to die.
Kate had lowered herself to the tile and now gently cradled his head in her lap. “Better?” she murmured, stroking her cool hands on his overheated temples.
Her touch was like heaven, and he heard a moan. His.
“Oh, you poor, stupidly stubborn man,” she whispered softly, and gently massaged his scalp and temples until he wanted to whimper with relief.
She didn’t push him to talk or try to get him up; she just ran those fingers over him until he was certain he wasn’t going to be sick again.
“Okay,” he finally managed to say. He was going to get up. “We’re even now.”
“How’s that?”
“You’re pretending last night didn’t happen, and I’m going to pretend tonight didn’t happen.” Leaving his eyes closed, he slowly sat up.
She said nothing until he managed to very carefully look at her.
“If you won’t let me call anyone for you,” she said. “I’m going to help you home.”
“I’ve got it.”
“Really? Because you can’t even open your eyes all the way, Big Alpha Man. How the hell do you think you can drive?”
“You talk to your students in that tone?”
“When they’re acting like little idiots,” she said.
If he could have sighed without feeling like his head was going to fall off, he would have. He didn’t want to talk about his migraine or why he got them. He just wanted to be in his bed.
She reached for his hand.
“Kate—”
“Shh. Just a little pressure,” she said, and began a slow, steady pinch to the skin between his thumb and forefinger. “Acupressure,” she said, holding him like that for a long moment before slowly releasing him. “Better?”
He had to think about it. No, his head still wanted to come off his shoulders, but he no longer felt like he was going to throw up. Progress.
“I used to do this for my dad’s migraines,” she said. “They started after my mom died. At first he had his pain meds, but then he got too attached to them.” She paused. “Way too attached. So when he had to learn to go without, I did this to help him.”
“Did it work?”
“On the pain, yes. On keeping him off the pills? No.”
He knew her father was a recovering addict. Knew also how much of his life Kate had taken over so he didn’t lose everything. Grif wondered at the strength of her, giving up her life for her family, something he’d never had to do. His own father hadn’t fallen apart when his mom had left. Nor when she’d died. Donald Reid had simply shouldered the grief and gone on. It was what the Reid family did.
Go on.
He rolled to his hands and knees and stilled, taking stock. Before he could stagger to his feet on his own, Kate put a shoulder beneath his armpit and shoved.
She was maybe 120 pounds soaking wet, and yet she managed to get him upright.
“Okay?” she asked very quietly, her arms around him, holding him steady.
He paused, considered throwing up again, but managed to hold it together. What he couldn’t do was talk. Thankfully, she got that and steered him to the door.
She took him out the back way of the restaurant, something else he’d have to be grateful for later, because it was taking all his concentration not to whimper like a baby.
Just before she opened the back door, she stopped and fiddled with her purse. Then she was putting something over his eyes.
Sunglasses.
“Come on,” she said softly but matter-of-factly. Calm. She led him straight to the ranch truck he’d appropriated from his dad’s fleet. He leaned against the side and tried to figure out how to tell her that he probably couldn’t drive without killing them both.
That’s when he felt her hand in his front pants pocket. Not much shocked him, but her questing fingers came close.
She made a sound of frustration.
An inch to the left, babe, and you’ll have all you could ever want . . .
But then she retracted her hand and . . . shoved it into his other front pocket. “There,” she said, pilfering his keys right off his person, leaving him hard on top of being in excruciating pain—quite the feat.
“Watch your head,” she murmured, and he squinted his eyes open to see that she’d unlocked the truck and wanted him to get into the passenger seat.
And that, according to his reflection in the window, he was wearing neon green sunglasses.
Nice.
With that same calm, matter-of-fact air, Kate got him seated, and then she leaned over him to fasten his seat belt. Her hair tickled his nose, as did her scent, but he kept his eyes closed.
He must have drifted off because the next thing he knew he was jerking awake when a hand stroked lightly over his arm.
Kate had driven him home. She stood in the open passenger door of the truck, watching him far too carefully for his comfort. He slid out of the vehicle and walked into the ranch house, heading straight down the hall to his bedroom. He kicked off his shoes and stripped in two seconds flat, then stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes, sighing at the blissful silence.
