Читать книгу The Bewildered Wife - Vivian Leiber - Страница 11

Three hours later, after a conference call made from the hospital lobby to reschedule the day’s meeting with the owner of Eastman Toys, Dean Radcliffe swept up the hospital staircase with an oversize bouquet of dazzlingly white and pink tea roses that had been dropped off by Mrs. Witherspoon.

He stopped at the fourth-floor’s nurses’ station.

“Susan…uh,” he said, snapping the fingers of his free hand as he struggled to remember the last name of his nanny. “Susan. She was brought in this evening. The emergency room nurse said she’d been transferred up here from the emergency room. It was a lightning accident. She was struck by lightning. Susan…uh…Susan…uh…”

Susan something or other.

He couldn’t remember her last name.

Had he ever known what it was?

When he had called the office, Mrs. Witherspoon hadn’t even known. And Mrs. Witherspoon knew everything, with the cool, unruffled efficiency of a computer.

He had told Mrs. Witherspoon to find someone, anyone from the agency who could take over this crisis. He ordered her to make arrangements to pay for Susan’s hospitalization and recovery. And a generous severance pay to help her if she didn’t want to return to work.

He hoped she’d want to come back.

The alternative would be a disaster because the agency had warned him many times that it was difficult to find anyone who would work for him at the Radcliffe Estate.

He shoved down the sensation that had haunted him for the past hours, a memory he had dodged by concentrating on the changing profit-loss ratios of Eastman Bears and stock option prices.

Still, the memory nagged at him.

She had kissed him.

She had grabbed him by the collar and kissed him in a way that was most un-Susan-like.

In a way that made him think of stars and fire-crackers and roller-coaster rides and trips to the beach. In a way that lingered on his lips like a caress, even now he could remember the feel. And when he had been most thoroughly kissed by her, she had pulled away and looked up at him with frank sensuality and the breezy confidence of a woman his equal. Straight into his eyes without a whisper of the deference he had unconsciously come to expect from the women in his life.

Not like the Susan he knew at all!

As the paramedics poured out onto the courtyard, he had picked her up, shielding her face with his jacket—but it hadn’t been the rain he had feared, it was the notion of strangers seeing her so…so naked and open and womanly and sensual.

When she was brought back to her right senses, she would be appalled.

She had obviously been very traumatized. Would never remember it and be very embarrassed if she were told about it.

Which he didn’t intend on doing.

He found himself staring into the eyes of the fourth-floor station nurse. And remembering Susan’s beautiful amber eyes, eyes that he had never before noticed.

“Susan,” he repeated more slowly, wondering if the feel of her name on his lips would ever be the same. The name didn’t sound quite so efficient and no-nonsense. The name Susan conjured up images of such intensity that he closed his eyes and counted to ten in an effort to get a grip on himself.

“Your wife, Mr. Radcliffe?” the nurse, a big blonde with a horsey jaw, supplied. “She’s resting comfortably. In room 403. Here, there’s some paperwork in her file. You’re supposed to sign two releases for the Cat scan we performed and…”

Dean opened his eyes to an inch-thick sheaf of forms the nurse had flapped down on the counter.

“No, no, no,” he said, the roses trembling in his arms. “She’s not my wife.”

“Not your wife?” the nurse questioned, frowning.

“Not my wife,” Dean confirmed, again reviewing his nanny’s very odd behavior. She had called him darling. She had kissed him. He touched his lips, where he thought he might still feel her kiss.

She must have been in some sort of shock.

Poor, poor Susan.

Now he was the one having problems.

An older man in a white jacket approached the nurses’ station. He leaned close to Dean.

“But, Mr. Radcliffe, your wife is in room 403. Recovering nicely,” he said. “The Cat scan indicated some problem areas, but considering the shock she took, we’re all quite amazed that she’s doing as well as she is.”

“She’s my children’s nanny,” Dean said brusquely, determinedly putting the memory of her kiss aside. “My wife…my wife…my wife is—was actually was a woman named Nicole and she’s…”

“Relax. You look entirely too agitated,” the man soothed. “Please, let me introduce myself. I’m Dr. Sugar. Sam Sugar. I treated your wife this evening in the ER. When she came in, her blood pressure was 80 over 40 and her heartbeat was erratic but essentially strong and we started with a potassium drip—”

“The woman who was brought in this evening is not my wife,” Dean interrupted.

“But it says right here that she’s your wife,” the nurse said, holding up the chart.

Her square-jawed stare made clear that as far as she was concerned, that ended the matter. Hospital forms were never wrong.

“She’s not my wife. Maybe there’s been some confusion,” Dean said. “She’s actually my children’s nanny. If she told you she’s my wife she’s very much mistaken.”

“Admitting on the first floor says she’s your wife,” the nurse insisted.

“Maybe it’s Braxton-Myers shock,” Dr. Sugar mused.

“What’s that?”

“Disturbance on the left lower ventricle of the brain,” Dr. Sugar explained. “People who have been struck by lightning often have very strange neurological responses.”

“Lightning made her think she’s my wife?”

“Most Braxton-Myers experiences are short-term,” Dr. Sugar reassured.

“How short-term?”

Dr. Sugar shrugged.

“Hours, days, weeks, sometimes a few months.”

“You don’t know when she’s going to stop thinking she’s my wife?”

“She’s very beautiful.” Dr. Sugar shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to a man.”

“I’ve never noticed whether any employee is beautiful or not,” Dean said coldly. “Least of all, the woman I hire to provide child care.”

But he had noticed—if only this evening. In the rain, her hair slicked back with rain, her face flushed like a tea rose and her eyes a clear, brilliant golden shade.