Книга - The Billionaire Claims His Wife

The Billionaire Claims His Wife
Amy Andrews











About the Author


AMY ANDREWS has always loved writing and still can’t quite believe that she gets to do it for a living. Creating wonderful heroines and gorgeous heroes, and telling their stories is an amazing way to pass the day. Sometimes they don’t always act as she’d like them to, but then neither do her kids, so she’s kind of used to it. Amy lives in the very beautiful Samford Valley with her husband and aforementioned children, along with six brown chooks and two black dogs. She loves to hear from her readers. Drop her a line at www.amyandrews.com.au




The Billionaire Claims His Wife

Amy Andrews















www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


Dear Reader,

When my editor asked me to write this story, I balked. Me? Write a billionaire? But always up for a challenge, I decided to give it a whirl.

Almost straight away, before I even knew the names of the characters I knew they were going to be total opposites. She was going to be a free-spirited hippy-chick to his uber-wealthy driven business man. I knew that they’d once loved each other very deeply but their different life philosophies had eventually driven them apart. And I knew that I wanted to take Mr Rich-List and pull him out of his comfort zone making him utterly dependant on another human being – to start with anyway. There’s nothing sexier than a powerful man having to be nursed back to health by a woman. Particularly if that woman happens to be his ex-wife.

As you can tell, I had some fun with my hero, Nathan. Yes, we authors can be downright evil from time to time :-) But to be fair, I also throw Jacqueline into Nathan’s world – the glamorous multi-billion dollar strip that makes up the famous Gold Coast.

I hope you enjoy their story and their gradual realisation that some people are just meant to be together.

Amy


To Mandi Carr, Veterinarian, for her invaluable assistance with this book and her

unflappability when faced with a barrage of strange “what if” questions.




CHAPTER ONE


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.’




CHAPTER TWO


NATHAN woke to the smell of frying bacon and toast and his stomach grumbled. He was starving. His mouth watered. He rubbed at the stubble on his jaw, momentarily wondering where the hell he was. The ceiling didn’t look familiar and he wasn’t in his bed.

He turned his head and saw a half-drunk glass of water on a coffee table and Shep dozing nearby. Then it returned. Driving to see Jacqui. The Porsche getting bogged. Walking in the rain. The flu.

He stretched, feeling only a vague ache now, but malaise sat heavily in his bones. He thought about sitting for a few moments before he attempted it, and was surprised how weak he felt as he levered himself up. The duvet bunched around his waist and he pushed it aside.

Shep woke and lurched slowly up off the floor. ‘Hey, boy,’ he murmured, ruffling the dog’s ears.

He’d missed Shep in the beginning. Terribly. Almost as much as he’d missed Jacqui. Then all too soon life had consumed him and he hadn’t thought about Shep for years. Maybe that was what he was missing from his life now? Maybe a dog, a pet, would help fill up this strange emptiness that afflicted him from time to time? Give him something to come home to? He made a mental note to check into it when he returned home.

Nathan stood, feeling vaguely light-headed, leaning heavily against the arm of the couch for a few seconds before pushing off and following his nose. He wasn’t sure what day it was, but his stomach felt as if it had contracted down to the size of a walnut, so it had to have been a couple of days since he’d eaten.

He passed a window filtering grey light and vaguely acknowledged the continuing rain. He could hear the sounds of cooking and singing coming from the room ahead, and forced his wooden legs to take bigger strides.

Nathan reached the doorway and stopped abruptly. Jacqui had her back to the door, standing in front of the stove, singing in a fake falsetto and dancing along barefoot to a song from a battered-looking radio nearby.

She was wearing some loose pants that sat low on her hips—probably that hemp stuff she loved so much—and a white strappy singlet that had ridden up to reveal the small of her back.

Her bottom was swaying, and she was clicking her fingers to the beat above her head. The bangles on her arms jingled and the metal of her rings blurred as her fingers wiggled and her corkscrew curls bounced in time.

He smiled at the scene before him. ‘You haven’t changed, I see.’

Jacqui nearly had a heart attack as his voice broke into her tuneless singing. She whirled around abruptly, her heart thundering. He was lounging in her doorway in nothing but his underwear and his stubble as if he belonged there. He had that just-rolled-out-of-bed look she’d always found utterly irresistible, and she was overwhelmed with a surge of lust she hadn’t felt in a decade.

Oh, God! No, no, no. She would not make this easy for him. He couldn’t show up at her door on a dark and stormy night, collapse on her couch for two days, tell her he needed his wife back before lapsing into unconsciousness, and then just expect her to melt into a puddle of desire at his feet.

‘You have.’

