Dangerous Temptation Read Online Free PDF

wondered if Nathan had really been to see his father. She knew pathetically little about his background, and what she did know was hardly up to date. She knew his mother was dead and that his father was virtually a recluse—at least, that was the excuse he'd given her for Jacob Wolfe not attending their wedding. And it must have been true, she supposed, or her father wouldn't have encouraged the match.
    Weariness descended like a cloud upon her. What was she really doing here? she wondered disconsolately. Why had she let her father persuade her to make this trip? Whatever had happened, Nathan wouldn't want to see her. She should have told her father the truth and made him send someone else.
    Marshall O'Brien could have done it. Her father's personal assistant—secretary—
henchman—
would have handled the less attractive details far better than she. He wouldn't have felt as helpless as she did staring round this vast foyer, with no earthly idea where her husband might be. And no helpful nurse to direct her. She sighed heavily. Just a cacophony of voices, and squealing gurneys, and—noise!
    Yet it was she who hadn't allowed Marshall to accompany her, even though her father had suggested it. After living a lie for almost three years, she was not about to expose the travesty of their marriage just because Nathan had been involved in a plane crash. Dear God, when she'd first heard the news, for a second—for the minutest, most shameful second of her life—she had actually believed that it was over. In spite of all the guilt and recrimination she had felt later, for that one fleeting second she'd thought she was free…
    A harassed receptionist eventually informed her that her husband was in a ward on the twelfth floor. "Just take the elevator, take the elevator," the woman exclaimed when Caitlin asked for directions. Then turned away almost immediately to answer another query.
    She could have been a serial killer and she'd have received the same instructions, Caitlin thought wryly. Any security there had ever been had been eclipsed by the very real demands of the situation. It was no one's fault; there simply weren't enough staff to handle it. In circumstances like these, the most you could hope for was a civil tone.
    The lifts, when she found them, were jammed with stretchers and still more people. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, and the mix of sounds and dialects was deafening in the ponderous, clanking cubicle. But they ascended, albeit ponderously, to the upper reaches of the hospital, stopping at every floor to disgorge and take on more passengers.
    Caitlin inevitably found herself pushed towards the back of the lift, with the iron rails of a gurney crushed against her stomach. She had never felt claustrophobic before, but the panic of confinement rose sharp and unfamiliar inside her. Only the awareness of the injured child on the gurney kept her silent, the bottle of plasma held high by an orderly providing a steadying focus on which to fix her gaze.
    They reached the twelfth floor at last, and Caitlin forced herself to step out onto the vinyl landing. The gurney had swished away to her left, and her fellow passengers rushed off to find the nearest nursing station. But Caitlin took a moment to compose herself, as the smells of the hospital washed around her. Nathan would not expect her to rush to his bedside. In the circumstances, her being here at all seemed out of place.
    She should never have married him, she thought again, with a sense of vulnerability. It was a feeling she'd had many times before. But it had been what her father had wanted, and after resisting him for so long, it had seemed the most logical thing to do.
    How wrong she'd been…
    Another lift stopped beside her, and realising she was causing an obstruction, Caitlin began to walk towards the busy nurses' station. Around her, the tide of humanity continually ebbed and flowed, and listening to the unmistakeable sounds of grief, she wondered