A few seconds later he felt someone come into the room, but he was unable to bring himself to care. He was shivering a little bit, which was par for the course. His body had a hell of a time regulating his own temperature when he got like this.
A blanket was pulled up over him. His head was burning up, but he didn’t have the energy to do anything about that either.
A minute later a cold wet washcloth was set against his forehead, and though he hadn’t cried in years, he actually nearly lost it then in sheer relief.
“I called Adam,” Kate said softly, stroking his hair off his forehead. “Before you get all butt-hurt about that, you have to know I can’t leave you alone like this.”
“It’s his fucking wedding rehearsal, Kate.”
“Dinner’s over and he’s on his way.”
He’d have to kill her later because the nausea was back. He couldn’t move without throwing up, and he’d sell his soul to the devil himself before doing that in front of her.
* * *
Kate was alternately pacing the living room and standing in the doorway to Griffin’s bedroom, straining to see his chest rising and falling, when she heard a truck drive up.
Adam, she thought hopefully.
But it wasn’t. It was Donald Reid. He looked surprised to see her standing in his house, and she quickly told him about Griffin’s migraine.
“Huh,” he said, and headed in the opposite direction.
“Wait. Aren’t you going to check on him?”
Donald turned back. “Didn’t you check on him?”
“Well, yes. Of course.”
Donald nodded and kept going. “No worries, his head is hard enough; he’ll get past this.”
Kate was still standing there in shock when she heard another truck. This time it was Adam. He strode into the house, nodded at her, and went straight down the hall.
Toward Griffin’s room, she noted in relief.
Unable to help herself, she followed, staying in the doorway as Adam entered Griffin’s room. The two men spoke so quietly that she couldn’t hear a damn thing.
A few minutes later, Adam came out and met her in the hallway. He tugged on a strand of her hair. “Looking a little rough, cutie.”
“Forget me,” she said. “What about Griffin? Is he okay? What’s wrong? Has he always gotten migraines like this, or is it from his injury?”
He gave her a second look. “What do you know of his injury?”
“Absolutely zip.”
Adam nodded but said nothing.
God save her from alpha men. “Tell me,” she said. “I’ve seen his scar.”
And she’d seen a lot more than that earlier when he’d stripped out of his clothes without a thought; there wasn’t a self-conscious bone in his body. And now that she’d seen it all—every inch—she could say with certainty that he had absolutely nothing to b
e self-conscious about, because the promise he made in clothes was absolutely kept without them.
“He was injured in a blast,” Adam said. “He sustained a head trauma, a closed head injury. It left him with ringing ears, headaches, light sensitivity, fatigue . . .”
“And talkative friends.”
Both Adam and Kate froze at Griffin’s rough, low, irritated voice coming from the bedroom.
“I’m fine,” Grif said. “Or I will be. So unless one of you is going to get naked and offer up sex, get the hell out.”
“I did offer it up,” Kate said. “You weren’t interested, remember?”
Adam’s brows shot up so fast and far that they vanished under his hairline.
Griffin said nothing, but she could feel his annoyance coming in loud and clear.
“Explain,” Adam said.
Griffin said nothing, apparently pleading the Fifth.
And Kate would explain over her own dead body. She shouldn’t have said anything at all; she hadn’t meant to. But once again her mouth had spoken without permission. “Having sex is three times more effective as a pain reflector than a morphine dose.” Dammit! She closed her mouth and then put her hand over it just in case.
A snort came from the direction of the bed but no words.
“Well, I’d offer to take one for the team,” Adam said conversationally to Griffin through the open door, “but you’re not my type. Now someone talk to me.”
More radio silence from Griffin.
Adam slid his back down the wall until he was seated on the floor. “Fine. I’ll sit here all night. And then be too tired to bone your sister tomorrow night.”
Griffin’s silence ramped up a notch.
Kate sighed and sat next to Adam. Time passed.
“You know he’s leaving,” Adam eventually said. “After the wedding. He’s got job offers on the other side of the country.”