And he had. Even with next to nothing on, with his body essentially the same—familiar on so many levels—the changes were undeniable. He wasn’t the boy she’d lain naked with, spinning happy dreams on endless nights. Who’d been content eating cold spaghetti and drinking wine from a cardboard box. Who had thrived under killer shifts and arrogant consultants because he’d loved his job.

That boy was long gone. He was a man now. Successful beyond his wildest dreams. Aside from the designer threads, it was in the way he held himself, the proud tilt of his head, the commanding angle of his jaw. Even knocked flat by the flu, lying naked and vulnerable on her couch, there had been an undeniable authority, a tangible aura of power about him.

Nathan’s gaze was drawn to Jacqueline’s bare midriff, where the top had ridden up. Her belly button was as fascinating as it had always been. He moved higher. As usual she was braless, and he could see that despite her life-long aversion to supportive measures her breasts were still firm, her nipples just visible through the white fabric.

He shrugged. ‘We all change, Jacqui. Evolve.’ His gaze dropped to her chest again. ‘Well, most of us anyway.’

Jacqui placed a hand on her hip and raised an eyebrow. ‘Evolve, Nate? Or sell out?’

Nathan laughed, and regretted it as the dull ache behind his eyes gave a vicious pulse. ‘Evolve.’

Jacqui gave him a silky smile. ‘You say potato. I say po-tar-toe.’ She preferred cold-spaghetti-boy to medical-tycoon any day.

The toast popped behind her and she turned away, grateful for the reprieve from the gorgeous stranger in her husband’s skin.

‘You’re obviously better,’ she said, slathering butter onto the toast. ‘Hungry?’

Nathan’s stomach growled as he watched her, the sway of her hips as mesmerising as it had always been. ‘Ravenous.’

Jacqui gripped the knife hard as his voice, still a little husky from his flu, carried an entirely different meaning towards her altogether. She was conscious of him watching her every move as she bent and pulled the perfectly crisped bacon from the oven, adding it to the tray of goodies. She took a calming breath before lifting the tray and turning to face him, still unprepared for the familiar kick down low as his jade gaze slid over her.

‘Why are you really here, Nate?’

Because he needed his wife back. That was what he’d said. Needed. Not wanted. He needed her back. His choice of words had been curious. Very curious. And she’d turned them over in her mind a hundred times since he’d uttered them. Had he said he wanted her back she would have dismissed it as a flight of fancy issued from the depths of a flu-ravaged brain. But need. Need indicated necessity rather than desire. Need was an entirely different word altogether. It was more … calculated.

‘I told you. I want a reconciliation.’ And this time it wasn’t fever that glinted in his eyes but stone-cold purpose.

There was a moment of silence. Jacqui’s head spun and she gripped the tray so hard she was surprised it stayed in one piece. He just stood there, looking at her, his expression deadly serious. Oh, God! He hadn’t been delirious that night.

She swallowed. She couldn’t do this. Not on an empty stomach. Her gaze dropped to his naked chest. Not with him in his underwear. She moved forward, tossing her hair, praying her tremulous legs would carry her to her destination.

‘For God’s sake, Nate,’ she said as she passed by him, injecting as much bored-with-the-view into her voice as possible. ‘Put some clothes on.’

Nathan smiled as she strutted by, her nonchalance not fooling him for a moment. Her perfume embraced him in a hundred rekindled memories, and none of them involved her asking him to get dressed. In fact he doubted she’d ever uttered those words to him. ‘I remember a time when you would have asked me to take my clothes off,’ he said to her back.

Hell, he remembered a time when she would have ripped them off for him.

Jacqui almost stumbled with the tray as she set it down on the table. She took a moment fussing with the plates before she raised her face and looked him square in the eye. ‘Those times are long gone.’

Nathan noticed the determined jut of her chin and the hardening of her toffee eyes. Yes, they were. They seemed about a million years ago now. He pushed away from the doorframe. ‘I’ll be right back.’

He climbed into his trousers and his business shirt, doing up three buttons, rolling up the sleeves, not bothering to tuck it in. He joined Jacqui in her braless singlet and hemp pants, feeling way overdressed.

He smiled to himself as she swiped at some egg yolk that had dripped down her chin. ‘You are a disgrace to hippies everywhere—you know that, don’t you?’ he said as he took a seat opposite.

‘Not all hippies are veggies,’ she protested.

‘Just as well.’ He grinned, enjoying how she devoured her food. He’d used to love watching her eat. Like everything else, she did it with gusto. ‘They would have revoked your card years ago.’

Jacqui savoured the salty flavour of the free-range bacon and the warm squelch of locally churned butter, ignoring Nate’s familiar patter. He’d always teased her about her lackadaisical approach to the alternate lifestyle she’d embraced in her teens. A ‘hybrid hippy’, he had affectionately called her.

