“What’s the problem?” he demanded.
“The doctor advised me to wake him and check his pupils. Only he wouldn’t go back to sleep. He started crying, and nothing I’ve done has helped.”
“K-k’tina.” Samson’s breath hitched on the wail, but his message was clear.
“He keeps asking for her,” Tessa revealed, the plea in her eyes as heart wrenching as Samson’s tears.
Julian set his back teeth. The woman had caused this problem; it went against everything in him to reach out to her for help.
Feeling helpless, watching both woman and child struggle, he racked his mind for something to do to right the situation. But for all his considerable knowledge and his massive IQ, he lacked experience dealing with women and children, let alone both in a state of distress.
Considering distraction to be an option, he tried to take the boy.
“No!” Samson screamed and hit out at him. “K’tina!”
Bloody hell, he rebelled against drawing that woman back into his nephew’s life. She was the reason he suffered so. But this wasn’t just a tantrum; this was a miserable child seeking solace from the one person he’d connected with during this crisis. How did Julian deny him?
Simple, he didn’t.
He called for a porter seeking information about Katrina and found that she had rooms at the palace. Lucky for him or he’d be out scouring the streets of Pasadonia. He soon stood outside Katrina’s room. He wished for a more formal form of address, but in all the confusion they hadn’t been properly introduced.
A maid answered his knock. She bowed. “Your Highness.”
“I need to see Katrina.” He stepped past the maid into the room.
“She’s sleeping,” the young woman said softly. “I’ve followed the doctor’s orders. I woke her just half an hour ago and she was fine.”
“I’m not here about her injury.”
Through the open door of the bedroom he saw the redhead. Light from the lounge fell across the bed and the lovely woman within it. Long lashes dusted creamy pale cheeks. Dark bruises under her eyes were a violation against the porcelain perfection of her features. Whatever she’d done, he couldn’t deny she’d pushed herself beyond the expected to help Samson.
Suddenly it seemed wrong to ask more of her. But for Samson he must.
“I’m sorry to disturb her, but I need Katrina to come with me. My nephew needs her help.”
“Oh.” The woman looked uncertain and then nodded. “I will wake her.” She slipped inside the room and closed the door.
He paced the small lounge, wishing he were anywhere but here.
People called him cold. And maybe he was. If preferring order and calm were attributes of being cold. He needed both to do the work he did. Overseeing his country’s treasury, including both finances and security, required a clear head and a focus of purpose.
He could work under pressure but he rarely had to. He had the ability to see the big picture, to track patterns and trends. So he prepared and diversified and created contingency plans. Which allowed him to move before the market did.
Some said it was magic or worse called him psychic. Bah. It was just the way his mind worked. He enjoyed learning things, and his brain absorbed knowledge like a sponge. He surprised himself with the facts he knew sometimes.
People, on the other hand, were a mystery to him. As was their penchant for displaying high emotions.
A bachelor at thirty, he’d been content in his role as the spare heir. Though his father occasionally addressed his desire for Julian to find a suitable woman and start a family, the pressure had lessened after Donal wed Helene and Samson was born.
Still, Julian was a man like any other, with the same needs. His position, however, called for discretion. He managed that by having a number of lady friends he escorted to the many functions his title forced him to attend. By spreading his attention around, no one—women or press—built up undue expectations.
He supposed his reputation for being cold kept him from being dubbed a playboy.
The woman, Katrina, threatened his hard-won detachment. His attraction to her stunning beauty just made him angrier over the whole situation. As did the intelligence he’d spied in her violet eyes. She struck him as being too smart to make the blunder she had. So what had she been thinking?
Shock, he imagined. But it was no excuse, not in her position.
He may not be able to do anything to help his brother, but he could make sure Samson was cared for. And if that meant disturbing the injured woman’s sleep, he’d do it without remorse. She deserved no more rest than the child she’d traumatized.
The door opened and Katrina walked barefoot into the lounge. She wore a lush white bathrobe that brushed her bare pink-tipped toes. Under it was a white garment trimmed in lace cut nearly as low as the V of the robe.
His gaze jerked to hers from the soft swell of her breasts visible in that V. She was so pale there was very little difference between her skin and the white of her nightclothes. Except for the shadows he’d noted earlier.
“Is Sammy okay?” she asked in a voice husky from sleep, her brow furrowed in concern. “Have you called the doctor?”
“His injury is not the problem,” he assured her, his brusqueness more for his benefit than hers. “Tessa woke him as instructed, but he will not go back to sleep.”
She gave a resigned nod, the action making her head appear too heavy for her slender neck. There’d been no sign of softness or frailness when she attacked him in the nursery. Just fierce protection of Samson.
Now he saw how tiny she was, clearly no more than five-four at the most. At six-two he towered over her. The oversize robe didn’t help. Nor did her fiery mane of hair, which she’d tamed into a braid that hung halfway down her back. But without makeup, her skin appeared starkly white against the vibrant color of her hair.
“Shall we go?” She moved forward, swaying slightly.
He ground his teeth, half tempted to send her back to bed. More than tempted to join her there. He dismissed the inappropriate thought, disgusted with his libido for rising up when his full attention should be on his brother’s family.
Samson’s needs came first.
“Where are your shoes?” he demanded, focusing on the practical.
She stopped and frowned, as if it took an effort to think. He was reminded she, too, had taken a knock to the head.
“I’ll fetch them.” The maid disappeared into the bedroom and returned a moment later with a pair of fuzzy slippers. Katrina slipped them on; her pink-tipped toes peeked through the end.
She rubbed her forehead. “Would you prefer I take the time to dress?”
Yes. There was something entirely too intimate about her in nightgown and robe.
“No.” Again he thought of Samson, saw tear trails on pale cheeks. “Let’s go.”
He followed her from the room and was surprised when the maid also stepped into the hall.
“It is all right, Anna.” Katrina bid the maid. “Thanks for watching over me. You can go now.”
“Oh, but I have doctor’s orders,” the young woman protested.
Annoyed by the delay, Julian bit back his impatience to address the woman. “What are your instructions? I’ll see she’s cared for the rest of the night.”
Clearly