The Texan's Royal M.D.. Merline Lovelace

nothing but elation that the end is in sight. Yet I sense that something’s troubling her. Something she doesn’t wish to talk about, even with me. I shan’t force the issue. I don’t condone unwelcome intrusiveness, even by the most concerned and well-meaning. I do hope, however, that the vacation I’ve engineered for the family over the coming holidays eases some of the worry Zia hides behind her so bright, so lovely smile.

      From the diary of Charlotte,

      Grand Duchess of Karlenburgh

       One

      Zia almost didn’t hear the shout over the roar of the waves. Preoccupied with the decision hanging over her like an executioner’s ax, she’d slipped away for an early-morning jog along the glistening silver shoreline of Galveston Island, Texas. Although the Gulf of Mexico offered a glorious symphony of green water and lacy surf, Zia barely noticed the ever-changing seascape. She needed time and the endless, empty shore to think. Solitude to wrestle with her private demons.

      She loved her family—her adored older brother, Dominic; her great-aunt Charlotte, who’d practically adopted her; the cousins she’d grown so close to in the past few years; their spouses and lively offspring. But spending the Christmas holidays in Galveston with the entire St. Sebastian clan hadn’t allowed much time for soul-searching. Zia only had three more days to decide. Three days before she returned to New York and...

      “Go get it, Buster!”

      Sunk in thought, she might have blocked out the gleeful shout if she hadn’t spent the past two and a half years as a pediatric resident at Kravis Children’s Hospital, part of the Mount Sinai hospital network in New York City. All those rewarding, gut-wrenching hours working with infants and young kids had fine-tuned Zia’s instincts to the point that her mind tagged the voice instantly as belonging to a five-or six-year-old male with a healthy set of lungs.

      A smile formed as she angled toward the sound. Her sneakers slapping the hard-packed sand at the water’s edge, she jogged backward a few paces and watched the child who raced through the shallows about thirty yards behind her. Red haired and freckle faced, he was in hot pursuit of a stubby brown-and-white terrier. The dog, in turn, chased a soaring Frisbee. Boy and pet plunged joyously through the shallow surf, oblivious to everything but the purple plastic disc.

      Zia’s smile widened at their antics but took a quick downward turn when she scanned the shore behind them and failed to spot an adult. Where were the boy’s parents? Or his nanny, given that this stretch of beach included several glitzy, high-dollar resorts? Or even an older sibling? The boy was too young to be cavorting in the surf unsupervised.

      Anger sliced into her, swift and icy hot. She’d had to deal with the results of parental negligence far too often to view it with complacency. She was feeling the heat of that anger, the sick disgust she had to swallow while treating abused or neglected children, when another cry wrenched her attention back to the boy. This one was high and reedy and tinged with panic.

      Her heart stuttering, Zia saw he’d lunged into waves to meet the terrier paddling toward shore with the Frisbee clenched between his jaws. She knew the bank dropped off steeply at that point. Too steeply! And the undertow when the tide went out was strong enough to drag down full-grown adult.

      She was already racing back to the boy when he disappeared. She locked her frantic gaze on the spot where his red hair sank below the waves, crashed into the water and made a flying dive.

      She couldn’t see him! The receding tide had churned up too much sand. Grit stung her eyes. The ocean hissed and boiled in her ears. She flung out her arms, thrashed them blindly. Her lungs on fire, she thrust out of the water like a dolphin spooked by a killer whale and arced back in.

      Just before she went under she caught a glimpse of the terrier’s rear end pointed at the sky. The dog dove down at the same instant Zia did and led her to the child being dragged along by the undertow. She shot past the dog. Grabbed the boy’s wrist. Propelled upward with fast, hard scissor kicks. She had to swim parallel to the shore for several desperate moments before the vicious current loosened its grip enough for her to cut toward dry land.

      He wasn’t breathing when she turned him on his back and started CPR. Her head told her he hadn’t been in the water long enough to suffer severe oxygen deprivation, but his lips were tinged with blue. Completely focused, Zia ignored the dog that whined and pawed frantic trenches in the sand by the boy’s head. Ignored as well the thud of running feet, the offers of help, the deep shout that was half panic, half prayer.

      “Davy! Jesus!”

      The small chest twitched under Zia’s palms. A moment later, the boy’s back arched and seawater spewed from his mouth. With a silent prayer of thanksgiving to Saint Stephen, patron saint of her native Hungary, Zia rolled him onto his side and held his head while he hacked up most of what he’d swallowed. When he was done, she eased him down again. His nose ran in twin streams and tears spurted from his eyes but, amazingly, he gulped back his sobs.

      “Wh...? What happened?”

      She gave him a reassuring smile. “You went out too far and got dragged in by the undertow.”

      “Did I...? Did I get drowned?”

      “Almost.”

      He hooked an arm around his anxious pet’s neck while a slowly dawning excitement edged out the confusion and fear in his brown eyes. “Wait till I tell Mommy and Kevin and abuelita and...” His gaze shifted right and latched on to something just over Zia’s shoulder. “Uncle Mickey! Uncle Mickey! Did you hear that? I almost got drowned!”

      “Yeah, brat, I heard.”

      It was the same deep baritone that had barely registered with Zia a moment ago. The panic was gone, though, replaced by relief colored with what sounded like reluctant amusement.

      Jézus, Mária és József! Didn’t this idiot appreciate how close a call his nephew had just had? Incensed, Zia shoved to her feet and spun toward him. She was just about to let loose with both barrels when she realized his amused drawl had been show for the boy’s sake. Despite the seemingly laconic reply, his hands were balled into fists and his faded University of Texas T-shirt stretched across taut shoulders.

      Very wide shoulders, she couldn’t help but note, topped by a tree trunk of a neck and a square chin showing just a hint of a dimple. With her trained clinician’s eye for detail, Zia also noted that his nose looked as though it had gotten crosswise of a fist sometime in his past and his eyes gleamed as deep a green as the ocean. His hair was a rich, dark sorrel and cut rigorously short.

      The rest of him wasn’t bad, either. She formed a fleeting impression of a broad chest, muscular thighs emerging from ragged cutoffs, and bare feet sporting worn leather flip-flops. Then those sea-green eyes flashed her a grateful look and he went down on one knee beside his nephew.

      “You, young man,” he said as he helped the boy sit up, “are in deep doo-doo. You know darn well you’re not allowed to come down to the beach alone.”

      “Buster needed to go out.”

      “I repeat, you are not allowed to come down to beach alone.”

      Zia shrugged off the remnants of the rage that had hit her when she’d thought the boy was allowed to roam unsupervised. She also had to hide a smile at the pitiful note that crept into Davy’s voice. Like all five-or six-year olds, he had the whine down pat.

      “You said Buster was my ’sponsibility when you gave him to me, Uncle Mickey. You said I had to walk him ’n feed him ’n pick up his poop ’n...”

      “We’ll continue this discussion later.”

      Whoa! Even Zia blinked at the that’s enough finality in the uncle’s voice.

      “How do you feel?” he asked the boy.

      “’Kay.”

      “Good