Page 75 of Breaking the Ice

Samantha shook her head. All she needed was to be horizontal and sleep. “I’ll be fine.”

He looked at her dubiously and stuck close, hunting through her bag for her keys as they reached her door because even that simple task was too much in her current state.

“Easy,” he said as she swayed, sliding his arm around her waist as he inserted the key into the lock and pushed open her door, guiding her inside.

Samantha’s body must have known she was home because she couldn’t stem the nausea a second longer. “I’m going to be sick.”

Afraid she wouldn’t quite make it on her woozy legs, she ran anyway, clapping her hand over her mouth. She made it but only just, throwing herself on the cold bathroom tiles in front of the toilet as she vomited.

And vomited. And vomited.

She was vaguely aware of Nick entering the bathroom and sitting on the edge of the bath but couldn’t even find it in her to be mortified that this was the second time he’d seen her ridingthe porcelain bus. His hand glided to her neck and started to rub and it felt so good she would have purred had she not been so busy retching.

“Lower,” she croaked as the nausea ebbed, and she moaned when his strong fingers moved to her aching lower back.

Rousing herself, she pulled the toilet lid down with shaking hands and rested her head on it, murmuring, “Harder,” as she almost drooled on the plastic at the instant relief from his ministrations.

“I’m calling the doctor,” he said a few minutes later when she hadn’t moved.

“No. I’ll be fine in a little while.”

“You don’t look fine. Maybe it’s not a migraine? Maybe you have food poisoning or appendicitis. You know how bad that can be left untreated?”

Samantha smiled at the mild note of panic in his voice and opened her eyes. “Bad?”

“Ugly,” he agreed. “I know. I have three brothers who are doctors. They have an inexhaustible supply of horror medical stories.”

“Yeah, well, pity you never had any sisters,” she muttered as she shut her eyes again, lulled by the rhythm of his magical fingers.

“What the hell has that got to do with anything?”

“It’s just my period, Nick. It’ll be fine in a few hours.”

26

“You do thiseverymonth?”

“No.” Samantha gave a half smile at the alarm in his voice and shook her head gingerly. Her stomach may have been empty, but it was still waging a precarious battle and anything too vigorous was likely to start it off again. “I just get a really bad one every now and then.”

“Fucking hell. Being a woman sucks.”

“Yep. It’s not all sleepovers and naked pillow fights.”

Nick laughed. “You forgot the lying in bed all day playing with your boobs.”

It was her turn to laugh but it ended in a wince and she squeezed her eyes shut as Nick asked, “What can I do?”

“Just keep rubbing my back,” she murmured, her back pain receding beneath his deft fingers. “It’s blissful.”

She let his fingers lull her for a while but she knew she had to get up, take her pills, shower and crawl into bed with a hot water bottle.

“What?” he asked as she roused herself.

“I need a hot shower and to take some tablets.”

“Where are they? I’ll get them.”

Nick retrieved the medication and was back in a flash with the three bottles. He filled a glass of water from the faucet then decanted the pills as she pointed to each bottle. “One migraine tablet, one painkiller and two anti-inflammatories.”

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