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.
“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.”
*