Spencer returned, sliding the quilts off my face and regarding me with that calm, mildly amused expression he always seemed to wear around me. "You never actually agreed to my deal."
"It's not like I can do much else," I pointed out. I digested what he'd said, setting aside my mortification over having been helped in and out of the bath and actually taking into account the implications of his "deal." My brow fell slowly. "Wait, did you say on the couch until the rales aregone?"
He flashed a straight, white smile, handing me a steaming bowl of rice and chicken dressed with some kind of clear, thin broth. "That's what I said."
I took the bowl automatically but scowled in return. "Spencer, it takesweeksfor lung inflammation to fully resolve."
He shrugged, slipping his hands into the front pocket of his black hoodie. I was used to seeing him like this—relaxed, wearing old, faded clothing, and ruggedly handsome with his short beard and twinkling eyes. Yet somehow, he still managed to steal the air from my tortured lungs. "You know as well as I do, it won't resolve unless you're letting them rest."
"Within reason," I argued swiftly. And then I coughed loudly, which ruined my point entirely.
"Temperature extremes, excessive exercise or activity, and physical labor are all hard 'noes' when it comes to acute pneumonia, Dr. Rook." Spencer stood over me, watching me with a hawkish glint in his dark eyes. "Or do you think your animals with similar conditions should be treated better than their vet?"
I glared. "You and I have different definitions of 'excessive,' I think."
"But temperature extremes are out of the question. So, it's either my way or—" He paused, looking up in thought. "No, that's it. It's my way."
I stabbed the rice bowl mutinously. "Does the UN know about you? I think this might be considered a war crime."
"I think you're very dramatic when you're hungry and tired. Eat." He pointed at me before going back to the kitchen. "I'll get your meds lined up."
I ignored the bowl, sitting up straighter so I could look over the back of the couch and follow him with my eyes. The long, open concept of the space allowed me to glare daggers at his back as he went to the kitchen island. "Spencer, you are not staying in my house for weeks."
He shrugged, peering at a prescription bottle before opening it with apop. "What are you going to do about it, Bee?"
All thoughts of howniceandcomfortingandsafeI felt with him here vanished immediately. Dark rage clouded my vision. "You cannot be serious about this. You have a job. I have a job. You can't just—" I didn't get to finish because my lungs had an inconvenient habit of taking all the authority out of whatever I kept trying to say. When I finished coughing, I croaked, "—live here."
"Ah, Bee." Spencer had returned to me, this time with a glass water bottle and five pills on his large, square palm. He sat on the couch, nearly squishing my feet, and his dark eyes found mine without a trace of worry in them. "The only thing worse than working yourself to death is letting your stubbornness finish the job. Let people help you. Letmehelp you."
His words left a welt right across my psyche. I stared at him, drinking in the depth of his calm gaze, guzzling down the sight of him here on my couch, imposing and yet softened by the flickering orange glow from the wood stove to my right. A little flame of desire I kept smothered in my chest licked to life, swaying and dancing with heat. I swallowed hard. "I'm not dying."
He held out the pills and water with a twitch of a smile. "Exactly."
Chapter seventeen
Spencer
Ireached peak insanity in an aisle of the home improvement store. I'd already completely lost my mind over Arabella—anyone who moved states, changed careers, and went toe-to-toe with Arabella Rook when she was ill clearly had almost no sanity to spare. And I lost what was left when I passed the Christmas trees.
I hadn't even grabbed a cart. I just needed a pack of Edison bulbs for her kitchen light fixture, some WD40 for squeaky hinges, and weather stripping for her drafty back door. But as I passed by the glittering, pre-lit trees trimmed with ribbons and shiny baubles, I paused.
It occurred to me that Ara didn't have any Christmas decorations around her house even though I knew she celebrated it. Or she'd celebrated it when she'd been younger, anyway. Thinking back to the last few years of my life, I realized I hadn't decorated for Christmas in a while, either. There was something about being single around the holidays that snuffed out holiday cheer.
I was still single, but I wasn't alone. And neither was Arabella.
Giving in to the impulse, I jogged to the front of the store, grabbed a cart, and loaded it up. Arabella was just as likely to set fire to a tree in her front room as she was to allow me to decorate, but something about her bristly attitude seemed to be softening.
It wasn't anything overt likethankingme, but the hardness in her eyes had melted. Her lips sometimes twitched with the effort to hold back smiles, and she had stopped threatening to drag me off her ranch with a team of homicidal horses.
By the time I made it through Park City, down the slushy highway, and over the treacherous back road to the ranch, the sun had come out, melting some of the snow. Thank God. Waking up at the crack of dawn to take care of smelly animals was hard enough. Wading through snow made it a fucking act of martyrdom. And if it warmed up enough, I might help Ara do some rounds with the animals so she could make sure the teenage weirdo and I weren't screwing things up in her absence.
Speaking of which. As my SUV came to a stop in front of the garage, I found Jay splitting wood out back, so I left my purchases on the back seat and hopped out. "Jay!"
Jay leaned back to get a better look at me, and then he rested the ax handle on his shoulder casually. He wore the same baseball cap as always, but it was warm enough that he'd traded his winter coat for a hoodie. "Yeah?"
I crunched through the snow with my hands in my coat pockets, trying for the dozenth time to put my reservations about this kid to the side. There wasn't anythingwrongwith Jay. He did his job, worked hard, and took instructions from Arabella without complaint. As far as twenty-somethings went, there were far worse than independently motivated ranch hands.
But there was something about him, something that plucked at my nerves the wrong way. He refused to hold my gaze, and Ididn’t think it was because he was on the spectrum. He’d gazed into Arabella's eyes willingly enough when she'd given him instructions earlier this morning. So, it was something about me that made him fidgety, silent, and evasive.
