Page 64 of Stirring Up Love
“I’m plenty warm.” But he sneezed. Sat down on the sofa, brow furrowed. “Look, Simone ...”
“I can’t, Finn. We can’t.” She took him in, brown eyes and mussed hair. Soft lips. Open heart. Wounded. She shut the door.
When she came out, Finn was curled up on the couch under a blanket. She tiptoed over, but his eyes were shut, his breath even. She bit the corner of her lip. Took another blanket off the bed and covered him up. Added another log to the fire. And crawled into bed in broad daylight, intent on getting some shut-eye for the overnight drive.
But she couldn’t sleep.
CHAPTER 22
FINN
He was dead. Simone had murdered him in his sleep. Set the cabin on fire and left him to burn. That was the only explanation for the inferno in his skull. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter and prayed the end would come quick.
“I know you’re awake. You can stop faking it.”
He pried open his eyes, and a very blurry, very irate Simone came into view, hovering over him like the ghost of bad decisions past—starting with crossing her at the farmers’ market and ending with dragging her on this cross-country exercise in futility. He blinked again, and she came into focus, curls framing her frowning face, her brow knotted in irritation.
He squinted, reassessing her expression. Not irritated. Worried. Maybe this was an apparition, after all. Human Simone would never be worried about him. “Am I dead?” His voice croaked out like a strangled frog, and he tried to swallow.
Not dead. Dead wouldn’t hurt this much.
“If only I could be so lucky.”
There she was. He smiled, and instantly regretted it, because even that small movement sent a bolt of pain through his throat. His skull pounded with the drums of a thousand marching bands.
“Drink,” she said, holding out a bottle of water. “Can’t have you dying on my watch.”
He tipped up the bottle, shocked at how weak he felt, and took a sip. The water hit his tonsils like a cement truck, and he let out a gasp. Made himself go back for another swallow. Closed his eyes and collapsed back onto the pillow, spent like he’d just worked a double shift.
He felt a cool hand press against his forehead and sighed at the relief.
“Jeez, Finn, you’re burning up.” He might’ve been imagining it, but it seemed like her words held less judgment than theYou fell into a freezing river and I had to save you and you’re now delaying my trip more than the snowstorm of the centurythat he expected.
He opened one eye and found her unscrewing a medicine bottle. Light drifted in through the curtains—she must’ve shut them so the brightness wouldn’t wake him. Shoot. He’d only meant to sleep an hour, not all morning. He pushed back the covers, ignoring the pounding in his head. “We need to get back on the road. Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Because you’ve got a raging fever.” She’d checked on him in his sleep? The thought was strangely comforting. “And you’ve been coughing in your sleep.” That explained the tightness in his chest. “You’re in no condition to drive right now.”
She pressed a pill into his hand. Cyanide? With the delay he’d already caused, he wouldn’t put poison past her.
“You must hate me.” He eyed the bottle in her hands—the label readIbuprofen, but he curled his palm around the pill anyway, taking no chances. Although if it was arsenic, she probably would’ve crushed it up in the water to be on the safe side.
“No more than yesterday,” she said, and when he lifted his eyes, she was ... well, she wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t scowling either.
Whether or not she hated him didn’t matter to him personally at all. Which is why he’d kissed her twice. To prove it didn’t matter. He could get physical with her and suffer no ill effects because it was just an attraction—
“Finn, stop overthinking and take your pill.”
Bossy, as always.
“Can’t.” He pushed the words past chapped lips.
“If your throat hurts, the medicine will help that too.”
“No. It’s not my throat.” He lifted a hand to gesture at his neck and winced, letting it fall to the quilt. Jeez, his muscles ached with a constant shiver of pain. “Can’t swallow pills.”
She rolled her eyes heavenward, and if he didn’t know better, he might’ve caught her lips moving in a silent prayer. But Simone Blake didn’t rely on divine intervention. When she met his gaze again, she looked strained, with her sister’s bachelorette party coming up and them stranded in the desert. Who could blame her? All because of his stupid scheme to get her to trust him.
But instead of tearing him a new one, she asked, “What do you do, then?”
