Royally Claimed

chapter 12

THE DREAM CAME AGAIN THE next night, the first time in the two weeks she’d been with Frank. Julia knew she was in their bed back in Belas Aguas and knew she was only dreaming. But she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t wake herself. She was crying in her sleep at what would come.

It hadn’t started out as anything but the typically drunk patient on a Saturday night in her Boston emergency department. He had come in for stitches for a scalp wound—nothing serious, but it looked as if someone had bashed him due to the bruising around the wound.

He’d only mumbled something about standing up under an open kitchen cabinet when she’d asked him what had happened. She had her doubts but he was a large guy, definitely big enough to take care of himself. His dark flannel shirt was covered in dried blood. His chart said his name was Mark.

She’d numbed his wound and prepared it for suturing, her needle ready to close the edges. She probably wouldn’t need most of the suture kit, which included several different clamps and a scalpel.

Julia inserted the needle into his scalp, trying to line up the edges of the skin as neatly as possible. He twitched. “Did you feel that?” He might need more local anesthetic.

“No, just do it.”

“Okay, but let me know if it starts to hurt.” She moved along the wound, knotting and cutting the threads.

She focused on her work but noticed Mark getting more and more agitated, twitching from side to side and breathing rapidly. He didn’t flinch when she poked him, so it wasn’t pain. Was he mentally ill?

Through an opening in the privacy curtain, she caught sight of Lyle, the retired cop who worked as a security guard in their emergency department. She jerked her head slightly in her patient’s direction and Lyle’s still-sharp instincts made him amble casually in her direction.

Lyle stuck his head in the room. “Julia, how’re you doing today?” His broad Boston accent always made her smile, but she was getting a weird vibe from her patient. Lyle was, too. He came into the room, his tan uniform pressed neatly and his silver hospital security badge shining on his chest. “How are you tonight, sir?”

“Gotta get out of here!” Mark jumped off the bed and jerked away. Julia yelped, her thread still sticking out of his head with the needle dangling in his hair.

“Easy, buddy,” Lyle tried to soothe him, thumbing his radio for back-up.

Julia tried to get out of his way but the agitated man grabbed her wrist. “Help me, Lyle!” she yelled. She vaguely remembered him tossing her away from him, her head cracking into the corner of the countertop.

When she opened her eyes next, she was on the floor, her head splitting in pain. Lyle lay near her, blood pulsing from his chest. He was pale and clammy, losing blood at an alarming rate. The patient stood about ten feet away, a red-stained scalpel in his hand. The scalpel from her kit. He must have grabbed it after shoving her and then stabbed Lyle.

Julia brutally forced back the pain, pushing up to a sitting position. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve had a rough evening.” He laughed nervously. “Any minute now, the cops will be here for me.”

What did he expect? A mint on his hospital pillow?

He read her scorn. “Oh, yes. But what you don’t know is that he’s not the only person I stabbed tonight. Caught my wife cheating. Tonight she grabbed a knife and well, I got to her first.” He swallowed hard. “I didn’t mean to, but she wouldn’t stop screaming at me about her stupid boyfriend. I had to shut her up.”

“Don’t make this worse for yourself,” she stated as firmly as she could. “Put down the scalpel and let me help the guard.” Other staff were yelling in the hall for help.

“Get back or I’ll finish them both off!” He shrugged. “What’s one more murder tonight? I’ll get life in prison whether it’s one life—or many.”

Julia went cold. Lyle wouldn’t make it if he didn’t get medical help soon, and she was pretty sure she had a bad concussion.

Sirens sounded in the background, distracting Mark. He looked away briefly, and she caught sight of a small ankle holster above Lyle’s heavy black shoe. She never would have seen it if she weren’t sitting on the floor. Non-regulation, but the guard was a retired cop and probably never went anywhere without a gun.

She crawled toward the guard. “Please, let me help him.” She clutched at his leg, unsnapped the holster and pulled out the small black revolver. She pointed it at Mark’s middle. “Drop the scalpel!”

