The Billionaire Claims His Wife. Amy Andrews

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       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 СКАЧАТЬ