by Andrews, Amy
Magazines and television stations wanted to interview her. She had requests for ‘happy couple’ pictorials from all the nation’s glossies.
It made her feel like a fraud.
But there was no time to think or talk as the crazy week hurtled past. No time for reflection. There was only time to keep her head above water, smile for the cameras until her face hurt, murmur appropriately vague answers to incessant questions, and pray she didn’t sink like a stone to the bottom of the very murky waters they were treading.
And all the while her heart ached.
Nathan was out till late every night at his office, tending to last minute business before the big float. And she’d moved back into the guest bedroom, so the opportunity to talk to him about his insane baby proposal or what had happened in her surgery before he’d been whisked away with Jeremy in the retrieval chopper never arose.
But she knew he’d felt it again that night. The pull inside him that tugged at his soul. That demanded to be heard. She’d seen it shining in his eyes. A vibrancy. He hadn’t looked as if something was missing as he had hugged her goodbye and run towards the chopper.
He’d looked alive.
She suspected he welcomed this frantic week so he could avoid the topic altogether. She’d bet her last cent that underneath all his efficient businessman bluster he was running scared. Ever since she’d known him he’d been on a direct path to the top – no way would he welcome feelings, no matter how vague, that rattled his gilded cage.
And then float day arrived, and Trent Fertility shares were the hottest debut stock the market had seen in decades. They were snapped up like hot cakes. The recent phenomenal media exposure Nathan had attracted was better than anything he could have bought. He’d endeared himself to both the business sector and the Australian public, winning both their affection and their confidence, and they all wanted a share of him.
The security of the company he’d built up and nurtured over the last decade was most definitely assured. In the end he hadn’t even needed the respectability Vince brought to the board — he’d earned the respect all by himself.
Jacqui and Nathan got home late to the apartment that night, after a celebratory dinner with the Trent Fertility executive board. It was the first moment they’d had alone since the previous weekend.
Nathan’s gaze fell on Jacqui’s bags, sitting just inside the door. ‘You’re leaving.’
Jacqui shut her eyes as the warmth from his body behind hers, so very, very close, almost touching but not quite, wrapped her in an embrace. He’d been in his element tonight. Larger than life, filthy rich and sexier than anyone had a right to be. He’d made every other man in the restaurant fade into the background.
‘Yes.’
Nathan hesitated. She was so close. If he inched forward they’d be touching. But she’d never felt further away. ‘I thought you were going to stay on for another week or so?’
Jacqui opened her eyes. ‘You don’t need me, Nate. Trent Fertility shares are an overnight success.’
To hell with the shares! She was wrong. Dead wrong. He’d always needed her. He loved her.
Hell...he loved her.
Nathan stilled momentarily. Man! What a stupid, blind idiot he’d been!
He loved her.
He just hadn’t realised it until her case was packed and she was set to walk out the door again. He’d been angry at himself and her when she’d fled to Serendipity for those few days, but now the thought of her leaving — for good —gripped him in a cold panic, chilling him to the bone.
He’d thought something was building between them again. That they’d recaptured some of their magic. But he hadn’t suspected it was love.
His heart crashed in his chest. Everything depended on what he said next. And he doubted, given her tense stature, that a declaration of love was the right strategy. He was likely to get it thrown back in his face. She would see it as a desperate ploy instead of what it was.
The truth.
He cleared his throat. ‘You were right.’
Jacqui frowned. Right about what? ‘Really?’
Nathan could bear her back no longer, and gently placed his hands on her shoulders, applying enough pressure to turn her to face him. His breath caught in his throat.
God, she was beautiful. ‘I miss medicine. I miss being a doctor.’
All week he’d been searching his office for the same exhilaration that he’d found during his operation to remove Jeremy’s spleen. The thrill, the utter elation of helping another human being. Saving a life. The same thrill he’d always felt when catching a wet newborn or telling an infertile couple they were pregnant.