‘Mmm, but it tastes sooooo good,’ she said shutting her eyes in rapture. At the moment eating was preferable to thinking. Eating gave her a focus other than Nate’s preposterous statement.

Nathan shook his head and smiled at the look of bliss on her face. The corner of her mouth glistened with a smear of butter that in another time and place he would have taken great pleasure in removing with his tongue. Her corkscrew russet curls framed her face in the same wild abandon they had a decade ago, and she looked so happy, so sated. Like a goddess.

The hippy goddess of abundance.

‘How did I end up with you?’ he mused.

Jacqui opened her eyes and stared into his puzzled gaze. His beautifully sculpted lips sported a Mona Lisa smile. Their gazes locked, and for a moment neither of them said anything, contemplating their wild glory days when neither of them had needed anything but each other.

‘I don’t know, Nate. I don’t know.’

Nathan’s stomach grumbled and he broke their eye contact, helping himself to some toast and placing an egg on top. As hungry as he was, he didn’t think it wise to pile up his plate after two days of starvation. Jacqui was right, though, it did taste good. Damn good. He could feel the residual weakness from the flu virtually disappearing as he ate, the restorative effects of protein, carbohydrates and coffee making him feel bulletproof again. Preparing him for the verbal sparring to come.

‘So, I take it that’s your Porsche bogged down the road a bit?’ Everyone who had come into the clinic on Saturday had reported the unusual sighting.

He looked up at her and nodded. ‘Is it okay?’

Jacqui frowned. ‘Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?’

‘Sports cars attract attention.’

She laughed. ‘Isn’t that the point?’

‘Sometimes not the good kind.’

‘This is hardly the Bronx, Nate. Don’t worry, your mid-life-crisis toy is safe here.’

Nathan chuckled, well used to her disdain for the trappings of wealth. ‘What makes you think my car represents a mid-life crisis?’

Jacqui shrugged. ‘You’re forty-two and you’re here.’

He laughed again. ‘Sorry to disappoint. I’m crisis-free.’

Although that wasn’t entirely true. He did have a problem or two. One she could help him with. The other … that odd, restless feeling that kept rearing its ugly head … that was best left undefined. Best left well alone.

‘Well, the car certainly doesn’t represent option number two.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes—you know. The I’m-compensating-for-a-lack-of-what-I-have-in-my-shorts toy.’ God knew she’d been reminded of that too often this weekend.

This time Nate roared laughing. ‘No. Nothing Freudian about it.’

Jacqui had forgotten how magnificent his laugh was, and she felt goosebumps feather her skin and her nipples tighten in blatant response to his sexy baritone. She watched over the rim of her coffee mug as the crinkles around his eyes and mouth relaxed. But the amusement still sparkled in his jade gaze.

God, she’d missed this. Sharing a meal with him.

She placed her coffee mug down on the table. Time to lay their cards on the table. Her stomach was full and he was dressed. She couldn’t bear the suspense any longer.

‘Okay, Nate. Spill. Why the bizarre request?’

Nathan watched her watching him, her gaze wary. Would she listen to him? Would she hear him out? Would she agree? ‘I have a … problem only you can help me with.’

Jacqui’s heart started drumming in her chest. It seemed so loud in the intense silence that followed his statement it was real competition for the rain on the roof. Surely he could hear it? ‘Go on.’

‘You ever heard of a guy called Vince Slater?’

Jacqui frowned, the name vaguely familiar. ‘Some rich old guy who’s on to wife number six?’

Nathan chuckled. Good summation. Except he was also a world-renowned financial genius, with razor-sharp business acumen and the Midas touch. And a friend.

‘That’s the guy. He’s agreed to join the executive of TrentFertility, which will put us in a very strong position for the float.’ He looked at Jacqui, looking at him as if he was speaking in tongues. ‘You do know about the float?’

Jacqui nodded. Her mother kept her up to date with all Nate’s goings on. She received regular clippings from the nation’s newspapers, all featuring Nate’s very commanding presence.

TrentFertility was about to go public.

‘Of course. We do have TV and newspapers out here, you know.’

He ignored her sarcasm. ‘This is big for me. Bigger than anything else I’ve done.’ She needed to understand that he wasn’t asking anything of her lightly.

Jacqui heard the hard edge in his voice. He wanted this badly. ‘I don’t understand. Why do you need Vince? Surely you have enough money of your own? Why do you need his financial backing?’

Nathan shook his head. ‘It’s not about his money. It’s about confidence. Market confidence. Vince is a seasoned executive. He’s known and well thought of in all the right business and financial sectors. He has experience, and a reputation for shrewd fiscal choices. Stockmarkets, particularly in the last few years, are notoriously jittery. Having him on board will be a ringing endorsement for TrentFertility.’

