Читать книгу The Billionaire Claims His Wife - Amy Andrews - Страница 6

DR NATHAN TRENT felt like hell. He trudged through the downpour, his Italian leather shoes squelching as he pulled his saturated jacket closer to his body. Another set of chills skated across his hot, soaked skin. His fever and the rain were making his teeth chatter. He sneezed, and the razorblades in his throat cut a little deeper. His joints ached, making each footfall feel like a step up Mount Everest in the middle of a blizzard.

He thought about his sleek new Porsche, covered in mud and abandoned a kilometre away, bogged down deep in roadside slush. He should have waited it out. At least it was warm and dry inside his latest toy. But he’d been driving in torrential rain for hours with no let-up, and Jacqui’s place hadn’t seemed that far. And he needed to get horizontal—an impossibility in the confines of a car that was built for show not practicality.

The thought of throttling his estranged wife sustained him as the rain belted down around him. He couldn’t even hear the roar of the ocean somewhere to his left over the noise from the heavens.

Why couldn’t she live in civilisation? In a city? Or a town? Or at least on a highway somewhere, instead of this narrow pot-holed excuse for a road that strung together a series of communities collectively known as Serendipity.

His fingers shook as he checked his mobile phone for reception, shoving it back in his jacket pocket in disgust at the barless signal. No mobile towers out here to ruin the pristine, free-range, organic air. No chemicals or satellite dishes—or anything that was remotely useful to civilisation!

‘Damn it, Jacqui!’

Twenty minutes later not even the faint glimmer of lights up ahead could rouse an ounce of glee. The flu that had started as a vague sore throat and sniffle this morning now had him fully in its grip. Water from his hair and his forehead dripped onto his lashes and he blinked, half expecting the lights to be gone—an illusive mirage summonsed by a fever-addled brain.

Nope. They were still there. He forced his legs to walk faster, his joints protesting at the increased demand on his flagging reserves. When he finally drew level with a darkened row of shops, one solitary light shone from an illuminated sign mounted on a pole near the front door of the middle building.

It had seen better days. The light blinked on and off in some kind of electrical death throe, and between his delirium and the pouring rain he could just make out the letters. Veterinarian.

It took all his determination to lift his arm, make a fist and rap against the heavy wooden door. He shivered as he waited, feeling desperately ill and frustratingly weak.

‘Come on, Jacqui, answer the bloody door!’

His curse was drowned out by the deafening drumming of rain and the pounding of his fist against the wood. The effort to be heard strained his inflamed vocal cords, ripped through his sore throat and hammered through his throbbing temples. He leaned his forehead against the door and contemplated death.

His own this time.

Dr Jacqueline Callaghan woke with a start and looked at the red illuminated figures on her bedside clock. One a.m. Her heart was pounding almost as loudly as the storm outside, and her eyes fluttered shut as she realised it was just the continuing heavy rain on the tin roof that had woken her. Shep, lying stretched out at the end of her bed, hadn’t moved a muscle.

Her eyes flew open when the noise came again a few seconds later. Shep even lifted his head. That wasn’t Mother Nature knocking at her door. She groaned as she dragged herself out of bed. Being woken in the middle of the night wasn’t unusual in her line of work, but what pet crisis could there possibly be in this God-awful weather?

She stumbled into the red cotton robe she kept by the bed for emergencies such as these, desperately trying to clear the fog from her brain. She’d been up most of last night with a sick horse from one of the nearby properties. She was dog tired, her body craving the restorative powers of good, solid sleep.

The pounding came again. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ she muttered as she descended the internal stairs as fast as her groggy brain allowed, Shep by her side. She flicked the outside light on and opened the door.

It took a moment or two for Jacqui’s brain to compute who the cursing, dishevelled-looking man standing on her doorstep actually was. He was dripping—literally—his hair plastered in dark wet strips against his forehead, droplets running down his face and clinging to his eyelashes. His suit was completely soaked.

