by Lauren Layne
Acting fast, I open the window. It’s in the low forties outside, but the room desperately needs fresh air, and with that hideous sweater and the blanket, he’ll be fine.
His linen closet’s in the same place as mine, right across from the bathroom. His spare set of sheets is dark gray and impressively folded, right down to the fitted sheet.
I rush back to the bedroom, but he hasn’t moved; he’s fast asleep, upright in the chair. Poor guy.
I hurriedly strip the bed of the wrinkled old sheets and replace them with the fresh, clean ones. I fold back one corner to make it easy for him to get in, and return to his side.
“Andrew.” I kneel beside him, touch his arm. “Andrew?”
His eyes flutter open, and he looks surprised to see me there. “Georgiana.”
“Still with that?” I ask with a smile.
“Always,” he murmurs.
I laugh softly. “All right, then. Let’s get you into bed, okay?”
He gives me a sleepy nod, letting me help him out of the chair and shuffle him the few steps toward the bed.
Andrew gives me a startled look, apparently not too sick to register that the sheets have been changed. “You did this?”
“Yup, the Scarecrow figured it out,” I say without heat as I half shove him into bed. I wait until he slowly hauls his legs onto the mattress, which seems to take an eternity in his current state, and then pull the covers up to his chin.
I tuck them around his shoulders, the way my mom always did for me when I was little, and maybe I let my fingers brush against the stubble of his jawline, just a little.
His eyes are closed again, and I think he’s asleep already, but when I start to pull away, he reaches up, grabs my wrist.
It’s like the other day when he was angry, and yet…different.
“Thank you,” he murmurs.
“You’re welcome.” I bite my lip. “I can leave if you want, or I’m happy to stay—”
“Stay.” His eyes close again, and his next words are a sleep-filled murmur, but they stop my heart for a second anyway. “Need you,” he says, his voice low and exhausted.
Need you.
Andrew Mulroney needs me. And go ahead, call me a sissy, but my eyes water, just a little.
It’s sort of nice to be needed.
Especially by him.
Georgie
WEDNESDAY, EARLY EVENING
The poor guy sleeps all day. I mean, like, all day.
When I finally hear his bedroom door open, it’s four-thirty in the afternoon, and I’m standing at his stove with a wooden spoon in one hand, a glass of buttery Chardonnay in the other.
He shuffles into the kitchen and then freezes when he sees me.
Oh my heart. Rumpled, sleepy Andrew Mulroney is…well, he’ll kill me for thinking this, but he’s sort of adorable.
His eyes are sleepy, his hair’s even messier than it was this morning, and he looks like he wants to rub his eyes and see if I’m really there.
I give a little wave with the spoon before I resume stirring the soup. “Morning, sunshine.” I take a sip of the wine.
He blinks. Blinks again.
Then without a word, he turns and walks into the bathroom, muttering something that sounds like shower.
A moment later I hear the sound of water running, and I go back to my wine. Now that he’s up, I turn on some music on my phone, opting for Norah Jones’s old-school debut album, because really, nobody can complain about that goodness.
I’m pouring myself a second glass of wine when I hear the water shut off.
When Andrew appears a few minutes later he still doesn’t look like himself, but at least death doesn’t seem to be knocking on his door anymore.
His hair’s damp, making it look darker than it usually does, but already it’s starting to curl a little. He’s wearing another pair of gray sweatpants, the loose cotton kind, not the ones he wears to the gym, and a formfitting white T-shirt that strains a little bit over his chest, as though he usually wears it under something. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if this guy didn’t have an arsenal of comfy shirts like regular people, and had to settle for an undershirt. It beats the holiday sweater.
“You didn’t shave,” I say as he lowers himself to the bar stool at his kitchen counter.
“Too tired,” he mutters.
I lean back against the counter opposite from him and cross my legs at the ankles.
“I sort of like the stubble,” I say. “It makes you look friendlier.”