Jacqui listened to Nathan’s clinical assessment of Vince Slater’s attributes and felt chilled by how detached he sounded. ‘So billionaire doctor, top of the rich list isn’t enough for you?’

Nathan stalled. She didn’t get it. She’d never got it. A nerve jumped at the angle of his jaw. ‘Like I said, it’s not about the money, Jacqueline.’

She sighed at his stiff response. She, more intimately than anyone, knew that. She understood the demons that had driven him to push himself beyond just a career in medicine. She had been party to all his young-man dreams, his drive to make something of himself beyond just plain Dr Nathan Trent.

The hand-to-mouth existence of his childhood, when he’d been forced to live out of the family car for a while after his father’s bankruptcy and subsequent suicide, working three jobs to put himself through med school, had hand-tooled him to build the medical empire he resided over today.

Twenty fertility clinics responsible for a thousand babies—several to high-profile couples. He’d gone global five years ago, with clinics expanding into the Asian and European markets. Three research facilities. He’d come a long way and become a force to be reckoned with—both in medicine and in business. More importantly, he’d built something that no one could take from him. Because underneath it all Nathan Trent—fertility guru, medical magnate—craved security.

She sighed. ‘What’s this got to do with me, Nate?’

‘Vince’s wife.’

Jacqui saw the slight flicker in his gaze, the way he couldn’t quite meet her eyes. He looked guilty as hell. She shut her eyes. Had money totally corrupted him?

‘Oh, Nate … you haven’t?’

Nathan blinked, his gaze settling back on hers. He drew his brows together, annoyed that she would think what she was obviously thinking. ‘No,’ he denied icily, his jade gaze chilly. ‘I bloody well haven’t.’

‘Nate …’ He could deny it as much as he liked, but something had happened between the two of them. She could read him like a book. ‘Tell me.’

‘Abigail’s taken a … a shine to me.’

Jacqui raised an eyebrow. ‘And you haven’t encouraged her?’

‘No.’ His denial was as emphatic as he could make it. ‘She’s young enough to be my daughter. And married. To a close business associate and dear friend. You know me better than that.’

Did she? Truth was, she didn’t know him any more. She hadn’t even known who he was for the last couple of years of their marriage. Perhaps she never had? Perhaps she’d only ever seen what she’d wanted to see?

But he hadn’t exactly been a monk during the decade they’d been apart. Her mother made sure she had a copy of every picture of every woman who had ever been photographed gracing Nathan’s arm.

‘She’s got the wrong idea,’ Nathan supplied.

‘And how would she have got that, Nate?’

‘Not through anything I’ve ever said or done,’ he said firmly. Infidelity had always been abhorrent to him. Jacqui knew that. At least she’d used to. ‘But she’s persistent. She thinks I’m playing hard to get.’

‘So tell Vince.’

Nathan shook his head. ‘Vince may be a financial genius, but he’s dumb as a rock when it comes to matters of the heart. He loves her. You know what they say—there’s no fool like an old fool. It’d break him.’

Jacqui was taken by the softening of Nathan’s voice as he spoke about Vince, given his earlier businesslike summation of the man. Seeing Nate bordering on sentimental took her back to the old days—when he’d been nothing like the man who had looked at her from the kitchen doorway with cold purpose less than thirty minutes ago.

It was clear that while Vince was a means to an end, Nathan held obvious affection for the older man. But she had a feeling that the worst was yet to come, and hardened her heart. ‘I don’t suppose it’d help the float any either?’

Nathan lips flattened into a grim line. ‘Vince would resign. It’d cause a big scandal. A newly floated company might not survive the backlash. Vince is TrentFertility’s greatest asset for legitimacy in this new frontier we’re embarking on.’

‘Aren’t you its greatest asset?’

Nathan returned her gaze, feeling curiously flattered. ‘Not this time. This is a whole new ballgame and I need him.’

She turned her attention to the murky contents of her coffee mug, formulating the question she didn’t want to hear the answer to. ‘And I fit in to this how?’

‘Cover. If we reconcile, she’ll back off.’

Jacqui shrugged. ‘You don’t need a wife for cover. Get a girlfriend.’

Nathan shook his head. ‘Tried that. Hasn’t worked.’

‘So what makes you think she’ll respect the sanctity of marriage? It seems she has no problem cheating on her own husband—why would bagging someone else’s be a no-go for her?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t pretend to know what goes on inside the head of a twenty-two-year-old girl who’s been spoilt rotten all her life. All I know is that happily married men are a no-no for her. I suppose even princesses have some moral codes.’

Jacqui suppressed a laugh at the distaste in his voice. Poor Nate. Things were obviously on top of him. Fending off a determined female and chasing the almighty dollar even higher into the stratosphere had obviously run his immune system into the ground.





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