He did as he was ordered, groaning as he rolled over.
“Pull his pants down a bit, will ya, love?” Craig asked.
“She’s been wanting to do that all night,” he said with a smirk.
“Will you please stop?” she asked.
“Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a stop button,” Craig said. “I’ve looked.”
“Limp dick,” he growled.
“Asswipe,” Craig returned.
She tugged the waistband of the jeans down his hip and held it in place as Craig stabbed the needle into his patient’s ass as though he was throwing a dart.
“Fuck, Craigie!” he cried out, flinching. “That hurt!”
“Fuck, Synnie, you knew it was going to.”
“Fuck.”
“Stop being such a pussy,” Craig told him.
“It does burn,” she said.
“Yeah, well he should be used to it by now.”
“I don’t think you ever get used to it. I’ve got lumps on my fanny from years of getting poked,” she stated.
There was a gasp from one of the men—she couldn’t tell which one—then they both howled with laughter, the howl dying down to a fit of the giggles.
“What did I say?” she demanded.
Wiping his eyes from laughing so hard, Craig put a hand on her shoulder. “Sweetie,” he said. “In Kiwi-ese, a fanny doesn’t mean the same thing as it does to a Yank.”
“What does it mean then?” she asked.
“Don’t tell her,” he told Craig. He was rubbing his hand on the place where he’d been injected.
“Look it up,” Craig said as he capped the syringe and put it back in his bag then closed it. “He’s gonna be down for a few hours. Are you staying?”
“Looks that way,” she said.
“Good. I won’t worry about the little prick.” He grinned. “I didn’t get your name, Miss…”
“It’s none of your business!” he snapped, drawing his knees up into the fetal position.
“Well, Miss Noneofyourbusiness, it was nice meeting you,” Craig told her.
“It was nice meeting you, Dr. Tonika,” she replied.
“It’s Craigie. Call me if that headache isn’t gone in four hours and I’ll jog over and pop him again. I love hurting the little wanker.”
She liked Craig. He had the same goofy grin that she had come to adore on Jonny and wondered if all Māori men of his acquaintance smiled so readily and were so personable, if they all teased him so unmercifully. She started to walk him to the door.
“He can leave without your assistance. Come here.”
Craig rolled his eyes. “Better scoot. That’s his pissy tone.”
“Yes, I know. I’m all too familiar with it,” she said.
“Melina!”
She looked around to find him on his back once again with his hand outstretched toward her.
“Call me if you need me,” Craig said again.
“Thank you,” she said as he opened the door and exited, lifting a hand in acknowledgement of her gratitude.
“He’s a nice man,” she said when she returned to the bed. She slipped her hand in his and he placed it against his chest and snorted.
“That’s a load of lod cods wollop,” he replied and she stared at him, wondering if that was a real phrase from his homeland or Demerol-induced gobbledygook.
“Is there a dictionary of New Zealand words and phrases I can buy?” she asked.
“I’ll teach you everything you need to know after I let my ferret run.”
“What?” she asked.
“Lie down with me,” he mumbled, his words beginning to slur from the potency of the narcotic.
“You need to go to sleep,” she said. “I’ll sit over by the win—”
“You lie down with me, Melina!” he ordered. “You lie down with me!”
“All right!” she snapped. “Let me take off my sandals.”
“T-shirt and jammies in the dunny,” he said, running his hand up and down hers, pressing it harder against his chest. “That’s what you sleep in every night—T-shirt and jammies.”
“Of course you’d know,” she said and tried to slide her hand from under his. “I’m assuming dunny is New Zealandish for bathroom?”
“Kiwi-ese,” he corrected. “I speak Kiwi-ese.”
“Well, let go so I can go change.”
“T-shirt and jammies. Pretty little cotton jammies wid bundy wabbits on ‘em. Sweet little cot…” he said, the last word fading away as the drug took complete control of him.