“Now where did that gun come from?” He sounded more interested than intimidated, and that was more frightening than rage. He was a man with nothing to lose, holding her and a dying man hostage with a deadly weapon in the middle of the emergency department. He moved toward her.

“Get back!” Her vision split him into two and then back into one. But the scalpel was her focus.

He waved it so it glinted in the light. “You’re as bad as my wife. My late wife. My dear, departed, unfaithful wife.” His laugh echoed crazily. “Put the gun down and I won’t kill you.”

No, her father’s voice floated in her mind. Don’t. He’s lying.

“I know,” she whispered.

He grinned, blood trickling down his face and growing bloodlust in his eyes. The first murder might have been an accident, but she feared he was beginning to enjoy himself. “That’s a good girl. Gun’s getting heavy for a tiny thing like you, isn’t it?”

It was.

“And you don’t even know how to use it, do you?”

But she did. Her father had taught her in the pistol range when they lived in the Azores. Oh, Azores. Oh, Franco. If she failed, she would never see him again.

Thumbed back the hammer, the click deafening in the small room.

His eyes narrowed. His shoulders bunched. He was coming.

Her finger tightened on the trigger. God help her.

Aim for center mass, her father commanded. Start shooting. Don’t stop until the gun’s empty. He came.

She obeyed her father. For once. And he saved her life.

Julia sat up in bed with a scream.

“Julia!” Someone grabbed her around the shoulders and she screamed louder. She was immediately let go. “Julia, please! You are safe.”

She opened her eyes and saw Frank kneeling next to her. “Oh, my God, Frank. I am so sorry. Did I wake you?”

His eyebrows shot up even higher and she realized what a silly question that was. But he didn’t point out the obvious. “Julia, are you all right?”

“Fine.” She pressed her hand against her thumping heart.

“No.” He rested his hand on her knee. “Sometimes you cry out in your sleep, but nothing like this. What is your nightmare, Julia?”

She sighed. “I lived it a few months ago when I got hurt.”

“What?” He sat next to her and gathered her into his arms. “You told me you hit your head at work and got a concussion. Does that give you nightmares?”

“In a way.” She took a deep breath and told him about the man coming into the emergency room needing stitches. How he had grabbed her, slamming her head against the wall and stabbing the guard. Frank listened silently but his distress grew as she told how the man had killed his wife.

“I grabbed the guard’s gun when I fell next to him and scooted away from him. The bad guy came at me and I shot him.”

Frank gasped. “You shot him? You?”

Julia almost didn’t believe it herself. It had been something out of a cops-and-lawyers TV show. The cops had just arrived. The first one on the scene yanked her out of the room, the second aimed his gun at the dead man.

Her savior dragged her around the corner and took the gun from her hands. The emergency team rushed in for poor Lyle as soon as the second cop called the scene clear. “Are you okay, miss?”

The floor wobbled under her feet, and he called for help, supporting her weight. “You did good, miss.”

It was a good thing to kill someone?

The cop read her unsaid question. He was in his forties with a ruddy, lined face and weary, though kind blue eyes. “He would have killed you, too. You get to go home tonight. He doesn’t.”

With her concussion, she didn’t go home that night. But she did go home.

It was still very raw, but she’d come to see the older cop had been right. “Yes, he had a scalpel and would have killed me as well as the hurt security guard. I had to do it to save us both. And we both survived. Lyle needed surgery and lots of blood tranfusions, but the last I heard, he was doing well.”

“Thank God you did what you had to do.” Frank’s voice thickened. “Or you would have been lost to your family. Lost to me. How could we have gone on without you?”

She touched his forearm. “Frank, you haven’t seen me in eleven years before now. You went on without me for that long.”

“No, I didn’t.” He pulled her against his strong chest, her cheek resting in the springy hair. He stroked her head. “I didn’t go on, Julia. I went back to New York that August and was a mess. George and I went out to a bar and I got drunk and cried in my beer. I told him some of what had happened between us, he dragged me home and poured me into bed. He’s the only one who knew about us.”

