Taming the Tycoon (16 page)

I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.

She felt tears prick her eyes and she pushed the balls of her hands into them as she rocked back and forth.

“Addie?”

How was it fair to finally fall in love and not only have it potentially snatched away, but to be with someone who seemed incapable of loving anything that didn’t have a pound sign attached?

She grabbed her fluffy robe off the back of the bathroom door and threw it on. She had to get rid of him. She couldn’t have him here. Have him around her. If he wasn’t on her side, he had to go. If she had to face leukemia again, she needed people she could count on around her.

Goddamn wretched, horrid, cruel disease!

She quickly washed her hands and splashed water on her face, then opened the door. He was sitting on the side of the bed in his underwear.

“Addie.” He held his arms out for her but she stayed well out of their reach and he dropped them, running the flats of his palms up and down his bare thighs. “I’m so sorry. I really don’t think I was that rough. I know I kind of grabbed you but I didn’t think it would be hard enough to
bruise
you.”

Addie nodded. “It’s okay, it’s not you. Don’t worry.”

Nathaniel frowned. “This has happened before?”

Addie sat on the bed at a safe distance. “Yes.” Tears threatened again and she swallowed hard against them. “When I was first diagnosed with…my illness five years ago.”

She couldn’t even say the word. Didn’t want to. If she said it—
the “L” word—
it would be like opening the gate. She watched as he caught on fast.

He shuffled nearer. “Do you think—are you saying—”

She shut her eyes because she didn’t want to think about it. She wanted to go back to bed and pull the covers over her head and start the day all over again.

“Is the leukemia back?”

She shook her head vigorously as Nathaniel named the unmentionable, as if she could erase it ever being said.

It couldn’t be.
It just couldn’t.

She opened her eyes. “I’ll have to get some blood tests. I’ll make an appointment with the doctor as soon as they’re open.”

Addie congratulated herself on how calm she sounded. Except for a very slight tremor in her voice, she doubted he could tell. Which was pretty damn amazing, considering she was hyperventilating on the inside.

Nathaniel nodded and reached for her hand. “I’ll come with you.”

Addie felt tears well as their joined hands blurred before her eyes and she blinked them away. She didn’t want or need his pseudo concern.

“There’s no need,” she said briskly, dropping his hand as she stood, moving to stand over the other side of the bed to him.

“I don’t mind.”

Addie felt a sudden surge of anger. “Going to take some time out of your work day, are you?” she asked caustically and when he hesitated, she shook her head. “Just go, Nate. Go to work. Go back to your life. Knock down the garden, make your billion pounds. I’ll be fine.”

Nathaniel stood and still, even in the middle of this terrible crisis, she loved him. “I just need to call Margaret and rework some things.”

Addie nodded. Of course he did. Any other man involved with a woman staring down a leukemia relapse would just ring and say he wasn’t coming in.

And that was the difference between
being
with someone and being
in love
with them.

“There’s no need. I’ll call Penny.”

Not a conversation she was looking forward to. Penny would be just as devastated as she was.

“I can do it,” he insisted.

“Why?” she demanded. “There’s no obligation for you to do so. I’ve only ever been a pain in the arse to you anyway. Consider this your get out of jail free card.”

He glared at her. “Addie, please.”

But she was suddenly incensed, building up to a rage because it was easier to concentrate on that than what might be going on in her body right now. She loved him but she didn’t want him here when he didn’t love her back.

“I don’t want you here, Nate. Ever since you’ve been in my life, I’ve been sucked back into a world where nothing matters but working and the pursuit of money. The kind of life that I left behind. For good reason. It’s not healthy and if I’m going through this again, I don’t need unhealthy influences.”

Addie looked at the floor. His discarded clothes were near her feet and she scooped them up. She threw them on the bed. “Just go. I don’t want you here.”

She turned and left the bedroom, her determination to be strong lasting only until he brushed past her fully clothed five minutes later, telling her he’d ring.

The doors shut behind him and she burst into tears. Because she was frightened and angry. But mostly because she wanted to call him back and tell him she’d take whatever crumbs were left over at the end of his busy day as long as he loved her.

Chapter Twelve

It was three–thirty in the afternoon when Nathaniel managed to track Addie down at the pathology department at the local NHS hospital. He’d been going out of his mind all day. He’d rung her phone about a hundred times but it kept going to voicemail. Margaret had finally managed to get hold of Penny’s number and wheedle Addie’s appointment time for her blood test out of her.

He was almost frantic when he saw her sitting in one of the rows of hard plastic chairs. All he’d been able to think about all day was that damn picture on her fridge and it was driving him crazy.

“Hi,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets.

She looked up from her frenetic scribbling in a notebook and a hand closed around his gut. She usually smiled when she saw him, was upbeat no matter what his mood was. When he looked back now, he’d been generally annoyed and disagreeable with her, but now she just looked at him and sighed, anxiety clouding her gray eyes.

“What are you doing here, Nate?”

“I don’t want you to be here alone.”

“I’m not. Penny’s just gone to move the car. We’ve been here longer than expected.”

