"Rosalie never said anything about going to the hosp-"
"I can't imagine why."
Nick spun around and plucked Mrs. Ronaldi's coat off the couch, put it on the stunned woman's shoulders, and herded her out the door.
"I'll have Lee call you when she feels better."
Nick let out a breath of relief when he got Mrs. Ronaldi out of the building and the security door closed behind her. She hadn't recognized him. Thank God.
When Nick returned, he found Dave at the front window with his paws on the sill, growling at the retreating Mrs. Ronaldi.
"Some watchdog you are. Where were you when the battle-ax was hounding Lee?"
Nick grabbed the bag of Thai food and brought it into the bedroom.
Rosalie still had her head buried in the pillows. She uttered a muffled, "Is she gone yet?"
"Oh, yeah. She's gone all right."
Nick sat on his side of the bed, digging through the contents of the bag. Rosalie groaned as she sat up and reached for both sets of chopsticks. She broke one set apart and rubbed them together to remove the splinters.
She looked better than she had when he'd first walked in. The death-mask look must have been from shock.
Obviously, introducing him to her mother had not been on the top of her list of things to do. Nick pushed the hair off her cheek, watched it curl around his finger, and decided not to think about why that bothered him. He pulled the silken strand down, let go, and watched it spring back while Rosalie stared at him wide-eyed.
"I told your mother you'd call when you felt better."
Dave jumped on the bed and laid his head on Nick's knee.
Rosalie bussed a kiss on Nick's cheek. "Thanks."
"For what?"
Rosalie set the first pair of chopsticks down while she concentrated on pulling the wrapper off the second set. "Oh, I don't know, making coffee, filling the refrigerator, straightening up the apartment. Where did you put everything, anyway?"
Nick dropped a couple of napkins on Rosalie's lap. "You know, there are these amazing things called drawers and cabinets, even closets."
"I have a fear of closets. When I open them, something heavy falls on my head."
Nick opened the box of pad thai and handed it to Rosalie. "No digging for shrimp this time."
"I'm not guilty of excavation. I told you, all the shrimp were right on top. Poor shrimp distribution was not my fault." She grabbed the first shrimp she saw and popped it in her mouth, before handing him his chopsticks.
Nick took a shrimp from the container. "The secret to proper closet usage is to hang the clothes, put the heavier things on the floor, and put the lighter things on the shelves-or invest in a cargo net." He popped the shrimp in his mouth.
"Why didn't I think of that? Where does one buy a cargo net?"
She opened another box and dug in. "Oh, man, how did you know I love red curry and roast duck?"
"The last time I ordered it, I didn't get so much as a bite." Nick passed her the spicy eggplant salad and grabbed the roast duck.
Rosalie ate a few bites and then opened the sticky rice with chicken. "I thought this was for Dave."
"It is."
"He's only supposed to eat vegetarian sticky rice."
"Oh, come on, Lee, the boy needs real meat. It's chicken. Chicken won't hurt him." He took the box and set it between Dave's front paws. Dave scarfed down the contents before Rosalie finished her argument. Smart dog.
"You're spoiling him. I know you gave him lasagna last night."
"What are you complaining about? I gave you some, too."
"No wonder Dave loves you. His emotions are driven by his stomach."
"Maybe it's because your taste in men has improved, which doesn't do much to recommend me. It sounds as if there was no way to go but up. Besides, I'm a loveable guy. I've never had to resort to bribery."
Rosalie gave Nick a doubtful look. Great. His own girlfriend... or whatever Rosalie was, doubted that he was loveable. It amazed him how one look from Rosalie could make his ego feel as battered and bruised as if it'd been run over and dragged for miles by a crosstown bus.
"How'd you sleep?"
"Fine, until Mama dropped by. What a way to start the day. Awakening with my mother at the door might be a marginal step above awakening with a horse head sharing the sheets, but only because it's less messy."
Nick swallowed hard and stared into the box of red curry and roast duck.
"Thanks for that mental picture."
Rosalie handed him a box of pineapple fried rice, took back the duck, and looked pleased with herself.
"You did that on purpose so you could steal the duck."
"It worked, didn't it?"
"If you wanted more, you could have asked." "What's the fun in that?"
