Claiming His Christmas Wife

She glared at him. “Don’t let me keep you.”

He had the nerve to look at the doctor and jerk his head, ordering the man to confer with him outside the room.

“Don’t you talk about me,” she said to their backs. “Did you see what just happened?” she asked the nurse.

“Let’s finish this dose of medication before we talk about removing your needle. I’ll bring you some soup.”

Imogen fell asleep in the time it took the nurse to come back, but felt a little better after a bowl of soup and a glass of vegetable juice. Half her weakness in the street had been hunger, she realized. Apparently, the human body needed to eat every day, and sneaking a few maraschino cherries from the bar while she scrubbed the floor behind it didn’t count. #ThingsTheyDon’tTeachYouInSchool.

The nurse removed her needle after giving her some pills to swallow, then helped her shower and dress in a pair of drawstring pajamas and a T-shirt with yellow birds on it.

After all that activity, even finger-combing her hair was too much. Imogen used a rubber band she begged off the nurse to gather her wet hair into a messy lump, then sat in the chair, trembling with exertion, pretending she was fully on the mend, fishing for the thin slippers that would no doubt cost her a hundred dollars apiece.

She signed forms that promised the hospital both her useless arms and legs and tried to be thankful Travis hadn’t thrown out her boots with her jacket. She snuck a blanket off a linen cart on her way to the door, but it was still going to be a long, hellish walk home, looking like one of New York’s finest. It would be dark soon and was still snowing, growing dusky at three in the afternoon. Her debit card would combust if she so much as tried to put a subway fare on it. She had no choice.

“Bye now,” she said as she passed the nurses’ station with a wave. “Add this to the bill,” she added with a point at the blanket. “Thank you.”

“Ms. Gantry,” the motherly nurse said in protest. “You really should rest.”

“I will,” she lied. “Soon as I’m home.” She would swing by to see one of her employers on the way, though. See if she still had a job with the biker bar’s janitorial staff after blowing her shift last night with this unplanned excursion to the right side of town.

She walked out of the blasting heat in the space between the two sets of automatic doors, and winter slapped her in the face. It immediately sapped 90 percent of her energy, making her sob under her breath as she began putting one foot in front of the other. The cold penetrated before she took ten steps, but she pushed on, doggedly following the looped driveway toward the gilded gates that suggested this place was heaven after all.

It began to look like a really long way just to get to the road. She had to stop and brush snow off a bench dedicated to a hospital benefactor, rest there a moment. She felt so pathetic her eyes began to well. At least her ear didn’t hurt like it had. It was just a dull ache.

There was always a bright side if she looked for it.

Nevertheless, panic edged in around the meditative breaths she was blowing like smoke in front of her face. She was shivering, teeth chattering. How was she going to carry on?

One day at a time, she reminded herself, closing her eyes. One footstep at a time.

Before she could rise, a black car stopped at the curb in front of her. The chauffeur came around and opened the back door. She already knew who would get out and tried to pretend she was bored, not so very close to beaten.

Even her father hadn’t crushed her as quickly and thoroughly as one irritated look from this man did. He wore a fedora and a gorgeous wool overcoat tailored to his physique. His pants creased sharply down his shins to land neatly on what had to be Italian leather shoes.

“You look like a gangster. I don’t have your money. You’ll have to break my knees.”

“Can those knees get you into this car or do I have to do that for you, too?”

The air was so cold, breathing it to talk made her lungs hurt. “Why do you even care?”

“I don’t,” he assured her brutally.

She looked back toward the hospital doors. As usual, she’d come too far and had to live with where she had ended up.

“I told the doctor I would get you home if you insisted on leaving and make sure a neighbor checks on you.”

The drug dealer across the hall? She would love for him to come and go.

She clutched her purse against her chest, inside the blanket she clenched closed with her two hands. She stared at the flakes appearing and melting on her knees so he wouldn’t see how close to tears she was.

“I’ll find my own way home,” she insisted.

Travis, being a man of action, didn’t say a word. He swooped so fast she barely had time to realize he had picked her up before he shoved her into the back of his car and followed her in. Abject loss struck before she’d even had time to process the safe feeling of being cradled against his chest.

Dear God it was deliciously warm in here. She bit back a moan of relief.

“Now,” he said as he slammed his door and sat back, shooting his cuffs. “Where is home, exactly?”

“Didn’t the hospital tell you? They seemed so keen to share everything else about me. What is my blood type, anyway? I’ve never bothered to find out.”

He only nodded toward his driver, indicating the man was waiting with more patience than Travis possessed.

They were really doing this? Fine. A perverse urge to let him gloat over his pound of flesh gripped her. Maybe if he saw she was being thoroughly punished, he might quit acting so supercilious and resentful.

She stated her address.

The driver’s frown was reflected through the rearview mirror, matching Travis’s scowl.

“Would you be serious?” Travis muttered.

She shrugged. “You wanted to know what I was doing in that neighborhood. I live there.”

“What are you doing, Imogen?” he asked tiredly. “What’s the game? Because I’m not letting you screw me over again.”

