The Fatherhood Affair. Emma Darcy

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СКАЧАТЬ intense, and with all his unleashed energy, indefinably dangerous.

      For years she had wondered what went on inside him. What restraints he had...and, if all his secret longings were bared, what would a woman experience? The thought had intrigued her. She was getting more than a glimpse of the answer now, and it both fascinated and frightened her. She saw a primitive male hunter, relentless in his determination to track down his quarry, unstoppable.

      She shivered. ‘I don’t want you, Damien. I don’t want you.’ She heard the wary, almost excited note in her voice, and didn’t care as long as he got the message.

      ‘What would happen if I took you in my arms, Natalie?’ His eyes burned down to the agitated rise and fall of her breasts as she took quick breaths to calm her pulse-rate. ‘If I were to kiss and caress you...’

      ‘Stop it! I won’t listen! Go away!’

      But the images evoked did have an insidiously seductive power. Damien might be the hunter, but as a woman she knew if she tossed over the traces, threw everything upon the wind...anything and everything was possible. There had been solitary, vulnerable moments when she had fantasised... Damien wild, irrepressible, adoring her, approving of her, being proud of her. They had been some kind of solace at the time when Brett was entertaining himself with some other woman.

      She had sternly repressed such wicked thoughts. That they should focus on her husband’s best friend made them even more reprehensible. They were not fitting for a married woman who considered herself moral and decent. It dragged her down to Brett’s level. Natalie had been ashamed of herself that they had occurred at all.

      Now Damien wanted to do what she had forbidden herself to think about. More. Natalie felt there was some key to her mind and heart and body, and if some man was to unlatch the lock... Brett had had the key for a while but he had thrown it away.

      Damien probably had the key, too, but it would not last. The experience would be wild and wonderful and dangerous, and in the end, as with Brett, would cost her too much. She had to stop this now, not let Damien tempt her into something she knew would lead to more hurt and disillusionment. Men didn’t seem to understand how it was for a woman: the giving of more than her body.

      She felt for the handle of the passenger door on her side. If Damien wouldn’t get out of the taxi...

      ‘You’ve always avoided touching me, Natalie,’ he said softly, suggestively.

      ‘You avoided it, too,’ she flung at him.

      ‘We didn’t dare touch one another for fear of what would follow,’ he taunted her.

      ‘I feel the same way now.’

      ‘I don’t.’

      There was too much truth in what Damien was suggesting. Natalie felt an urgent need to escape from it. She found the handle, lifted it, and flung the door open. Before Damien could stop her she leapt out of the taxi, plunging away from him.

      She heard the shout, ignored it. The screech of tyres gripping the road surface in protest she didn’t ignore. She didn’t see the car in the other lane. She didn’t feel it hit her, and she didn’t feel any pain. Violet, purple and red colours merged momentarily on her retina. She felt an impact. Then nothing, nothing at all.

      CHAPTER THREE

      NATALIE’S mind was definitely fuzzy. She had the sense of being disembodied. She was in a bed. It wasn’t her own bed. How she knew she wasn’t quite sure, but she knew.

      She tried to reason out where she was and why. Nothing surfaced. Her memory seemed to have disintegrated into a jigsaw where the pieces needed to be sorted out. She gave up the effort. The thought came to her she should open her eyes and look.

      She did so with some trepidation. It was a hospital bed. Tubes looped to her arm. She shut her eyes again. She’d seen enough to identify where she was. It was an intensive care unit.

      Someone was talking nearby.

      ‘...severe concussion. Brains are a bit scrambled at the present moment. Nothing broken. Nothing that won’t heal properly.’

      It was an affable voice, speaking with confident authority, but how dared he speak of her brains as if they were a pastiche of broken eggs!

      ‘So the prognosis is...?’

      A different voice, deeper, warmer, richer, more passionate.

      ‘Fine. There’ll be some memory loss for a short period. That will return quite naturally.’

      ‘How long?’

      ‘Somewhere between a few days and a few months.’

      ‘But her memories, all her recollections, will return?’

      ‘Without fail. Everything.’

      Natalie forced a wary eye open. Who were these people who appeared to be discussing her quite openly in front of her?

      The light wasn’t too bad. She opened the other eye, as well. Two doctors stood at the foot of the bed.

      ‘Ah, she’s awake again.’

      That was the affable voice. It belonged to a short, slightly built man with sandy hair and spectacles.

      ‘Do you know your name?’ he asked.

      ‘Of course, I know my name. It’s Natalie.’

      ‘Natalie what?’

      ‘It’s not Natalie Watt at all.’

      ‘Can you tell me your second name, Natalie?’

      The persistent questioning made her feel very uncomfortable. She knew she knew the answer but it didn’t come to mind.

      ‘Natalie Something,’ she responded irritably. They wouldn’t be able to argue with that.

      ‘That’s good. Very good,’ the affable man soothed.

      Natalie dismissed him. She turned her attention to the other man, the one with the passionate voice. He was tall and broad-shouldered and so good-looking Natalie bet all the nurses swooned in his wake. He moved around the bed and sat on a chair beside her. He had riveting eyes, grey, with double rows of thick black lashes.

      ‘You’ve had a nasty knock on the head. Seven stitches. Everything is going to be fine,’ he assured her.

      ‘I know that, Doctor,’ she assured him back. She’d heard the other one say there was nothing that wouldn’t heal properly.

      ‘I’m not a doctor.’

      ‘Who are you then?’

      ‘I’m... Damien.’

      He looked anxious, uncertain, so she smiled to put him at ease. ‘Hello, Damien.’

      He relaxed and took her hand in his. ‘Hello, Natalie.’

      He СКАЧАТЬ