by Diana Palmer
She only grinned.
He sipped the juice and swallowed. He winced.
“Oh, gosh, it’s acidic. I’m sorry. I’ll get you something less abrasive. Gatorade?” she suggested.
“I’d rather have the juice, honestly. I do wish I had—”
“Some cough drops?” she finished, digging in the prescription bag. “How fortunate that I asked Tex to bring some. And you can have the cough syrup, too.”
She pulled a spoon from her pocket and poured out a dose of the powerful cough syrup the doctor had prescribed.
He took it, his dark eyes amused and affectionate as they met hers. “Your father’s going to raise hell if he catches you in here.”
She made a face at him. “Edna asked me earlier if you’d like something light for dinner. An omelet? She makes them with fresh herbs.”
He hesitated. “I’m not really hungry,” he said, not wanting to hurt Edna’s feelings. He hated eggs.
“I like eggs. We have fresh ones most of the year, when our hens aren’t molting.” She paused, her eyes narrow on his broad, handsome face. “You don’t like eggs, but you don’t want to trouble anyone,” she blurted out. “How about chicken noodle soup instead?”
He laughed. “Damn. How did you figure that out?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly.
“I’d really rather have the soup, if it’s not too much trouble,” he confessed. “I hate eggs.”
She grinned. “I’ll tell Edna.”
He studied her soft face with narrow, thoughtful eyes. “When do you start classes again?”
“January,” she replied. “I’ve already decided what I’ll take.”
“How do you get back and forth when the snows come?” he wondered.
She laughed. “Dad has one of the boys drive me back and forth. We have a cowboy who grew up in northern Montana. He can drive through anything.”
“It might be more sensible to get you an apartment near campus,” he said.
“I don’t like being on my own,” she said quietly.
He reached out a big hand and tangled her fingers in it. “All men aren’t animals, Niki.”
She shrugged. “I suppose not. I keep thinking what would have happened if you hadn’t been here that night.”
His face tensed. So did he. She was so fragile. Like a hothouse orchid. It bothered him that she was in here risking her own health to nurse him while his wife was off having a wild time in Europe and couldn’t be bothered to call him, let alone look in on him.
He’d never told Niki why he’d really married Elise. It had less to do with who she was than who she resembled. He’d just lost his mother, whom he’d adored, and Elise looked just like her. She’d come up to him at a party while he was grieving, and he’d fallen for her at first sight. Elise looked like his mother, but without her compassion and soul. Niki, oddly, reminded him more of her even than Elise, although Niki’s coloring was very different. Elise had the compassion of a hungry shark.
“You’re very quiet,” she commented.
He smiled gently. “You’re a nice child,” he said softly.
“I’m almost twenty-one,” she protested.
“Honey, I’m almost thirty-seven,” he said, his voice deep with tenderness.
“Really?” She was studying him with those wide, soft gray eyes that were silvery in the soft light of the bedside lamp. She smiled. “You don’t look it. You don’t even have gray hair. Don’t tell me,” she mused wickedly. “You have it colored, don’t you?”
He burst out laughing and then coughed.
“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,” she said at once, wincing. “I shouldn’t have opened my mouth!”
He caught his breath. “Niki, you’re a breath of spring,” he said. “No, I don’t color it,” he added. “My father was from Greece. His hair was still black when he died, and he was in his sixties.” He didn’t tell her that his real father was from Greece. He didn’t know or care where his stepfather, the man who’d raised him, came from.
“I remember my grandfather...”
“What in the blazes are you doing in here?” Todd ground out when he saw Niki sitting on the bed beside Blair.
“Well, darn, caught in the act,” Niki groaned.
CHAPTER TWO
“I DID TRY to chase her out,” Blair told his friend ruefully. “She wouldn’t go.”
“I called Doctor Fred,” Niki told her dad. “Blair wasn’t getting better. By the second day, I’m usually bouncing off the walls. Doctor Fred called in some new meds, and I had Tex go pick them up in town.”
“You’ll get sick again,” her father said solemnly.
“I will not,” Niki replied. “I’m just off antibiotics myself. And it isn’t as if I’m kissing him or anything,” she added indignantly. “I’m only pouring medicine into him. Well, that and orange juice,” she added. She grinned at her father.
Blair, looking up at her, had a sudden stark urge to drag her down into his arms and see if her mouth was as soft and sweet as it looked. That shocked him into letting go of her hand. He must be losing his mind. Well, he was sick. If that was an excuse.
“I’m sorry to stick you with an invalid over the holidays,” Blair began.
Todd cut him off, chuckling. “Niki’s almost always sick at Christmas,” he replied. “We’re used to it.”
He frowned. “At Christmas?”
“Yes,” Todd said with a sigh. “Last year we made sure she wasn’t around anyone who had a cold. She got pneumonia anyway.”
Blair’s dark eyes narrowed. “You have a live fir tree downstairs.”
“Yes. We always do,” Niki said, smiling. “I love live trees. It’s in a ball, so that we can plant it after...”
