Ship’s Nurse

By Rosie M. Banks

“A stowaway! It sounded romantic—like an MGM movie. He might be carrying some dread contagious disease, and she would be the nurse and cure the patient, and—since it was an MGM movie—she would marry him. That brought her back to reality. She would have to see him first.”

Beautiful Nurse Cathy Jerrold is setting off on a ten-day cruise to Bermuda onboard the same ship her Aunt Mary is to work as the ship’s nurse—but when Mary breaks an ankle before the ship leaves the harbor, Cathy volunteers to carry out Mary’s shipboard duties. Once at sea, she attracts the attention of bored Italian Turo Green, who is not exactly devoted to his wealthy and alcoholic wife Vinnie, 25 years his senior; her hometown beau Alan, a suave gadabout who loves the pursuit of Cathy more than he loves her, but who nonetheless has followed her aboard in the hope of persuading her to marry him; and both ship’s doctors, the old widowed one who drinks spiked iced tea all day, and the young one who is planning to leave the cruise line and set up shop on Nantucket. How hard will each of these men try to win Cathy’s affection? Will their desire to win her love push them too far—even to murder?