“No lift home, then?” She put her hand on the door latch.

He sighed. “If I drive you all the way over there, what happens? You get into the bed of some sketchy thug your father didn’t approve of?” His lip curled with disgust. His eye twitched, almost as if the idea of it bothered him. “Does he spank you the way you’ve always needed?”

“Hardly necessary when you’re doing such a fine job of that.” She glared at him, but holding his gaze was hard. It felt too intimate. They had never played erotic games, but suddenly they were both thinking about it.

While she grew hot, she watched him shut down, locking her out, jaw hardening and a muscle ticking in his cheek.

She swallowed. “I plan to crawl into my own bed and hope I never wake up.”

“Tell me where you really live,” he said through his teeth.

“I just did.” She didn’t bother getting emotional about it. It was the doleful truth that her life was so firmly in the toilet, she was barely surviving it.

She let her head rest back and must have dozed, because suddenly he was saying, “We’re here,” snapping her back to awareness of being in his car.

“Okay. Thanks,” she said dumbly, looking behind her to see if it was safe to open her door against traffic.

“You’re going through with this, then.” Travis swore beside her and went out his side, then motioned her to come out his side. He had to lean down and help her climb to her feet.

She clung to his hand, shaking, longing to lean into the woolen wall of his chest. Longing to beg, “Don’t leave me here.” She was scared all the time, not that she had the dim sense to show it. It might be a different neighborhood, but the apprehension was the same as she’d always felt in her childhood. Weakness would be pounced upon. She never showed it if she could help it.

She had never been this weak, though. It took a superhuman effort to release him from that tenuous connection of grasping his hand—not just physically, but because she felt so lonely. So adrift.

Why was it so freaking cold out?

Shivering, she fumbled her key from her purse and moved to the door of her building. It wasn’t locked. Never was. The entryway smelled like sauerkraut soup, which was better than some of the other days.

Travis swore as he came in behind her and set a hand on her upper arm, steadying her as she climbed the stairs. His looming presence, intimidating as it was, also felt protective, which made her heart pang.

“Hey,” one of her neighbors said as she passed them on the stairs. She was off to work the streets in her thigh-high boots, miniskirt and fringed bra beneath a faux fur jacket. “No tricks in the rooms.”

“He’s just bringing me home.”

“Don’t get caught,” the woman advised with a shake of her head. “You’ll get kicked out.”

Imogen didn’t look at Travis, but his thunderous silence pulsed over her as she pushed her key into the lock and entered her “home.”

It was the room where she slept when she wasn’t working but so depressing she would rather work. It was as clean as she could make it, given the communal broom was more of a health hazard than a gritty floor. She didn’t have much for personal effects, having sold any clothes and accessories that would bring in a few dollars.

There was a small soup pot on the only chair. It usually held a bag of rice and a box of pasta, but she had dumbly left it in the shared kitchen overnight a few days ago. She was lucky to have recovered the dirty pot. Payday wasn’t until tomorrow, which was why she hadn’t eaten when she collapsed.

Sinking onto the creaky springs and thin mattress of her low, single bed, she exchanged the damp blanket she’d been clutching around her for the folded one, giving the dry one a weak shake. “Can you leave so they don’t think I’m entertaining? I really can’t handle being kicked out right now.”

“This is where you live.” His gaze hit her few other effects: a battered straw basket holding her shampoo, toothbrush and comb, for her trips to the shared bathroom; a towel on the hook behind the door; a windup alarm clock; and a drugstore freebie calendar where she wrote her hours. “The street would be an improvement.”

“I tried sleeping on the street. Turns out they call your ex-husband and he shows up to make you feel bad about yourself.”

His “Not funny” glare was interrupted by a sharp knock and an even sharper, “No drugs, no tricks! Out!”

“Would you go?” she pleaded.

Travis snapped open the door to scowl at her landlord.

“He’s not staying—” she tried to argue, but of course she was on the bed, which looked so very bad.

“We’re leaving,” Travis said, and snapped his fingers at her.

She flopped onto her side with her back to both of them.

“Imogen.”

Oh, she hated her name when it was pronounced like that, as if she was something to be cursed into the next dimension.

“Just go,” she begged.

“I’m taking this,” he said, forcing her to roll over and see he held her red purse.

“Don’t.” She weakly shook her head. “I can’t fight you right now. You know I can’t.” She was done in. Genuinely ready to break down and cry her eyes out.

“Then you should have stayed in hospital. I’ll take you back there now.”

She rolled her back to him again. “Take it, then. I don’t even care anymore.” She really didn’t. All she wanted was to close her eyes and forget she existed.

With a string of curses, he dragged the scratchy gray blanket from her and threw it off the foot of the bed. Then he gathered her up, arms so tense beneath the thick wool that her skin felt bruised where it came in contact with his flexed muscles. He was surprisingly gentle in his fury, though, despite cussing out the landlord so he could get by and carry her down the stairs.

“Travis, stop. I’ll lose all my things.”

“What things? What the hell is going on, Imogen?”

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