He glances up and meets my gaze, as though looking for sarcasm, before his eyes narrow on the glass. “I know that’s my glass. Is it also my wine?”
“Yes, and it’s delicious,” I say with a smile. “Are you hungry?”
“I’m not sure,” he says tentatively, as though he really doesn’t know.
“When was the last time you ate?”
Andrew rubs his palm over his stubbly cheek. “Monday?”
Monday. As in the day he kissed me.
As in the day on which Page Six pronounced us the city’s new “It Couple.”
I don’t go there. Not yet. For all I know, he got sick before hearing the “news.”
I’ve already snooped through all of his cabinets, so I know exactly where he keeps his bowls, and I pull one down before ladling some soup into it.
“A few bites,” I say, setting it and a spoon and napkin in front of him. “Even if your appetite’s off, you need something so you don’t get shaky.”
He stares down at the steaming bowl. “What is this?”
“A cheeseburger.”
He looks up, and I roll my eyes. “It’s soup, Andy. Chicken noodle. Homemade. Eat it.”
He slowly picks up his spoon and studies me. “I don’t know what’s more surprising—that you shopped or that you cooked.”
“Only half right,” I say, leaning forward on my elbows, regretting a little bit that this particular V-neck shows off my cleavage in quite the perky fashion, and that he’s too sick to notice.
Or not, I amend, noticing that his eyes are most definitely not on the soup.
“Half right?” he asks, the question coming a heartbeat later than it should. I won’t tease him, not when he’s feeling down. But the second his strength is back…
“I cooked, but I didn’t shop. Got the groceries delivered to my place so the doorbell wouldn’t wake you up, then brought what I needed down here.”
“Georgiana Watkins cooks,” he says, thoughtfully spooning in a mouthful of broth and noodles.
“You sound surprised.”
“I thought Park Avenue princesses had personal chefs.”
“We did. But my grandmother insisted on teaching me some basics.”
“Same grandmother who left you the money to buy a place here?”
I nod. “I’m named after her. Even though she was elderly, in some ways I feel like she did more mothering than my own mom.”
He glances up. “You’re not close to your mom?”
“No, we are,” I tell him, keeping my eyes on the glass as I gently swirl my wine. “But she embraced the whole career woman thing right at the time when I really needed someone to talk to.”
“And your grandmother was there.”
“She was.”
He studies my face for a second before turning his attention back to the soup, and I hide a smile as he devours the entire thing in big, methodical gulps.
Finally he sits back and wipes his mouth with the napkin.
“More?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No. Thank you. It was good.”
“Yeah, well, I kept it easy,” I say, reaching for his empty bowl and turning toward the sink to rinse it. “Figured even you would have a hard time criticizing chicken noodle soup.”
I look over my shoulder when he doesn’t say anything. He’s frowning. “That’s what you think? That you’d come in here, take care of me, cook for me, and I’d criticize?”
I lift my shoulders as
though to say Par for the course, then turn away and put the bowl in the dishwasher, which I’d emptied earlier.
When I turn back, he’s watching me with a troubled expression, but that could be because he’s just feeling crappy.
“So what now?” I ask gently. “Back to bed?”
“God, no. I feel like I’ve been sleeping for days. Hell, I have been sleeping for days.”
“True, but respectfully, you’re not looking yourself.”
“No, and I don’t feel it either,” he says irritably, running a palm along his scratchy cheek, looking thoroughly put out.
“We could watch a movie,” I suggest.
His attention snaps back to me in surprise.
I hold up my hands in laughing surrender. “Or I can leave.”
“No, that’s not—” Andrew flexes his fingers before reaching up and running both hands over his hair in a quick, frustrated gesture that’s so unexpectedly spontaneous I laugh. I think I like sick Andrew. His guard’s down, and it’s…endearing?
“I don’t want you to leave,” he says with a scowl.