He shrugged and sat beside her. “So I’ll wait with you.”

“There’s no need,” she said and the flatness of her tone was chilling.

“How long have you been here?” he asked, deciding to ignore her objections.

“About ninety minutes.”

He looked at the ticket in her hand with her number. The digital display overhead told him Addie was still four places away from being seen. “That’s ridiculous.”

She shrugged. “It’s the NHS. They’re busy.”

He looked around at the other occupants of the awful plastic seats. Two elderly people, a skinny man in probably his forties, and directly in front of them a woman whose age wasn’t obvious but given that she had her arm around a beanie-clad child who looked about six or seven from the back, Nate guessed probably in her thirties. Although why she would bring her child to this kind of hell he had no idea.

“I could have had you in with my doctor and tests all done in a couple of hours today.”

“I don’t mind waiting,” she said, her voice dull as she returned her attention to the notebook.

He glanced at her sharply. She looked tired, which wasn’t surprising, given the sheer awfulness of the chair she’d been sitting in for an hour and a half. And if her thoughts were as dark as his, she had to be going out of her mind.

“What are you doing?” he asked as he looked at her notebook.

“Writing down prime numbers,” she said, not bothering to look at him as she finished a page and quickly flicked it over to join a thick wad of others before starting again instantly on the pristine lined paper.

He frowned. Didn’t they go on ad infinitum? She certainly appeared to be well into the millions. “Why?”

“Because it calms me,” she snapped.

“It does?”

She nodded. “Numbers always have. I use them to help me relax when I meditate.”

Nathaniel wanted to ask her more, but her demeanor was not exactly conducive to conversation. And as long as they were helping her keep it together, that had to be a good thing, right? His gaze flicked back to the screen as the number changed and an automated voice over requested the owner of the next ticket in line. The skinny man stood and moved toward the glass window as indicated.

“How are you feeling?” Nathaniel asked after she’d filled another page and flicked it over.

Addie, her gaze firmly fixed on her work said, “If you want to stay, then I can’t stop you, but don’t talk, okay? I’m trying really hard to stay calm and find my center and you are, as per usual, screwing with it.”

It was disconcerting to hear her
Shut up and be quiet
put so serenely. It was not repeated when his phone rang a minute later. “If you’re going to stay, then turn that damn thing off,” she hissed, gesturing to the nearest of many signs that requested phones be switched off while inside.

Nate
never
switched his phone off. Not even on planes when they requested passengers do so just before takeoff and landing. But her glare brooked no argument and he pushed the off button.

A few minutes later, the couple got up when their number was displayed and Nate checked his watch. A sign up near the glass window caught his eye.

Results for blood drawn after four p.m. will not be available until the following morning.

He looked at his watch. Ten minutes to go with the woman in front of them presumably up next. His heart beat harder—after waiting an hour and a half, Addie was going to have to wait until tomorrow to find out whether her leukemia was back?

No. Absolutely not.

That was madness. She couldn’t wait till then. It was mental torture for him—it had to be worse for her. For God’s sake, she’d reverted to doing math! And she should be starting treatment immediately, shouldn’t she? He’d get her hooked up with the best oncologist in London. At the best hospital. He’d take care of everything. All she had to do was beat this thing. She’d done it once, she could do it again.

But he was damned if she was going to wait until tomorrow.

He stood and said, “I’ll be back in a moment.”

He felt Addie’s hand on his arm and turned. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“Just going to see if I can’t speed the process up a little.” He pulled away and approached the window.

The woman behind the window looked his mother’s age and not someone who suffered fools gladly. He shot her his best smile.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “My—” God, what did he call her? Lover, bonk buddy, tour guide? “Friend over there has been waiting for over ninety minutes and I’m afraid she’s not going to make the four o’clock cutoff. But,” he smiled again as he reached for his wallet, “I was hoping she could slip in next?”

He felt Addie near his shoulder as he removed four fifty-pound notes and pushed them across the counter. She gasped and said, “Nathaniel!”

The woman ignored the money as she looked at him, her gaze unwavering, her expression steely. “You want to jump the line? Ahead of the bald kid who’s been waiting just as long as your—friend?”

Nathaniel looked behind him. The kid was the one having the test? Guilt tore at him as the child chose that moment to pull his beanie off to reveal he was as bald as a badger. The same tube he’d seen on Addie’s fridge picture was in his nose. Big black circles colored the huge hollows occupied by the boy’s eyes and he stared straight ahead like a concentration camp victim.

His mother looked gutted—like someone had punched her in the stomach.

Nathaniel blinked, shocked at the sight, horrified at his actions. The little boy gave him the slightest of smiles through lips that were so pale, Nathaniel could barely differentiate where his mouth started and his face began.

“No…look I’m sorry,” Addie said. She pulled at his arm, taking the money, trying to drag him away, but it barely registered. “I’m so sorry. He’s just worried,” she said again to the woman behind the window. “And spoiled.”

“Uh-huh,” the woman said, her lips pursed, her arms crossed across her ample bosom.

“I’m fine waiting, don’t worry,” Addie said, and he felt her glare all the way to his toes.