She peered closer, something primal inside her knowing who it was despite her sensible side rejecting such a preposterous supposition. It couldn’t be. ‘Nathan?’

Had he been well, his keen wit intact, he would have said something ironic, like Hi, honey, I’m home, but at the moment it was taking all his strength just to stay upright. ‘Jacqueline.’

She stared at him askance. Nathan Trent—richer-than-sin fertility specialist, maker of a thousand babies, darling of the business community—was standing on her doorstep.

‘What … what are you doing here?’

Nathan shivered as icy fingers stroked his skin. He felt like a popsicle, even though he knew somewhere deep in the recesses of his brain that he was burning up.

‘I’m sorry, Jacqui,’ he said, ignoring her question. He needed to get dry. He needed to crawl under ten blankets and sleep. ‘I feel like h … h … hell.’ His teeth chattered uncontrollably. ‘Do you th … think I could c … come in?’

Jacqui blinked, the enormity of seeing him again so completely out of the blue too much for her sleep-deprived brain. But the croak of his voice and the alarming sway as he let go of the doorjamb at last penetrated through to the doctor in her.

‘Whoa!’ she said, reaching for him, steadying him. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, ushering him in and shutting the door.

Nathan closed his eyes and luxuriated briefly in relative silence as the heavy door muffled the storm. It was dry and warm inside, and he’d never been more pleased to be anywhere than he was right now to be inside Jacqui’s house.

‘Nate?’

His eyes fluttered open and he frowned down into her concerned face. ‘Flu,’ he muttered, attempting to shrug out of the jacket that suddenly felt as if it weighed a ton against his aching shoulders. ‘Feel like crap.’

Jacqui helped him off with the sodden garment, putting her arm around his waist as he swayed again. His long-sleeved business shirt was soaked, but it was hot against her arm—not cool as she had expected. She reached up and felt his forehead.

His skin was flushed and practically scorched her palm. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you dry.’

Nathan eyed the steps and groaned. They might as well have been the Alps. He could barely keep his head up, let alone master a flight of stairs. He was tired. So tired. Deep down in his bones weary. ‘I can’t.’

‘Hold on to me,’ Jacqui murmured, ‘I’ll help.’

She was no dainty, fragile female. Most of her practice consisted of puppies, parrots and goldfish, but some of it was large animal work, and that required the strength and stamina which her statuesque frame coped with easily. But still, as he put his arm around her shoulders and leaned into her, she staggered under his bulk.

She’d always appreciated how his superior height and broad male shoulders had made her feel more feminine, and she was surprised to feel a familiar stirring deep down low at the solidness of muscle beneath her hands, the bound of his heart against her palm and the way her be-ringed fingers looked with his shirt splayed beneath them. She quashed it, bracing herself for the slow trip up the stairs.

At the top she guided him to the lounge room. ‘Sit,’ she instructed him.

A hundred questions vied for front-line attention in her head as she scurried off to the linen cupboard. She pushed them aside. Nate was obviously unwell. Why he’d turned up on her doorstep after a decade could be discussed when he was better.

Nathan sneezed as his shaking fingers attempted to undo the buttons of his shirt. The warmth of the house was a welcome haven, but he needed to get out of his wet clothes. He cursed as he fumbled the job, the buttons refusing to budge.

‘Towels and blankets,’ Jacqueline announced, reentering the room with an armful of linen. She stopped in front of him, watching his feeble attempts at undressing himself.

Nathan looked up at her. Backlit by the light, her crazy ringlet hair of russet and gold looked almost angelic. Was he hallucinating? ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do it.’

Jacqueline gazed down at the whole lot of man sitting in her lounge, looking like a drowned rat and helpless as a kitten. It was an admission she knew wouldn’t have been easy for him. She sighed and knelt. ‘Let me.’

She briskly undid the buttons, ignoring the chest she’d known like the back of her hand ten years ago, and pushed the wet shirt off his shoulders and down his arms. She grabbed one of her towels and threw it around his shoulders, cocooning him in it while she attacked his dripping hair with another.

