Love Redone (6 page)

Shoving a hand in his pocket, 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
he 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.

It didn’t take long for the intake assessment to be completed, the pertinent information recorded, and Shannon to be made comfortable on the bed. One by one the medical personnel wrapped up their tasks and exited the room. The last person remaining was the lead nurse, 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.

Once her
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.

All Nick
could do now was wait for the doctor to arrive, for ready or not, they would have to face the past and the present in due course.

Still shocked at having been so unceremoniously scooped up out of the wheelchair and marched off down the hallway as if the whole world was coming to an end if he didn’t get her help in the next ten seconds, Shannon was overwhelmed and frankly a bit bemused. When her painful grimace had split the air, she couldn’t help but see how that had affected him.

He’d looked like someone had just shot his dog, and if she hadn’t known better, because after all he was a heartless bastard, she would’ve thought he actually cared. That each time he cuddled her close she wanted to surrender to her baser instincts and simply melt against him instead of demanding he step away and leave her alone shook her to the bitter core of eight years of pain.

Shannon’s mind told her she should be telling him off instead of seeking his comfort.  She cringed realizing that her instincts were ignoring the painful past. Surely the fact that she was injured accounted for this uncharacteristic vulnerability.  If not, well, she would have to think about that later.

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” demeanor, Shannon was at the mercy of her careening emotions and struggling to maintain some semblance of calm.

The fact that her
surprise was deeply rooted in a thrumming awareness of him on a deeply primal level scared off whatever was left of rational speech. That an organic responsiveness was growing, broadening, and evolving with every minute she spent in his company unnerved Shannon even more. She could
feel
him, dammit—could 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 where 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 a keen wit and fast smile. That impression had been frozen in time from a past long thought buried, but right here, right now, nothing could have prepared her for the reality of the man he had become.

He’d had a way of standing
that 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, laid 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 day’s 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 that 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
that molded to 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.

The startling memory of how his sex was crouched in another smattering of dusty colored body hair came unbidden and unwanted, enflaming the primitive drumbeat of awareness already overtaking her
. 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 blond, sun
-bleached shaggy hair she remembered was now immaculately cut and styled in a burnished darker blond 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
Shannon realized that though she tried to block her feelings she was helpless and sinking fast. Her mind wandered over the moments that made up this extraordinary day and 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 that led to this bizarre situation. What was looming even more importantly was the spontaneous response that 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.

* * *

Shannon let out a little sigh, snapping Nick back to instant, focused awareness of 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. Shannon appeared to be as lost in her own thoughts as he was by the swirling confusion and turmoil he was feeling.

All those years of wondering what she may or may not feel about him had been answered when she
had bolted from him 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 as it sank like a stone to the pit of his stomach. 

Everything in him wanted to instantly protect her
. For 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, tossed her over his shoulder, and run away to the first secluded caveman retreat he could find to simply throw 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
had 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.

Nick felt like the room was bursting at the seems with their swirling energies—hers, his, bouncing off the other, circling, stopping, careening off the walls in a heady communication of lost souls impeded by the frailties of human nature
. He felt both longing and fear, 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 that 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 he was hearing was actually the hammering of his thoughts in his head. Not knowing what to do next, Nick just stared with a tight-lipped expression, unable to break the silence as Shannon shifted slightly and rearranged her position. He could tell that even 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
finally asked in a tight, husky little voice that 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.” 

The curious expression in her eyes had him following that detail up in quick response with, “Jules is my little sister
.” And then with a slight shrug of self-deprecating humor, he added, “And she just happens to have seduced and married my best friend, so between Ned, Dom, and Jules, my goose is cooked!” 

Said tinged with lighthearted humor, Nick instinctively tried to lighten the situation
, aware in his very bones that her outward show of calm hid a vulnerability that caused him wisely to soften his approach.

* * *

The half-smile he attempted with his words showed a brief flash of the sexy dimples that had made her knees go weak as a silly twenty-year-old, reminding Shannon again that she was in over her foolish head.

“What about you
, Shannon? Why are you here?  I gather from something Ned said that you planned Dom’s birthday event?”

To say a million lights went off in her fuzzy, headache
-shrouded brain was an understatement.  The blazing, brilliant spotlight that was suddenly shining in her mind brought with it some answers to be sure, but also deposited a hundred more questions on her mind’s doorstep.

Good god, he was Jules’
s brother and Dom’s uncle.  Stunned into silence by this disclosure, Shannon went to reposition herself, as if sitting up straighter was going to make her brain work better. 
Bad move
was her next thought as once again agony shot up her leg, causing fireworks of tension and pain to slice through her head.  Her anguished moan—part pain, part frustration, part surrender—echoed off the walls of the exam room.

“No, don’t move,”
Nick said with a frustrated growl, causing Shannon to flinch at the gravity of his delivery. He moved suddenly and was across the room at her bedside before she could blink

How the hell did he do that?
she wondered.  He had a way of dominating the space around him in such a way that made her feel small and vulnerable.

In the next instant
, he gently but determinedly nudged her shoulders back against the pillows while rearranging the exam sheet more comfortably around her.  Wherever they connected, wherever skin met skin, or if his touch brushed against her clothing, Shannon experienced warmth. Knowing she was aware of him on a deeply physical level caused her senses to scramble even more.