Heartless (Chestnut Springs, #2)(50)

His head raises slowly. “No, but you were here taking care of Luke. You stayed with him all night. You helped him, and now you’re paying for it.”

I hum at that, reaching for a piece of toilet paper to wipe my mouth, because if Cade Eaton sees me with barf on my face, I will dive headfirst into this toilet bowl and flush myself down it. With a small shrug, I glance over at the man standing in the doorway—tall and broad and imposing, with the sweetest expression of concern on his face.

“He’s worth it,” I say, with a watery smile.

Sadly, smiling makes me feel nauseous again and within seconds, I’m frantically waving a hand at Cade, hoping he’ll just leave me to be sick alone.

He does.

But only briefly.

He’s back with some sort of war kit, and I watch him place things on the counter. Thermometer, Tylenol, water, ginger ale and . . . one of his T-shirts?

“What are you doing?” I grumble as I wipe at my watery eyes, no doubt smudged with mascara.

“Taking care of you,” he replies without even looking my way. His tone says that I just asked him a stupid question.

“That’s fine. I can take care of myself.”

“I know you can, but you don’t have to because I’m here to help.” He says it so matter-of-factly. Like doing this for someone is the most obvious thing in the world. And I wonder if, for him, maybe it is.

He stepped in to take care of his siblings in the wake of tragedy. He stepped up to be a single parent to his son.

Barfing babysitter? That’s a perfect job for him too.

At his core, Cade is a caretaker. Selfless. With such a big heart I almost can’t wrap my head around it.

He turns now, lips tipped down and brow furrowed. I’ve started thinking of this expression as resting scowl face—it’s just his default.

I startle when he holds the thermometer gun to my forehead where I’m kneeling on the floor.

“I’m just taking your temperature.” His face softens.

“I know.” I push my hair off my face. “It still feels like a weapon to me.”

He clicks the button. When it beeps, he frowns. “101.4—it’s red.” He turns to show it to me, like I don’t trust his ability to read or something.

“Okay.”

“Did it come out of nowhere?”

I shrug. “You’re neurotic cleaning really was giving me a headache. And then it was Luke’s weight on my stomach and the smell of his cracker breath.”

A deep rumble rolls around in his chest. “Well, if Luke is anything to go by, it seems short lived. The bad news is—”

“I’m going to be barfing my brains out for the next several hours?” I ask.

His head tilts as he swipes the T-shirt off the counter beside him, takes one step toward me, and crouches down to look me in the eye.

Really look me in the eye. In a way that makes me realize he’s been avoiding my gaze or turning away when I meet his. But not right now. Right now, it’s all dark chocolate and warm caramel streaking across multi-faceted irises. I note the fine lines beside his eyes. On anyone else, they’d be laugh lines, but on Cade they lend to his rugged sex appeal.

He smiles, making them crinkle even further. “No, Red. The bad news is that you have some barf on your shirt.”

I close my eyes and groan. “This is my go-to style these past twenty-four hours.”

“It’s okay.” His voice is like velvet dragging across my skin. “No one has ever looked better than you do with barf on their shirt.”

Popping one eye open, I regard him warily. “Are you hitting on the barfy girl, Eaton?”

He grins and reaches forward, fingers stretching for the hem of my shirt. “Let me help you, Red,” he says quietly.

There’s nothing sexual about the way Cade takes my shirt in his fingers, but it doesn’t stop my pulse from racing or my breath from quickening as he peels my shirt up, exposing my bare stomach and plain sports bra.

He’s such a gentleman, he doesn’t even glance down. He keeps his eyes on my face, even after I lift my arms and let him pull the shirt over my head. I will the nausea away, hoping upon hope I can hold it together.

But even the beautiful man in front of me can’t distract from the feeling at the back of my throat, the smell of my shirt as he moves it away.

“Sorry,” I groan before I turn back to the toilet, gripping the shiny edges as another wave of sickness hits me.

It racks my body and I moan, which is right when I feel Cade’s calloused fingertips at my neck, gently lifting my hair away from my face. I spend the next minute of my life hugging the toilet while Cade fists my hair and smooths gentle circles on my back.

I’ve imagined Cade taking my hair in his fist—but not like this. This is humiliating in a way I’ll never recover from. The magic is straight gone.

When the urge subsides, I quickly flush again, wiping my face before turning back to the sexy-as-sin man who just held my hair and rubbed my back while I emptied my stomach.

He continues caressing my back and, like the saint he is, doesn’t even look horrified by me. “It’s okay, Red. I got you.”

I got you.

There’s something about being sick that turns me into a child again. Helpless and pitiful. And the fact Cade is here and not annoyed is the biggest relief.