"Oh, and spoiling my appetite is a regular trip to Disneyland."
"Aw, poor baby." She took the box of rice from Nick, set it on her bedside table, and scooted closer, nudging Dave off the bed.
In less time than it took to register that he was in trouble, Nick was wading knee-deep in it. She had her arm around his waist, her breast flattened against his side, and her hand sliding down the center of his cable-knit sweater toward Old Faithful. She nibbled on his earlobe and whispered, "Feel better now?"
No, better would not be the word he'd use to describe how he felt. Horny, conflicted, frustrated-yes, those would sum it up. Nick could hear Mike laughing at him-again, not a good thing, when the object of your lust is sucking on your ear-though it did have the necessary effect on Old Faithful, which deflated almost as fast as it had inflated. Nick got up and stood at the foot of the bed. He had to get away from Rosalie or risk tossing Dr. Know-it-All's orders right out the window, along with the laugh track running rampant in Nick's head.
What was going on? When Rosalie touched Nick, he stiffened up-and not in a good way. Maybe all this togetherness had killed the sexual interest, on his part, anyway. Hers, like a creature in a horror movie, seemed to have awakened from the dead in attack mode, and all she got was a pat. She couldn't believe he'd patted her shoulder.
"Lee, why don't you try to get some sleep? You look tired."
"I'm not tired. I've been sleeping for over a week. I've never slept so much in my life."
"Do you want to watch TV? I got a few movies."
"No, I don't want to watch TV! Hell, for all the good this is doing me, I might as well go to work."
"You shouldn't go to work until late next week at the earliest..."
"Says who?"
"Says Mike."
"Oh, really? And how do you know what Mike said to his patient, since I, the patient, never told you? You wouldn't have by any chance wormed information out of my doctor, would you? What else did the good doctor tell you? And you better be straight with me, because I have no problem getting Mike on the phone and asking him myself, if for no other reason than to assure him, in no uncertain terms, he's seen the last of me-as a patient, anyway."
"What in the hell is that supposed to mean? Why would you see him at all if not as a patient?"
"Hold up here. You're the one in trouble, not me. Where do you get off being pissed?"
She started coughing, and not a little cough. She sounded like a freaking goose honking and felt the burn right between her breasts. Every cough felt as if it were cutting a hole in her. Of all the times to start a coughing jag. She was just getting warmed up for a good fight.
Nick hovered over her, pushing her back against the pillows and reaching for the damn nebulizer.
"See, Mike was right. You can't go getting all excited-look what happens."
He shoved a glass of water in her face, so she drank some, trying not to choke on it. He held the nebulizer out, and she pushed it away and took a blast of her handy-dandy inhaler. It tasted like garbage, but it only took seconds to get through, compared to the eons it took for a nebulizer treatment. There's nothing like a shot of Albuterol to set things right. Rosalie wanted him to leave once she started to breathe regularly. It wasn't as if she needed him. She was doing fine by herself.
"Look, you're off the hook. I'm able to take care of myself. You can go back to whatever it is you should be doing. I don't need a babysitter. I never did. Thanks for every-"
"Oh, no, you don't. You're not getting rid of me that easy. I'm not leaving, until you're able to throw me out yourself. Besides, we never did finish our date."
"What are you? A masochist? So far, this date can go in the annals of dating as the longest and most vile date imaginable. Hell, the only time you had any fun was when Dr. Barbie was flipping her hair and jiggling her artificial mammary glands in your face."
"You caught that?"
She couldn't believe it. The man actually looked guilty. As if he'd had anything to do with it-well, other than looking like an X-rated dream date with that whole just-got-out-of-bed sex god thing he'd cornered the market on. "Caught what? That she was throwing herself at you, or that they were fake?"
"Both, either-I don't know."
Damn the man. He made it so hard to hold onto the mad. It took all the fun out of fighting and left her with no outlet for all that energy, especially since she was in bed, and he wasn't. "I was sick, not dead. And it wasn't as if she was subtle."
"That's why I told her we were engaged. You're not mad about that, are you?"
"Not unless you believe it."
"Not a chance."
"Good."
"Fine."
Did he have to be so damned adamant about it? Plenty of guys had asked her to marry them.
