The Billionaire's Impulsive Lover (The Sisterhood) (17 page)

The past week without her had been horrible. He’d been thinking about her all the time, wondering what she was doing, what she’d thought about the note he’d asked Allyson to deliver, and if she’d be mad at him for not telling her where he’d been.

He’d done an urgent favor for a friend, who needed to find his sister. She’d been in and out of the gossip papers for years so he’d thought it would be an easy job to find the woman. Especially with her reputed drug and alcohol problems. But she’d been much more elusive than he’d thought. And when he’d found her, living on a farm only a few miles from his house, he’d been amazed that she’d been so close all the time when he’d traveled from one corner of the country to another and even to London to track her down with the various leads he’d unearthed. For a woman who had been so open about her clubbing and partying, she was definitely not an easy target to find.

But now, his favor had been repayed, he’d delivered the information on her whereabouts to his friend and he was free to try and convince this tiny little blond bombshell to spend the rest of her life with him. He wanted kids with her, which shocked him to the core. As he went down the stairs to make himself some coffee, he thought about little blond daughters running around his house, all with her chocolate brown eyes and sweet, mischievous smile. And boys. He’d love to have some sons as well. The thought of little blond boys was a nice idea. He considered how he would teach the boys to watch out for the girls, then realized what he was thinking and stopped himself, glad that he’d only thought it instead of saying it out loud to Claire. She’d probably try to kick his butt if she knew what a sexist thought he’d just had.

He chuckled when he revised his future plans. The girls, he corrected himself, would learn to defend themselves just as well as the boys. Because they would be dating….Mitch stopped cold, his hand frozen with the coffee grounds spilling onto the countertop as he furiously considered one of his daughters trying to defend herself from a teenage boy. Someone like himself. No way in hell!

Mitch again revised his thoughts. No daughters. He couldn’t handle having daughters that looked like Claire. No way. He’d be a nervous wreck by the time they finally married if they were anything like Claire. No way! He almost punched the cabinet just thinking about some teenage boy trying to kiss his daughter so he wiped that image out of his mind. They would have sons. He could handle sons. Lots of boys running around, chasing after Duke, and Duke’s puppies. Yep, kids needed puppies. Maybe the woman he’d just found could recommend some animals to adopt, ones that Duke wouldn’t mind. The kittens he’d noticed trailing after a pack of mismatched dogs might be a nice touch.

With that on his mind, he pressed the start button on the coffee machine, then started up his home computer which was instantly linked to his office. Anything he could do at the office, he could also do here, although he had significantly different security here because he wasn’t willing to have armed guards patrolling the grounds of his house like he had at his various office buildings.

Several hours later, he heated up some soup, poured a glass of juice and brought it up the stairs. Since Claire was still sleeping, he placed the tray on the bedside table and laid his hand on her forehead. She was burning up. Going into the bathroom, he pulled out a package of unopened cold medicine.

Back in the bedroom, Claire was waking up, staring into the wall as if confused.

Claire looked around, but didn’t recognize her bed. This one was much bigger, much more masculine. “Where am I?” she asked.

“You’re at my house,” Mitch said softly and walked back to the bed. “Can you sit up and take some medicine? You have a fever right now that I think needs to come down so you’ll be more comfortable.”

Claire sat up slowly and leaned against the pillows he stacked up behind her. She took the medicine, then drank as much of the orange juice as she could. “Why did you bring me here?” she asked. “Can you take me home?”

“We’ll talk about that later,” he said, knowing there was no way in hell he was going to drive her home to her house while she felt, and looked, so awful.

“Take me home now, please,” she said, but her eyes were already drifting closed, her body relaxing back to sleep.

Mitch would have chuckled at her stubbornness if he hadn’t been so concerned. Standing up, he picked up the phone and called Allyson, giving her instructions to get a doctor over to his house as soon as possible.

Twenty minutes later, a doctor called back, giving Mitch instructions based on the symptoms he’d described. “If she gets any worse, or if her fever doesn’t break with the medicine, bring her into the emergency room,” he said.

For the next three days, Mitch brought her hot tea, orange juice and soup along with cold medicine, promising each time she woke up that he’d discuss taking her home when she woke up the next time. For three days, he slept in the bedroom across the hallway from her so he could be near in case she needed him during the night, he worked from home and pampered her as much as he could.

Claire woke up and looked around, amazed that she felt so much better. She’d been in a blurry haze of misery for so long, she had no idea what day it was or where she was. No, she looked around the room at the gorgeous furniture she’d picked out….she wasn’t sure how long ago their weekend together was, but she smiled as she looked at the furniture she’d picked out of a magazine and sent to him through interoffice mail. Once again, he’d followed her suggestions exactly, even down to the placement of the furniture and the sheets and bed spread.

Then her smile disappeared. She hated this man, she reminded herself. Okay, so he’d taken care of her when she was sick, but she would have gotten through this cold just like she’d gotten through the others. Besides, it was his fault she’d gotten so sick in the first place. If she hadn’t been so overworked and depressed, pushing herself so she wouldn’t think about him, she never would have gotten so sick.

Looking to the side of the bed, she didn’t see the tea he normally brought to her each morning. Swinging her legs carefully over the side of the bed, she padded her way to the bathroom to shower, feeling enormously better once she was clean. She still didn’t have makeup, nor any clean clothes to wear and she definitely wasn’t putting on the clothes she’d been in for the past four days.

