The Billionaire's Second Chance (8 page)

Looking around to distract himself he noticed the beautifully appointed private exam room with original artwork on the walls, muted colors and soft furnishings which spoke to the wealth of its clients. No expense had been spared to make this room seem less like a hospital setting and more like a luxury hotel. Shoving a hand in his pocket as he surveyed the impressive array of medical equipment which blended in effortlessly around the room, Nick felt something with his fingers and pulled out the ankle bracelet he had so carefully removed from her swelling foot. He’d forgotten in the kerfuffle of their accidental meeting that had pocketed it. Staring at the delicate silver chain with the Goddess charm, he was hit yet again by the discomforting feeling that she was involved with someone, hell, maybe even married for all he knew.  The very notion that she was anybody’s Goddess except his made him physically sick.

Sounds from the bed where Shannon reclined during this initial examination brought Nick back to the present. She was answering questions about her personal information to an attendant while the nurse continued taking her vital signs.

“Ms. Reynolds, may I call you Shannon?” Nancy asked. At Shannon’s nod of consent Nancy economically rolled back the sleeve of her patient’s blouse and fixed a blood pressure cuff around her arm before pressing a stethoscope to her skin as she checked Shannon’s pressure. Talking in soothing terms to her the entire time, letting her know what she was doing and what was coming next, Shannon, though still in pain and wracked with anxiety, tried to relax just a bit.

It didn’t take long for the intake assessment to be completed, the pertinent information recorded, and Shannon helped to be comfortable on the bed. One by one the medical personnel wrapped up their tasks and exited the room. The last person remaining was Nurse Nancy who, while her fingers were pressed gently to Shannon’s wrist as she continued to assess her pulse, informed her that the doctor would be in momentarily.

With that Nancy’s duties were completed and after a brief nod in Nick’s direction and taking a moment to assure Shannon’s comfort she too left the room.  As the exam room door soundlessly swished shut Nick and Shannon were alone again in a bubble of swirling energy marked by an umbrella of silence.

To say they were both agitated was an understatement. All they could do now was wait in tense silence for the doctor to arrive, neither fully aware of how unhinged and staggeringly confused the other was. In this instance, ignorance probably was best for
ready or not,
they would have to face the past and the present in due course.

CHAPTER
FIVE

After the flurry of talk when Jules and Ned had come upon them in those initial moments after the shocking collision of her soft, woman’s body into his hard-as-steel form, Shannon had retreated in confusion, partially due to the excruciating pain she was experiencing but certainly more due to the fact that she was in deep shock at having the object of a life’s worth of regret suddenly and unexpectedly in her face.  With no time to prepare or chance to adopt a ‘don’t mess with me’ game face, Shannon was at the mercy of her careening emotions and struggling to maintain some semblance of calm.

The fact that her shock was deeply rooted in a thrumming awareness of him on a primal level scared
off
whatever was left of rational speech. That
an
organic awareness was growing, broadening and evolving with every minute she spent in his company unnerved Shannon
even
more. She could
feel
him
d
amnit
; c
ould feel his presence as though he was a magnet pulling her closer with every passing second.

Daring to spare a glance at the object of this discomfiture she shifted her eyes under a hooded gaze to his ramrod straight silhouette as he stood at the window of the hospital room
as they waited for
the next round of poking and prodding at her hideously swelled ankle.

As a young man just past his college days she’d thought of him as beautiful.  He had been poster boy perfection; tall, lean, ripped and possessing of a keen wit and fast smile. That impression had been frozen in time from a past long thought buried but right here right and now nothing could have prepared her for the reality of the man he had become.

He’d had a way of standing which reminded her of a swashbuckling ship’s captain; feet spread apart, arms crossed, face to the sky and even now the same held true.  Right below the surface of the controlled façade he was projecting she knew lay the essence of something daring and enthralling within him.  He was very much a bold and fearless warrior at heart.  Deep in thought before the wide cased window, he was silhouetted against the dazzling rays of that days’ sun with more shadow now than light, emphasizing
the
sizzling
presence
she couldn’t ignore; the latent sensuality and a primal sense of superiority he exuded without trying.

With his arms crossed she couldn’t help but admire the
casual attire he’d chosen. The
sexy western style shirt in the brightest of bright whites, perfect for the cowboy pirate in her mind, stretched tight across his massive shoulders and down muscled arms to sleeves which had been turned back revealing tanned forearms sprinkled with soft hair.

Was she wrong to notice that the shirt was neatly tucked into a pair of dark jeans which molded his body; showing her the physique of a grown
man?
  He had a flat stomach and long powerful legs along with what the girls would call a very cute butt accentuating that pirate stance of his.

It didn’t take much to open the floodgates of memory even further recalling intimate details her mind seemed helpless to block. Remembering how this giant of a man looked without a stitch of clothing on; his impossibly broad shoulders and naturally muscled arms framed a torso sculpted to perfection with a line of dusty brown hair running down his chest like an arrow pointing lower beyond his navel to slim hips and powerful thighs.

Unbidden and unwanted came the startling memory of how his sex was crouched in another smattering of dusty colored body hair which enflamed the primitive
drumbeat of awareness
overtaking her now.  Wanton memories of running her hands over his body and the way he would growl when her delicate touch had explored his maleness caused a sudden eruption of heat to pool between her legs
,
rocketing a deep blush up from the core of her being until it all but burst into flames on her face.