Nick ran his hands through his hair and shook his head. "So, are we done fighting?"
She picked up the empty carton Dave had left on the bed. "I don't know. I'm still plenty pissed about you talking to Dr. Mike behind my back."
"Well, it's not as if you were forthcoming. Give me a break, would you? I've been sleeping with you every night, and every night you plaster that hot little body of yours to mine, and every night I lay awake thinking of all the things I'd like to do you."
"I do not plaster myself to you."
"Oh, yes, you do. You might be all cool and standoffish when you're awake, but when you're asleep, you cling to me like a drunk's hand around a bottle of cheap whiskey."
"I'm not standoffish."
"Oh, come on. You're afraid to touch me because you think I'll make something of it, and all night long you shrink-wrap yourself to me. I haven't slept all week. So yeah, I guess I am a masochist."
"Then why did you jump off the bed? Oh, and then you patted my shoulder. Don't pat me. I'm not a damn dog."
"I jumped off the bed because Mike said I should wait until next week, and damn it, the minute you get excited, you start coughing up a lung. And that's just from getting mad at me. Can you imagine if you... well, I remember how heavy our breathing was after only one kiss."
"You asked Mike when we could have sex?"
"Well, not in so many words, but yeah. I'm sorry."
The look on his face was priceless. It was a fascinating combination of embarrassment mixed with total disappointment, guilt, and a heaping helping of chagrin. The man was irresistible. She couldn't help it. She had to laugh. It felt good to laugh a straight from the belly, tear-inducing laugh.
"Aye? Who needs Monty Python when you have me to laugh at, right?
"I'm not laughing at you. Well, okay, I guess I am, but only because you're so cute."
Nick sat on the bed and groaned. "Don't say that! It's the kiss of death. Don't you know you're never supposed to call a man cute? Puppies are cute; stuffed animals are cute; babies are cute. I'm sexy, hot, gorgeous-"
"Not to mention modest, unassuming, and unpretentious-"
"Right, those, too. How would you like it if I said you were cute?"
"Okay, I admit "cute" is the wrong word. How's irresistible?"
"Better." He pushed her hair behind her ear. "So, you think I'm irresistible, huh?"
Nick might have sounded appeased, but it wasn't long before he pulled the old you're-recovering-from-pneumonia-and-you-need-your-rest ploy. He tucked her in, pulled the shades, and tiptoed out of the room.
Rosalie fumed until she could no longer fight her ever-present exhaustion and drifted off to sleep. She was in the middle of a dream, one of those dreams when you know you're dreaming. The fact that she dreamed she was walking through an air tunnel seemed weird, but she went with it-that was, until her hair began being drawn toward the fan blades at the end of the tunnel like some kind of reverse blow dryer. That's when she decided it was time to stop dreaming. She awoke with a start and found that the noise wasn't a dream after all. It was real. She didn't know what it was, but she planned to find out.
Feeling like a naughty child, Rosalie snuck out of bed and opened the bedroom door a crack. When she saw the coast was clear, she stepped out.
Nick had his back to her, so she was able to stare for a good long time. She still couldn't believe her eyes. She tried to remember what time she'd taken that codeine-laced cough syrup. It had been well before lunch, before her mother had arrived. It was already after three in the afternoon. There was no way this was a drug-induced hallucination. Amazing. Rosalie tilted her head to the side and watched with abandon.
Nick was doing a really good impression of Superman, the man of steel. But instead of lifting a car off the ground with one hand to keep a baby from being crushed, Nick was lifting the end of Rosalie's long, extremely heavy sectional sofa to vacuum under it.
Yes, she was watching a man vacuum, which was enough to make her wonder if she'd been pulled into an alternate universe. Nick's arm and neck muscles bulged as he expertly maneuvered a vacuum that looked as if it came out of an episode of Star Trek. Star Trek. The thing was amazing. It was also purple. Really purple. Who made bright purple vacuums, and where in the hell did it come from? It did have some black on it, and it wasn't a girlie purple. But still, it was purple. The thing was amazing. It was also purple. Really purple. Who made bright purple vacuums, and where in the hell did it come from? It did have some black on it, and it wasn't a girlie purple. But still, it was purple.