Page 222 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

‘I know. This will make you feel better.’

‘Can’t.’

‘Can’t what?’

‘Move. Hurts.’

‘You want me to help you?’

She made the smallest nod even as she gave a nearly audible, ‘No.’

Chuckling softly, he removed two of the tablets from the tub, placed them by the glass, then sat himself beside Victoria and carefully slipped an arm beneath her. ‘I am just going to lift you a little so you can take your pills,’ he told her.

She gave no protest, verbal or otherwise.

It took only a little effort to raise her so she was semi-upright. Holding her securely to him with his right arm, he reached for the water and pills with his left.

‘Open your mouth,’ he commanded.

She obeyed. He placed a tablet on her tongue without making any direct contact, then held the glass to her lips. Her hair tickled his throat and chin as she took the water into her mouth and swallowed.

‘One more.’

Her lips parted again. This time his precision failed him and his finger brushed against soft, plump bottom lip then soft, plump, wet tongue.

Marcello’s chest and airwaves tightened. His grip on the glass when he held it to her mouth a second time was much firmer than his first, reflexively gripping harder still when her hand fluttered up and tentatively covered his in silent encouragement for him to feed her more water.

He didn’t know if it was her fever causing it but his own skin heated. The core temperature she’d teased him about only hours ago rose.

It felt like time stood still while he waited for the signal that she’d had enough, a passage of time where, in an effort to disassociate himself from the soft body leaning against his and the slender hand covering his own, he conjured images of dancing nuns and didn’t dare to breathe.

Her hand flopped away from his.

He expelled the breath he’d been holding. ‘Done?’

Another tickle of her hair as she nodded and whispered, ‘Thank you.’

Putting the glass back on the bedside table, he carefully extricated himself from his role of human support and, doing his utmost to touch her as little as humanly possible, helped her lie back down.

She turned her cheek onto the pillow and gave a tiny whimper.

It was a sound that pierced through him.

A second whimper had him closing his eyes and forcing air into his lungs as he was carried back to the darkest days of his life, a time of unbearable loss and a grief so debilitating he could hardly breathe through it.

CHAPTER FOUR

CHANGEDINTOAT-shirt and pair of pyjama bottoms gifted by his brother as a joke birthday present, and which he’d never worn before as he always slept nude, Marcello quietly padded into his room carrying a bundle of bedding taken from a guest bed. Outside, the storm continued to wage its war on the East Coast. The news was reporting half of New York being without power. Guessing it was only a matter of time before his apartment was similarly affected, he’d dug out the scented candles his mother gifted him each year under the delusion they would add a feminine touch to the apartment he’d determined before he’d even bought it would remain a bachelor pad for the rest of his existence.

For the first time in a long time, Marcello thought back to the home he and Livia had created together and the room they’d turned into a nursery. They’d spent hours searching for the best furniture to fill it with, and the best wallpaper and curtains to cover its walls and window. Giraffes. That had been the theme they’d chosen. Cute, cartoon-like giraffes that bore no resemblance to the real-life versions but were close enough that he still couldn’t bear to see a giraffe in any shape or form. After moving to Manhattan, he’d deliberately avoided Central Park Zoo until discovering by chance that they didn’t house them.

Pushing the memories away, he gave his attention back to the person who needed it most.

The insulation in his bachelor pad was so good that no sound of the raging storm penetrated. In his bed, though, lay Victoria, fighting her own personal storm. He had no thermometer and the concierge service had been unable to assist, so he had only his hands to judge that her temperature was worsening. Had only his eyes to see her struggle to keep warm one moment then to cool down the next.

Once he’d made a bed for himself on the sofa, he braced himself and went back to her with more painkillers. If he could have given them to her an hour ago he would have but Dr Internet—his own doctor wasn’t answering his calls—had been firm that this brand and dose of painkillers could only be taken every six hours. This would be the third lot he’d fed her. She’d been a dead weight in his arms for the second batch, unable to support her own head. He supposed it was some inherent survival instinct that had enabled her to take the water into her mouth to wash the tablets down, and it was the one thing that kept the coldness of fear in his heart at bay and enabled him to leave her for a few minutes at a time.

Gently lifting her upright, his heart stuttered to find her hair wet and plastered to her skull and her sweater drenched. The sheet beneath her was soaked with her perspiration. Fever almost crackled on her skin.

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