Carole Mortimer Romance Collection

‘I wish all my problems could have been solved as easily,’ Wolf added grimly now. ‘Cyn—’

‘Let’s see if we can get you moved,’ she said briskly, standing up to bend down and put her hand under his arm. ‘If not, with the telephone being out of action, I’ll have to drive to the doctor’s and get him to come out here to you.’

Wolf made no attempt to move, but sat looking up at her, so close she could see the black flecks in the gold of his eyes. ‘End of conversation?’ he prompted gruffly.

Cyn refused to meet his gaze. ‘The past is best forgotten, Wolf,’ she told him offhandedly.

His hand moved out to grasp her arm. ‘I’m not talking about the past—’

‘Well, don’t fool yourself into thinking there’s a now!’ she bit out scornfully. ‘The only here and now we have is your injured ankle—and I intend getting professional help for that as soon as possible,’ she said briskly, deliberately moving so that his hand fell from her arm. ‘Can you try to at least get into a chair so that I can take a better look at your ankle?’ It was cramped, to say the least, sandwiched as he was between the sofa and the coffee-table.

He continued to look up at her for long, tension-filled minutes, then he nodded slowly, his expression grim at the effort it took for him to move at all; the ankle was obviously very painful indeed.

In fact, when Cyn finally looked at it once he was in the chair, she wondered how he had managed not to shout out loud at the pain moving must have caused him. His ankle was swollen to twice its normal size, and she knew if she didn’t soon get his shoe off it would have to be cut from him. Which would be a pity, as the shoes were obviously handmade, and very expensive.

Yet another indication of the wealthy businessman lifestyle Wolf now enjoyed.

Not that his clothes hadn’t been of good quality in the past, they had been; it was just that he hadn’t seemed to particularly care what he wore. Now his clothes, as with everything else about him, seemed to have been chosen with studied care. Unless he hadn’t chosen them! Barbara was still very prominent in his life, and Cyn had never forgotten the fact that the other woman had decorated his flat for him all those years ago. For the times the two of them could be together...?

Cyn didn’t want to think about that, it was still all too painful.

‘The shoe will have to come off,’ she told him abruptly, lifting his foot up on to her knee. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered as he gave a pained groan at her rough treatment, moving more cautiously now as she unlaced the shoe and gently eased it loose so that it no longer pressed down into his swollen foot. Slipping the loosened shoe off obviously caused him further pain, although he didn’t actually say that it did, the grim set of his face telling its own story. ‘Why don’t you just scream and shout like other people when they’re in pain?’ she snapped, impatient with his stoic attitude; why couldn’t he just be normal, for a change!

‘Will that change anything?’ he said quietly.

She looked up at him sharply, quickly looking away again as she saw the pain etched into his features. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sighed at her own lack of feeling, sitting back on her heels. ‘I think you may have to go to the hospital.’ She frowned at the amount of damage he appeared to have done to his ankle; he might even have broken it.

‘I’ve known that for some time,’ he nodded. ‘The question is, will you drive me there?’

‘Will I—? Of course I’ll drive you there!’ She glared at him for even thinking she might not. She hadn’t changed that much. ‘I hate to see anyone in pain,’ she snapped dismissively.

‘That’s me firmly put in my place,’ Wolf drawled with a grimace. ‘Just in case I should have thought your concern was personal,’ he added ruefully at her questioning look.

Cyn didn’t even bother to answer him, concentrating all her attention on getting him outside to her van so that she could drive him to the West Middlesex Hospital, about five miles away—which proved difficult in itself. Wolf was unable to put any weight on his injured ankle at all; his arm was about her shoulders as he leaned heavily on her on the slow walk—hobble!—out to her van parked in the driveway.

‘I think you’ll be more comfortable in the back,’ she frowned as she realised he couldn’t possibly climb up into the passenger-seat in the driving compartment, but that he would probably be able to fall into the back of the van without too much trouble.

Which was exactly what he did, almost taking her with him as she wasn’t strong enough to stop him overbalancing!

Cyn felt hot and irritated when she finally had him settled into the back of the van, not least, she admitted, because of all the physical contact necessary with Wolf to get him there. No matter how she might try to convince herself that she and Wolf were totally wrong for each other, her body seemed to have other ideas, and even now she could feel her nipples taut beneath her pink sweatshirt; thank God the material wasn’t such that Wolf was aware of them too!

‘You’ll have to move my car, I’m afraid.’ He grimaced at the BMW parked directly behind the van.

‘Well, I didn’t intend reversing over it!’ She glared at him for the unnecessary reminder; she was well aware of the fact that she would have to move his car. She was also aware that she would rather not have done so in the small confines of the driveway. It would be just her luck to back the expensive car into her garden wall!

Knowing Wolf was sitting watching her, with the van doors still open, didn’t help. But finally, with a grating of gears—and more than a little cursing!—Cyn managed to manoeuvre Wolf’s car out of the way enough to be able to reverse the van down the driveway and out on to the lane.

She deliberately didn’t think about him sitting in the back as she drove to the hospital; she dared not allow herself to dwell on the pain the jolting of the van must be giving his ankle, just concentrated on her driving.

