Fated Attraction Read online

  ‘No,’ she sighed.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ the doctor dismissed briskly. ‘The point is, you want Mr …? He looked enquiringly at Raff.

  ‘Quinlan,’ he instantly supplied.

  ‘Right,’ the younger man said before turning back to smile reassuringly at Jane. ‘All that matters is that you want Mr Quinlan in with you during the examination.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘I’m going to be here,’ Raff cut in firmly, his steady gaze meeting hers with determination.

  To be quite truthful, the nausea, and its subsequent result, had tired her to the point where she really didn’t care any more. She very much doubted she would be the first—or the last!—woman Raff would see in her bra and briefs. She tried to remember the colour of the underwear she was wearing today, but for the moment it eluded her; she did know it would match in colour, whatever that colour was. It was one of her foibles … And extravagances, Jordan would have said. Oh, damn Jordan and his preaching! It was doing little to ease the pain as the doctor examined her ankle!

  ‘Hm.’ He frowned a little. ‘Just badly bruised, I think. Although we’ll X-ray it anyway,’ he announced cheerfully. ‘Just to be on the safe side. Your hip was the other place injured, I believe?’ He briskly pulled the sheet down to examine the injured area.

  Jane heard Raff’s sharply indrawn breath, wondering if she could have been wrong about his having seen a woman in her underclothes before.

  She looked across at him curiously, but his gaze was fixed on the area being examined by the doctor. A glance down at that spot herself told her why!

  She knew her hip was extremely painful; in fact the nausea had begun in the car on the drive here from the pain of it. But she had just been concentrating on getting her outer clothing off earlier without fainting, and hadn’t had the strength to actually look at her hip. She wished she hadn’t bothered now either!

  Her side was black and blue with bruising already, not just on the hip-bone but across her stomach and down her thigh too. It looked ghastly. No wonder Raff was staring.

  Just when she thought she couldn’t stand the poking and prodding into her flesh any longer the doctor straightened.

  ‘Well, it looks as if you’ve been quite lucky, young lady.’ His smile had gone now to be replaced by a reproving frown. ‘I don’t think any bones have been broken here either. You sustained the injuries in a fall, I think you said?’

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded distractedly. ‘I tripped and fell over the pavement.’

  The doctor continued to frown. ‘The injuries seem rather—severe, for a fall of that nature.’

  ‘Well, I—’ Colour flooded her cheeks as she sensed concern behind the question. She glanced at Raff, his mouth tight now as he too sensed the scepticism. My God, the doctor didn’t really think that …! She respected his concern, realised that he probably often had reason for it, but it really was unfair to Raff in the circumstances.

  ‘I fell in the street and Mr Quinlan very kindly helped me by driving me here,’ she told the doctor firmly. The last thing she wanted was to get involved with the police over what had, after all, just been an accident.

  The doctor still didn’t look convinced, but there was really very little he could do about the situation in the face of her insistence. ‘We’ll X-ray the ankle and hip just to be sure,’ he told her gently. ‘And decide what to do with you once we have the result of those.’

  That sounded rather ominous. What did he mean, ‘decide what to do with her’?

  She wasn’t given the chance to ask either the nurse or the doctor that question before they bustled out of the room in deep conversation together, the doctor presumably on his way to treat another patient, the nurse to organise Jane’s X-rays.

  Jane couldn’t quite look at Raff after the implication the doctor had made about him a few minutes ago.

  He crossed the room to stand next to her. ‘I had no idea you were so badly marked,’ he spoke quietly.

  She grimaced dismissively. ‘I bruise easily.’

  He shook his head. ‘You must have fallen very heavily. Or else I did actually hit you with the car …’

  ‘No,’ she denied as she sensed the doubt in his voice. ‘I only said that earlier because I was annoyed by your bluntness,’ she explained truthfully.

  ‘Nevertheless, if I hadn’t driven around that corner at speed—’

  ‘You weren’t speeding,’ she cut in exasperatedly.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Mr Quinlan,’ Jane spoke steadily. ‘Believe me, my accident was not your fault.’