As she pulled her hand back she watched his lips part and thought he was out. She sat there looking at him and realized she was beginning to like the arrogant, high-handed jerk—which was no doubt what he intended. Any woman would consider him a box full of eye candy and the taut muscles beneath the tight T-shirt were enough to fan the lowest of flames into a full conflagration of lust.
“You are way too handsome for your own good,” she said softly. “Or for mine.”
She looked down at the hand that lay on his chest. It was a strong hand with short, clean, professionally manicured nails. The large signet ring he wore gleamed as his chest rose rhythmically in slow cadence to the soft breath coming from his parted lips.
She went into the bathroom and found a new pair of pajama bottoms and a bright pink T-shirt folded neatly on the vanity. The pajamas were pale blue with tiny koala bears climbing eucalyptus trees. G’day Mate! was written in pink script across the front of the t-shirt.
“You are a goof ball,” she whispered as she began to undress. “You really are.”
He was beginning to burrow a tiny hole inside her heart like one of the little kiwis she’d seen on the National Geographic Channel. He was becoming her Kiwi in more ways than one.
Clad in the soft cotton pjs and T-shirt, she started to turn off the bathroom light but thought better of it. The room was very shadowy—as it needed to be for him to sleep—but if she needed to get up to take care of him, she didn’t want to be blundering around in the dark. She did, however, ease the door almost shut and was annoyed that the shaft of light from the room fell directly on his face.
“No wonder you had your arm over your eyes,” she said as she crawled into the bed beside him.
She thought he was out of it but as soon as she lay down, he rolled over and gathered her in his arms before she could react. He put his forehead and nose to hers but didn’t open his eyes.
“Night, baby,” he mumbled.
“Go to sleep, Kiwi,” she said and watched him smile. He took three breaths and completely relaxed and the fierce hold he had on her loosened.
Her gaze wandered over his face. In the low light, there were dark hollows under his eyes and the pain had given him a slight pallor. Though his lids were closed, she could picture the vibrant blue of his eyes and knew at that moment should he open them, the pupils would be wildly dilated from the drug. He looked younger. He looked vulnerable and for some reason that brought out her protective instincts. Something moved inside her and she knew she’d never knowingly hurt him.
“You wouldn’t be the first woman to do that to me,” he’d said and she wondered what he’d meant.
“Melina…” he said on a long sigh and she realized he was floating in that muted, numbing netherworld of the narcotic where nothing registered. Soon he would be under completely.
“Kiwi,” she whispered and snuggled against him.
As she drifted into sleep, she took the sight of his face down with her into her dreams.
Chapter Eleven
He woke slowly, experiencing that body encased in cotton feel he knew all too well. He rolled to his back. Opening his eyes slowly, he stared at the ceiling above him and wondered where the hell he was. Instead of staring at himself in the mirror tiles over his bed at home, he was looking at nondescript acoustic tiles. He turned his head on the pillow and his gaze fell on the sweep of windows covered in drapes. It took him a moment or two to realize he was in the Roo
m. When he did, he pushed up on his elbows and looked around.
She was nowhere to be seen.
“Melina?” he called out and coughed. His voice was hoarse as it always was after coming off a particularly nasty migraine episode. He tried again. “Melina?”
There was no answer and his first instinct was to bellow her name. He was annoyed she wasn’t immediately at his beck and call. He sat up.
“Melina, where are you, woman?” he demanded.
The realization that she was gone infuriated him and he carelessly swung his legs from the bed and got up—immediately wishing he’d been more prudent as things shifted wildly around him.
“Whoa!” he said and plopped his arse back on the bed, molding his hands over the edge of the mattress to keep from flying off into space as the room spun around him.
When the room finally stopped moving and he managed to open his tightly closed eyes, he lay down and pulled his legs back on the bed. Almost immediately, there was a ringing sound coming from under his pillow. He reached his hand up, shoved it under the pillow to retrieve the cell phone, wondering how the hell it got there.
“Yeah,” he mumbled as he put it to his ear.
“You okay, bro?” Jono asked.