“I was a mess, too, Frank. I went back to school and slept-walked through the first semester, waking up only when my grades took a nosedive.”

He gave a melancholy laugh. “I wouldn’t get out of bed for my classes. George dragged me into the university counseling office after I missed the first week. It helped me cope, but not much more. Portuguese dukes are not good at taking suggestions. Arrogance and anguish are a bad combination.”

“I had to go to a counselor a couple weeks after I got hurt,” Julia blurted out. “They said I was at high risk for post-traumatic stress and made me visit the police psychologist, of all people.”

“Why him?”

“Her. Because she knows what to say to people who have just shot criminals.” Julia nudged him in the side. “That’s typical of you to assume it would be a man.” Her effort to lighten the topic made him grin.

“Julia, my love, you of all people know I would never underestimate a woman.”

“That guy did.”

He actually growled. “I am glad he is dead, Julia, because I would kill him myself for daring to hurt you. My darling.” He kissed her forehead.

She allowed herself to sink into him, to let him comfort her. Although her parents had tried their best after the shooting to help her through the trauma, she had purposely hidden her distress to protect them and their feelings. Looking back, she probably hadn’t fooled them at all, especially her dad, who had lost several Air Force buddies to warfare, training accidents or airplane crashes.

“Come, lie down with me again,” Frank coaxed, fluffing her pillow and covering them up with the soft cotton sheet and summerweight blanket. “I’ll keep you safe. Don’t worry, meu bem.”

Julia rested her cheek on his chest. His heart thumped under her ear, fast but slowing gradually as they relaxed. She drifted back to sleep, knowing somehow that her dream wouldn’t return that night.



FRANK STARED AT THE CEILING, forcing himself to breathe slowly and steadily as to not alarm Julia. Julia, his Julia, forced to face down a deadly criminal and kill him herself. None of this, not one bit of this would have happened if he hadn’t been such a coward after they’d parted. He’d taken to his bed like a melancholic poet instead of chasing after her.

He’d handled their break-up poorly, but in his defense, twenty-year-old men were not the most polished creatures. And he’d lost more than only Julia.

He’d let her sleep, let her dream more pleasant dreams. And in the morning he’d make it very clear that he wouldn’t make the same mistake of letting her go again.



THE NEXT MORNING, FRANK had something on his mind, Julia could tell. She’d fixed him chouriço and pancakes topped with honey and pineapple jam again but he’d been unusually quiet. She wondered if he was thinking about her nightmare last night. “More coffee?” she offered.

He shook his head. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Julia looked out the window at the gray clouds scudding along. An Atlantic storm was blowing in, but she was used to them. “Promise me we’ll head back before we get blown to the mainland.”

“It won’t take long.” He handed her a slicker and put one on himself.

She didn’t quite know what to make of that but it sounded as if he wanted to have a relationship chat. Not what she was looking forward to, but inevitable. Her life and career was back in Boston, and his was at his Portuguese estate.

She suppressed a sigh and walked out the kitchen door in front of him. They crossed the stone terrace and descended onto the lush green lawn.

The lawn ended at the rocky cove near the boat dock, but he kept going over the rocks until they were out of sight of the house, a raised bluff at their backs and the ocean at their feet.

“We never did talk about why we broke up eleven years ago,” he said.

“We’ve talked about the past somewhat, Frank. Why do we have to dwell on it?”

“Because our problems lie in the past.” He took a deep breath. “We both remember why we broke up back then.”

Blood rushed to her face. “A misunderstanding.”

“You were pregnant, Julia.” His expression was as serious now as it had been eleven years before. “And then you weren’t.”

“Shut up, Frank!” It burst from her before she could stop. “Just…stop.” She really didn’t want to discuss this. They’d never discussed this. “It doesn’t matter…it was only a couple weeks that we knew about…that.”

