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She grasped the bowl, leaning over with a moan to retch some more. But mercifully there was nothing left to come up.
She felt fragile and pathetically grateful for his presence as he helped her off the floor and guided her back to the bed when she had finally finished vomiting.
‘I’m calling a doctor,’ he said, his phone in his hand.
‘Don’t be silly. It’s just a stomach bug.’
He ignored her, but she felt too rubbish to argue further as she listened to him contacting one of his assistants and ordering them to have the nearest medic sent to the suite.
Embarrassment scorched her cheeks when he finished the call.
‘Get some rest,’ he said. ‘The doctor will be here soon.’
She lifted her aching head and turned over to stare at him. He sat in the chair opposite, having donned his shirt as well as his trousers.
‘This is silly,’ she said. ‘I’m sure I’ll be fine now. I’ve been needing to do that for days.’
His forehead furrowed. ‘What do you mean? For days?’
‘I’ve been a bit queasy for a while, that’s all. And tired. It must be a bug that’s going round.’
‘So not something you ate?’ he said, his eyes narrowing.
‘Well, no, maybe not.’
‘Exactly how long have you been feeling nauseous?’ Why did he sound so annoyed?
Her tired mind tried to grasp his mood, but she couldn’t seem to grasp much of anything at all. ‘Only a week or so.’
‘Aweek?’ He cursed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before I dragged you to the party last night?’ he added, confusing her more. It was impossible to tell from his expression whether he was angry with her now, or himself.
‘Would it have made a difference?’ she asked.
‘Of course. I’m not a monster, Charlotte,’ he said, getting increasingly aggrieved by the second, which only fascinated her more. ‘I wouldn’t have made you spend all evening on your feet. And I sure as hell would never have touched you if I’d known you were sick. You should have told me.’
‘I didn’t feel sick last night though. I think that was fairly obvious.’
He paced across the room, looking more agitated than she had ever seen him.
This was new. But while her stomach still felt super-delicate—and the heat in her cheeks at the thought of vomiting in front of him wasn’t exactly abating either—his agitation was somehow reassuring.
In fact, she almost enjoyed it when the knock sounded on the door and he shot across the room to answer it.
Who knew? The way to make Cade Landry lose his cool, and that cast-iron control, was to puke your guts up in front of him.
He stood beside the bed, tapping his bare foot on the carpet, hovering over her as the nice Dr Ramirez introduced himself, then started to ask a lot of questions.
The doctor took her blood pressure, checked her pupils, then asked her more questions. But as Cade got more agitated, she found herself relaxing. The nausea had finally faded. And it was almost sweet to have Cade so concerned. About her.
When she was a child, she’d always felt like a burden whenever she was sick. She knew the staff had been paid to look after her because her mother was too fragile to spend any time with her and her father was always working—or banginghis latest bit on the side—and her older brother was away at boarding school.
How strange to have that yearning for someone care to enough about her to look the way Cade looked now—agitated and worried—finally fulfilled in these circumstances.
But then her own composure took a major hit.
‘Is there any chance you could be pregnant, Ms Courtney?’ the doctor asked.
‘No... What?No!’ she sputtered, refusing to look at Cade.