And when he hadn’t found it he’d pushed himself a bit more. Stayed later, worked harder. God knew there’d been enough to keep him occupied. But no matter how long he’d sat at his desk, how many nights this week he’d crawled into bed exhausted for a few measly hours’ sleep, the emptiness had persisted.
It was past time to admit defeat. Jacqui was right. He was a doctor. First and foremost a doctor. Sure, he could play at being a businessman, but it was never going to fill the gaping hole that had been steadily deepening over the years as he’d tried to be something he wasn’t.
Tried to live his father’s dream.
And if he could finally admit it to himself, he could certainly admit it to the woman he loved. The woman who had opened his eyes. Made him look into himself. Kept at him, not letting him hide inside his comfort zone.
Maybe it was the key to convincing her that he had changed. That he was worth sticking around for.
Jacqui blinked, stunned by his admission. She opened her mouth to say something — anything. But nothing came. He looked overwhelmingly handsome in his business suit, with the knot of his tie loosened and pulled to one side. She dragged her gaze from the broadness of his shoulders, and from carnal thoughts of how good they looked without the suit.
‘I realised this week at work. It’s been such an intense week. Full on. And I hated it. It used to be thrilling. It used to be heady.’
Jacqui smiled. Maybe he was finally getting it. ‘Like it was the other night,’ she said quietly. ‘With Jeremy.’
Nathan nodded. She looked so damn calm, with that I-told-you-so gleam warming her toffee gaze. It wasn’t right that he should want to kiss her this badly when she’d been right and he’d been a blind fool.
When she was walking away. Again.
‘Like it was with Jeremy. Yes.’ He accepted his judgement had been in error with complete humility. ‘I felt energised, I knew what I was doing, and it was exciting and exhilarating. I felt...complete. I felt whole.’
Jacqui knew she should be grinning like a crazy woman. Wasn’t this what she’d been saying to him all along? He’d finally given in to his destiny. But, contrarily, she wanted him to say that she completed him. That she made him whole.
As he did her.
It hurt so much inside right at that moment that she had no idea where she dredged up the huge smile that split her face. It must have come from the deep, dark depths of her utterly joyless soul, but it arrived at the appropriate time and she was grateful.
‘Oh, Nate,’ she said, grasping his lapels in a familiar gesture that almost broke her heart. ‘Are you sure?’
He nodded. ‘I’ve never been surer of anything in my life. I mean, it’s going to take me a while to step back from the business side of things, and I’ll have to juggle both for a while until I can appoint a CEO, but I know what I want now.’
And it wasn’t just medicine.
‘That’s wonderful news. So wonderful.’
She hugged him then, tight, her arms sliding beneath his jacket, her face pressed into his neck. She was desperate for his warmth, to inhale the very essence of him that made him the man she loved. He put his arms around her shoulders and hugged back, and she never wanted to leave this spot.
Never.
They broke apart slightly and it was inevitable that he kissed her. In fact, s
he wasn’t sure who kissed who. All she knew was that his mouth opened wide over hers and she accommodated him. It was deep and wet and sexy. Greedy, and getting faster and harder, more desperate. And when he groaned against her lips her belly clenched as if he’d stroked her.
It was the kind of kiss that melted clothes and inhibitions as if they were trifling details. She thrust her hands into his hair and pulled him closer, deeper. Wanting all of him, needing to feel him tremble, lose control a little as she was.
Damn, the man could kiss.
Nathan felt as if he was losing his mind. How could she kiss him like this and still want to leave? She tasted like wild raspberries. She smelled like woman. Her breasts were squashed against his chest and he could feel the rub of her body against his burgeoning erection.
He wanted to crush her against him, sheath himself inside her, never let her go.
Breaking away, he held on to the one slim thread of sanity that was left to search her turbulent gaze. She was beautiful tonight. The crazy retro gown that she’d bought from a local op shop had outshone all the designer labels at the restaurant. Her crazy corkscrew curls framed her face and her lips glistened with clear stuff that emphasised their fullness and tasted like forbidden fruit.
