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He shot her a look she couldn’t decipher, then said as if against his better judgment, “Then I’m glad you were not a fan.”
“Let’s just say I’ve been recently converted.” Lexie, you flirt, her conscience chided. The thing was, flirting with Nic felt like the most natural thing in the world. It was so easy to forget he wouldn’t be sitting across her right now if Pygmalion hadn’t been dangled in front of his beautiful nose. Containing her attraction, that was what was unnatural. This thing with Nic was a dead-end. Do not cross the line. Caution on yellow tape. He must have thought so too because he wisely refused to follow it up with a flirtatious rejoinder and his expression turned grim. She felt mortified.
They finished the rest of their meal with some semblance of normalcy. Lexie was vainly trying to train her body to shut down and her circuitry not to run haywire within a few feet of Nic. She refused coffee or dessert and acquiesced readily when he said that he would be bringing her home.
On their way to the parking lot, a flash popped. They both ignored it. Lost in their thoughts, they braved the downtown traffic.
Chapter Seven
Lexie started experiencing vague abdominal cramps just as she was disembarking from the car. The pain made her pause, one leg already out of the vehicle. Her skin started to feel clammy and nausea was already climbing up her throat.
“Lexie?” She dimly heard the car door slamming shut on the driver’s side and some hurried footsteps. In an instant, Nic was crouched beside her and the two bodyguards were hovering behind him.
“I think I’m having an allergy attack.” Her voice came out thin and reedy. Nic’s gaze roved over her body, checking for hives. “Sometimes there are no rashes,” she wheezed. “Hospital,” she croaked.
Nic drove like the whole Black Cavalier line-up was after him. Heart pounding, he burst into the ER with a limp Lexie in his arms, not waiting for a wheelchair.
“I need a doctor, now,” he demanded to a nurse who was carrying a clipboard. In a few seconds, a harassed-looking man stepped out from one of the curtain-lined cubicles. “I think she is having an allergic attack.”
Lexie was laid down on a stretcher and Nic was asked to step back from the scene. An IV line was started and the nurse started asking him details about what had happened. After recounting her symptoms, the nurse disappeared and approached the doctor, who started barking orders. She came back.
“Name of the patient, sir?” Her head was bent and the pen was already poised on the hospital form.
“Alexandria.”
“And her last name?”
Fuck! Did royals even have last names? “Ligueria?” he bit out uncertainly, his anxiety making him tense. The nurse’s matter-of-fact manner made him long to shake her.
“Would you care to spell that out?” Nic raked a hand through his hair in nervous frustration, and the nurse took pity on him. “Is it spelled Ligueria like the name of that royal family?”
Thank God. “Exactly.”
The nurse stepped back and took a good look at him. She blinked then she glanced to where Lexie was on the stretcher. She craned her neck sideways to see past Nic, and he knew she was now registering the two hulking bodyguards in their “men in black” suits by the entrance of the ER. She started backing away and scurried back to where Lexie was being treated. Nic saw her whisper something to the doctor in charge. He stiffened and his manner became more brisk.
Fifteen agonizing minutes later, the doctor in charge came out of the cubicle to find him pacing frantically.
“How is she?”
“The Princess is fine, Mr. Fernandez,” the doctor reassured him. Nic’s knees went weak with relief. “We just gave her a shot of epinephrine. Her blood pressure when she came in was normal, so that’s a positive sign it wasn’t as severe a reaction as we originally thought it had been.”
“She hadn’t eaten any peanuts in the restaurant we were in,” Nic recalled, puzzled.
“Sometimes it’s the peanut oil they use for cooking. At any rate, I’ll be prescribing some low dose steroid and round-the-clock antihistamine tablets just to make sure. She will be a bit groggy since we started her on antihistamine already, but she can be discharged as long as she has someone to look after her for 24 hours.”
