His Heir, Her Honour
Catherine Mann
Meddling with a Millionaire
Cat Schield
His Heir, Her Honour
Catherine Mann
“I’m pregnant. Over two months along, and you’re the father.”
Pregnant?
Shock hit him square in the solar plexus. Followed by disbelief. Then jaded acceptance of her betrayal. Just when he’d thought he couldn’t be any more disillusioned by how easily people could deceive others. A bitter laugh rolled around in his gut and burned a bilious path up his throat.
She crossed her arms under her breasts defensively. “If this is some kind of payback for my laughter earlier, I don’t appreciate it. I don’t find this in the least amusing.”
“Believe me, neither do I.”
Her mouth went tight, her anger palpable. “This isn’t going to make much of a story to tell our child some day.”
“Our child? I think not.”
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the final book in my RICH, RUGGED & ROYAL series! In The Maverick Prince, we were introduced to Antonio, the shipping magnate and youngest of the Medina men. In His Thirty-Day Fiancée, we saw the second Medina son, Duarte, meet his match. And now it’s time to learn more about the oldest son, Carlos, dedicated doctor and heir to a defunct kingdom.
During the violent coup to overthrow the Medina monarchy, Carlos sustained injuries that left him with a permanent limp and no hope of ever having a family of his own. Or so he thinks! His preconceptions are blown out of the water when his long-time friend and one-time lover surprises him with the news that she is carrying his child, his heir, their future.
I hope you enjoy the last instalment to my Medina trilogy. As always, I enjoy hearing from readers and can be reached through my website, www.catherinemann.com, or at my mailing address, PO Box 6065, Navarre, FL 32566, USA.
Happy reading!
Catherine Mann
About the Author
USA TODAY bestselling author CATHERINE MANN is living out her own fairy-tale ending on a sunny Florida beach with her Prince Charming husband and their four children. With more than thirty-five books in print in more than twenty countries, she has also celebrated wins for both a RITA® Award and a Booksellers’ Best Award. Catherine enjoys chatting with readers online—thanks to the wonders of the wireless internet that allows her to network with her laptop by the water! To learn more about her work, visit her website, www.catherinemann.com, or reach her by snail mail at PO Box 6065, Navarre, FL 32566, USA.
One
“Cover the family jewels, gentlemen,” Lilah Anderson called into the men’s locker room at St. Mary’s Hospital. “Female coming through.”
High heels clicking on tile, Lilah charged past a male nurse yanking on scrubs and an anesthesiologist wrestling with a too-small towel, barely registering the flash of male flank here, masculine chest there. Smothered coughs and chuckles echoed around her in the steamy tiled area, but she remained undeterred.
Completely focused on locating him.
No one dared stop her on her way past benches and lockers. As chief administrator of Tacoma’s leading surgical facility, she could have any of them fired faster than someone could say “Who dropped the soap?”
Her only problem? A particularly stubborn employee who seemed determined to avoid her every attempt to speak with him over the past couple of weeks. Therefore, she’d chosen the one place she could be certain of having Dr. Carlos Medina’s complete attention—a public shower.
The stall tactics would end here and now. And speaking of stalls …
Lilah stepped deeper into the swell of steam puffing around a cream-colored plastic curtain. His secretary, Wanda, had warned that he couldn’t be reached since he was washing up after a lengthy surgery. He would be exhausted and cranky.
Not deterred in the least, Lilah saw this as the perfect opportunity she’d been seeking to corner him. She’d grown up with two brothers, and she would have been left out of everything if she didn’t occasionally invade their male inner sanctums. She eyed the line of showers.
Three of the five were in use. The first sported a shadowy, short and round male figure. Not Carlos.
From the second, a balding head peeked around the industrial curtain with shocked green eyes. Also not her surgeon in question.
She nodded to the head of pediatrics. “Good afternoon, Jim.”
Jim ducked back into his stall, which left her to focus on the third tiled cubicle. She marched forward, heels tapping almost as fast as her heart.
Stopping, she planted her feet and checked first. Through the plastic folds, she studied the lean outline standing under the spray, scrubbing his hands over his head. Without even pulling aside the curtain, she knew that body well, intimately so.
She’d found him, Carlos Medina—doctor, lover and, as if the guy didn’t already have enough going for him, also the eldest son of a former European monarch. His princely pedigree, however, didn’t impress her. Long before she knew about his royal roots, she’d been drawn to his brilliance, his compassion for his patients….
And a backside that looked damn fine in scrubs. Or wearing nothing at all. Definitely not what she needed to think about right now.
Lilah gathered her nerve as firmly as she clenched the curtain and swept it aside, metal rings clink, clink, clinking along the rod.
A wall of steam rolled out, momentarily clouding her vision until the mist dispersed and exposed an eyeful of mouthwateringly magnificent man. Water sluiced down Carlos’s naked body turned sideways, revealing long lean muscles flexing and bunching. And heaven help her, she had a perfect view of the curve of his taut butt.
Beads of moisture clung to his bronzed skin, arms and legs sprinkled with dark hair. No tan lines marked him since he spent most of his time indoors either in surgery or asleep. But his natural olive coloring gave him an allover tanned look, as if he’d bared himself unabashedly to the sun.
As he turned his head toward her in a slow, deliberate move, not even a whisper of surprise showed on Carlos’s face. His eyes shone nearly black … heavy lidded … darkly enigmatic. She couldn’t suppress a shiver of desire as his intense gaze held hers. Her stomach knotted with a traitorous ache that could only serve to distract her from her mission today.
He raised one thick eyebrow, slashing upward into his forehead. “Yes?”
His subtle Spanish accent saturated the lone syllable like the steam in the air, so hot she felt the urge to ditch the jacket on her power suit.
In the next stall, water shut off in a hurry as the head of pediatrics made a hasty departure from the locker room. Others lingered, backs studiously turned as they retrieved clothing.
Lilah tugged her jacket more firmly in place. “I need to talk to you.”
“A telephone conversation would have saved my coworkers some embarrassment.” He spoke softly as always, never raising his voice as if he knew innately that people would hang on his every word.
“What I have to say isn’t for an impersonal call.” And wasn’t that the understatement