He placed his forehead against hers. His palms cradled her face. ‘Stay with me,’ he groaned, his breath ragged, his pulse echoing through his head. ‘I love you.’
Jacqui’s head spun as she clung to his lapels. Her limbs were heavy, laden with desire, her brain was fogged with lust. She was breathing hard, trying to compute what he’d said at the same time she wanted to reclaim his mouth.
He loved her?
What? Oh, God, this was madness. All they were doing was torturing each other.
It had to stop.
She took a couple of deep calming breaths and slid her hands from his lapels to grasp his wrists. ‘Nate.’
‘Jacq.’ He could hear the huskiness as his breathing took its own time to settle.
She pulled gently on his wrists, and was gratified when he dropped his hands and took a step back. She needed space.
They both did.
‘I think one revelation is enough for tonight, don’t you?’
Nathan placed his hands in his trouser pockets lest he reach for her again. Damn it! He’d known it was too early. But what the hell? It was out there now.
‘No.’
Despite herself, Jacqui felt her heartbeat trip at the utter arrogance of his statement. His unflinching green gaze looked at her with frank sexual hunger. She swallowed.
‘It’s been a day of highs. You’ve just made a big decision about the entire direction of your life, Nate. One sweeping change at a time, huh?’
The thought that he actually might love her wheedled its way past her sensibilities. She quashed it before it burgeoned out of control, before she took the two very tempting paces it would take to be back in his arms.
He was mistaking desire for love. Lust for something more.
He was high on the day’s successes and the night’s revelations and their crazy, mixed-up, tangled sexual chemistry was just confusing the issue.
After all, if he loved her as he claimed why had he said that medicine completed him? Surely if he loved her then she would have that honour? Be the other half of his whole?
He was certainly her half.
And she wouldn’t take anything less. She couldn’t get involved with him again knowing that his job — even the right job — meant more to him than her. She’d been down that road before.
Nathan took a moment to gather his thoughts — a little difficult when all his blood was stubbornly stuck down yonder. He’d got carried away with the moment, with that mouth. He needed to take it back a step or two.
‘Come with me. I want to show you something.’
Jacqueline looked at his outstretched hand and blinked at the abrupt request. ‘I have to go.’
‘Please, Jacq. It won’t take long.’
She shut her eyes at the way his voice sighed her nickname. His gaze was roving over her as if he had X-ray vision. Her skin tingled in the wake of those knowing green eyes. Where did he want to take her? And what did he have in mind?
She knew exactly where they’d end up if she went with him now. But she had the rest of her life to be sensible.
To be alone.
Tonight she needed to be with her man in the most carnal way possible. To say goodbye. She took his hand. ‘Okay.’
‘What are we doing here?’ she asked as Nathan pulled the car up in his space at Paradise Private Hospital ten minutes later.
Nathan’s heart thudded in anticipation. This was his last ace. ‘I told you. I want to show you something.’
Jacqui sat motionless for a few seconds, looking out of the window. And then he was opening her door and ushering her out, and before she knew it they were standing in the middle of his office, where she had watched him with Sonya that fateful day.
‘What are we doing here?’ she repeated.
Nathan shrugged. He wasn’t sure why he’d brought her here — he’d just gone with his gut. Maybe he felt more comfortable with her here in a hospital, as a doctor, than he did in a business suit in his sixtieth-floor apartment.
This was the man she knew him as — the man she saw underneath the billionaire veneer and through the mists of ten years’ separation.
The man she’d fallen in love with.
‘Just wanted to get a feel for it again, I suppose.’
He wandered around his office, his desk, touching things. He shrugged out of his jacket and discarded it on the back of his chair. He picked up his stethoscope and loved the feel of the heavy bell in the palm of his hand. He stopped in front of his examination couch and looked at the pictures on the corkboard.
