Tomboy (The Hartigans #3)(6)

However, something about the pink staining her cheeks had him looking downward. The basketball shorts he’d been wearing when he’d finally collapsed last night onto his king-size bed, the only piece of furniture in the huge bedroom, had worked their way down, waaaaaay down. And Fallon had noticed.

He glanced over at her and caught her snapping her attention back up to his face again as she approached his bed. But her gaze kept dipping back down, her blush deepening with each look. And for the first time in two days, he stopped thinking about how miserable he felt. Fallon Hartigan couldn’t stop looking, even though it was obvious from her grimace that she didn’t want to.

Well, this could be useful. All he wanted was to deal with the grossness of food poisoning on his own. Alone. No one seeing any crack in his defenses. That’s how he lived his life now. He probably always should have. All he had to do was make Fallon want to leave, and acting like a total dickhead would be the fastest way to do that.

“Pull up my covers?” he asked, knowing he was about to put a skate across the line of decency even if he had absolutely zero plans of following through. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time he fought dirty, as many of his opponents on the ice would attest. “If I do that, how are you going to give me a sponge bath before you leave?”

She jolted to a stop at the foot of his bed, and he practically heard the match strike the dynamite. “A. Sponge. Bath?!”

He shoots. He scores. He would have lifted his arms in celebration—after she stormed out of the house, of course—but something in his gut bubbled and cramped, causing beads of sweat to pop out along his forehead.

Want had nothing to do with it anymore, he needed to get her away from here.

Hello? This is karma here to fuck you up, asshole.

Ignoring the vehemence in her tone, along with the continuing twist in his stomach, Zach shrugged and ran one of his hands down the hard ridges of his six-pack, playing the part of a sexist jerk who would actually ask for a sponge bath. “I ran a fever yesterday. It made me all sweaty.”

Closing her eyes, she tipped her pointed chin toward the ceiling and sucked in a deep breath. That gave him a chance to try to will his stomach to chill the fuck out, which worked about as well as could be expected. He barely got the oh-fuck expression off his face before she lowered her chin and opened her eyes, staring right at him with nothing but sweetness and light.

The air around him stilled, and the little hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

“Well, I’d hate for you—in your weakened condition—to slip in the shower and crack open your head,” she said, putting enough sugar in her words to put him in a diabetic coma. “Where do you keep your sponges?”

Like the Homecoming Queen in a slasher movie, Zach bolted from his bed, managing to yank up his basketball shorts from just above his junk to his waist.

He held up his hand like she was a vampire he had to ward off. “Don’t even think about it.”

Her laugh burst out, full and teasing. She’d gotten him. She’d seen right through him like he was an unshaded window.

With her eyes as big and round as an anime heroine’s, she cocked her head to one side. “Do you no longer need my professional sponge bath expertise? I’ll have you know that I excelled in the wax-on, wax-off motion of it at nursing school.” She let out a deep, melodramatic sigh. “If only I could have specialized in that instead of trauma medicine.”

Zach dropped his hand and closed his eyes. She was fucking with him. He clamped his jaw shut so she wouldn’t see the smile fighting to get out even as his stomach was screaming in protest at his sudden movement.

Finally, he opened his eyes and took in a deep breath, knowing he had to get her out of this room before he puked again. “Point taken. I’ll just get in the shower.” He started edging toward the en suite bathroom.

“Good.” She crossed her arms and gave him a don’t-fuck-with-me-again smirk. “Anyway, hasn’t anyone ever told you that nurses aren’t scared by anything?”

They hadn’t, but then again, if it didn’t have something to do with on-ice defensive strategies, he wouldn’t have been paying attention.

And how’d that work out for you, Blackburn?

“Are you going to play nice now, so we can make Lucy happy and she can stop worrying about her client and enjoy her well-earned vacation?” she asked as she walked to his bedroom door.

Another wave of impending doom washed over him, the kind that meant the fates were sending him a big fuck-you on the no-more-throwing-up thing. “Fine.”

Fallon nodded and walked out of his bedroom—right in time for him to rush to the bathroom.





Chapter Three


A few hours later, Zach knew his health had turned a corner when he started wondering if his own personal Nurse Ratchet was as bossy in bed as she was outside of it and what that would be like.

No doubt it was the lingering effects of the food poisoning.

Mouthy women weren’t his thing. Also, he usually went for a certain kind of woman—the super-femme, puck bunny kind. Big boobs. Big hair. Big red lips that he liked wrapped around his dick.

Attila the Nurse didn’t have any of those. Scratch that. He’d gotten a hint about the size of the rack she had hidden under her bulky sweatshirt that said Nurses Know Where to Stick It, but not enough for confirmation.