He followed as she yanked him down the corridor. “Are you crazy?” Her angry words were so low he hardly heard them above the roar of blood through his ears. “You can’t bribe a nurse, Nathaniel.”

Nathaniel thought he must be crazy. What the hell was he doing?

He’d actually tried to bribe a nurse.

He’d never bribed anyone in his life—he’d always,
always
played it straight. As the son of Nigel Montgomery, he’d made sure that everything he’d done had been scrupulously above board.

“Hospitals aren’t like the business world you know,” Addie continued, her notebook clutched to her chest like armor. “You can’t come in here with your big boots and act like your father.”

Okay. That he heard. “I didn’t realize it was the kid,” he said, even though his justification sounded as lame to him as it must to her. “I thought it was the mother.”

She snorted. “And that makes a difference how?”

Good question
. Of course she was right, what he’d done was unforgivable, inexcusable, deplorable. But there was this tight ball of fear inside him, that picture of Addie pounding at the back of his brain like a jackhammer, and he was terrified for her.

For himself.

He’d been Googling everything he could about leukemia relapse all day and none of it had been encouraging. He wasn’t being his usual rational self, he knew that. But was rationale required in this sort of situation?

“Is everything okay here?”

Nathaniel hadn’t noticed Penny’s arrival.

Addie smiled reassuringly at her friend before turning to him. “Go,” she said. “Just go.”

Nathaniel felt his irrational desperation ratchet up another level. “Look, Addie —I’m sorry, that was stupid—”

“Mr. Montgomery,” Penny said as she put her arm around Addie, “I think you should leave.”

Nathaniel glared at Penny of the Kombi. The woman had been a huge pain in the butt since she’d wielded that damned megaphone at the protest rally. She’d been behind every attempt to derail the St. Agnes project over the last couple of months. But he couldn’t help but notice how heavily Addie was leaning on her, at the implicit care and trust the two women shared. And he noticed something else, too—the same fear lurking in his heart reflected in Penny’s gaze.

He suddenly remembered that she had lost her sister to the same disease that had ravaged Addie and realized that this must be a savage blow to Penny as well.

Strangely, he felt a weird kind of solidarity.

He glanced at Addie. She looked wretched and pale and he castigated himself even more for his insane behavior. He wanted to sweep her up, tear her away from her friend, but he didn’t. Addie needed all the support she could get and he knew with utter certainty that Penny would go into bat for her friend—be with her every step of the way.

Unlike himself, with a million demands on his time. He couldn’t look after her, not the way Penny could.

Maybe this was for the best?

So why did it feel plain wrong?

“Good-bye, Nathaniel,” she said, and he watched as Penny led her back to the seats.

He was dismissed.

…

There were flowers waiting for Addie when she got back to the
Ida May
an hour later, and she gave them to a harried-looking mother who was trying to drag her toddler away from the dock edge. She couldn’t look at them.

Penny stayed with her for the long, long night and the distraction was good, but when she eventually went to bed, she dreamed twisted dreams about being sick and Nathaniel visiting her at the hospital every day with a different woman on his arm.

Addie was utterly exhausted when she saw the doctor first thing the next day. But it was amazing what difference a few minutes could make because when she told Addie that her blood work was normal and that she did not, in fact, have leukemia again, Addie felt ten-feet tall and bulletproof.

“It’s just a virus,” the doctor confirmed. “Sometimes they can knock your blood counts about, especially with your history.”

She and Penny smiled. Then they laughed. Then they cried and laughed. Then they both hugged the doctor, who was laughing, too.

It had never felt so damn good to be alive, and Addie left the office with a spring in her step and a renewed vigor to get her life back on track.

It lasted for a whole minute until her phone rang.

“Nathaniel?” Penny asked.

Addie nodded. There were several missed calls from him last night and this morning.

“I have a feeling he’s just going to keep ringing,” Penny said. “Put the man out of his misery. Then put him out of your mind.”

Addie nodded. Sage advice. She answered the phone.

“Well?”

Addie raised an eyebrow.
Good morning to you, too
. “I’m clear. Tests are normal. It’s just a virus.”

There was silence for a moment or two and she felt as if every cell in her body had paused, waiting for his next words.

“Oh…good…”

His brevity was typical, but the relief in his voice was obvious. She felt the sting of tears and blinked them back—what had she expected? She’d just had exceptionally good news—that was all she needed. The universe didn’t owe her anything else.

Certainly not an effusive Nathaniel Montgomery.

“Can I come over tonight?”

Addie shut her eyes against the request that sounded husky, unsure. She wanted him so badly, but the last month had been a roller coaster of emotions with Nathaniel. After the scare she’d just endured, she knew she couldn’t go back to that.

Being with Nathaniel was making her sick.

And she needed to be healthy.

“No, Nate. I can’t be with you.”

“Of course you can,” came his quick response. “You can do anything you want, Addie.”

She gripped the phone as his voice became smoky. “No, Nate, I can’t. I’ve fallen in love with you and—”

“What?”

Addie was glad they were on the phone. She had a feeling he would just have spluttered saliva all over her face.