“I’m alive if that’s what you mean,” he responded.
“I’m on my way back with black coffee. TOA five minutes.”
“Where is she?” he snapped.
“This time of day?” Jono asked. “At work.”
“You took her to work?” he demanded.
“It’s Friday, bro. I came and got her, took her home, but her friend Rachel took her to work.”
“I wanted her here when I woke up!”
“The woman’s got a job, Synnie,” Jono reminded him. “She don’t work, she don’t get paid.”
Without replying, he hung up on his friend and thumbed in the number for his office.
“McGregor Industries,” a cheerful voice greeted him. “How may I direct your call?”
“This is McGregor,” he snapped. “Put me directly through to Anderson Holt.”
“Good morning, Mr. McGregor,” the perky woman said. “One moment while I connect you, sir.”
“You plan on coming in today?” Anderson inquired when he came on the line.
“No,” he growled. “There’s something I want you to do.”
“Today?”
“Yes, today! Drop whatever you’re doing. Nothing you’re doing is more important than this.”
“Syn, I’m working on the Kuwaiti deal. There’s nothing more important than—”
“Fucking do what I tell you, Andy!” he shouted and sorely wished he hadn’t for the room ricocheted again and pain lanced through his head.
“All right,” Anderson said. “Don’t have a hissy fit! Whatcha want done?”
“I don’t care how much it costs or what you have to do but I want to own Dunham, Belvoir, and Brell by the end of the day.”
“Excuse me?” Anderson asked after a long pause.
“You fucking heard me, Andy. I want that fucking company and I want it now!”
He turned off the phone and dropped it on the bed beside him. Burrowing his cheek into the coolness of the pillow under his head, he realized the migraine wasn’t entirely gone. To add to his misery, his hip hurt like a mother from the shot. Absently, he reached down to rub at the offending injection sight. He heard a sound at the door and knew Jono had arrived.
“How’s it going bugalugs?” Jono asked, grinning.
“Don’t you take her anywhere again without my direct say-so,” he told his friend as soon as he was in the room.
“So now she’s to be your hostage from here on out?” Jono asked. He brought a cardboard container with two tall Styrofoam cups over to the bed.
“I wanted her here when I woke up,” he said.
“If she hadn’t called me, she would have called a cab, bro,” Jono reminded him. “Unless you put shackles and a leash on her, how you gonna keep her from doing that if I tell her I can’t pick her up?”
“After tonight, she won’t want to leave,” he stated.
“And you know this because…”
“Don’t you have a job to do?” he countered as he gingerly sat up.
Jono plucked one of the cups of coffee from the carrier and extended it toward him. “My main job is babysitting you.”
“Fuck you,” he snapped. He took a cautious sip of the strong brew.
“You wish,” Jono answered with a chuckle. He came around to the opposite side of the bed, sat down and stretched out. He sniffed then sniffed again. “Too sick to root last night, bro?”
“We haven’t done that yet,” he told his friend.
“Well, now,” Jono said, eyebrows elevated. “That has to be a world record for the Kiwi Kutie.”
“I’ve told you not to call me that!”
“Hey, that’s not my nickname for you, bro. I prefer shithead. Frankly, I don’t find you cute at all. You’re really not my type. I think that came from one of those gossip rags, didn’t it?”
“Anne Sheridan of StarTalk,” he grumbled.
“Oh, yeah. Wasn’t she the broad who told everyone you and she were engaged?”
He took a long swig of the hot coffee and winced as he burned his tongue. “How was she this morning?” he inquired, wanting to get off the subject of Sheridan.
“A little quieter even than usual. She kept yawning so I assumed she probably watched over you all night and didn’t get much shuteye.”
“I wanted her here when I woke up.”
“Can’t always get what you want, bro,” Jono said then grunted. “Well, maybe you can since you’re richer than Midas.”
“I want her,” he said quietly and realized it was the truth. He felt—rather than saw—Jono give him a stunned look. “I mean it. I want her, Jono.”
