Tomboy (The Hartigans #3)(3)

Now that was something he knew all too well.

He’d wanted parents who hadn’t embezzled all of his money, a hockey career that wasn’t marred by scandal, a town that didn’t hate him, teammates that didn’t look at him like he was nothing but trash, and an end to the streak of shitty playing that had plagued him since the Ice Knights traded for him. But, most of all, at that moment, he wanted to keep whatever was in his stomach in his stomach.

Cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck. Fallon Hartigan may be a pushy pain in his ass, but that didn’t make her wrong. He was most definitely not going to get what he wanted.

Propelled by powerful, stomach-mandated urgency, Zach flipped off the monitor, pressed the button to open the security gate to let Fallon in, entered the security code to unlock the front door, and then sprinted to the closest bathroom to puke up his guts.

Again.

This sure as hell wasn’t the life he’d dreamed of when he laced up his skates for the first time, back when he’d thought his parents saw him as more than just a paycheck.

…

A non-nurse would have bolted. However, when they said nothing scared a nurse, they weren’t kidding. It would take more than Zach Blackburn dry heaving to send her screaming for the exits. And yes, that would be exits plural. The house he lived in was massive, if woefully under-furnished. Literally, it looked like the guy had just arrived in town a week ago instead of seven months—right in time to ruin the Ice Knights’ run for the playoffs last season. Not that Fallon was still bitter, but she was totally still bitter.

After peeling him away from the porcelain god, she’d moved him into the kitchen for a better-smelling piece of scenery. It was one of those fancy kitchens where there was a cooking area, an island the size of her bathroom, an eating area big enough for a table for ten but which held only a card table and a single folding chair, and a sitting area with a dark brown leather couch and a massive TV. Zach was sitting in the middle of the couch with a green plaid blanket wrapped around him.

It was almost comical. Here was this hulk of a man with a sexy dimple in his chin, steel bar going through his eyebrow, and a hint of a vibrant tattoo on his forearm peeking out from where the blanket had fallen away, all cuddled up like a swaddled baby. However, the fact that his skin had a sweaty, pasty, vomiting-way-too-much sheen to it pretty much killed the humor vibe.

Poor guy.

Okay, he was still the jerk whose selfish play resulted in the end of the Ice Knights’ playoff dreams last year, but the man was obviously hurting, and she couldn’t just turn off the nurse thing. It was who she was, so much so that she’d even forced her siblings to play hospital with her growing up.

She picked up the folding chair and carried it over to the sitting area, along with a cup of warm peppermint tea. She handed him the tea and set up the chair in front of him before sitting down on it.

He looked at the Ice Knights mug in his hand as if it were a live grenade. Of course, if she’d been throwing up as much as it seemed he had, she’d be a little hesitant about drinking or eating anything, too.

“It’s peppermint tea,” she said. “It’ll help soothe your stomach.”

He brought the mug up close to his face and sniffed the swirling line of steam coming up from it. “You aren’t one of those touchy-feely alternative nurses, are you?”

“People have been using peppermint to ease nausea symptoms for eons,” she said as she took out the little spiral notebook and pen she’d stuffed in her scrub pants pocket. “If you want to skip it because it’s not a pill that came from a little brown bottle with a childproof cap, you can go right ahead.”

He brought the mug up to his nose and sniffed again. Then, he took a sip. He didn’t smile so much as grimace a little less. Fine. She could live with that.

“When did you first start experiencing symptoms?” She flipped open her notebook. Just because she didn’t have a patient chart didn’t mean she wasn’t going to keep track of symptoms and vitals.

“This morning.”

“Had you been feeling ill before that?”

“Nope.” He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the couch. “Everything was fine and then, pow, I wanted to die.”

Sure, it could be the flu, but Fallon was starting to suspect something else. “Anyone around you been sick?”

“Not that I know of,” he said, as if he didn’t give a shit either way.

Fallon glanced at the kitchen. It wasn’t so much clean and tidy as it was barren. No dishes in the sink. No bananas or anything else in the fruit bowl. Only a basket decorated with a golden bow and filled with tissue paper, ribbons, and muffins that was sitting in the middle of the island like it had gotten lost on the way to Martha Stewart’s house.

She turned back to Zach, who was drinking the tea as if he hadn’t distrusted it in the first place. “Eat anything different than usual, or from a new place?”

“I don’t eat out.”

“Where’d the muffins come from, or do you cook?” she asked.

“A woman brought them over.” He twisted on the couch, looking at the island behind it. “I had three.”

Fallon could practically hear the ding-ding-ding in her head, and she scribbled down food poisoning and the pertinent information in her notebook. “And how soon after that did you become nauseous?”