  His mouth was tight. ‘Nevertheless, I’m responsible for you …’

  ‘I’m responsible for myself!’ Her tone was a little more vehement than the occasion warranted, but she was more than a little tired of being told she wasn’t capable of taking care of herself. She certainly wasn’t anyone’s responsibility. God, what an awful label to give someone! ‘I’m grateful to you for bringing me here.’ She spoke more calmly now. ‘But there’s really no need for you to delay yourself any longer.’

  ‘I was only on my way back to my home,’ he said dismissively, his gaze once again on the brightness of her hair.

  ‘Then your wife—’

  ‘I’m not married,’ he bit out curtly.

  Jane couldn’t help but wonder why that was. Unless, as she had presumed earlier, he had been married and divorced. It was the most likely explanation. For a man who supposedly lived alone he had been in a hurry to get there earlier.

  Something about this man raised her curiosity, possibly because she sensed there was no artifice in him—not even the one of politeness! Jordan would find him brash in the extreme, but then Jordan could be brash himself on occasion.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ she said firmly, ‘the X-rays will take some time, and I really mustn’t keep you any longer.’

  ‘You—’

  ‘Don’t bother to dress, Miss Smith.’ The nurse came back into the room, straightening up Jane’s discarded clothes. ‘We need you undressed for the X-ray, anyway.’

  Jane had had no intention of even attempting to put her clothes back on in front of Raff Quinlan, even if she hadn’t been hurting so badly that the nausea was never far away.

  Perhaps the hospital just wasn’t busy, or maybe it was the time of night, but the X-rays were completed and a diagnosis given within a matter of minutes; there were no bones broken, only the severe bruising. But even that was enough to make Jane shudder at the thought of putting her clothes on again.

  Some of her distress must have shown on the paleness of her face.

  ‘Of course, I think we should offer you a bed for the night,’ the young doctor smiled encouragingly. ‘If only as a precaution.’

  For ‘offer her a bed’ Jane knew he meant admit her to the hospital, and she had no desire to spend the night in a hospital ward. But she was sure the doctor was as aware as she was that the address she had given them was that of a hotel, a hotel she had actually booked out of earlier today.

  ‘Is that really necessary?’ Far from leaving, Raff had gone with her to the X-ray department, and then stayed right by her side while the doctor gave her his verdict on her injuries. Now he spoke with a quiet authority. ‘As long as Miss Smith has someone to take care of her, couldn’t she be allowed to leave?’

  The doctor looked slightly irritated by this interruption, obviously still not quite convinced of the other man’s innocence in the affair, although he was holding a tight check on any more even veiled accusations of that nature. ‘I suppose so,’ he accepted slowly. ‘But as she—’

  ‘Miss Smith has somewhere to go,’ Raff told him arrogantly.

  Even Jane looked at him in some surprise. If that ‘somewhere’ was his home, then he could forget it; she may be weak but she wasn’t helpless.

  But if seeming to agree to that suggestion would get her out of here without too much fuss she could always make other arrangements once they were outside. After all, she didn’t have
to go anywhere, do anything she didn’t want to do. After years of being ordered around she was finally free to make her own choices. Even if the majority of them this last week had been a disaster!

  ‘Miss Smith? Miss Smith?’ The doctor repeated his query more firmly at her wandering attention.

  She looked up to find them all looking at her—the nurse kindly, the doctor enquiringly, Raff Quinlan challengingly. It was the latter that now held her attention.

  ‘Is Mr Quinlan’s suggestion agreeable to you?’ the doctor persisted.

  The poor man was still half convinced she had taken a beating from Raff Quinlan!

  And Raff was still fully aware of the unspoken accusation.

  ‘Yes, it’s agreeable to me,’ Jane finally answered, much to Raff’s unspoken but felt relief, and the doctor’s chagrin.

  But he seemed to be resigned to her decision as he stood up to leave. ‘If you have any further trouble, don’t hesitate to either come back here or see your own doctor,’ he advised.