My heart gives a happy leap. “Are you sure?” I can’t help but ask. “Because I’m sort of aware that I barged my way in here, and that maybe your mortal enemy isn’t exactly the person you want by your side when you’re at your worst.”
His lips twitch. “At my worst, huh?”
“Well, the shower was an improvement,” I say with a smile, gesturing with the base of my wineglass in his direction. “When I got here this morning, though—”
“And yet you stayed.”
“Yeah, well.” I shrug and take a sip of my wine. “We are dating, after all.”
Andrew goes perfectly still. “What?”
I wince. “Okay, so at what point did you become dead to the world? Did you miss the fact that—”
“The paparazzo sold his tawdry photo of us? Unfortunately, no. Got the message loud and clear.”
I reach across and pat his hand. “Poor thing. Is that what made you sick?”
He lets out a startled laugh. “No. Although, speaking of getting sick, I’m feeling like I should prep you for getting sick.”
I wave this away. “I washed my hands after handling your cootie-infested sheets and door handles.”
“I wasn’t referring to your exposure today.”
I frown. “But what—Oh. Ohhhh. The kiss.”
He nods once. “I wasn’t feeling myself that morning, but I chalked it up to not sleeping well. Had I known that within a few hours I’d come down with a fever—”
“You wouldn’t have kissed me?” I finish for him.
He blows out a breath. “Hell, I don’t know. It’s not like I planned it. Whether or not I was coming down with the flu was the last thing on my mind.”
“What was on your mind?”
“Great question,” he mutters. “I apologize for it. I’m sure the last thing you want is for all your party people to think you’re shacking up with a stodgy attorney.”
My heart sinks a little. His calm dismissal of the kiss as a mistake isn’t really what I was hoping for.
But then I remember what he whispered when he was at his absolute worst: Need you.
Hell yes, he does need me. He just hasn’t accepted it all the way yet.
“It’s no big deal,” I say. “Besides, I’m sure the consequences are worse for you than they are for me.”
His gaze sharpens. “Meaning?”
I shrug and take a sip of wine. “I’m not one of your people, any more than you’re one of mine. I mean, I’ve never even seen a pocket protector.”
He doesn’t dignify my lame comeback with a response. “Did you ever learn if your boy Brody’s actually engaged?”
“Not my boy,” I say, lifting my glass. “But yeah, rumor has it he knocked up some midwestern tourist who was in town a couple of months ago. She’s Catholic, her dad’s pissed and owns a gun, and Brody’s telling people he put a ring on it until he can talk her into an abortion.”
Andrew swears under his breath. “Yeah,” I say quietly. “I suppose I should thank you for saving me from hooking up with him.”
“I confess, my motives were a bit more selfish than that.”
My gaze snaps to his. “Meaning…?”
Instead of answering, he places both palms on the counter and scoots the bar stool back. Conversation over, apparently.
I sigh. “So we’re really not going to talk about the kiss anymore? Or about the fact that everyone thinks we’re dating?”
“What’s the point? People will believe what they want to believe regardless. It’ll pass. As for the kiss…” He shrugs. “Not like it’s going to happen again.” He watches me. “Right?”
My eyes drop to his mouth, and even though I know he’s sick, my body remembers all too well what it felt like to have him pressed against me, remembers how hot and possessive his mouth was.
How I didn’t want the kiss to end…
“Georgiana?”
My eyes go back to his. “Right. No repeats.”
Something flickers across his face, and I can’t figure out if it’s disappointment or relief. I’ve never had any trouble reading guys, but for the life of me, Andrew Mulroney remains a mystery.
I try to tell myself that’s why I’m still sticking around when we’re so obviously incompatible. Because I want to solve him.
“So, movie?” I ask brightly.
“Why are you pushing it? Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
I let out a tired laugh and close my eyes. “Fine. Fine. You win, Mulroney. I’ll get out of your hair. You’re welcome for the damn soup.”