Kate nodded, pretending she knew and that it didn’t matter. But it did matter, if the pang of disappointment was anything to go by, even though logically she never expected him to stick around in Sunshine. “Nothing’s going on.”
“Why are you still here?” Griffin asked.
“We’re not,” Adam said.
Griffin swore with impressive skill. “Go home.”
“Make me,” Adam said lightly.
Either Griffin had nothing to say to that or he’d fallen asleep again.
“He’ll be okay,” Adam said to Kate.
“How do you know?”
“Because I called in some favors and got his medical history.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Griffin muttered from the bed.
Adam met Kate’s gaze. “The problem is that he was at ground zero when the explosion went off.”
“Was he alone?” she whispered, horrified.
“No. His unit was with him, at least until a few seconds before when he got a hinky feeling and sent them to safety. He got a medal for that—not that he’s said anything about it. Anyway, he’s healing up pretty good. Too slow to suit himself, but that’s par for the course. He’s not exactly a patient guy.”
From the bed came a long-suffering sigh, and Adam smiled.
Kate took heart in that. Surely, if Griffin was in any sort of danger, Adam wouldn’t be baiting him.
“And this isn’t the first time I’ve sat at his bedside after some stupid move he’s made,” Adam said.
Kate looked at him. “No?”
“Nope. Fourth of July, twenty years ago. Remember that, Grif?”
Grif didn’t respond.
“We stole a box of fireworks from the rec center,” Adam told Kate. “We took the haul up to Beaute Point and set out to create us a hell of a show. Except one of the mortars backfired. Landed us both in the hospital. Grif with second-degree burns on his arms and chest, and me with a sprained ankle.” Adam smiled fondly at the memory. “Old man Reid was fit to be tied. I think if Grif hadn’t been flat on his back, Donald would’ve beaten the shit out of us both.”
“You didn’t get the sprained ankle from the explosion,” Griffin said from the bed. “You got it from running like hell from the explosion.”
Adam grinned and pointed to his head. “No grass growing here.” His smile faded as he glanced into the dark room, at the far-too-still figure on the bed. “And you told me to run,” he said softly. “You probably saved my life that night.”
Griffin didn’t answer this.
Long moments went by, and they could hear the steady, deep breathing coming from the bedroom.
“You’re a good friend,” Kate said quietly.
“He’s the good friend,” Adam said. “He’s not the person who’ll call you when you’re going through a hard time. He’s the person who gets on a plane in the middle of the night when you’re going through a hard time, and he won’t leave until you’re better again.”
Kate knew that to be true. Over the years she’d watched as Grif had come through for Holly in every possible way a brother could, being there when their mom died, flying to her when he’d suspected that her first marriage had gone bad in New York. Whatever Holly needed, Grif gave it to her, whether Holly wanted his help or not.
“So,” Adam said. “Did you really try to sleep with him last night? Does Holly know?”
“Yes. And no. Not yet.” Kate leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. “It was a momentary weakness, and besides, he turned me down flat.”
Adam laughed softly. “I bet he’s kicking his own ass about now.”
“I doubt it.” She paused. “Although men do change their minds two to three hundred percent more often than women.”
“I’m not going to change my mind,” came Griffin’s disembodied voice from the bed.
Kate rolled her eyes.
Adam patted her knee. “Go home, cutie. I’ve got this.”
“But you need sleep, too.”
“Oh, I’ll sleep.”
“How?” Kate asked.
He flashed a grin. “Trust me, I’ve been in worse conditions.” And with that, he rose lithely to his feet and walked into Griffin’s room, stretching out on the bed next to his oldest friend.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she heard Griffin mutter.
“Suck it up, man.”
“Jesus. Don’t say suck while you’re in bed with me. Don’t even think it.”
Confident that if he could joke around like that, then he was probably going to live, Kate left the two of them alone.
Nine
The next day dawned early and bright. Kate got up to run just to make extra-sure her bridesmaid dress fit well. She pulled on her gear, slipped outside into the icy morning air, and hit the trail. She was tempted to run to the ranch just to make sure Griffin wasn’t still suffering.