But he battled on. “I’m so sorry you lost our baby, Julia. I could have handled it better.”

“Yes, you could have.”

He shrugged helplessly.

“I was about a week pregnant, looking at two little pink stripes on the dipstick, and you put your hand on my shoulder and told me we would get married in the fall.”

“Obviously! I couldn’t leave you to face it all alone. Did you think I would just jet back to New York to school and let you explain everything to your parents without me to support you?”

She’d been careful to keep her miscarriage secret from her parents at first but had broken down and told them later in the year after they’d found her sobbing in her room one day. “I was your obligation, and you never once mentioned love, just marriage and duty.”

“But you were my duty.”

“And I was scared to death. To drop out of school, to marry you, to become a mother. I would have been the nineteen-year-old pregnant Duchess of Aguas Santas. I’m sure your mother would have loved planning our shotgun wedding.”

“She would have loved it, because I loved you. And now we are older and hopefully wiser.”

“I don’t know about wiser, Frank. We seem to be repeating the same pattern.”

He looked down at her, his expression ironic. “Well, I don’t want to break up again. That part doesn’t bear repeating. If you didn’t realize I loved you eleven years ago, I’ll say it again—I love you still. And I hope you love me, too.”

“Oh, Franco.” She cupped his smooth jaw. What was she going to do? At least she could tell him the truth, no matter what she decided. “I don’t think I’ve ever stopped loving you.”

He wrapped his arms around her. “I’m so glad to hear that. If I hadn’t been such a fool, we would have been settled at my estate long ago, and you never would have been put in such a dangerous position. Forced to take a life to save your own.”

“Of course I regret that, but I don’t regret the other parts of my life.” She regretted that he had never knocked at her dorm room door, that she hadn’t taken the train to New York to find him at his apartment.

“Not at all?” He raised a black brow.

It had been a second-best option, but the best one she’d had at the time. “I got to finish my education, get my nursing license. I graduated from graduate school with high honors. I’ve met so many patients and their families, had the chance to help them live, and some of them, to help them die. I don’t regret that at all.”

“It doesn’t seem like a fair trade,” he informed her. “Losing our baby and a happy life with me for sick people you don’t even know.”

She pushed out of his arms. “I don’t need reminding about the baby, Frank. I cried every day for months and had to go to grief counseling to even function. I don’t think it was a fair trade because life is not fair. We don’t get a certain number of points to redeem, and if we lose the tickets, we aren’t given another packet. Why me? Why not me? Do you know how many young people and even children I’ve seen die? They have parents, too, and none of us is spared pain and suffering. Not in this life.” The cold, damp wind blew strands of hair across her face, temporarily blinding her. She brushed them out of the way.

His jaw jumped. “Then forget about that. I insist you come to Portugal and marry me. I can give you another baby—I can give you as many as we can manage. You don’t have to waste your emotions on strangers.”

He still didn’t understand. Her schooling and career was the only thing that had saved her from despair and paralysis. And his second proposal of marriage was about as grim as the first. She told him so.

“Well, excuse me if I am doing this wrong,” he replied sarcastically. “But I have only done this once before and it seems that I’m not doing any better this time.”

“We don’t have to get married. Why don’t we just get together in Boston or I could even come to Portugal to visit? Maybe not right away since I have to go back to work next month and I’ve been on disability leave.”

“What? You’re going back to work?”

“My work means a lot to me.”

“So come work in Portugal. You would learn the language easily and there are plenty of hospitals.”

“It would take me months, if not years to pick up Portuguese well enough to function in a high-pressure work situation.” And then what? Date Frank on her days off? Live with him at the fazenda? Marry him and be the Duchess of Santas Aguas, hobnobbing with royalty and presiding over a huge estate?

“I think I know what is going on. When you work at the hospital, you can be the most caring person around—but only temporarily, and only on the surface.”

“What?”