Nathan drew the soft fluffy towel closer. It smelt like soap and sunshine and Jacqui, and he closed his eyes, hunching into it, absorbing its warmth. The fabric rasped against his heated flesh, goosing his skin. A wet nose nudged his hand and he opened his eyes.

‘You still have Shep,’ he said, stroking the dog’s head. He’d given her the golden retriever as an anniversary gift years before.

Jacqui’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Yes,’ she said briskly, continuing the job.

He sat placidly, his hand on Shep’s back, as she towelled his hair, incapable of offering any assistance. A shard of a memory from their past undulated through the fevered quagmire of his brain.

His eyes fluttered open. ‘You used to like to play with my hair,’ he murmured.

Jacqueline’s hands stilled, and she looked into his amazing green eyes. They were glazed with fever, and she could see the lights were on but no one was home. She ignored him, taking his shoes off. ‘You’re going to have to stand so I can get your pants off.’

Nathan heard the words come towards him from far away. They sounded disconnected, and he gave a goofy laugh. ‘You used to like to get my pants off, too.’

Jacqueline gritted her teeth, reminding herself it was the delirium talking. ‘Up you get.’

He rose slowly and leaned against her as she reached for his fly. He gave another juvenile laugh, and she rolled her eyes as she dispensed with his soaked trousers and underwear, trying to channel a mother superior–like indifference.

He stood still while she briskly rubbed him down, drying his legs with as much clinical detachment as she could muster, ignoring another part of his anatomy she’d once known like the back of her hand.

He swayed again, and she held on to him with one hand while the other arranged some bedding on the couch. ‘You can sit now,’ she murmured.

Nathan collapsed back onto the couch. He felt icy cold all over and he shivered, tucking his legs up towards his chest. ‘Freezing,’ he murmured, wrapping his arms around his knees.

He looked incredibly vulnerable, naked on her couch in the foetal position, the overhead light bathing his superbly tanned body in a soft golden hue. He almost looked like the boy she had met at uni, not one of the most influential men in the country, and she threw a one-hundred-percent-duck-down duvet over him to block the image from her sight and her mind.

She looked down at him for a long time. ‘What are you doing here, Nathan Trent?’ she whispered.

Jacqui placed Nate’s clothes into the washing machine, ignoring the ‘dry clean only’ advice next to the designer label. She hung his jacket up and parked his equally expensive-looking shoes near the front door.

She crept back into the lounge. Shep had taken up position on the floor near the couch, and thumped his tail as he spotted her. She switched off the overhead light and reached across Nathan’s supine form to snap on the nearby lamp.

He looked totally out of it, his cheeks flushed, his full lips slack with slumber. She stroked the back of her hand against his roughened jaw. He was hot. So hot. He murmured something unintelligible, shifting slightly, and she withdrew her hand abruptly, scuttling away to the couch opposite.

Her heart drummed a crazy beat, matching the inclement weather in its ferocity, and she held her breath. Fortunately Nathan settled quickly—which couldn’t be said for her pulse—and she sank gratefully into the leather cushions, pulling her feet up under her.

God, how she’d used to love watching him sleep. Of course his hair had been longer then. A curly mop that she had loved to push her fingers into, rub her face against. It was shorter now, cropped closer to his head, its tendency to curl severely denied.

He had slept naked then too. They both had. Clothes had seemed such an inconvenience when neither of them had been able to get enough of each other. Even at the end, when they had drifted apart, their desire had still been a potent force, keeping them bound to a marriage that no longer worked.

Jacqui shut her eyes against the memories. There was no point dredging up the past. The man lying on her couch might be the man she’d married all those years ago—was still technically married to—but he was as much a stranger to her now as he had been at the end. And wishing things had been different didn’t make it so.

It was five a.m. when Jacqui next awoke, her neck stiff from falling asleep in a semi-upright position. The rain still pelted against the roof like a platoon of tap-dancing soldiers, and a grey watery dawn was breaking through the window. And Nathan Trent still slept on her couch.

