Love Slave for Two Collection [Box Set 7]

  * * * *

  Tyler didn’t care who saw him cry. His angel was awake, that’s all that mattered. “Nevvie,” he whispered, “I’m so sorry, please forgive me. I love you so much.”

  She weakly squeezed his hand. “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t protect you, sweetheart.”

  She squeezed again. “Stop. It’s okay.”

  Thomas held her other hand. “You scared me bad, Nevvie. I was afraid I’d lost you, sugar.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Not yet. Alex?”

  “In jail. Denied bond.”

  “Can you stay?”

  “Thirty minutes,” Thomas told her. “I’m sorry, then we have to leave. Once you’re out of here and in a regular room we can probably sweet talk them into letting us bend the rules so I can stay with you all the time.”

  If Tyler noticed his particular phraseology, he said nothing.

  But Nevvie noticed. She squeezed their hands. “Both. Not just you.”

  Thomas glared at Tyler. Now was not the time to stress her out. “I doubt they’ll let us both stay all the time, sugar, but we’ll work something out, alternate shifts. Okay?”

  She nodded and squeezed their hands again. “I love you. Both. I need both.”

  Tyler leaned in. “Sweetheart, we’re here for you. Don’t worry, we’re fine. You just focus on getting better.”

  “Did you sleep?”

  Thomas nodded. “Some. They made us go home.”

  She brought her hands together over her chest, forcing the men’s hands to touch while she held them. Neither had the heart to pull away.

  “Eat. Rest. Okay?” She held them like that until the nurse told them their time was up. Nevvie was falling asleep anyway. Each man leaned over and tenderly kissed her on the lips.

  “I love you, Nevvie,” Tyler whispered.

  “Love you, too.”

  “Love you, baby girl,” Tom said. “I’ll take care of you. You just get better.”

  “Love you, too. Both.”

  The men reluctantly left.

  * * * *

  They came back to see Nevvie later. In that time the men had spoken less than ten words. The staff bent the rules and let them stay an hour with the warning that the men would have to leave if another SICU patient had an emergency. Nevvie drifted to sleep before their time was up, and the men kissed her and reluctantly left.

  When they returned home they spotted a car waiting, parked on the street. A woman and a man jumped out. “Mr. Paulson? Barbara Walsing, from the Tampa Tribune. Can we talk with you?”

  He held up a hand and shook his head, heading for the house. Thomas grabbed the mail from their box, the paper laying in the drive, and shook his head.

  “No comment. Please, just give us privacy.”

  He locked the front door behind him and dumped the mail and paper on the counter. He yanked the paper from the bag and looked at it, nothing in the A section. In the local section, a headline on the front page above the fold read, “Local Author’s Housemate Stabbed, Critical.”

  Goddammit.

  He took a deep breath and read. While it didn’t specifically mention them being gay, it said, “…the housemate of famous author, Tyler Paulson, and his long-time partner, award-winning architect and local developer, Thomas Kinsey…”

  Great. Hopefully Tyler had called Maggie, because he’d totally forgotten.

  Carrying the paper, he stopped at the answering machine. Over forty messages and it blinked that the machine was full.

  Craptacular. He walked to the bedroom. Without a word he handed Tyler the paper.

  He sank to the bed, reading. “I’m sorry, Thomas,” he finally whispered.

  Thomas undressed. He still wore her necklace and rings under his shirt. “For what, Ty?” His anger boiled, barely restrained. “For nearly getting her killed? For breaking her heart? For being a fucking dumb shit? You need to be a little more specific than that.”

  “For everything. I’m so sorry.”

  “Here’s how this is going to work. I won’t have her become a media sideshow. The gay guys’ girlfriend. So I am going to take care of her. You are going to stay the fuck away from her once she’s out of ICU. She doesn’t need TMZ offering bounties for pictures of you at her bedside.”

  “You can’t stay there twenty-four hours a day. You have to sleep.”

