Listed: Volume IV Read Online Free PDF Page A

evening. “Did you get a lot of work done today?”
    “Not
very much.”
    “Oh.”
She experienced another hot wave of achiness and twisted on the bed,
desperately trying to find a cool spot and get comfortable. When she was able
to speak again, she mumbled, “Maybe you should go back to the apartment so you
can focus better. I’m fine here with Amy.”
    There
was a long silence, during which Emily earnestly but futilely tried to adjust
her covers so she wouldn’t somehow be both hot and cold at once.
    Then
Paul replied, “I will take that suggestion as a symptom of fevered delirium and
thus won’t be offended by it.”
    Emily
sucked in a surprised breath and tried to focus up at his face. While his voice
had been very dry, his expression did look a little stiff. “Sorry,” she
muttered, guilt doing nothing to ease her physical condition. “I just hate for
you to have to deal with all this.”
    “You
need to stop worrying about me.”
    “I do worry about you.” She squirmed some more and tried to shake her
sheets into feeling better against her skin. It didn’t work. They were hot,
slightly damp from her perspiration, and smelled like sickness. She gave a
little whimper of frustration.
    “Amy
said you could have another bath if you wanted one,” Paul told her, standing up
and looking down at her. “And I can make the bed up with clean sheets while
you’re in there. Does that sound all right?”
    “Yes,
please,” Emily rasped, desperately wanting to get out of the icky bed. Acting
on instinct, she reached her arms up toward Paul, so he could help her get to
her feet.
    He
reached down for her and eased her up, but his face twitched slightly with what
looked like amusement. Emily had no idea what would be funny.
    “Are
you laughing at my hair?” she asked, a little dazedly, as she leaned against
Paul and tried to get her balance. Her legs felt ridiculously weak.
     “How
could you possibly think I would laugh at your hair when you’ve been so sick?”
    “Oh.”
She clung to his gray t-shirt and looked up at his face. She was too groggy to
effectively read his expression. “Why were you laughing at me then?”
    “I
wasn’t laughing at you.”
    She
wasn’t sure she believed him. She was too ill to pursue the matter, though, so
she let him help her into the bathroom.
    When
she got there and stared down at the empty bathtub, she was suddenly stumped.
“Oh.”
    “I
didn’t have a chance to get the bath ready,” Paul explained, leaning down to
turn on the faucet and check the temperature of the water. When the water was
the temperature he wanted, he pulled the tub stop and took a couple of small
bottles from a shelf. He poured in a few drops of each. Then he turned back to
Emily, who was still staring at the puzzlingly empty tub. “It will just be a
minute before it fills up.”
    “Oh.”
She blinked up at him. “ That ’s why you were laughing at me.”
    “I
told you I wasn’t laughing at you,” he said with a smile that was almost fond.
    “Liar.”
She wasn’t insulted. In fact, his expression was intimate in a way she liked. She
was hot and shaky, though, and she desperately wanted to get into the bath. She
should never have gotten out of bed until it was ready.
    Paul
had leaned over to feel the water in the tub again. Evidently satisfied with
the temperature, he straightened up. He looked at Emily for a moment, and then
he sat down in the white accent chair that had seemed to her completely useless
when she first saw its position in the bathroom.
    “Come
here,” he murmured, reaching an arm out toward her.
    Emily
was far too hot and sticky to feel like cuddling, but she let him draw her onto
his lap anyway. She didn’t have the strength to keep standing, and she didn’t
want to sit in only an inch of water in the tub.
    Paul
was hot—way too hot—but she liked the way his arms wrapped around her tightly,
and she liked the inexplicable tension she could feel in his body as he