Except the duvet no longer covered him. At some stage he had moved onto his back, pushed the blanket down to his hips, exposing his smooth, bare chest and only just covering what lay a little further south. The long leg closest to the edge of the couch jutted out too, escaping its covering, its foot flat on the floor. The opposite arm was thrown up over his head, his face turned away from her, pressing into the bulk of his bicep.

Dear God, he was gorgeous. She’d tried not to look before, as she’d been undressing him, but now she couldn’t stop. Maturity had given his body an edge, a hardness that youth hadn’t. He’d always had a good body, but now he looked … fit. More honed. As if he worked at it now instead of relying on a God-given gift.

He murmured and turned his head, and she held her breath. His eyes fluttered open. The clocks stopped. The rain faded. Her breath stuttered to a halt. It took a second or two for those incredible jade eyes to focus on her.

‘Thirsty,’ he croaked.

It took another beat or two for her functions to return. She sucked in a breath. ‘Right. Okay. Be right back.’

Nathan watched her leave, trying to figure out where he was and why Jacqui was here. But his head felt as if it was stuffed with cotton wool, and it hurt too much to think anyway. He sat up and the room shifted. He vaguely felt Shep lick his calf as he buried his forehead in his hands and waited for everything to stop moving.

Jacqueline entered the room and paused momentarily. He looked even more imposing sitting upright, his back and chest and both legs exposed, the duvet bunched around his hips.

‘Take these,’ she said, injecting a businesslike note into her voice, forcing herself closer. She nudged his hand with the glass, two pills on the flat of her palm.

‘What are they?’ he asked, looking at them.

‘Cold and flu tablets.’

Nathan reached for them as they swam out of focus. He located them through sheer force of will. He felt as if someone had been lighting spot fires in his joints, and would have taken any pill she’d given him to extinguish the flames. He pushed them past his lips, into a mouth that tasted sour and furry, and gulped the whole glass down.

‘Thanks,’ he murmured, collapsing back against his makeshift bed as a coughing spasm took hold. The aches intensified, pulsing in protest as each cough tore through his spine, his chest, his head.

Jacqueline frowned. The cough sounded nasty. Maybe it was more than the flu? Maybe he’d managed to give himself bilateral pneumonia in the pouring rain last night? She left him for a moment and retrieved her medical bag from the clinic downstairs.

His eyes were shut when she returned. She opened her bag, pulled out her stethoscope, and perched herself on the edge of his couch. She rubbed the stethoscope in her hands to warm it, and then placed it on his still exposed chest.

Nathan opened his eyes. Jacqui. Jacqui was still here. ‘What are you doing?’ he murmured.

‘That cough sounds nasty. Just checking your lung fields,’ she said briskly. ‘Sit up.’ She grabbed his arm and pulled.

Nathan couldn’t muster the energy to resist. ‘It’s just the flu,’ he protested. He was a doctor, damn it. He knew flu when it had the audacity to invade his usually impenetrable immune system.

Her long fingers felt heavenly against his skin, the wide bands of her rings like icicles. He studied the chunky jewellery adorning her fingers. The intertwined strands of metal set with earthy stones took him way back, to days when they’d eaten spaghetti straight from the tin before crashing together in a tangle of limbs after night duty. When they’d stayed up late eating honey toast and watching old black and white horror films in bed.

‘I could have given you diamonds,’ he muttered.

But even his feverish brain recalled she hadn’t given a damn about diamonds. It had been her funky eclectic style, sourced from garage sales and op shops, that had attracted him all those years ago. And cheap and cheerful still looked better on her than any diamond on any woman he’d ever seen.

Jacqui heard his voice rumble through her earpieces as she moved the stethoscope around his back, but his eyes were shut and she dismissed the odd statement as his temperature talking. His skin was warm under her touch, and the urge to rub her cheek against his oh-so-close shoulder was surprisingly powerful.

