questions—even things like: ‘Is she sleeping at night?’—they turned to her, as if Zoe couldn’t possibly know.

      So what had Stefanos done different?

      She knew. He hadn’t treated her as an object of sympathy, and he’d talked directly to her. Simple but so important.

      ‘Whereabouts?’ Stefanos asked, still speaking only to Zoe.

      ‘Under my arm at the back.’

      ‘Is it hurting?’

      ‘No, but…it’s scary,’ Zoe said, and her bottom lip wobbled.

      ‘Can I ask why?’

      ‘Elsa will have to take me to hospital and they’ll make me stay there, and I don’t want to go.’ Her voice ended on a wail, she turned her face into Elsa’s shirt and she sobbed.

      ‘Zoe,’ Stefanos said, in a voice she’d not heard before. Gentle, yet firm. He squatted so he was at her eye level. ‘Zoe, will you let me take a look? I don’t know if I can help, but I’m a doctor. Will you trust me to see if I think you need hospital?’

       He was a doctor?

      There was a loaded silence. Zoe would be as stunned as she was, Elsa thought.

      You still can’t have her, she thought, her instinctive response overriding everything else, but she had the sense to shut up. The last thing Zoe needed was more fear.

      Because, astonishingly, Zoe was turning towards him. She was still hard against Elsa but he’d cut through her distress.

      ‘You’re a doctor?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘But you’re a prince.’

      ‘People are allowed to be both.’

      ‘My papa was a doctor,’ she said. ‘But a doctor of science. He studied shellfish.’

      ‘Did Christos get his doctorate?’ he said with pleasure. ‘Hey, how about that. I wish I’d known.’ Still he was talking to Zoe. ‘Your papa and I used to be really good friends. He taught me where to find the best shells on Khryseis. Only I always wanted to find the pretty ones or the big ones and he wanted to look for the interesting ones. Sometimes he’d pick up a little grey shell I didn’t think at all special and off he’d go, telling me it was a Multi-Armpit Hairy Cyclamate, or a Wobblysaurus Rex, or something even sillier.’

      Zoe stared in astonishment—and then she giggled.

      You could forgive a lot of a man who could make Zoe giggle, Elsa conceded. And…a man who could make her giggle as well?

      ‘Will you let me see what the problem is?’ he asked gently, and Zoe lifted her T-shirt without hesitation. Which was another miracle all by itself.

      And here was another miracle. He didn’t react. Zoe’s left side was a mass of scar tissue but Stefanos’s expression didn’t change by as much as a hair’s breadth. He was still smiling a little—with Zoe—and she was smiling back. His long fingers probed the scar tissue with infinite gentleness, not going near the tiny suppurating wound but simply assessing the situation overall.

      He had such long fingers, Elsa thought. Big hands, tanned and gentle. She wouldn’t mind…

      Um…whoa. Attention back to Zoe. Fast.

      ‘What sort of medical supplies do you have here?’ he asked, still speaking only to Zoe, and Elsa held her breath. This was a question