“A live tree,” Blair persisted. “Some people are allergic to them.”
Niki and her father looked at each other in confusion.
“We had artificial trees until about three years ago,” Todd said. “You wanted a live tree like your girlfriend had at her home.”
Niki grimaced. “I started getting sick at Christmas three years ago. I never connected it.”
“I’ll have Tex come and take the live tree out,” Todd said. “We’ll get a pretty artificial one from the hardware store in town, and you can decorate it again.”
Niki laughed. “I guess I’ll have to.” She glanced at Blair. “Leave it to you to see the obvious, when both of us miss it.”
“Good for me,” he mused.
“I’ll go talk to Edna about that soup,” Niki said. She put the bottle of cough syrup on the bedside table and picked up the spoon. “Want some more juice?” she added.
He shook his head. “I’m fine. Thanks, Niki.”
She grinned and left the men to talk.
“I couldn’t stop her,” Blair said quietly. “She’s formidable when she makes up her mind. I didn’t encourage her to come in here.”
“I know that.” Todd dropped into the chair beside the bed. “Her mother, Martha, was just like that,” he told the younger man. “She’d go out of her way to help sick people. Niki worries.”
“Yes.”
Todd’s eyes narrowed. “I called Elise.”
Blair’s face closed up. “She can’t bear illness.”
Todd didn’t say a word. But his expression was eloquent.
Blair just shrugged.
“She reminded you of Bernice, didn’t she?” Todd asked, because he and Blair had been friends for a long time. He’d been the one they’d called when Blair was going out of his mind after the accident that left his mother first paralyzed, and soon after, dead.
Blair’s face grew hard. “Yes.”
Todd didn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I.
But I’ll make the best of it,” he added. “No woman is going to be perfect.”
* * *
THE NEXT DAY, Blair was feeling better. He sat up in bed to eat the food on the tray Edna brought him, and he was smiling when Niki peered in to check on him.
“I’m not going to die anytime soon,” he assured her with a grin.
She grinned back. “Okay. Nice to see that you’re better. I won’t have to worry Doctor Fred again.”
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded. “I don’t think I’m going to catch whatever you’ve got. I don’t even have a sore throat.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” he said. “I don’t want to be responsible for putting you back in bed again.”
“Thanks. But I’m good. Want some more orange juice?”
“Please.”
“I’ll be right back.”
* * *
SHE SAT WITH Blair from time to time while he recovered. Once, she brought in her iPad and presented him with a graphic novel from the Alien vs. Predator series, one they both enjoyed.
“This is cool,” he chuckled. “You can carry graphic novels around without having to lug a suitcase full of them.”
“I thought so, too. I’ve got a Calvin and Hobbes collection on there, as well. It’s one of my favorites.”
He nodded. “Mine, too. Thanks, Niki.”
“No problem.” She got up. “I have to help Edna and the two temporary cooks with the breads. We have a huge spread for Christmas dinner.”
“That’s on Thursday,” he pointed out.
“Yes, and today is Tuesday. We start baking breads today for the dressing, and cooking giblets for the gravy and making pies and cakes. It takes a while. We set the big fancy table in the dining room, and we have the cowboys and their wives come by, in shifts, to share it with us. That’s a tradition that dates back to my grandfather’s time here.”
“It seems like a nice one,” he commented.
She smiled. “They work very hard for us all year. It’s little enough to do. We have presents for them, and their children, under the tree. It’s usually a madhouse here on Christmas Day. I hope you’ll be up to it,” she added with a grin.
“I’ve never been involved in Christmas celebrations,” he commented.
“Not even when you were a child?” she asked, surprised.
“My...father was an agnostic,” he said, hating the memory of his stepfather. “We didn’t celebrate Christmas.”
She hesitated. “Was your mother like that, too?”
His face was hard. “She did what he told her to do. It was a different generation, honey. He was old-school. God bless her, she put up with a lot from him. But she missed him when he died.”
“I’m sure you did, too.”
“In my way.”
Eager to lighten the atmosphere, because his face was painfully somber, she said, “We have eggnog on Christmas Eve. I make it from scratch.”
He made a face.
She grimaced. “I see. You don’t like eggs, so you won’t like eggnog, right?”
“Right. I’ll just have my whiskey neat instead of polluting it with eggs,” he said, tongue in cheek.
She sighed. “Are you always such a demanding dinner guest?” she despaired.
He chuckled. His black eyes twinkled at her. “I like pretty much anything except things with egg in them. Just don’t forget the whiskey.”
She sighed. He was very handsome. She loved the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. She loved the strong, chiseled lines of his wide mouth, the high cheekbones, the thick black wavy hair around his leonine face. His chest was a work of art in itself. She had to force herself not to look at it too much. It was broad and muscular, under a thick mat of curling black hair that ran down to the waistband of his silk pajamas. Apparently, he didn’t like jackets, because he never wore one with the bottoms. His arms were muscular, without being overly so. He would have delighted an artist.
“What are you thinking so hard about?” he wondered aloud.
