Page 42 of Married in Vengeance

He never did get to finish what the medicine was going to do because Aadhya shoved past him and launched herself out of the bed. He ran behind her into the bathroom to find her heaving over the toilet, the remnants of her toast and whatever else she had in her witch’s stomach spewing out of her.

He wrapped an arm around her waist bracing her and gathered as much as he could of her unruly curls to keep it out of the way. No matter how hard he tried, her wild hair just kept slipping out and into her face.

“Hold my hair,” she hissed at him like the she-devil she was.

“I’m trying,” he hissed back. “It’s un-holdable.”

More hair slipped out of his grasp just as she threw up again, bucking against his hold around her waist. Hell, whatever this was, it couldn’t just be the flu.

When she was finally done, he helped her to the sink to rinse her face and mouth. He surreptitiously wet a few locks of hairthat he’d lost his grip on and that had since gotten caught in the onslaught.

“Shit!” Aadhya braced herself against the toilet counter. “I have to get ready for work.”

Ram’s eyebrows shot up. “The only place you’re going is the hospital.”

“You’re not the boss of me!” Aadhya spun in her place to face him.

He saw it coming, a split second before it happened, and that was the only reason he managed to catch her before she collapsed. Her eyes rolled back and she was out even before he’d managed to brace himself against the dead weight of her.

Panic like he’d never known flooded through him as he carried her into the room and laid her on the bed. He needed to get her to a hospital immediately. A knock on the door heralded his mother’s entry.

“Amma.” Ram looked at her wild eyed. “Aadhya’s really sick.”

“Hmm.” His mother reached down to lay her hand on Aadhya’s clammy forehead.

“She has fever, throat pain, a headache, and she vomited.”

“Sounds like the flu,” Amma said placidly. “You gave her paracetamol?”

“102.4?” Ram shook the thermometer in his mother’s face. “And she fainted!”

“She’ll feel better the minute the paracetamol works.” Amma adjusted her pallu on her shoulder calmly. “Let her rest now.”

“She fainted!!” Ram yelled, just as Aadhya stirred in the bed. “It’s not the flu. We have to go to emergency now.”

“Make it stop!” Aadhya moaned.

“What chinna?” his mother asked, leaning forward.

“Him.” Aadhya pointed a finger at Ram who was still holding the thermometer up like it was evidence in a case he was arguing. “Make him stop.”

His mother smothered a grin. “I will,” she assured Aadhya. “I’ll get rid of him. You sleep. We’ll check in on you in a little while.”

Ram glowered at his mother when she gestured to him to precede her out of the door.

“No,” he ground out.

“Alright.” Dhanvantri Gadde had spent a lifetime managing the idiotic Gadde men. “How about a compromise? Instead of dragging this poor child to a crowded hospital, why don’t we call a doctor home to check her out? If the doctor also feels she needs to go to the hospital, then we’ll take her.”

Fine. Ram could live with that.

“Deal,” he muttered. “But it’s not the flu.”

Twenty-Four

AADHYA

“It’s the flu.”

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