“You want every woman you take to your bed, bro,” Jono said.
“I want her,” he repeated, emphasizing the word.
There was a long, long pause. “As in only her?” Jono asked.
He nodded slowly then took another swallow of the coffee.
“How do you know it’s just her?” Jono asked.
“Every night I’m sitting here getting the colly wobbles waiting for her to walk through the door,” he said quietly. “When she does, my entire body begins to ache.”
“Could be something you ate,” Jono suggested.
He ignored him. “My muttongun starts to throb as soon as I see her. My jeans get so tight it feels like the zipper’s gonna bust.”
“Now, that could be a case of the dreaded lurgy,” Jono told him.
“I’m being serious, Jono!” he declared. “I think I’m falling for her!”
Jono’s mouth dropped open. “Get off the grass!” he whispered.
Chapter Twelve
Night Nine
It was pouring rain as she drove the black McGregor Industries sedan to Friendship Manor. The car had been delivered to her that morning and by Saturday afternoon she was able to leave for the nursing home with the intention of staying a few hours at Drew’s bedside. If all went well and she held to her bargain—and he didn’t renege on their deal before it was all said and done—she would be visiting her brother at Cedar Oaks in December. Glancing at her watch, she knew he would be eating lunch soon so she decided to stop at Drecker’s for a six-inch ham and cheese on rye. Luckily there were no other cars filling up the parking slots and she was able to park directly in front of the door. Hurrying inside, she jumped when a loud clap of thunder shook the building.
“Mean as a cornered snake out there, huh, Lina?” the young guy behind the counter asked. His nametag said Jed but he was a neighbor kid whose real name was Jethro.
“There are sharks swimming in the gutters,” she replied. “And I think I saw a sting ray too. A Moray eel stuck his head out of a manhole.”
“Gotta watch out for those gutter sharks,” Jed said. “They are vicious during mating season.�
�� He grinned. “Want the usual or somethin’ else?”
“I’ll have a six-inch ham and cheese on rye.”
“Everything ‘cept cukes, extra hot peppers, right?”
“Right,” she replied as he handed her a cup to fill at the water dispenser.
“Oh, free ten-ounce drink with any purchase today,” he said.
“Cool beans,” she said and placed the cup under the lemonade spout.
She took a seat in the corner—well away from the windows where lightning was flashing across the glass. Shaking salt onto the dill pickle quarter Jed always slipped into her sandwich basket when he worked the counter, she glanced up as the door opened and a customer came hurrying in. She paused with the pickle halfway to her mouth when she realized it was him who had come hurrying in from the rain.
“It’s hosing down out there, Jethro,” he said with a laugh, shaking his hands. He pronounced the boy’s name as Jeethro. The sleeves, shoulders and back of his gray T-shirt were soaked. Running his hands down his bare arms, he sluiced off the remaining rainwater.
“Rain’s good for you, mate,” Jed said in what she supposed was his rendition of a Kiwi accent. “What’s your pleasure today?”
She watched him study the menu on the wall, run his arm under his dripping nose, then shrug.
“Give me today’s special with the usual stuff,” he ordered.
“You gonna have crisps with your meal?” the young man asked.
“Good on you, Jethro!” he said with a laugh. “You’ve been Googling again, ain’t you? And yeah, I think jalapeño crisps will go good with a steak sarnie.”
She took a bite of her pickle and wondered if he would notice her. She wondered if he would eat there. She wondered if she should speak to him, call attention to herself and decided it would be best if she didn’t. She saw him turn his head toward the door as a bright splash of red appeared. She stopped chewing as he hurried to open the door for the same little old lady with the same red umbrella she’d seen a month or so before.
“Thank you, young man,” the lady said.
“My pleasure, young lady,” he replied.
The woman looked him up and down then shook her head. “Son, you are going to catch your death of cold if you don’t get out of those wet clothes. You are sopping wet. Where’s your jacket?”
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