Claiming His Christmas Wife. Dani Collins
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“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?”
IN THE FIVE minutes they’d been upstairs, a handful of jackals had begun circling to case the car. His chauffeur stood ready to open the back door and Travis shoved her into it, wondering why he’d got out at all.
To see how far she would carry her charade, of course, never dreaming she would take him into a dingy firetrap of a room that was