  “You’re right. You can sit with her at night. From midnight until six a.m. The rest of the time, I’ll be with her, I’ll take care of her. You do whatever you have to do around here, you handle the fucking media, the phone calls, all the bullshit. I will take care of her, and you will take care of any and everything else. Do I make myself clear?”

  Tyler nodded, unable to bear the weight of his angry glare.

  “Don’t go stressing her out. Don’t go blubbering all over her. For now we’ll pretend everything’s fine between you and me so she doesn’t worry. You and I will deal with the rest of this shit after she’s home and healed up though.”

  He jabbed his finger at Tyler. “You and your fucking plans. I will not lose her. Do you understand me? Not for you, or anyone else on this fucking planet. She might not want to choose, but if it means not losing her, I damn sure will.”

  Tyler offered no resistance. Thomas was a man usually slow to anger, but when enraged he hated with a passion and was slow to forgive—if ever. Once he formed a grudge it became as solid and durable as the Great Wall of China.

  Tyler left the bedroom and found a notepad, started playing the answering machine messages. The Tampa Trib, St. Pete Times. All the local TV stations. CNN. Many leaving more than one message. His agent, his editor, and his publicist. Eddie and Pete and a few other friends.

  His mother. Damn, that meant it had reached the UK tabloids. He’d have to get their home number changed.

  He wrote them all down and cleared the machine, knowing at this rate it would be full again by the next evening.

  When Tyler finally emerged from his shower, Thomas was tightly curled on his side at the far edge of the bed. Tyler didn’t speak to him. He lay down on his side of the bed and tried to sleep, feeling the vast gulf between them through his very core. He desperately wanted to reach out to him, apologize and comfort him, but was afraid it would only make things worse.

  Tyler switched pillows, taking one of Nevvie’s. The smell of her shampoo on the pillowcase made his heart ache.

  * * * *

  The men arrived early the next morning to speak to the doctors during rounds, but the doctor intercepted them at the SICU desk. “Fifteen minutes. She spiked a fever overnight and we’re worried about infection.”

  Tyler’s heart fell. “Will she be all right?”

  “We’ve upped her antibiotics and put her on a morphine pump for pain. She’s pretty out of it. Her blood pressure’s good, but if we can’t knock out the infection with drugs we might have to go in and find the problem.”

  Nevvie’s color didn’t look good either. Ashen, her eyes sunken and dull, she managed a weak smile. She squeezed their hands and held on the entire visit. She still had the tube in her nose, as well as an oxygen cannula. Tyler suspected the morphine helped not only her pain but her nerves. She fell asleep after ten minutes and they both kissed her on the forehead before filing out of the SICU.

  * * * *

  Tyler called to check on her every hour while dodging calls from news outlets and his mother. Nevvie’s fever steadily rose. At noon the nurse called and informed him they were prepping Nevvie for surgery, afraid she had an abscess. The men raced to the hospital, but Nevvie was already in the OR.

  Two hours later the surgeon appeared in the waiting room. “I think we found the source of infection, but needless to say she’s not leaving the SICU until we know for sure. You won’t be able to talk to her until tomorrow morning at the earliest, so you might as well go home.”

  “Please, can we just see her?” Thomas asked.

  The doctor nodded. She was in the same bed as before, unco
nscious and back on the respirator. Both men cried, whispering their love before kissing her goodbye.

  A television crew had parked across the street from the house and when they pulled in, Thomas went inside, leaving Tyler to deal with them. This was his mess. He’d have to clean it up.

  Tyler took a deep breath and waited while the reporter jogged up, followed by a cameraman. “Mr. Paulson? Tyler Paulson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can we interview you, get a statement?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, no statement. Please respect our privacy.”

  “What exactly is your relationship with Ms. Barton?”

  “Our focus right now is making sure she gets the care she needs to recover. We’ll release a statement at a more appropriate time, but for now I will make no other comments. Thank you.” He retreated to the house. There were fifteen messages on the answering machine.

  His first call was to Bob Campbell, their attorney.

  “I wondered when I’d hear from you.”

