Page 26 of Pound

He beamed at her compliment. “Told you I’m the real deal. Now…” He stepped up to a cabinet and shook two bottles at her. “Peashooter or hand grenade?” Meri wasn’t sure which was which.

“Um, just acetaminophen, please.”

He shrugged and dumped a few pills in his hand and filled a small paper cup with tap water. “Peashooter it is.”

After she threw the pills back and downed the little cup of water, he pinched the skin on the back of her hand. “You sure you don’t want that IV? I have a gentle touch with a needle.” He winked.

“No, I’ll rehydrate the old-fashioned way. I don’t want to be restricted by anything right now, not even a gentle, well-placed IV.” She smiled.

“Understandable.” He grabbed a bottle of water and passed it to her. “How about I escort you upstairs?” Meri hopped—hopped was a bit of an oversell—off the table and he took her arm like before. When they exited the in-house clinic, Mash turned left instead of right. “Where are we headed?”

“Upstairs, but we’re taking the back way. I don’t think your brother would appreciate me parading you through the clubhouse in that.”

Meri looked down and realized she was wearing a tee shirt that fell to her upper thighs and what she called her period underwear. Nothing more. Trip had added a bra and jeans to the pile, but she really didn’t feel like putting them on. She hadn’t showered for a while, and she may have gone a little overboard and irritated her skin. Besides, she didn’t need those things to sleep.

Mash led her up the stairs and to a room that was just as unexpected as the clinic. The Travelers clubhouse was state of the art.

Her room was like a hotel suite but homier. She’d just entered, and Mash was bowing out when a gorgeous woman shoved her way around him, carrying the tray of food Mash ordered.

She wasn’t dressed like a club girl, so she assumed she was someone’s ol’ lady, but she seemed awfully young. Mash disappeared. “Hi, Meri. I’m Cami, and these are some of my favorites, so I hope they’re yours too. I put your stuff in the closet and there’s more bottled water in the kitchenette. Oh.” She reached around to her back pocket. “Phone, so you can call your kids. Preprogrammed and a hell of a lot nicer than mine. If you need anything, I’m just next door.”

“Thank you, Cami.” She should’ve said more to the bubbly woman, but she honestly just wanted to call her kids and then go find Pound. She didn’t want to sleep alone, and he was the only one she wanted to hold her.

Before Cami even shut the door, the sweetest faces she’d ever seen popped up on the phone. “Hey, babies.”

“Mom, we’re not babies.”

“You’re my babies, so deal with it. How are things at your uncle’s house?”

“We’re not at Uncle Trip’s house. Uncle Bullseye and Auntie Billie live there. We’re at Uncle Pound’s house.” Her son told her, sounding more like a grown man than her baby boy.

Not to be ignored, the phone shifted, and Crissy’s face dominated the screen. She was so close she could barely see her eyes. “He’s going to get me a chicken. Three chickens.”

“Is not.”

“Is too.”

“Is not.”

“Is too, Uncle Taps said so.”

Ahhhh, there were her ten-year-olds. She would table the chicken talk for later. The last thing she wanted was to argue with her kids.

“Kids.”

James shifted the phone back his way. “Is that a bruise?” And just like that, he’d switched out of kid mode into caretaker mode. It made her sad that he did that. She just wanted him to be a kid, but he’d always been that way, serious, while Crissy was carefree. Her hand flew to her cheek. She was aware it was there but faded, she’d just forgotten about it.

“Um.”

“Did you get that at your conference? Mommy, when is your stupid conference done? Uncle Granite said we’d have a pool party when you got back.” That was her daughter, the fish. The child was obsessed with swimming.

The Phantoms were her heroes. She’d been confused about how, when, and what to tell her kids, but thank God that was a worry for a little later now. One more thing she would need to thank them all for.

“Yes, the conference is over, and I can’t wait to smoosh you both.”

7

POUND

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