All those satisfied customers, all those happy families. Couldn’t he have that too? Was that too much to ask?
‘I wasn’t totally honest tonight, Jacq.’
Jacqueline leaned against his desk, watching the pull of white cotton across his broad back and the way his hair just brushed the collar. ‘Oh?’
He turned. ‘Medicine doesn’t complete me.’
She frowned. Okay. Where was he going with this? ‘Oh?’ she said again, a slight squeak heightening her reply.
‘I’m nothing without you.’
Despite everything, her heart leapt as if it had been prodded with a defib paddle.
‘I love you. I don’t think I ever stopped loving you. I don’t want you to go.’
She clutched the desk and reminded herself to keep her head. One of them had to be the voice of sanity.
‘I was a fool to let you walk. A fool not to see that you were the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m so very sorry I wasted a decade of our lives chasing a dream that wasn’t even mine.’
Jacqui swallowed, her heart nearly blowing a hole in her chest, it was beating so forcefully. ‘Nate. This is insane. It’s too late. We’ve been apart for too long.’
‘But I’ve never stopped thinking about you, Jacq. You were always there at the back of my head, with your bangles and your crazy hair. Why do you think I went into fertility?’
Jacqui snorted. ‘Because of the squillions of dollars?’
Nathan chuckled. ‘No. Plastic surgery is where the big bucks are. I went into it because of you.’
Jacqui shook her head. This whole thing was insane. She wouldn’t let him sweet-talk her when she was about to go back to her life. One that she loved. ‘Oh, come on, Nate. Bet if I had chronic psoriasis you wouldn’t have become a dermatologist.’
He gave her a gentle smile. ‘I remember all those months too, Jacq. The negative tests, the arrival of your period, the investigations. I know how much it devastated you.’
‘You didn’t want a baby. Not like I did.’
He nodded. ‘No. But I do now. With you.’
The whole room seem to narrow down to a tunnel. One that was big enough for the two of them and nothing else. And
the air was thick. Tense. Jacqui wanted to believe him, wanted to let it all go, but it just seemed too easy. And nothing between them had ever been easy.
‘Why?’
Nathan held his breath for a second. He could see she was wavering. Maybe there was hope. Maybe she still loved him too. He turned back to the board and unpinned a photo at random. He walked towards her and handed it over.
‘There’s a lot of years there on that board, a lot of babies. Other people’s babies.’
He looked down at the photo he’d given her. He was standing behind a lounge chair, where a set of new parents were looking down adoringly at a swaddled infant with such rapture it seemed almost too intimate a moment to capture.
‘I’m tired of nursing other people’s babies, Jacq. Of helping to bring them into the world. I want my own baby. I want to see my baby growing inside the belly of the woman I love.’ He stopped and placed a hand on Jacqui’s stomach. ‘I want to look at something that we created with that same wonder and awe, like we’ve just received a rare precious gift. Is it so unbelievable that I’d want to share my life with someone?’
Jacqui felt hot tears sting her eyes as she looked at the photos, felt his hand on her belly. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The only thing she’d ever wanted more than Nathan was his child. A tear ran down her face and splashed on the photo.
‘Hey.’ Nathan lifted her chin gently and looked down into her blurry toffee gaze.
‘It may never happen. I already have documented fertility issues. I’m older. It’ll be so much harder.’
Nathan felt his heart soar. Was that a yes? Was she taking a step towards him? ‘Lucky for you, I know this great fertility specialist.’
Jacqui laughed, dislodging more tears down her face. She shut her eyes as Nathan wiped them away with his thumbs. Then she opened them again. ‘I mean it, Nate.’
‘So then we’ll adopt, or we’ll foster, or we’ll get a surrogate. Whatever it takes, Jacqui. I love you. Whatever it takes. I want this.’ He pointed to the photo.
Jacqui looked at it too. That was all she’d ever wanted. To be a family with the man she loved. She’d never dared hope that it was all there for the taking. ‘But—’