Page 63 of Kiss the Dawn
Bella and Dash weren’t due back till late tomorrow. The work part of Dash’s trip was over, and they were enjoying the romance part, something that Ordell said they didn’t often get to do but something Ordell had jumped at helping them out with it when Bella had called to ask if he could watch the kids. Their regular sitter had come down with a bug.
Watching him with them this evening, the pure joy on his handsome face, made my heart ache because he should be able to have more of this. Time with his children and the right to call them his.
It was so unfair that he couldn’t.
But we had tomorrow with them, and we’d promised to take them boating on Woodsted Lake and then for lunch at their favorite grill house.
Ordell nudged me and jerked his chin toward the triplets snuggled on the bean bag with a huge bag of chips between them. Their eyes were at half-mast and their cheeks flushed.
They looked so cute but…it wasn’t overly warm in here. “Aidan? Are you feeling hot?”
He blinked at me. “I don’t feel too good.”
“Feel sick,” Aaron said.
“Shit.” Ordell hurried to stand. “I think we overdid it on the?—”
Ava projectile-vomited all over the floor and the beanbag, but the other two didn’t even try to scramble away. Instead, they added to the sick fest.
I rushed out of the room and down the hall to the kitchen to get cleaning supplies, but I didn’t know where anything was. I managed to find a basin and some kitchen towels and wipes and took those back.
Ordell had moved the kids to the sofa, where all three lay listless and half conscious.
I dropped the supplies on the table. “Ordell, that doesn’t look like a snack coma.”
“They have fevers,” Ordell said, pulling his phone from his pocket. “I need to call Bella.” He scrolled quickly, found her number, and called.
“Bella, sorry to call…No, they’re sick…Yeah, they’ve thrown up…all three…Right…Okay. No, I can handle it…No, it’s fine. Thank you.”
He hung up and sat back on his heels. “Apparently there’s a tummy bug going round the school at the moment. Bella thinks they must have caught it. A twenty-four-hour thing. She said there’s medication for the fever in the main washroom upstairs. I’ll clean up here if you can go get that. It’s the second room down the hall off the foyer.”
“We’ll need fresh clothes for them too.”
“Leave that to me.”
I hurried to the washroom. The cabinet above thesink was filled with medications. Cough syrups, Band-Aids, and some herbal stuff, but I couldn’t find the fever meds.
I pulled everything out and searched thoroughly, but no luck.
Back in the sitting room, Ordell had cleaned up the kids and was working on mopping the sick off the floor. He looked up, nose wrinkled as I entered.
“I couldn’t find the meds.”
“It’s all right,” Ordell said. “I’ll go look.”
“Ididlook, Ordell.”
“I’m not saying you didn’t, but I’d feel better if I double-checked.”
I stanched my flash of annoyance. “Let me finish up here while you go check.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know. But I want to.”
He pecked me on the cheek and handed me the wipes before striding out of the room.
He’d done a pretty good job of cleaning up. I just needed to give it all a once-over and?—