‘It sounds clear,’ she murmured, pushing him gently back and out of reach.

Nathan shut his eyes, the effort to sit up rendering him completely exhausted. He was drifting off when something was pushed into his ear canal. ‘Hey,’ he protested, opening his eyes.

‘Shh. It’s just a thermometer,’ Jacqueline said, pulling the tympanic device out of his ear and looking at the digital display. ‘Thirty-eight point nine degrees.’

Nathan looked at her for a long moment, trying to work out why his wife was here. Jacqui was here? ‘I s’pose I should be grateful you only stuck it in my ear,’ he murmured, before the effort to keep his eyes open became too much again.

Jacqueline rolled her eyes at the old vet joke she’d heard a thousand times. She looked down at him. His stubble was heavier now, but no less fascinating. She sighed. He’d drifted off again. He was bound to do that for probably most of the day—maybe even tomorrow as well. So she’d better get used to him lying on her couch looking all shaggy and fascinating. It was going to be a very long weekend indeed.

Saturday evening, after a slow, rainy day in her clinic, and multiple trips up the stairs to check on Nathan, Jacqueline put an Enya CD on low, collapsed on the couch opposite a still sleeping Nathan and an ever-present Shep, and opened her book. Not that she could get into it. Her gaze kept flicking to his face, checking on him. His lashes, so long they cast shadows she could see from across the room on his cheekbones, were endlessly fascinating.

An hour later she realised she’d read the same page over and over. The clock said eight and the evening stretched ahead of her. She looked at him again, and was startled to find him looking back at her.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi.’ Neither of them said anything for a moment. ‘Are you feeling better?’ His gaze was clearer; the fevered glitter it had been sporting since he’d landed on her doorstep had dulled.

Nathan shook his head, and winced as his neck protested the sudden movement. ‘Marginally.’

‘Are you hungry? I can make you something. Some toast, maybe?’

He gave a weak smile. ‘Ah, toast. Jacqui’s cure for everything.’ He knew she would have been happy to eat tea and toast the rest of her life. It was like the sixth food group to her. His stomach turned at the mere thought of food. ‘Pass.’

She ignored his dig. ‘You’re due a couple more tablets.’

Good. His sore throat had settled, and he didn’t think his head was in imminent danger of exploding from his shoulders, but he did feel as if he’d gone ten rounds with a giant. ‘Where’s your bathroom?’ he asked.

‘Out the door to the left.’

Nathan sat gingerly. He took a moment to gather his energy and stood, his legs disgustingly weak. A wave of dizziness hit him square in the solar plexus, distracting him momentarily from the sudden realisation that he was naked. And then Jacqui was there, holding him around the waist, the thin multi-coloured bangles adorning her wrists jangling, the metal of her rings cool against his heated flesh. He figured it wasn’t anything she hadn’t already seen a thousand times before.

‘Sorry.’ He grimaced.

Jacqui swallowed, her face hot. Was he apologising for needing her, or for his full-frontal nudity? ‘It’s fine. Just hold on to me.’

He allowed her to lead him to the toilet, and while he was taking care of business she placed his clean underwear and a spare toothbrush on the vanity. She hovered outside the bathroom, waiting for him to finish, relieved to see him slightly less exposed for the return trip. She handed him the tablets and water as he climbed back under the covers.

‘Thanks,’ he said, swallowing the entire contents of the glass, grateful beyond words for her help, just too exhausted to convey it adequately.

He shut his eyes and felt instant relief. But a strange nagging sixth sense pulled at his leaden lids and he looked up to find her watching him.

‘What?’ he croaked.

He’d been here for less than twenty-four hours, but already her house was filled with him. After he left she’d never be able to sit on that couch again without thinking of him laying there buck naked. ‘Why are you here, Nate?’

Good question. If only it didn’t hurt his head so much to think. He shut his eyes. And then he remembered.

He fixed her with an intense stare. ‘I need my wife back.’