I turn on my heel and take my glass to the sink, dashing the last few sips down the drain before flipping the water on to rinse it out. “Just let me put the leftover soup in a Tupperware container and I’ll—”
Because of the running water, I don’t hear him approach, and I jump when I feel a touch on my shoulder.
I spin around, the soapy water from the glass dripping on the floor, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care.
His hand drops from my shoulder, and he starts to cross his arms defensively, but instead lets his hands fall to his side as he exhales. “You always do that,” he says.
“Do what?”
“Assume the worst of me.”
I drop my mouth open. “I assume the worst of you? Says the guy who told me I have no brain? The one who says kissing me was a mistake? The one who can barely muster a thank-you after I just played Florence Nightingale all day for a guy who doesn’t even like me?”
His jaw tightens. “Georgiana.”
“Andrew.” I refuse to make this easy for him. I’m not sure what we’re doing here, but I’m a little tired of putting myself out there over and over without getting even a little something in return.
We stare at each other in stubborn silence, and finally he does cross his arms, at the exact moment when he says, “I don’t dislike you.”
I throw my hands up in the air. “Seriously? Okay, I’m done. I’m out. I hope the Wicked Witch’s flying monkeys carry you away and I never have to see you again.”
I sidestep, but he steps with me, his arm finding my elbow. “You can pick the movie.”
I clap my hands together in fake excitement. “Oh, can I? That will make everything better.”
“You can drink more of my wine.”
“I have a headache,” I snap, realizing that it’s true. Dealing with this man is basically the mother of all migraines.
I pull my arm free and head toward the door, feeling just…done.
“Don’t leave,” he calls, raising his voice, and then lowering it. “Please.”
I turn back. “Why should I stay? Just because you don’t dislike me? Because—news flash, Andy—I’m starting to think I really do dislike you.”
He flinches but doesn’t look away. “Please.”
Need you.
His voice is wooden, but his eyes are sincere, maybe even a litt
le pleading, and…oh, damn. Damn.
I feel myself relenting. “I can pick the movie?”
“Any movie. My TV’s connected to iTunes, and they have nearly everything.”
I give a slow smile, and his eyes narrow. “Am I going to regret this?” he mutters.
“Have you ever seen Enchanted?” I ask breezily as I stroll toward his living room.
“What do you think?”
“Oh, you’ll love it,” I gush, plopping onto the couch and kicking off my cheetah-print flats, making myself at home with a throw blanket that was sitting on the arm. “It’s about a divorce attorney.”
“And?” he asks hesitantly. “What else is it about?”
“You’ll see.” I pat the cushion next to me as an invitation for him to join me, then reach for the remote, pushing buttons until I come up with the screen I want.
“Hold on,” he says, settling on the couch beside me, scowling at the TV. “Did it just say this movie is PG? Are we watching a kids’ movie?”
“Figured it’d be a safe bet, what with you being such a fan of The Wizard of Oz and all.”
The animated credits of Enchanted and Disney’s singsongy soundtrack start coming through his impressive sound system, and he groans.
“Oh, did I mention?” I ask sweetly, curling onto his couch and giving him a happy smile. “It’s also a princess movie.”
He leans his head back, giving me a bland look. “A divorce attorney and a princess.”
I nod. “You’ll like her. She wears poofy dresses and talks to pigeons.”
He lifts his eyebrows. “She sounds ridiculous.”
“As I said, you’ll like her. Or should I say, you won’t dislike her.”
He rolls his eyes, and we both turn back toward the TV, where a cartoon prince is chasing a troll, and out of the corner of my eye, I swear I see him smile.
Georgie
THURSDAY MORNING, REALLY EARLY
Last night I blamed the onset of my headache on two glasses of white wine.
Which, honestly, is probably a little silly. Two glasses doesn’t usually give me a headache unless it’s really crappy wine, and we all know Andrew Mulroney is so not the type of guy to have crappy wine on hand.
But you know what he has had on hand lately?