  Tyler closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Tell me what to do, Bob.”

  “What do you want me to say? You can’t exactly give a statement to the media saying she’s your common-law wife, or label her your domestic partner.”

  “How do I protect her and Thomas from this?”

  “You can’t. When the three of you opted for this ‘alternative lifestyle’ of yours you opened a can of worms. It’s not like you’re Joe Mechanic working at the Jiffy Lube. You aren’t flying under the radar anymore. The 911 tape doesn’t help, either.”

  “What?”

  “Pull up Channel 8’s website. I’m sure they’ve got the clip online by now. That came out around noon today.”

  “Shit.” Tyler sat at his computer and found the site. Sure enough. “I’ll call you back, Bob.” He hung up and clicked on the link to play the video from their noon news. The anchor recapped the story and then they played the audio with—how helpful of them—captioning.

  Operator: 911, what is your emergency?

  Thomas Kinsey: I need a deputy, now, 270 Sailfish Court!

  Operator: Sir, what is your emergency?

  Kinsey: We’ve got an intruder at our home, just got home, someone’s inside.

  Operator: Sir, are they armed? Do you know how many there are?… Sir?… Are you there?

  Kinsey: (unintelligible)…Nevvie! Oh God, he stabbed her! Please, send an ambulance! Oh, God, she’s bleeding everywhere!

  Operator: Who was stabbed, sir?

  Kinsey: He stabbed my wife!

  Operator: Sir, please calm down—

  Kinsey: God ****ing dammit, send a ****ing ambulance! She’s dying! He hit Tyler, he’s out cold, but she’s dying, you’ve got to save her!

  Operator: Who is Tyler? Is he okay?

  Kinsey: He’s my partner—I don’t know, he’s on the floor unconscious, he got hit with a chair when he tried to help Nevvie, please, you’ve got to send an ambulance…

  The agony in Thomas’ voice crushed Tyler’s soul. He shut down the browser. Just when he thought he’d grown accustomed to their current pit of hell they exposed yet another fresher, deeper layer.

  He called Bob back. “I played it.”

  “I suppose the only saving grace is that he called Nevvie his wife and you his partner. Partner can mean a lot of things. People will assume it means boyfriend, but you can spin it to make it look like you’re the odd man out and sharing a house.”

  “I’ll call Elliot Paterno. The two of you work something out and get it to me to look at before it goes to the media. I want Nevvie and Thomas to look good.”

  “What about you?”

  “I don’t care what I look like. Say they’re engaged but living together and in the stress he said wife, whatever. Get the heat off of them. If you need to spin it so people come after me, fine.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do mean that.”

  Bob hesitated. “What happened, Ty? The news said he followed her home.”

  “I screwed up and made an ass out of myself, and she rightfully got very upset with me. She was in search of boxes to move out.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Yes.” Tyler took a deep breath. “It was my fault. I take full responsibility. Nevvie and Thomas should not pay for my stupidity. Please, whatever we need to do to take the focus off them, that’s fine. Let me see it for approval before it goes out.”

  “How much does your publicist know about her?”

  “He’s a don’t ask, don’t tell guy. He knows we have an arrangement.”

  “How much do you want me to tell him?”

  “He won’t talk, if that’s what you mean.”

  “We need a statement that won’t give the guy’s defense any leverage later at the trial.”

  Tyler swore under his breath. Of course. Unless Alex struck a plea deal, they’d all have to testify. More torture for his poor Nevvie and dear Thomas.

  “Work it up. Make sure it’s okay from your perspective. I don’t want it going out until I see it.”

  Bob paused. “It might be better to push her to marry Thomas when she’s out of the hospital.”

  Tyler sighed. He’d already thought about it. “I know.”

  He called Elliot Paterno and gave him Bob’s information, fielded his questions, then called his agent and editor. Eddie. A few other friends.

  The last—and worst. He checked the time and held his breath as the call connected, then a woman answered.

  “Hello?”

