Page 34 of You Complicate Me

Annoyed? Sexually frustrated? Damn tired of getting interrupted? Take your pick, she wanted to say.

But she didn’t say any of that. Instead, she turned to Nick, opened her mouth, and for the second time in their short acquaintance…

She threw up all over his shoes.

Chapter Fifteen

“I have Ebola.”

Nick shook his head and pushed her hair off her sweaty forehead as she rested her cheek on the toilet seat. He was pretty sure she’d just heaved up more food than he’d eaten all week. No doubt she felt like she had Ebola. Hell, his stomach hurt just watching her. “Gage was pretty sure it’s food poisoning. Unless you, your mom, Sadie, and doucheBrad all have Ebola.”

She groaned and curled into the fetal position on the bathroom floor. He wished he could carry her to bed, but every time he’d tried, the movement made her puke again. So, he settled for gently shifting her so that his thigh was between her face and the cold marble tile.

“I’d be so embarrassed if I wasn’t dying,” she muttered.

Feeling completely helpless and hating every minute of it, he laid a cool, damp washcloth across her forehead and smoothed her hair behind her ears. “I’ve told you before that you’ve got nothing to be embarrassed about with me, angel.”

She snorted, then moaned. “I’ve puked on you. Twice. You’ve seen me with my head in the toilet. A lot. There’s not a woman alive who’d want to be seen by a man who looks like you when she’s like this.”

“Tell you what. Next time I have the flu or food poisoning, I’ll give you a call so you can see me with my head in the toilet. Then we’ll be even. How’s that?”

“That’ll work.”

“Good.” He lifted her clammy hand and kissed her fingertips. “No more being embarrassed with me.”

She struggled for a moment to lift her head before letting it drop back to his thigh. “Yeah, about that,” she said with a frustrated sigh. “I could use some help changing my clothes.”

Under normal circumstances, he might’ve made a joke about her request to help get her out of her dress. But at the moment, he just wasn’t in a laughing mood. “Sure. Want the T-shirt you slept in last night?”

“That’d be good,” she said against his thigh.

“Ready for me to try and move you again?”

Grace blew out a sharp breath. “Oh, sure. Why not? I mean, it’s been, what, three minutes since I last vomited?”

“I’ll be extra gentle.”

“Do you really think you can dead-lift me off the floor?”

In answer to her question, he lifted her straight off the floor without even really trying and climbed as slowly as possible to his feet. Her head lolled against his shoulder and she gave him a weak smile that pinched at his heart.

“Wow,” she said. “That would’ve been really sexy if I hadn’t just been on the bathroom floor.”

“We’ll try it again when you’re back up to a hundred percent.”

He laid her on the bed and she rolled to her side so that he could unzip her dress. He refused to notice the miles and miles of smooth skin and lacey red underwear exposed as the zipper made its long, slow, torturous journey down. Refused.

Through some miracle, he managed to shimmy the dress off her pliant body and slip the T-shirt over her head. She shivered. “Cold?” he asked.

She nodded, teeth chattering.

He crawled into bed and sat back against the headboard before easing her up so that she sat between his splayed legs with her head on his chest. She burrowed into him when he tucked the blanket around her.

“You’re so warm,” she murmured.

Yep. On fire. Had been since he first met her.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, and he saw that it was Gage, so he answered for her.

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