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.