Claiming His Christmas Wife. Dani Collins

he saw there was no fight left in her. Her mouth was pouted, her eyes glassy with exhaustion, her hands limp in her lap.

      If she weighed a hundred pounds right now, he’d be stunned. It wasn’t healthy, even for a woman barely hitting five and a half feet tall.

      “I can’t afford the hospital. Can you please just tell my landlord I’m sick, not stoned, and let me sleep?”

      “No.” He slammed his door and jerked his head at his driver to pull into traffic, wanting away from here. As far and fast as possible. “Do you have gambling debts? What?”

      “Oh, I backed the wrong horse. That’s for sure.” She rolled her head on the back of her seat to quirk her mouth in an approximation of a smile. “What’s that old song about not being able to buy love? Turns out it’s true.”

      “Which means?”

      She only sighed and closed her eyes, almost as if she was trying to press back tears. “Doesn’t matter,” she murmured.

      “Explain this to me. You had a lover who stole all your money? Tell me, how does that feel?” He ignored the gas-lit inferno that burst into life inside him as he thought of her with other men, feigning great interest in her reply instead.

      Her brow pleated and she turned her nose to the front, eyes staying closed. Her lashes might have been damp.

      “You seem obsessed with my many lovers. Accuse me of anything, Travis, but not promiscuity. You, of all people, know I don’t give it up easily.”

      That took him aback a little. He didn’t understand why. They were divorced. It shouldn’t matter to him how many lovers she’d had, so why was he needling her about it? He presumed she’d taken some. With her libido?

      Sexual memory seared through his blood, lifting the hairs on his body and sending a spike of desire into his loins.

      He ignored how thinking of other men enjoying her passionate response put a sick knot in his gut. He had long ago decided he was remembering it wrong, anyway. He’d been high on personal achievements when they’d met, which had lent optimism and ecstasy to their physical encounters. Whatever had been roused in him hadn’t been real or wholly connected to her. It certainly hadn’t been worth all she’d cost him.

      As for what she’d felt?

      “Right,” he recalled scathingly. “You want a ring and a generous prenup before you sleep with a man. You haven’t found another taker for that? Of course, you only have one virginity to barter, and sex without that sweetener?” He hitched a shoulder, dismissing what had felt at the time like an ever-increasing climb of pleasure as she grew more confident with him between the sheets.

      His ego needed her to believe his interest had already been waning, though. He still felt embarrassed for going blind with impulsive urgency in the first place, unable to let her get away. He had married her in a rush, on the sly, because he’d known deep down that they wouldn’t last. A fire that burned that high, that fast, guttered just as quickly, which was exactly what had happened. A blur of obsessive sex had quickly dissolved into her walking away with her prenuptial settlement and a demand for a divorce.

      “Wow,” she said, voice husky. “That’s hitting below the belt, isn’t it? You’re welcome, then, for releasing you to enjoy much better sex than I was able to provide.”

      He wasn’t sure how her remark caused his own to bounce back and sting him so deeply. Maybe it was the fact that, try as he might to claim disinterest, he’d never found another woman who’d inspired such a breadth of sexual hunger in him.

      That was a good thing, he regularly told himself. Maybe he hadn’t erased her from his memory, but he didn’t want or need the sort of insanity she had provoked, either.

      No, he had spent the last years very comfortably dating women who didn’t inspire much feeling at all, only returning to the land of turmoil when his PA had interrupted his meeting yesterday morning.

      Had it only been thirty-six hours? Such was Imogen. She was a hydrogen bomb that cratered a life in seconds, completely reshaping everything around her without a moment’s regard.

      He remembered her prescription and drew the paper from her purse, handing it to his driver, instructing him to drop them in the front of his building before filling it.

      When they arrived at his Chelsea building, however, the doorman was busy corralling paparazzi away from the entrance. It was a common sight when one of his celebrity neighbors had just arrived home. The sidewalks were teeming with Christmas shoppers, too. Even some carolers dressed in olden days’ garb.

      “Take us to the underground,” Travis instructed, beginning to feel weary himself. He had only been home for a few hours of sleep last night, arriving late and leaving early, wanting to get back to the hospital. The urgency to do so had been...disturbing. Now he was compelled to get Imogen into his apartment so he could finally relax, which was an equally unsettling impulse.

      “You don’t want to be photographed with an escapee from the psych ward? Weird,” she murmured. “You realize I don’t just look like a homeless person? I am one. My landlord will have my stuff on the stoop and my room let to someone else by now. Thanks for that, by the way.”

      “Still have some spit and vinegar, though.”

      “Literally, all I have left. Why did you bring me here? Because I’m quite sure you’re not inviting me to live with you and I’m quite sure I won’t take you up on it if you do.”

      He didn’t know what he was doing, but he hadn’t been able to leave her in that roach-infested garbage pail of a building. He imagined she would only discharge herself if he took her back to the hospital. Bringing her to his penthouse was his only choice.

      “You’re going to have that nap you’re so determined to take. I’ll use the silence to figure out what to do with you when you wake up.”

      * * *

      Imogen wanted to sneer at him, but it took everything in her to open her door when the car stopped and it wasn’t even her own steam that did it. The driver got out and opened it for her. He helped her out and Travis came around to slide his arm across her back, helping her into the elevator where he used his fingerprint to override a security panel and take them to the top floor.

      He kept his arm around her and she couldn’t help but lean into him. It felt really, really nice. For a split second, she experienced a spark of hope. Maybe he didn’t hate her. Maybe this was a chance to make amends. She couldn’t change the past, but the future was a blank whiteboard.

      Then she caught sight of their reflection and her glimmer of optimism died. At one time, she had almost been his equal, when her family had had money and she had been a product—not a shining example, but at least a product—of an upper-crust upbringing.

      Since then, however, he had skyrocketed from wealthy architect who dabbled in real estate to international corporate mogul, taking on prestigious projects around the globe. An honest-to-God tycoon who lived in the city’s best building on its top floor. He was way out of reach for the black-sheep daughter of a paper publisher and far, far beyond taking up with a match girl—which she could aspire to be as soon as she stole some matches.

      She had thought dying in the street was rock bottom. Then Travis seeing how broke she was and the way she had been living had felt like rock bottom. But this was rock bottom. Riding an elevator up to what might have been her life if she’d played her cards differently, while she faced how completely and irrevocably she had fallen down in his estimation, was beyond demoralizing. It was shattering.

      Until this moment, her life had been a mess, but her heart had held some resilience. She had possessed some spirit. Some hope that one day she would be able to face him and make amends. That belief had got her out of bed and off to her many awful, minimum-wage jobs. But that was gone now.

      The doors of the elevator opened to a foyer of marble and mahogany. Floating stairs rose on the right with a bench tucked beneath. A