Since Mitch still wasn’t appearing to stop her, she opened and closed drawers until she found a pair of men’s pajamas. They were still in the package so she assumed Mitch simply slept in the nude, as he had that weekend they’d been together. Of course, she had as well, which wasn’t her normal sleeping attire. That weekend had been different simply because he hadn’t allowed her to wear much clothing at all. Good grief, they’d spent so much of it in bed, she’d barely dressed.

That was a bit embarrassing now, but she pulled on the soft, silk pajamas, admiring the way the navy blue made her skin look soft and creamy despite the need for makeup to cover those ridiculous freckles she hated so much.

The pants were a bit of a problem since Mitch was so much taller than she was, but she tied the waist band as much as she could, then rolled the pants legs up several times. The tails of the shirt she simply knotted at her waist and rolled the sleeves up as well. She looked like she was wearing a gunny sack, but she was covered, which was the priority.

It was surprising to leave Mitch’s bedroom but she found him almost immediately when she walked into the hallway. The door to the bedroom across the hallway was open and since there was only a bed in that room, with one very large male draped diagonally across the center of it, she’d found her nurse nightingale.

“I thought I was the lazy one,” she said, leaning against the doorframe, keeping as much distance as she could so she wouldn’t be tempted to touch his naked back, which was all she could see while the sheet covered his backside.

Mitch didn’t move.

A bit more concerned, Claire moved into the bedroom and looked more carefully at the man. Sure enough, he was sound asleep, but she could tell that his face was flushed underneath the grey tone of his skin.

“Uh oh,” she whispered. “So much for getting back to my own place today,” she said to the silent man. “I guess it’s only fair to help you out, big guy.”

Mitch’s hand moved slightly and she was relieved to know that he was at least not dead. Feeling his forehead, she confirmed that he was indeed feverish.

In his kitchen, she found the tea sitting on the counter and heated up the water. Taking that and some orange juice up to the other bedroom, she found him laying on is back, one hand draped over his face. “Can you sit up?” she asked softly in case he was still sleeping.

Mitch’s entire body jerked, then a moan escaped. “Go away.”

“Not gonna happen, dude.”

“I’m fine. Go away.”

“Take some medicine,” she said and pulled his hand so she could place the cold medicine in his palm. “Come on, I have some orange juice here for you to wash it down with. And some tea.”

“Coffee,” he groaned, popping the pills into the back of his throat and swallowing, followed by a grimace as the pills moved past what she suspected was a pretty painfully sore throat, since he most likely was experiencing the same things she’d been dealing with for the past several days.

“Come on, have some tea.”

“I have a meeting. Need coffee,” he said and tried to sit up.

“If I make you some coffee and bring your laptop up here, will you drink the tea?” she said.

“Yes.”

Claire almost laughed at how grumpy he was. She certainly hoped she hadn’t been like this when she’d been sick.

Three days later, Claire was no longer laughing. She was ready to kick his butt! The man was a horrible patient. He refused cold medicine, demanded coffee instead of tea, which she never gave him, even switching to herbal tea just to get more liquid into him without the diuretic effects of the caffeine. He demanded his computer, but when she brought to him, he was already asleep.

The first day, she’d driven home as quickly as she could, exceeding speed limits on every turn in an effort to get back before Mitch worried about her. As she stuffed clothes and makeup into a big bag, she tried to convince herself that she didn’t care if Mitch was worried when she didn’t come to him when he called, but she knew that she did care.

From his house to her apartment and back, she was gone for less than an hour, extremely grateful that it was the middle of the day so most of the police officers were probably on a shift change and hadn’t caught her racing along the roads and rolling through stop signs.

After that, she cooked in his magnificent kitchen, baking anything she felt like making, working from his house on her own laptop and calling into meetings when she was needed. When she had to go up to his bedroom, she braced herself to come up with some way to get that stubborn male to drink liquids and eat a small bit of food.

Each time she put something into the oven, she hurried up the stairs to check on him. By the middle of the afternoon, his fever had come down but he was still sleeping.

After making brownies, chocolate chip cookies, ginger snaps and butter brickle, she wandered into his library and skimmed the titles. No frivolous mysteries here, she thought as she noted Shakespeare, Durkheim, Nietche and other very heavy tomes. Pulling out one of the volumes of code, she picked up her laptop and carried both book and computer back up the stairs. In the guest room, she pulled a comfy looking chair into position, settled the laptop on her lap and started learning a new computer language. She didn’t like this one as much as the one she was currently programming in, but there could be benefits to this one.

She was halfway through the book when Mitch started moaning. She got up immediately and heated some soup for him and another cup of tea, this one raspberry, grinning maliciously as she carried both up the stairs.

He was somewhat awake and trying to reach for the glass of water by the bed when she walked in. “I’ll get that for you,” she ordered.

Mitch tried to look furious, but he was simply too sick to contradict her order. His hand dropped down to the bed, but he glared at her as best he could.

Claire chuckled as she watched him, handing him the glass carefully and helping him drink it. “You’re cute when you’re sick, buddy,” she teased.

“Payback, Claire,” he warned but because he started coughing at the end of that threat, it didn’t come across and nearly as ominously as he’d intended.

“Well, when you’re feeling better, you can reprimand me all you want. Until then, take some cold medicine and shut up.”

He took the cold medicine and popped it into the back of his throat, swallowing without liquids but grimacing at the pain. She laughed softly, shaking her head. “Stop trying to be all he-man about this and just accept some help, you big brute!”

“Claire,” he sighed and his eyes started closing but she wouldn’t let him fall asleep. “Nope! Wake up and have some soup. Just a little bit. It’s been twenty four hours since you’ve had anything and, although you’re a giant of a man, you won’t recover quickly enough if you don’t eat something and keep the liquids flowing through your system.”