and then fixing them around Ben’s head to keep him from moving it as she finally broke into motion out of the room.
Discipline had been drilled into him after the King had ordered Quinn’s divorce and enlistment. He’d learned to follow their orders and he’d taught his body to follow his own. Self-discipline would see him through this, no matter how wrong it had been to see Ben hanging there, no matter how wrong it was for him to finally see Anais again like this, no matter how wrong it was that she’d changed so much. Falsely brown hair, eyes, tanned skin... Wrong. All of it.
The resolve to speak evenly was all that let him banish his anger as he turned his attention to Ben—who obviously didn’t know who she was. “What’s the doctor’s name?”
“Anna,” Ben answered.
A brown name for a bizarrely brown makeover.
Grasping for the only way he knew how to face such a situation, he attempted some levity to try and take the bleakness out of his friend’s eyes. “The good news is, your arms still work great. I’m fairly certain I’ll have a black eye later.”
“You should’ve left me be,” Ben said, his voice a painful-sounding rasp that could only come from an injured throat.
“I don’t think so,” Quinn muttered and then looked at the door. “Rosalie would be doomed to treason if I had, after she’d murdered me slowly in retribution.”
Where the hell had Anais gone to get the brace—across town?
“What are you even doing here, Doc?”
“You’ve been avoiding my calls worse than my ex-wife,” he said just as Anais came back into the room, the sounds of tearing straps accompanying her ripping the collar open, and perfectly complementing the color draining from her face. She’d heard him. Good.
He focused back on Ben, and that anger instantly diminished. “I came to see you, idiot.”
Quinn accepted the collar and fitted it around Ben’s neck for stability. Only when it was in place did he help Ben into the wheelchair.
Having tasks to do helped. Not looking at Anais helped. If he looked at her, the way his heart thundered in his ears, he’d say or do the wrong thing. That was something about the military that had worked for him—he’d never had to worry about how to say something, just whether he should say it or not. Soldiers appreciated blunt honesty more than diplomats. Something his brother Philip would remember after Quinn’s first royal function.
“You should’ve let me hang,” Ben said again, the words sinking into the middle of Quinn’s stomach.
He shook his head. “I came to see you before I met with the King, which should give you some idea of my priorities right now. You’re the last person in this room I’d let hang.”
She’d hear that too. And she’d hear this... “Maybe even the last person in the world, though I might have to make an exception for any of GQ’s cover models. Even May’s, and you know how that ended.”
Petty. But it felt good to be just a little bit mean. Not that it could be all that mean—she was the one who’d left. And it made Ben almost smile, even the slight quirk of his lips was better than the desolation he’d seen in his friend’s eyes.
“You’re going to have to suffer me checking you over.”
She’d returned with a bag, wearing a white jacket over what he could only classify as workout clothes, the shoulder of the jacket embroidered with the lie that she claimed as her name. Dr. Anna Kincaid.
Kincaid. Family name. Just not her maiden name. Or his name.
From the bag, she produced a stethoscope and handed it to him without his asking, but not without her hand trembling.
Afraid? Maybe she trembled with sympathy or worry for her patient, if she could even feel those human emotions.
He snatched the device, fitted it in his ears, and went about his job. His former job. He wasn’t a medic anymore; yesterday had been his last day as a soldier.
Concentrating on the fast but steady thudding he heard through the ear pieces took more willpower than he’d have thought he had to spare. The urge to throw Anais over his shoulder like a caveman and take her somewhere to make her give him answers was just as strong. Maybe stronger. He’d been waiting seven bloody years for answers, and he’d never gotten a satisfactory one. He’d wait until he’d helped his friend, because today his luck had changed. She was here; answers were a matter of time.
Breaths sounded ragged but normal, all things considered.
“Let’s get out of here. I think we could use some fresh air.”
“Qui—Prince... Captain? There is a protocol...” Anais said from behind him.
He turned and looked pointedly at her embroidered shoulder. “I’m sure there is. Send whoever will be coming out to the garden, Anna.”
“Yes, sir.” She didn’t flinch, though he noticed she also didn’t look him in the eye.
Grabbing the handles of Ben’s chair, he maneuvered them both right out the door and down the hallway. He knew the way to the garden.
He’d loved a girl in those gardens. A girl who apparently no longer existed.
How the hell had she managed to sneak back into the country under a different name, and start practicing medicine at a government facility, of all things?
Once they wheeled out into the fresh air, Quinn angled them to a bench so he could sit and be on eye level with the person he’d actually come to see. The one who obviously needed to talk.
Parked in a patch of summer sunshine, he waited. It wasn’t the time for pushing. It wasn’t the time to tell Ben he should want to live, or to tell him anything about his own condition. He’d listen. And he’d talk about other things. Be a friend. Be present.
Call Ben’s fiancée and family as soon as he left.
Leave this Anais nonsense to figure out later. It wasn’t really important. There was nothing she could say to him to make any of what had gone on between them better.
I never loved you.
I stopped loving you.
You were never that important to me...
What could she really say to explain leaving?
The desire to know was just a natural reaction to seeing her again, a summoning of that anguish he’d moved past at least a few years ago.
It didn’t really matter. She didn’t matter anymore.
* * *
Three hours and at least a hundred self-reminders not to think about Anais later, Quinn found himself outside the shut door to Dr. Anna Kincaid’s office.
Anna Kincaid. Anna. Kincaid. The name summoned bile to his throat. Seven years might as well have been seven minutes for the crush of desperation that had him wanting to claw through the door to reach her.
He’d
