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There were lots of labels; none of them bore names that were familiar.
“Which of these pills were you looking for?” he said.
Jennie told him.
He found the correct vial, shook a tablet into his hand and went back to her.
“One second, baby.”
There was a white plastic cup on the sink. He filled it with water and squatted before her again.
“Open,” he said as he brought the pill to her lips.
“I can—”
“Did I ever tell you I was a Boy Scout in my misguided youth?”
Her lips curved in a semblance of a smile.
“Come on. Take the pill. Good girl. Now a drink of water...”
He returned the cup to the sink. Took a neatly-folded face cloth from the towel bar and ran it under cold water from the tap, wrung it out and went back to her.
Her eyes were still closed, her face still pale. He took her hand, turned it up and placed the cool, damp cloth in her palm.
“Lay that over your eyes, honey.”
“Travis. You don’t have to—”
“‘On my honor,’” he said solemnly, “‘as a Scout...’ You want me to go back on those words?”
She gave a soft, tentative laugh. His heart leaped with joy.
“You? A Boy Scout?”
“Well, no. My brothers and I had our own thing going.” Talk, he told himself, as he saw color begin coming back into her face, talk and keep talking, let her hang on to the sound of your voice and maybe it’ll help drive away the pain. “Besides, Mr. Rottweiler, the troop leader, hated us.”
“His name was not Mr. Rottweiler!”
Good. Excellent. She was listening to him, concentrating on his stupid jokes. The pill, the compress, were working.
“How come you’re so smart, Blondie? His name was Botwilder. Close enough, we figured.”
“And he hated you?”
“Yeah, well, see, we’d tipped over his outhouse...”
The breath hissed between her teeth. Travis felt his gut knot; he reached for her, lifted her carefully into his arms. She wound her arms around his neck, buried her face against his throat.
“Nobody has outhouses anymore,” she said drowsily.
“Ah, but the Rottweiler did,” Travis said briskly as he carried her into the bedroom. “He made his wife and his nineteen kids use it.”
Another soft, sweet laugh. Another wish to pump his fist in the air.
“Not nineteen,” she said, and yawned.
“Okay. Not nineteen. Eighteen.”
He switched off the table lamp. Dawn was breaking—the light in the room was a pale gray.
Gently he lay her down on the narrow bed.
His heart turned over.
She was naked and beautiful, but what he saw, as he drew the duvet over her, was her amazing combination of strength and vulnerability.
“Travis,” she whispered.
“I’m here, Jen.”
“Thank...”
And then, she was asleep.
He watched her for a minute. Then he whispered, “Okay,” reached for his clothes...
Except, he wasn’t going anywhere.
He wasn’t leaving her.
She needed him.
An image shot into his head.
He, as a very little boy. Sick as hell with something kids get, a virus, a cold, whatever. Waking in the middle of the night, wanting the comfort of a pair of loving arms to hold him, then realizing there were no loving arms, not anymore.
His mom had died, and his father was away saving the world.
Travis dropped the clothes. Pulled back the duvet, climbed into the narrow bed.
Would taking Jennie in his embrace wake her?
He didn’t have to decide.
She sighed in her sleep, rolled toward him, burrowed into him as if they had always slept together like this.
He wrapped her in his arms.
Kissed her forehead.
And fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SUNLIGHT BLAZED AGAINST Travis’s eyelids.
He groaned, rolled onto his belly...
And almost fell off the bed.
His eyes flew open; his brain took survey. Narrow room Narrow bed. Narrow window. What the hell...?
Then, he remembered.
Jennie. Bringing her home. Making love to her, how incredible it had been.
And hours later, she’d been so ill. That migraine...
“Jennie,” he said, as he shot to his feet.
He’d stayed the night to take care of her. Some job he’d done! He hadn’t heard her leave the bed. Leave him. Where was she? Was she hurting?
He started for the door.
Dammit, he was naked.
“Clothes,” he muttered, looking around the room for the stuff he’d discarded like a wild man last night.
There. On the dresser. A neatly folded stack of all his things.
He grabbed only his khakis, pulled them on, zipped them but didn’t bother with the top button, went in search of her...
And found her in the minuscule kitchen, standing with her back to him. Her hair was loose; she had on some kind of oversize T-shirt. Her long legs were bare, as were her feet.
She looked bed-rumpled. Sex-rumpled. And he wanted, more than anything, to sweep her into his arms, take her back to bed.
That he wanted her so with such intensity, even after all the times he’d had her last night, made his words sound gruff.
“Dammit,” he growled, “where’d you go?”
She spun toward him. She had a mug in her hand; a dark liquid—coffee, by the welcome smell that permeated the room—sloshed over the rim.
“Travis! You startled—”
He crossed the floor in three quick steps and pulled her into his arms. The coffee sloshed again, this time onto his toes. The stuff was hot, but he didn’t care.
“I thought something had happened to you.”
“No. I’m fine. I just thought coffee would be a good—”
He kissed her.
She tasted of coffee, cream and sugar.
There’d been times he’d started mornings in Paris with Champagne, in Seville with hot chocolate. But he’d never begun the day with a sweeter flavor on his tongue than the taste of Jennie’s mouth.
When he finally lifted his head, her eyes were bright, her lips softly swollen.
“I missed you,” he said, before he could think. “Waking up alone wasn’t what I had in mind.”
She smiled. And blushed.
He loved that blush. It was sexy and innocent at the same time, and made him wonder if he was the first man who’d spent the night with her in his arms.
Just because he was the first man who’d made love to her didn’t mean she hadn’t done other things with other men.
Hell. Where was he going with that line of thought? He kept reminding himself that he wasn’t old-fashioned about women and sex...
Except, it seemed as if he was. About this woman, anyway, and about having sex with her.
About making love with her.
About staying the night in her bed and, come to think of it, how often had he done something like that? Truth was, he could probably count the number of times on the fingers of one hand.
Women tended to get the wrong idea when you spent the night. They read more into it than it deserved.
The way to keep expectations reasonable was to avoid certain trip wires.
Spending the entire night in your lover’s bed was one sure trip wire—and why was he thinking of Jennie as his lover? He’d spent two nights with her. That hardly made them “lovers.”
Suddenly, the kitchen seemed even smaller than it actually was.
He let go of her, cleared his throat and moved past her to a shelf above the stove where coffee mugs hung from little hooks.
“Great idea,” he said briskly. “Making coffee, I mean.”
He could feel her looking at h
im as he filled the mug and added a dollop of cream.
“Yes,” she said, after a couple of seconds. “I’m no good at all until I get my morning dose of caffeine.”
“Mmm. Same here.” There was a teaspoon on the counter. He picked it up, stirred his coffee—but how long could a man take to stir coffee? “So,” he said, even more briskly, “you’re an early riser, huh?”
“You don’t have to do this.”
Her voice was low. Something in it made him wince.
“Hey,” he said, “why would I turn down a cup of—”
“You don’t have to stay. Really. It isn’t necessary. I mean, what you did last night—taking care of me, tending to me—that was—it was much, much more than—”
“You were sick.”
“Yes. But that doesn’t mean—”
He put down the mug and turned toward her. Forget bed-rumpled. Forget sexy. She looked small and fragile and all at once, he hated himself for being such a selfish, unfeeling bastard.
“Come here,” he said gruffly, although he was already moving toward her, his arms open.
