‘Whoa!’ she said, reaching for him, steadying him. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, ushering him in and shutting the door.
Nathan closed his eyes and luxuriated briefly in relative silence as the heavy door muffled the storm. It was dry and warm inside, and he’d never been more pleased to be anywhere than he was right now to be inside Jacqui’s house.
‘Nate?’
His eyes fluttered open and he frowned down into her concerned face. ‘Flu,’ he muttered, attempting to shrug out of the jacket that suddenly felt as if it weighed a ton against his aching shoulders. ‘Feel like crap.’
Jacqui helped him off with the sodden garment, putting her arm around his waist as he swayed again. His long-sleeved business shirt was soaked, but it was hot against her arm—not cool as she had expected. She reached up and felt his forehead.
His skin was flushed and practically scorched her palm. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you dry.’
Nathan eyed the steps and groaned. They might as well have been the Alps. He could barely keep his head up, let alone master a flight of stairs. He was tired. So tired. Deep down in his bones weary. ‘I can’t.’
‘Hold on to me,’ Jacqui murmured, ‘I’ll help.’
She was no dainty, fragile female. Most of her practice consisted of puppies, parrots and goldfish, but some of it was large animal work, and that required the strength and stamina which her statuesque frame coped with easily. But still, as he put his arm around her shoulders and leaned into her, she staggered under his bulk.
She’d always appreciated how his superior height and broad male shoulders had made her feel more feminine, and she was surprised to feel a familiar stirring deep down low at the solidness of muscle beneath her hands, the bound of his heart against her palm and the way her be-ringed fingers looked with his shirt splayed beneath them. She quashed it, bracing herself for the slow trip up the stairs.
At the top she guided him to the lounge room. ‘Sit,’ she instructed him.
A hundred questions vied for front-line attention in her head as she scurried off to the linen cupboard. She pushed them aside. Nate was obviously unwell. Why he’d turned up on her doorstep after a decade could be discussed when he was better.
Nathan sneezed as his shaking fingers attempted to undo the buttons of his shirt. The warmth of the house was a welcome haven, but he needed to get out of his wet clothes. He cursed as he fumbled the job, the buttons refusing to budge.
‘Towels and blankets,’ Jacqueline announced, reentering the room with an armful of linen. She stopped in front of him, watching his feeble attempts at undressing himself.
Nathan looked up at her. Backlit by the light, her crazy ringlet hair of russet and gold looked almost angelic. Was he hallucinating? ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do it.’
Jacqueline gazed down at the whole lot of man sitting in her lounge, looking like a drowned rat and helpless as a kitten. It was an admission she knew wouldn’t have been easy for him. She sighed and knelt. ‘Let me.’
She briskly undid the buttons, ignoring the chest she’d known like the back of her hand ten years ago, and pushed the wet shirt off his shoulders and down his arms. She grabbed one of her towels and threw it around his shoulders, cocooning him in it while she attacked his dripping hair with another.
Nathan drew the soft fluffy towel closer. It smelt like soap and sunshine and Jacqui, and he closed his eyes, hunching into it, absorbing its warmth. The fabric rasped against his heated flesh, goosing his skin. A wet nose nudged his hand and he opened his eyes.
‘You still have Shep,’ he said, stroking the dog’s head. He’d given her the golden retriever as an anniversary gift years before.
Jacqui’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Yes,’ she said briskly, continuing the job.
He sat placidly, his hand on Shep’s back, as she towelled his hair, incapable of offering any assistance. A shard of a memory from their past undulated through the fevered quagmire of his brain.
His eyes fluttered open. ‘You used to like to play with my hair,’ he murmured.
Jacqueline’s hands stilled, and she looked into his amazing green eyes. They were glazed with fever, and she could see the lights were on but no one was home. She ignored him, taking his shoes off. ‘You’re going to have to stand so I can get your pants off.’
Nathan heard the words come towards him from far away. They sounded disconnected, and he gave a goofy laugh. ‘You used to like to get my pants off, too.’
Jacqueline gritted her teeth, reminding herself it was the delirium talking. ‘Up you get.’
He rose slowly and leaned against her as she reached for his fly. He gave another juvenile laugh, and she rolled her eyes as she dispensed with his soaked trousers and underwear, trying to channel a mother superior–like indifference.
He stood still while she briskly rubbed him down, drying his legs with as much clinical detachment as she could muster, ignoring another part of his anatomy she’d once known like the back of her hand.
He swayed again, and she held on to him with one hand while the other arranged some bedding on the couch. ‘You can sit now,’ she murmured.
Nathan collapsed back onto the couch. He felt icy cold all over and he shivered, tucking his legs up towards his chest. ‘Freezing,’ he murmured, wrapping his arms around his knees.
He looked incredibly vulnerable, naked on her couch in the foetal position, the overhead light bathing his superbly tanned body in a soft golden hue. He almost looked like the boy she had met at uni, not one of the most influential men in the country, and she threw a one-hundred-percent-duck-down duvet over him to block the image from her sight and her mind.
She looked down at him for a long time. ‘What are you doing here, Nathan Trent?’ she whispered.
Jacqui placed Nate’s clothes into the washing machine, ignoring the ‘dry clean only’ advice next to the designer label. She hung his jacket up and parked his equally expensive-looking shoes near the front door.
She crept back into the lounge. Shep had taken up position on the floor near the couch, and thumped his tail as he spotted her. She switched off the overhead light and reached across Nathan’s supine form to snap on the nearby lamp.
He looked totally out of it, his cheeks flushed, his full lips slack with slumber. She stroked the back of her hand against his roughened jaw. He was hot. So hot. He murmured something unintelligible, shifting slightly, and she withdrew her hand abruptly, scuttling away to the couch opposite.
Her heart drummed a crazy beat, matching the inclement weather in its ferocity, and she held her breath. Fortunately Nathan settled quickly—which couldn’t be said for her pulse—and she sank gratefully into the leather cushions, pulling her feet up under her.
God, how she’d used to love watching him sleep. Of course his hair had been longer then. A curly mop that she had loved to push her fingers into, rub her face against. It was shorter now, cropped closer to his head, its tendency to curl severely denied.
He had slept naked then too. They both had. Clothes had seemed such an inconvenience when neither of them had been able to get enough of each other. Even at the end, when they had drifted apart, their desire had still been a potent force, keeping them bound to a marriage that no longer worked.
Jacqui shut her eyes against the memories. There was no point dredging up the past. The man lying on her couch might be the man she’d married all those years ago—was still technically married to—but he was as much a stranger to her now as he had been at the end. And wishing things had been different didn’t make it so.
It was five a.m. when Jacqui next awoke, her neck stiff from falling asleep in a semi-upright position. The rain still pelted against the roof like a platoon of tap-dancing soldiers, and a grey