Claiming His Christmas Wife. Dani Collins

your wife?”

      Memory washed through him in a rush of heat and hunger. He tensed against it and glanced around, lowering his voice. That broken teacup had been swept firmly under the rug four years ago.

      “We’re divorced. Are you a reporter?”

      “I’m trying to locate her next of kin. I’m at...” She mentioned the name of one of New York’s most beleaguered public hospitals.

      Whatever old anger had sent him soaring at the mention of his ex-wife exploded in a percussive flash. He was blind. Falling. Wind whistling in his ears. Air moving too fast for him to catch a gulp.

      “What happened?” he managed to grit out. He was dimly aware his eyes were closed, but she was right there in front of him, laughing. Her green eyes glimmered with mischief. Her hair was a halo of flames licking at her snowy complexion. She swerved her lashes to cut him a glance. So enchantingly beautiful. Gaze clouding with arousal. Sparking with anger. Looking so wounded and vulnerable that last time he’d seen her, his heart still dipped thinking of it.

      He’d quickly learned it was a lie, but that didn’t make any of this easier to accept.

      Gone? He couldn’t make it fit in his head. He had told her he never wanted to see her again, but discovered he had secretly believed he would.

      From far away, he heard the woman say, “She collapsed on the street. She’s feverish and unconscious. Do you know of any medication we should be aware of? She’s awaiting treatment, but—”

       “She’s not dead?”

      He heard how that sounded, as if that was the outcome he would have preferred, but leave it to Imogen to set him up to believe one thing, contort his emotions to unbearable degrees, then send him flying in another direction. That betraying, manipulative—If he could get his hands on her, he’d kill her himself.

      “And she was taken to that hospital? Why?”

      “I believe we were closest. She doesn’t seem to have a phone and yours is the only name I’ve been able to find in her bag. We need guidance on treatment and insurance. Are you able to provide that?”

      “Contact her father.” He walked back toward the door to his office, saying to his PA behind her desk, “Look up Imogen Gantry’s father. He’s in publishing. Maybe starts with a W. William?” He hadn’t met the man, only heard her mention him once or twice. Hell, they’d only been married fifteen minutes. He knew next to nothing about her.

      “Wallace Gantry?” His PA turned her screen. “He appears to have died a few months ago.” She pointed to the obit notice that said he was predeceased by his wife and eldest daughter, survived by his youngest daughter, Imogen.

      Perfect.

      He knew better than to let himself get sucked back into her orbit, but what else could he say except, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

      * * *

      Imogen remembered sitting down on the curb. It hadn’t been a nice, rain-washed boulevard of freshly mown grass beneath century-old elms with a stripe of sidewalk, then an empty canvas of manicured lawn to her mother’s rose garden, ending at the wide stairs to the double-door entrance of her childhood home.

      No, it had been a freezing, filthy inner-city curb where the piles of snow had turned to a layer of lumpy muck atop a century’s worth of chewing gum and other disgusting things. The damp chill on the air hadn’t squelched any of the terrible smells coming off the grate at her feet. She shouldn’t have touched the post she had braced herself against and she had thought a car would likely run over her legs as she sank down. At the very least, one would drown her with a tsunami of melt from the puddles.

      She hadn’t cared. The side of her head had felt like it was twice as big as the rest. Her ear, plugged and aching, had begun screaming so loud the sound had been trying to come out her mouth.

      She had tried to pretend she didn’t have an ear infection because those were for children. Her sister had got them, not her. She hadn’t gone swimming recently. She hadn’t known how it could have happened, but there she’d been like a damned toddler, nearly fainting with the agony of it, dizzy and hot and sick.

      She’d had to sit down before she fell down. A fever was nature’s way of killing a virus, so why hadn’t this run its course? And who passed out from such a silly thing, anyway?

      Her vision had dimmed at the edges, though. She had felt so awful she hadn’t cared that the wet snow had been soaking through her clothes. Her only thought had been, This is how I die. She’d been okay with it. Her father would have loved this for her, dying like a dog in the gutter a week before Christmas. Even Travis would probably conclude that she had got what she deserved. If he ever found out, which he wouldn’t.

      It had been a relief to succumb. Fighting was hard, especially when it was a losing battle. Giving up was so much easier. Why had she never tried it before?

      So, she had died.

      Now she was in—well, this probably wasn’t heaven, not that she expected to get in there. It might be hell. She felt pretty lousy. Her body ached and her sore ear felt full of water. The other one was hypersensitive to the rustle of clothing and a distant conversation that bounced painfully inside her skull. Her mouth was so dry she couldn’t swallow. She tried to form words and all she could manage was a whimper of misery.

      Something lifted off her arm, a warm weight she hadn’t recognized was there until it was gone, leaving her with a profound sense of loss. She heard footsteps, then a male voice.

      “She’s waking up.”

      She knew that voice. Her eyes prickled and the air she’d been breathing so easily became dense and hard to pull in. Her chest grew compressed with dread and guilt. She couldn’t move, but inwardly she shrank.

      She had definitely gone to hell.

      A lighter, quicker footstep came toward her. She opened her eyes, winced at the brightness, then squinted at a tastefully sterile room in placid colors that could have been the one her father had occupied the last months of his life. A private hospital room. For an ear infection? Seriously? Just give her the pink stuff and send her on her way.

      “I—” I can’t afford this, she tried to say.

      “Don’t try to talk yet,” the kindly nurse said. Her smile was stark white and reassuring against her dark brown skin. She took up Imogen’s wrist to check her pulse, the nurse’s hand soft and warm. Motherly. She checked her temperature and said, “Much better.”

      All the while, Imogen could almost but not quite see him in her periphery. She was afraid to turn her head on the pillow and look right at him. It was going to hurt and she just didn’t have it in her yet.

      “How am I here?” she managed to whisper.

      “Water?” The nurse used a bendy straw, the kind Imogen had never been allowed to use because they were too common. A gimmick.

      She got two gulps down her parched throat before the nurse said, “Easy now. Let me tell the doctor you’re awake, then we’ll give you more and maybe something to eat.”

      “How long...?”

      “You came in yesterday.”

      A day and a half in a place like this? When her bank balance was already a zombie apocalypse running rivers of red?

      The nurse walked out, sending a smile toward the specter on the other side of the bed.

      Imogen closed her eyes again. So childish. She was that and many more things that were bad. Maybe her father was right and she was, simply and irrevocably, bad.

      A shoe scuffed beside the bed. She felt him looming over her. Heard him sigh as though he knew she was avoiding him the only way she could.

      “Why are you here?” she asked, voice still husky.