  ‘By ‘‘further trouble’’, I suppose he meant any more beatings from me,’ Raff muttered grimly in the darkness, Jane now seated next to him in the Jaguar, their departure from the hospital made without further incident after the nurse had carefully helped her to dress.

  In truth Jane felt slightly lethargic now, the doctor having prescribed pain-killers to at least help ease some of her discomfort. The last thing she felt like doing now was sorting out a hotel for the night. But it had to be done. Raff Quinlan’s ruffled feelings over the doctor’s implications was the least of her worries for the moment.

  She looked about her in the darkness, realising they were fast leaving town—Raff’s home, wherever it was, seeming to be far from the hotels of London.

  ‘If you pull over at the next corner, I can get a taxi back to a hotel,’ she told him sleepily, those tablets, whatever they were, making her feel very tired.

  He didn’t even glance at her. ‘I said you had somewhere to go,’ he said tersely. ‘And you do. You also have someone to ‘‘take care of you’’.’

  ‘You?’ Jane scorned, her lids becoming so heavy now she could barely keep them open.

  ‘If necessary,’ he nodded abruptly.

  ‘It isn’t,’ she said drily.

  He gave her a scathing glance. ‘Forgive me if I disagree with you.’

  Her mouth tightened at the insult. ‘No.’

  ‘My dear young lady …’

  ‘I’m not your dear anything,’ Jane snapped. ‘And I have no wish to go to your home.’

  His mouth twisted. ‘You talk as if you usually expect your wishes to be carried out without question.’

  Perhaps she did, but she had a feeling, from the little she had learnt of this man this evening, that he rarely considered anyone else’s wishes but his own!

  ‘I want you to stop the car immediately so that I don’t have too far to walk before I can get a taxi back into town,’ she told him firmly, although she was aware that her voice sounded less than convincing, and that she was feeling sleepier and sleepier by the moment.

  Raff Quinlan laughed softly. ‘You don’t look capable of standing on your feet, let alone walking anywhere.’

  ‘I am—capable, of doing—whatever I have to—do …’

  It was the last thing she remembered saying, sleep finally overcoming her as she slumped down in the car seat.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WHAT on earth …?

  Where was she? Jane felt panicked as she awoke fully and didn’t recognise her surroundings. She had been on her way to a hotel—but this wasn’t a hotel, she felt sure of it.

  God! The pain when she tried to move …

  And with the pain came the return of her memory. The headlights of the car. The pain in her ankle as she turned to hurry back on to the pavement, then the terrible jarring of her hip as she made contact with the hard road.

  Raff Quinlan …

  She remembered everything about him too now—the way he towered over her in the darkness, his arrogance, his rudeness, the way he had insisted on bringing her to his home despite her protests …

  She was almost afraid to look beneath the bedclothes, had a feeling she already knew what she was going to find. Nevertheless she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and lifted the sheet.

  Naked.

  Completely.

  Even the peach-coloured underwear was missing now.

  There was something vaguely disturbing about the thought of someone undressing her when she was unconscious from the effect of pain-killers and tiredness because of shock—unfair somehow, and it gave Raff Quinlan an advantage over her that she didn’t like. At the hospital she had been wearing no less than if she had been on a beach, but being stripped naked when she could do nothing to prevent it was—well, it was underhand.

  And Raff Quinlan was responsible, somehow she felt sure of that. After all, he had admitted he didn’t have a wife who could have done it.

  She looked up sharply as the bedroom door opened after a brief knock.

  ‘Ah, good morning, my dear!’ A tall woman in a tailored blue dress with a pristine white collar bustled into the room carrying a silver tray that held what looked like a pot of coffee. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you.’ She smiled brightly before putting the tray down on the bedside-table and straightening, a perplexed frown appearing between her eyes as she looked down at Jane.

  ‘I didn’t realise— For a moment you looked so much like—’ She broke off, shaking her head. ‘I’m sorry, for a moment you looked so much like—someone I used to know.’