“That an artist would love painting you,” she blurted out, and then flushed then cleared her throat. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
He lifted both eyebrows. “Miss Ashton,” he scoffed, “you aren’t by any chance flirting with me, are you?”
“Mr. Coleman, the thought never crossed my mind!”
“Don’t obsess over me,” he said firmly, but his eyes were still twinkling. “I’m a married man.”
She sighed. “Yes, thank goodness.”
His eyebrows lifted in a silent question.
“Well, if you weren’t married, I’d probably disgrace myself. Imagine, trying to ravish a sick man in bed because I’m obsessing over the way he looks without a shirt!”
He burst out laughing. “Go away, you bad girl.”
Her own eyes twinkled. “I’ll banish myself to the kitchen and make lovely things for you to eat.”
“I’ll look forward to that.”
She smiled and left him.
He looked after her with conflicting emotions. He had a wife. Sadly, one who was a disappointment in almost every way; a cold woman who took and took without a thought of giving anything back. He’d married her thinking she was the image of his mother. Elise had seemed very different while they were dating. But the minute the ring was on her finger, she was off on her travels, spending more and more of his money, linking up with old friends whom she paid to travel with her. She was never home. In fact, she made a point of avoiding her husband as much as possible.
This really was the last straw, though, ignoring him when he was ill. It had cut him to the quick to have Todd and Niki see the emptiness of their relationship. He wasn’t that sick. It was the principle of the thing. Well, he had some thinking to do when he left the Ashtons, didn’t he?
* * *
CHRISTMAS DAY WAS BOISTEROUS. Niki and Edna and three other women took turns putting food on the table for an unending succession of people who worked for the Ashtons. Most were cowboys, but several were executives from Todd’s oil corporation.
Niki liked them all, but she was especially fond of their children. She dreamed of having a child of her own one day. She spent hours in department stores, ogling the baby things.
She got down on the carpet with the children around the Christmas tree, oohing and aahing over the presents as they opened them. One little girl who was six years old got a Barbie doll with a holiday theme. The child cried when she opened the gaily wrapped package.
“Lisa, what’s wrong, baby?” Niki cooed, drawing her into her lap.
“Daddy never buys me dolls, and I love dolls so much, Niki,” she whispered. “Thank you!” She kissed Niki and held on tight.
“You should tell him that you like dolls, sweetheart,” Niki said, hugging her close.
“I did. He bought me a big yellow truck.”
“A what?”
“A truck, Niki,” the child said with a very grown-up sigh. “He wanted a little boy. He said so.”
Niki looked as indignant as she felt. But she forced herself to smile at the child. “I think little girls are very sweet,” she said softly, brushing back the pretty dark hair.
“So do I,” Blair said, kneeling down beside them. He smiled at the child, too. “I wish I had a little girl.”
“You do? Honest?” Lisa asked, wide-eyed.
“Honest.”
She got up from Niki’s lap and hugged the big man. “You’re nice.”
He hugged her back. It surprised him, how much he wanted a child. He drew back, the smile still on his face. “So are you, precious.”
“I’m going to show Mama my doll,” she said. “Thanks, Niki!”
“You’re very welcome.”
T
he little girl ran into the dining room, where the adults were finishing dessert.
“Poor thing,” Niki said under her breath. “Even if he thinks it, he shouldn’t have told her.”
“She’s a nice child,” he said, getting to his feet. He looked down at Niki. “You’re a nice child, yourself.”
She made a face at him. “Thanks. I think.”
His dark eyes held an expression she’d never seen before. They fell to her waistline and jerked back up. He turned away. “Any more coffee going? I’m sure mine’s cold.”
“Edna will have made a new pot by now,” she said. His attitude disconcerted her. Why had he looked at her that way? Her eyes followed him as he strode back into the dining room, towering over most of the other men. The little girl smiled up at him, and he ruffled her hair.
He wanted children. She could see it. But apparently his wife didn’t. What a waste, she thought. What a wife he had. She felt sorry for him. He’d said when he was engaged that he was crazy about Elise. Why didn’t she care enough to come when he was ill?
“It’s not my business,” she told herself firmly.
It wasn’t. But she felt very sorry for him just the same. If he’d married her, they’d have a houseful of children. She’d take care of him and love him and nurse him when he was sick... She pulled herself up short. He was a married man. She shouldn’t be thinking such things.
* * *
SHE’D BOUGHT PRESENTS online for her father and Edna and Blair. She was careful to get Blair something impersonal. She didn’t want his wife to think she was chasing him or anything. She picked out a tie tac, a fleur de lis made of solid gold. She couldn’t understand why she’d chosen such a thing. He had Greek ancestry, as far as she knew, not French. It had been an impulse.
Her father had gone to answer the phone, a call from a business associate who wanted to wish him happy holidays, leaving Blair and Niki alone in the living room by the tree. She felt like an idiot for making the purchase.
Now Blair was opening the gift, and she ground her teeth together when he took the lid off the box and stared at it with wide, stunned eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she began self-consciously. “The sales slip is in there,” she added. “You can exchange it if...”