He nodded. “I understand why, because you would not be able to function if you cared deeply and permanently about your patients. Maybe you are carrying that over to me—to us.”

She frowned at him.

“Julia, this is our life. You don’t have to protect yourself from me.”

“Yes, I do.” She spoke without thinking, but it was true.

“Why? I know I hurt you before without meaning to, but now things are different.”

“No.” She backed away from him. “You love me too much and you want too much from me.”

“What?” He ran a hand through his damp black curls in frustration. “Why is that a bad thing? I don’t understand.”

“I can control things at my job—or at least deal with them better.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, yes, things are so much under control that you had to shoot a murderer in your emergency department. And you would rather go back there than stay with me?”

“Yes, because that was just physical pain. If my heart broke again, I wouldn’t be able to survive.” If she lost another baby, that would be the end of her. Guess that grief counseling hadn’t worked so well after all.

He dropped his hands to his sides. “And that is that, eh?”

“Yes.” Julia tipped her face to the sky, hoping the rain would disguise her wet cheeks. She’d been a fool to think she could spend so much time with Frank, spend so much time making love with him, and not encounter heartbreak. But maybe she could minimize it if she got away from him. “When can you take me back to São Miguel?”

His shoulders slumped. “Back to your parents’ apartment?”

She nodded, and he looked out to sea. “After the storm. Unless you want to get away badly enough to risk the weather.” He sounded bitter, and she didn’t blame him.

“I’ll pack and we can leave when it clears.” She turned to leave him. “I am sorry, Frank.”

He faced her, his eyes shocking in their desolation. “Don’t apologize, Julia. I actually feel sorry for you—that you would give up a second chance at our love just because of fear. I have never known you to be a coward, but people do change. I know I have.” He looked over the ocean again, and she left him. Left him to pack, left him to go back to her predictably unpredictable life of long hours at the emergency department and long hours alone at home.

Maybe that would sound better once she got back into her usual routine. And once again, she would never drive to the Azorean enclave south of Boston. Because the locals there would wonder why the sight of Portuguese pastries and smoked sausage made the American girl cry her eyes out.



BENEDITO HUNG UP THE PHONE in the main kitchen of the estate of Santas Aguas, his lovely wife Leonor chopping vegetables for dinner.

“Well?” She selected a potato and diced it like a machine. Leonor with a knife was slightly frightening, but Benedito knew how to keep on her good side.

“The duke has royally messed up.”

She snorted. “He let that girl get away from him?”

“Again.” Benedito nodded. “And he wants me on the next flight to São Miguel to help him finish the renovations.”

Leonor pointed the wicked-looking blade at him. “That boy will never marry anyone but that American girl. And he will never marry her unless he sees her again. Don’t you want little Duartes running around the estate? Putting them on their first ponies, teaching them about the long, proud traditions of our land and our people?”

“Of course, woman!” he barked. “I did my best to bring them together this last time, but now the Duke will throw himself into this renovation, and then it will be time for Stefania’s wedding. He will be in Italy, for goodness’ sake.”

Leonor stopped slicing, her gaze faraway. “The wedding. Invite her to the wedding.”

“But I don’t have the power to do that.” He spread his hands wide. “You and I are going, but we can’t take her as a guest.”

“Not us, idiota. Call little Stefania. She will do anything to make Franco happy.”

“Ah.” A wide grin spread over his face. “Meu bem, you are a genius.” Making sure the knife was set down, he threw his arms around his wife and kissed her. “As always, you know exactly what to do.” He lowered one hand to her ample bottom and gave her a pinch.

She squealed, but all that did was press her delightfully full bosom against his chest. He wiggled his brows. “Hurry up with that chopping. As soon as I get off the phone, I will show you my appreciation.”

“Oh, you.” She shoved him away, but her face was flushed. Benedito cackled and found the battered phone book with Stefania’s private number and dialed. First, the phone call. And if dinner was a little late, too bad. He had to make the most of his time with his voluptuous wife before answering the ducal command to return to the Azores.