These memories were her enemy; thoughts and responses to a time long ago when she’d thought they were two parts of the same whole. Suddenly she wanted to cry and not from the pain of her injuries but from her helpless response to an avalanche of sensual memories that were rocking her being and blowing away years of iron clad control over her emotions.

She should look away; focus on herself and block her female response to his absorbing presence but try as she might nothing could force her thoughts back from the abyss of an intense desire to drink him in and drown in the powerful response his presence was wringing from her frayed emotions.

His profile revealed little except that the sandy blonde, sun bleached shaggy hair she remembered was now immaculately cut and styled in a burnished darker blonde color with what she suspected from this distance were strands of grey at his temples. This man was an adult and a powerful one at that if his take command behavior since the moment he had announced to a shocked and speechless Jules and Ned that he was taking care of the situation was any indication.

Swallowing back a shaken sigh forced from her soul at the realization that though she tried to block her feelings she was helpless and sinking fast, Shannon’s mind wandered over the moments that made up this extraordinary day and instantly felt a creeping nervousness like butterflies before an important event invading every fiber of her being.  Her awareness of him was shockingly unexpected and oh so delicious at the same time.

A quick internal scan revealed much more than the bumps, cuts, scrapes and sprains which led to this bizarre situation. What was looming even more importantly was the spontaneous response which she could not control that seemed to be reaching out to him as though her body and soul recognized his as
a missing part
. A longing, deep and intense, overtook her and made more tears swim in her eyes. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be and for long moments she simply absorbed a tidal wave of memories both good and also tragically painful. The tears she was trying to keep private were going to break free and there was nothing she could do about it.

That little sigh she’d tried to control had found its way past the shroud of deep, thoughtful memories that had frozen him in space for lord knows how long and snapped
him
back to instant, focused awareness on where he was and who else was in the room.

With unerring accuracy his head instantly turned toward the delicate sigh still captured in the air
,
only instead of finding her eyes looking back at him he was
met
by
a
hollow gaze, apparently un-phased by the swirling confusion and turmoil in which he found himself.

All those years of wondering what she may or may not feel about him had been answered when she bolted in anger and gotten hurt.  That she had tried to run from him was all he needed to know.  Recognizing that his very presence sparked so vehement and reckless a response from her froze his heart and sank like a stone in the pit of his stomach. 

Everything in him wanted to instantly protect her
. F
or a single heartbeat he had been so overwhelmed with joy at finding himself in the gift of her presence that he had almost picked her up, thrown her over his shoulder and run away to the first secluded caveman retreat he could find and simply thrown himself at her feet in homage.  She was
his
goddess, his best beloved, the missing part of his sleeping soul and as undeserving as he was, the universe had somehow given him a second chance to make things right; to fix the madness he had created eight years ago. 

And then she recoiled in horror, wrenching herself from his grasp as though his touch had
made her dirty.  The strangled
No!
she
had screamed in his shocked face reverberated through his brain on a continuous loop of background noise that he was pretty sure was going to haunt him forever. 

And now here she was, in an
expensive
private clinic, nursing a serious contusion to her ankle, a nasty wound on her shoulder and an ugly bump on her forehead, all because of him.  Good job
,
Nick.

Like he hadn’t done enough to her already he winced as her blank gaze continued to remind him of what a complete ass he had been and still was.  To make him feel like an even bigger prick, there were clearly tears falling like raindrops down her cheeks. 
Shit
.  Those tears had the effect of Novocain on his reactions.  He just froze.

When the tears that sprang to her eyes overflowed down her cheeks, Shannon jumped back into the moment and inhaled sharply in an attempt to reign in the primal longing his sudden appearance in her life had revealed.  With a slight shaking of her head she refocused her attention only to find the object of her longing staring deeply at her as though he was attempting to read her mind.

The room was bursting at the seams with swirling energy; hers, his, bouncing off the other, circling, stopping, careening off the very walls in a heady communion of lost souls impeded by the frailties of human nature, each both longing and yet afraid, each reluctant to take whatever the next step would be. 

Their future lay in frozen suspension all around them while the past stirred the pot.  In those halted moments, his devastating power and natural authority stalled in the face of her potent allure. He was helpless.  Enchanted.  All the money, power and influence which pervaded his life meant absolutely nothing in this moment. 
He was, simply put, at his most vulnerable.  Exposed and emotionally naked.
Always having been rather fearless, he was instead completely terrified.  He who had negotiated toe to toe with world leaders and powerful tycoons; wielded influence and power beyond what most people could even imagine, was reduced to a panicked mere mortal
of a
man with no more power or control over this situation than a human could control the waves of the ocean. 
She was
turning him inside out and upside down without so much as looking in his direction.

The silence was deafening or maybe the noise she was hearing was actually that of the hammering of her thoughts in her head.  Not knowing what to do next but realizing from the grim tight lipped expression she was getting from him it was going to be up to her to break the silence, Shannon shifted slightly trying to rearrange her position.  That slight movement brought pain to every part of her body causing her to come up short with a barely suppressed groan of discomfort.

“Nick, what are you doing here?” Shannon asked in a tight husky little voice which spoke volumes about the
fragile
state she was in.

Moving closer but cautiously staying an unthreatening step or two away from overpowering her with his presence Nick answered in short order, “I’m here for Dom’s birthday. He’s my nephew.”