  He closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off a tension headache. “Hello, Mother.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Nevvie despised the ICU. She was sick of monitors and beeps and the whoosh of ventilators, hushed voices and jarring alarms that triggered more nightmares. She wanted a shower and a real toilet. She wanted a goddamned cheeseburger, but solid food wasn’t in her future for several days yet.

  At least she had a TV. She was turning her brain to mush with SpongeBob, but it was better than going stir crazy.

  She’d also had a lot of time to think.

  The only reason she could tolerate being there without the boys at her side all the time was the sheer number of people around—and morphine. She could see the nursing desk, where at least one person always sat at the station, monitoring patient data feeds on the bank of computer terminals.

  She stared at the nursing station her sixth morning there—the boys had already visited—when a woman walked in and stopped at the desk. One of the nurses pointed to Nevvie’s alcove and the woman headed her way. She carried a clipboard, wore a hospital name tag, and looked like trouble.

  The woman walked in and pasted on a fake smile Nevvie saw right through.

  “Ms. Barton? I’m Nancy Park from Administration.”

  Nevvie didn’t offer to shake hands. She never doubted Tyler’s ability to sense things about a person because she’d begun to think she had that same ability, something else they shared.

  Nevvie sensed a bitch with a mission.

  When Nevvie didn’t speak, Ms. Park continued. “Uh, I wondered if I could ask you a few questions about your paperwork? There seems to be some confusion.”

  Nevvie didn’t respond, instinctively mistrusting the woman.

  “We have paperwork,” she finally continued, “from Mr. Paulson and Mr. Kinsey, and we’re not sure who your next of kin is.”

  “Whatever they gave you, I’m sure it’s right.”

  “Well, if Mr. Kinsey is your fiancé—”

  Fiancé? “Do you have a point?” What the hell is going on? She’d have a word with her boys during their afternoon visit.

  The woman lowered her voice. “Nevaeh—”

  “Ms. Barton.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Ms. Barton, if you are in a situation where you need help, you can reach out to us and we can—”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Ms. Park
dropped her voice even lower. “If Mr. Paulson and Mr. Kinsey are holding you hostage or abusing you somehow—”

  “What?” If Nevvie could have sat up and hit her, she would. Her rage and indignation swelled. “Those men are not holding me hostage. And they damn sure don’t abuse me.”

  And it was the truth. That this woman tried to bad-mouth her boys when they’d never mistreated her… Maybe she was dreaming or it was an effect of the painkillers. This bitch couldn’t be for real, could she?

  “Well, yes, I’m sure it might not seem like it, but we can refer you to a women’s shelter, and we have professionals on staff, psychiatrists, who can help you learn ways to break free of their mental abuse.”

  “Nurse!” Nevvie punched her call button, realized it was her morphine button. She grabbed the call button, thumbing it.

  The nurse ran in and Nevvie pointed at the administrator. “I want her out of here. Right now. And a phone.”

  Forty minutes later, Bob Campbell and the SICU nursing supervisor were huddled in Nevvie’s alcove with the door closed and curtains drawn for privacy. Nevvie had ordered him not to tell the boys she’d called.

  “Bob,” Nevvie said, “I had a screwy visitor, a Ms. Park from Administration, who tried to convince me that the boys have me held hostage and are mentally abusing me.”

  He laughed out loud then stopped. “Oh. Oh! You’re serious?” He scowled and looked at the nursing supervisor. “Is this true?”

  “Between you and me, the woman has a stick up her ass. She’s been asking questions about Ms. Barton’s chart that are none of her business, and about Mr. Paulson and Mr. Kinsey and their relationship with her.”

  “I’m guessing you can handle this, Bob?” Nevvie asked.

  He set his jaw and nodded. “I’ve been looking for an ass to chew. I think I just found it.”

  “Come back when you finish, wake me if I’m asleep. And don’t tell the boys.”

  “I’ll see you shortly.” He grinned. “I love the smell of a HIPAA violation lawsuit in the morning. Smells like victory!”