  Her smile was only a little strained now. ‘I haven’t even introduced myself,’ she scolded self-derisively. ‘I’m Mrs Howard, Mr Quinlan’s housekeeper.’

  And she had obviously never seen Jane before this moment, confirming that she hadn’t been the one to undress her the evening before!

  But, remembering the evening before, Jane realised she had started a deception with Raff Quinlan that she would now have to carry on. ‘Jane Smith,’ she supplied gruffly.

  ‘Cream and sugar?’

  ‘Sorry?’ She looked up with a frown, the frown clearing as she realised the housekeeper was pouring her a cup of coffee. ‘Oh. Both. Thank you,’ she accepted with a tight smile.

  What was that saying, ‘When first you practise to deceive’ …?

  Sitting up to actually take the offered cup of coffee wasn’t as easy as it should have been, either. Every movement caused her pain, and there was her nakedness to consider. Not that she was at all shy about that, she just didn’t know what explanation Raff had given this woman for her being here, and her nakedness might look a bit suspect, in the circumstances. If Raff had felt he owed his housekeeper an explanation at all! Somehow she doubted it.

  ‘Jane Smith?’

  Her frown returned as she looked up from securing the sheet more firmly about her breasts, not quite as awake as she would have liked to have been, the pain-killers seeming to have left her with a slightly muzzy feeling in her head.

  She took the coffee-cup from the other woman, spilling some of the hot liquid into the saucer as her hand shook slightly. ‘Sorry,’ she grimaced. ‘This is much appreciated.’ And it was, for her mouth felt like sandpaper.

  She decided to ignore the reference to her name; it had already been discussed enough, one way or another! But sipping the coffee made her realise she had a sudden urgency to find a bathroom!

  Her suitcase was just visible behind the bedroom chair, and she had no reason to suppose any of her things had been unpacked and placed in the spacious drawers of the dresser. And, unfortunately, the last time she had seen the wrap she had brought with her it had been strewn across the road soaking up muddy water like a sponge. In fact, most of her clothes had been doing the same thing. But she could hardly stay in this bed forever!

  In fact, she couldn’t stay in it another minute longer, with her predicament becoming more and more desperate by the second!

  ‘My dear?’ Mrs Howard s
eemed to sense her discomfort, if not the reason for it.

  Jane’s smile was strained. ‘I don’t seem to be wearing a nightgown, and—well, I need to …’

  ‘Oh, my dear, how thoughtless of me!’ The other woman instantly looked contrite. ‘Your things are all laundered downstairs. Mr Quinlan explained about the catch breaking on your case, and all your beautiful clothes getting muddy. I’ll just pop down and get them,’ she reassured her.

  Jane waited only as long as it took the other woman to leave the room before struggling out of bed and into what she could see was the adjoining bathroom.

  She was more than a little shaky on her legs, and each movement across the room was an agony, but she finally made it, her relief immense once she had done so.

  She could think clearer now too and, although her accident the night before had delayed her returning home to Jordan, it had only done so for that one night; now she would have no choice but to go back. She had been so sure she could succeed on her own a week ago, but now she was defeated, knew he was right—that she needed him and the money to survive.

  She closed her eyes in shame at the pained memories of the last week—of one rejection after another, one humiliation after another. She had been so sure she could look after and support herself, and instead she had found how ill-fitted she was to do the latter, at least. And without the qualifications and means to support herself she wasn’t capable of being independent.

  Of course, there were a lot of young women in London who couldn’t get a legitimate job and who therefore found some other means of supporting themselves, but even going back to Jordan had to be better than that alternative. Better the devil she knew than ones she didn’t know, she had decided last night when she’d packed up to go home. Much as she hated the thought of Jordan’s gloating self-satisfaction in being proved right about her dependence upon him.

  The housekeeper still hadn’t returned to the bedroom by the time she had finished in the bathroom, and so Jane hobbled as best she could across the room, giving a gasp of horror as she caught sight of her reflection in the dressing-table mirror. Her hip seemed to have turned all the colours of the rainbow now, the bruising having spread further and deepened.