And once they reached the hospital the experienced staff took over, two able-bodied ambulancemen helping him out of the van into a waiting wheelchair, a nurse taking him off to an examination-room, leaving Cyn in the waiting-room feeling more than a little superfluous.

It seemed she was waiting there forever, and she began to wonder if they hadn’t all forgotten about her completely; the rumblings of her stomach told her it was suffering for the lunch she had missed earlier through Wolf’s arrival. At this rate she was going to miss dinner too!

But finally Wolf was wheeled back into the waiting-room, his ankle noticeably bandaged but, fortunately, not in plaster, which must mean he hadn’t actually broken any bones—although his face looked grimmer than ever, and Cyn could only guess at the pain the examination and following treatment had given him.

‘Nothing broken,’ the nurse announced cheerfully as she brought the wheelchair to a halt beside Cyn. ‘Although your husband will need these to get about on for a while.’ She produced a pair of crutches. ‘Although not too much of that for the first couple of days, Mr Thornton; you need to rest that ankle until the swelling goes down,’ she told Wolf sternly before going off to deal with the next patient.

Cyn stood up, looking down wordlessly at Wolf, deliberately ignoring the natural mistake the young nurse had made in assuming Wolf was her husband because she had driven him to the hospital, much as she had felt her cheeks burn at the error. Not that Wolf seemed in the least perturbed by the mistake, so why should she?

What did they do now? Obviously Wolf’s injury wasn’t serious enough for him to be admitted to hospital, but at the same time he couldn’t go back to his flat alone either. And yet the thought of having to drive him to his mother’s house, of possibly having to see the other woman again—worse, having to see Barbara again!—filled her with dread.

But she needn’t have worried; Wolf seemed to have his own answer to that problem!

‘You’ll have to take me back to your cottage for a few days, of course,’ he announced dismissively.

As far as Cyn was concerned there was no ‘of course’ about it; he couldn’t possibly stay at her cottage with her, for any length of time!

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_45401a09-e4e0-5b0b-a76b-d0e32feee3c3)

‘I DON’T have anywhere else to go,’ Wolf told Cyn once they were back in the van. He was in the driving compartment beside her this time, having managed, with the aid of the crutches, to lever himself up there, the crutches now relegated to the back.

From anyone else a statement like this might have produced a sympathetic, even pitying response from Cyn. And it might have been totally deserved—if it were anyone else but Wolf. But she knew it was totally untrue; there were any number of places he could go to be looked after besides her cottage.

‘You’ll have to move,’ he told her now mildly after glancing in the side-mirror. ‘There’s an ambulance trying to get parked behind us.’

Cyn had brought the van up outside the accident department so that it wasn’t so far for Wolf to go, and she saw, after a brief glimpse in her own mirror, that he was right about the ambulance. ‘OK, I’ll move the van,’ she told him grimly as she put the vehicle into gear. ‘But I am not driving you back to my cottage!’ she added forcefully.

She moved the van only a short distance away to the car park before parking there, turning in her seat to look at Wolf. He returned her gaze blandly now.

‘I mean it, Wolf,’ she told him tightly, unnerved by his calmness. ‘You are not coming back to my cottage with me. I— I’ll drive you to your mother’s house, if you want to go there,’ she offered with obvious reluctance. But even seeing Claudia and Barbara again was preferable to having Wolf at her cottage with her!

His mouth twisted as he obviously guessed her thoughts. ‘That’s very generous of you,’ he drawled. ‘And believe me, I know just how generous; you never did get along with my mother!’

‘I got along with her just fine,’ Cyn contradicted heatedly. ‘She just didn’t like me.’

‘Was that any reason—? Never mind,’ he rasped at Cyn’s stubbornly unresponsive expression. ‘It would upset my mother to see me like this,’ he stated firmly.

From what she remembered of Claudia Thornton the other woman would enjoy nothing better than having Wolf in her manipulative clutches virtually immobile, and, as such, powerless to stop her machinations. Unless Claudia had changed—which Cyn very much doubted!

‘She never really recovered from the stroke she had after Alex’s death,’ Wolf continued grimly at Cyn’s sceptical expression. ‘She’s had several minor ones since then. Another major one might kill her. And her initial response to seeing me like this might just cause one,’ he added decisively.

Cyn hadn’t even known of the first one. She couldn’t imagine Claudia as being anything else but completely in command, of herself, and of her family. Short, her figure petite to say the least, Claudia gave the impression of delicacy—a totally misleading impression, as Cyn had found to her cost.

Claudia hadn’t approved of Cyn for Wolf, although she had always been careful not to show that disapproval too strongly in front of him, making Cyn’s own wariness of the older woman all the more noticeable, a fact that Wolf had commented on more than once when they were alone. But she hadn’t been able to control the way she felt about his mother, just as she was sure Claudia hadn’t been able to change the way she felt about her either!

‘I’m sorry,’ Cyn said abruptly. ‘I didn’t realise.’

‘Why should you?’ Wolf dismissed coldly. ‘You just wanted out of my life. The absolute bloody hell I was going through didn’t— Forget it,’ he bit out abruptly, shaking his head. ‘As you’ve said, the past is the past, and raking it up isn’t going to solve anything now.’