Nathan's Child - By Anne McAllister Page 0,35
up pretty fast. Doc said a couple of months and you’d be good as new.”
“A couple of months?” Carin tried not to wail the words. “My show…”
“Don’t worry about your show.”
“Easy for you to say,” she muttered.
“Ah, good. You’re awake, dearie.” A nurse appeared in the doorway, a bright white smile on her ebony face. “How you be feeling, then?”
“Just ducky,” Carin muttered. But it was actually nice to see someone other than Nathan.
“Pain medication wearing off?” The nurse shook a pill out into a tiny paper cup and gave it to Carin. “You just take this. You feel better soon.” She held a glass of water so Carin could sip it and get the pill down. “You get lots of sleep now an’ you heal right up,” she went on. “Don’t worry ’bout a thing. Your husband, he take care of things for you.”
The water went right up Carin’s nose. She coughed and snorted and gasped and every muscle in her body screamed.
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. You drink too fast. Go slow. You got to go slow, dearie,” the nurse said, completely misunderstanding the reason for Carin’s coughing fit. The nurse put the glass out of reach and waited until Carin had stopped choking. “There now. You go slow.”
“He. Is. Not. My. Husband.” Carin wheezed out the words. She shot Nathan a fulminating glare.
The nurse looked surprised, then as her gaze turned to Nathan, she looked accusing.
In return Nathan looked both implacable and inscrutable. Whatever he had told the doctors and the hospital staff, it had apparently involved him being a close relative.
Now he shrugged, as if to say, Want to make something of it?
Clearly the nurse didn’t. “You want more water now you stopped choking?” she asked Carin.
“No. Thank you,” Carin added after a moment, banishing the rude child. She gave the nurse a wan smile and was rewarded with a pat on the hand.
“Don’t you fret now,” she said. “Whatever he is, he cares about you.” Then, giving Nathan a smile, too, she headed for the door. “You need anything, you push that button,” she pointed to the one by Carin’s hand. And then she was gone.
And the two of them were alone again.
“Go away,” Carin said after a moment.
Nathan didn’t bother to answer. He didn’t bother to move, either. He just sprawled in the chair by her bedside, looking tired. His dark hair was ruffled and uncombed, as if he’d run his hands through it. Dark stubble shadowed his cheeks and jaw. He was wearing a rumpled long-sleeved blue shirt and a pair of jeans faded at the knees to almost white. They were what he’d been wearing when she’d seen him right before she’d gone sailing over the handlebars of her bike.
“What time is it?” she asked wearily, when it was clear he wasn’t going anywhere. There was some light coming through the window, but not much. It looked to be getting dark.
Nathan glanced at his watch. “Just past seven.”
“I’ve been out six hours?”
“Eighteen. It’s seven in the morning.”
She stared at him. “Seven in the morning. Tomorrow? I mean, I’ve been here since yesterday?”
Nathan nodded. “Yep.”
“And you’ve been here…”
“Since we brought you in.”
No wonder he looked as if he’d been run over by a truck. And Carin didn’t even want to think what she must look like. “You should go home,” she said.
“I will.” But he still made no effort to move.
“Don’t you have a hotel room?”
“Didn’t need one. They let me stay here.”
All night? He’d sat beside her bed all night? Carin was mortified and felt oddly teary at the same time.
“Well, you didn’t need to,” she told him.
“I promised Lacey I would.”
And what could she say to that? Her fingers curled around a handful of sheet, and she shook her head, overwhelmed, exhausted, hurting even though the pain killer was beginning to take effect. It made her feel woozy. Her eyes shut.
“Go to sleep,” she heard Nathan say. His voice seemed to come from far away. “Get that rest the nurse was talking about.”
She strove to open her eyes. “You—” But of their own accord her lids closed again. “You should go…”
The last thing she heard was Nathan say, “Don’t worry about me.”
Nathan was doing enough worrying for both of them.
Whatever “opportunity” he’d been waiting for, he’d never imagined this one. The sight of Carin flying over those handlebars was one he would take to his grave. And the vision of her chalk-white face and the way her eyes went all glassy from