Inside, she changed into a yellow cotton sundress, fed the cat and fussed with a casserole. She was halfway through dinner when the phone rang. Biting her lip, she rose from the table and determinedly stalked toward the living room.
She picked up the phone on the second ring. “Hello?”
Her eyes squeezed closed when she heard the familiar low, throaty pant. Her stomach curled, and the same old fear licked up her spine. Her hands went slippery as she started to replace the phone. It hadn’t quite connected when she heard something else, and lifted the receiver halfway to her ear again.
“…and get the hell off that phone!” The colorful litany was punctuated by a sneeze.
She stared blankly at the receiver for a moment. “Ryan? If you’re talking to me-” she started irritably.
“Of course I’m not talking to you, foolish one. And don’t pick up the phone again tonight.” He slammed down his end.
She dropped hers. When or if The Breather had dropped his, she had no idea.
She stood silent, for an instant almost smiling. Ryan had quite an extensive vocabulary. She was familiar with all the words but had never heard them strung together in quite that way. She didn’t think it was physically possible for The Breather to do with himself what Ryan had suggested.
Her smile abruptly died. Her neighbor was sick. It wasn’t just one little cough and a few sneezes that convinced her, but the grating hoarseness in his voice. Abruptly, she whirled for the kitchen, and the freezer.
A half hour later, with a picnic basket under her arm, she crossed the hall to Ryan’s apartment, tentatively set down the basket and raised her hand to knock. Then dropped her hand, hesitating.
No one could know what it had cost her to admit her sexual failings to Ryan the night before. It had hurt when he refused to take her seriously. There was no way she wanted to give him the least chance to start something up again. Over a long, sleepless night, she’d decided that the only way to handle the situation from now on was to keep her distance.
Still. He was ill. And she was hardly inviting anything by just checking on him. When her fingers still hesitated to knock, she grimly reminded herself that she refused to play games with him. She was who she was. A lady who brought cough lozenges, not one who raised blood pressure. A woman who could be counted on as an honest friend, not as a potential lover.
She knocked. Once, again, and then a third time.
“Who’s there?”
She almost smiled at the crabby voice. “Greer.”
“Go away.”
She did smile then. The door wasn’t locked; she let herself in. “I’m here,” she called out. “Just stay where you are.”
The living room was silent and looked like a general disaster area. The curtains were closed; the air was stale; two glasses had been left out from the night before; clothes were strewn every which way. The kitchen was deserted, but it looked worse than the living room.
Lugging the picnic basket, Greer ventured determinedly toward Ryan’s bedroom and paused in the doorway.
The room looked remarkably different than it had the night they’d painted it. The king-sized bed was covered with rumpled cocoa-colored sheets; floor-to-ceiling bookshelves of natural pecan held a stereo and a smattering of books. A thick comforter in stripes of cream and dark brown had been tossed on the floor, and he’d carpeted the room in incredibly plush cocoa that felt like sponge beneath her feet.
She noticed all of that, but it was the man who really drew her attention, and Ryan looked like hell. Bare-chested, he was propped up on pillows with a makeshift drawing board in his lap. His hair was all rumpled, his chin dark with whiskers and his eyes looked glassy and lifeless.
She knew at a glance that he had a fever and that it was high. Dark circles half-mooned beneath his eyes, and there was a white pallor under his tan; dots of moisture marked his brow.
She loved him more that minute than she had ever even conceived of loving anyone. For no reason. Truthfully, he looked tight-lipped and furious when he glanced up and saw her-and the effort of raising his head made him wince, as if he had an excruciating headache.
“Exactly what I expected, McCullough,” she said softly. She set down the picnic basket and bent over it, taking items out one by one. “Juice. Soup, nice and hot. Aspirin. Thermometer.”
“Take that sweet little fanny of yours out of here, Greer.”
She heard the low, rumbled warning, but paid no attention. “If you expect to pull a fit of temper on me, McCullough, you can forget it. When my father gets a sniffle, he can outswear a sailor in a storm. What always kills me about men is that they’re at their meanest when they’re at their weakest. Machismo comes out of the woodwork, so to speak. Now…” She’d brought glasses as well. Being male, there was every chance he didn’t have clean ones. “Lemonade or orange juice?”
“Neither.”
“Lemonade it is.” She poured a glass and set it next to the bed, efficiently stealing the drawing board from his lap and whisking it to the floor on her downhill swing. “Now, can you handle soup, or is your stomach involved?”
“Your hide is about to be involved. I need to finish that work, and I’d appreciate it if you’d give me back the drawing board. If you value life and limb.”
He was propped up against the pillows, his threat virtually groundless. Greer scanned the bed and frowned, her eyes deliberately averted from his Jockey shorts. “Do you own a pair of pajamas?”
“Go home, Greer.”
“How long have you had a fever? Did you call the doctor?”
“Go home, Greer.”
She set the bottle of aspirin next to the lemonade, giving him a wry look. “You’re a little testy when you’re sick, are you? So am I, McCullough. You’re not alone. Take two aspirin and drink the juice. I’ll clean up in the other room and bring back some fresh sheets in a few minutes. No arguing.”
She heard no protest, and strolled from the room with almost a smile. It felt utterly natural, taking care of him. She didn’t really care if he was crabby. And this role, the role of caretaker, came naturally; it was Greer; it was her way of showing love and caring, one way she’d always easily shown love and caring.
In the living room, she picked up the dirty dishes and took them to the kitchen. Filling the sink with soapy water, she grabbed a dishcloth and started to work. She wasn’t really worried about Ryan. Anyone who had enough energy to be mean couldn’t be seriously ill. Actually, she almost felt the silly urge to hum, until the dishcloth was abruptly stolen from her hands by a towering behemoth behind her.
“Ryan, just get back in bed. You shouldn’t be up at all. For heaven’s sake, I-”
He was pale to his toes, his forehead sweating and his hands unsteady-but not so unsteady he couldn’t grasp her by the shoulders and firmly propel her toward the door.
When he flung open the door, he started coughing, but he still managed to push her inelegantly into the hall. “I love you like hell, sweetheart, but I think we’d better get this absolutely straight. For openers, there’s no way I’m going to expose you to a virus, even if it’s only a twenty-four-hour bug. More important, if I need a mother, I’ve got one in Maine. There’s a hell of a lot I want from you as a woman, lady, but being babysat isn’t and never will be one of them.”
He slammed the door. She heard the latch.
For a moment, she stood stunned. Then she was so furious she couldn’t think. The mule-headed dolt. The ungrateful, evil-tempered windbag. For ten cents, she’d send a dozen roses to that mother of his in Maine with a note of congratulations for having survived his upbringing.
In the meantime, she felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. Tears stung her eyes as she slammed her own door moments later and immediately crossed the room to take the phone off the hook…not because she was afraid his rest might be disturbed by one of her telephone calls. Just because.