Holding Strong

This time Armie shook his head and, deliberately provoking, said to Denver, “Women.”

“We already settled this,” Denver said as he handed the pills to Cherry. “Can you swallow them?”

“Yes.” But man, it hurt getting them down. Soon as she finished, he held up the tiny medicine cup of cough liquid.

That went down easier and didn’t even taste too awful. Pulling the covers tight around herself again, her vision a little muzzy, she asked, “What time is it?”

“It’ll be dawn soon,” Denver told her.

“I was gone an hour,” Armie told her. “Sorry about that. The store wasn’t quite as close as I’d figured.”

“Thanks.” She started to recline again.

Denver caught her shoulders. “I want to take your temperature.”

“Can she hold the thermometer in her mouth?” Armie asked.

Denver grinned, but Cherry choked on a gasp then coughed hard enough that she dropped the sheet and covered her mouth.

And still she tried to curse Armie, assuring him that there was no way—

“He’s teasing, girl. Calm down.”

“Not funny,” she managed to croak around broken breaths and a lot of glassy-eyed glaring.

Concern brought Armie’s brows together. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to cause all that.”

She wiped her watering eyes and concentrated on carefully catching her breath.

Coming closer, Armie stepped around Denver and felt her head again. “You sure she doesn’t have pneumonia?”

This was all too weird. No one would ever mistake Denver Lewis or Armie Jacobson for nurses. Big, muscular, macho guys should never tend the sick, especially not in freaking pairs.

Having them both try to pamper her at the same time was like an overdose of fantasy—only she’d never even dared fantasize anything that unreal.

How was she supposed to deal with it?

When Armie’s warm palm remained on her forehead, Cherry leaned out of his reach. He looked surprised until he took in her expression, then he grinned and winked at her, all in all being far too familiar when she looked and felt as she did and clearly wasn’t up to bantering with him.

Shaking the thermometer, Denver said, “Can’t know for sure but I doubt it. You know something’s been making the rounds.” He turned, waited for Cherry to open, and slipped the thermometer under her tongue. “If her fever gets too high, I’ll run her to the hospital to be safe.”

How dare they make plans without her input? Around the thermometer she said, “No hospital.”

“Not yet anyway,” Denver agreed, tapping the bottom of her chin as a reminder to keep her lips closed.

“Somehow,” Armie remarked, “it doesn’t seem as bad when it’s a dude who’s sick.”

“I know.”

“Sexist,” she muttered, then slumped against the headboard.

While waiting the requisite time to get a temperature reading, they both watched her far too closely, making her almost squirm. She wore only a T-shirt and panties, in a bed, in a hotel room—and she had two megahunks focused on her.

The upside to this whole awful scenario would be telling her girlfriends, Yvette, Rissy, Harper and Vanity about it. She just knew they’d love the details and would embellish some for laughs.

They might even envy her...since they didn’t actually have to suffer it.

Finally Denver deemed it time to take the thermometer from her mouth, and she collapsed back in the bed, pulling the sheet to her chin. He held it under the bedside lamp to read it, then with a frown told Armie, “A little over 101.”

Well. No wonder she felt like crap.

“Damn.” Armie checked the time. “I’d give it an hour and check again. If the meds haven’t brought it down by then—”

“Yeah.” Denver glanced at her, but said in an aside to Armie, “I’ll take care of it.”

Pigheaded men. She could damn well decide if she needed the hospital. Right now, though, all she wanted to do was hide, so she pulled the blankets over her head.

She heard Denver say low, “She’s going to suffocate herself. You better go.”

“You don’t need anything else?”

“Got it covered.”

“All right, then.” Voices dropped more, moved farther away, and Armie said quietly, “You’ll let me know if anything else happens?”

“Yeah. But I’ll keep a close eye out, so don’t sweat it.”

A close eye out for what? Cherry lowered the sheet enough to see both men standing by the open door.

Armie half stepped out. “Think you’ll be back at the rec center tomorrow?”

“Depends on how she feels in the morning.” When Denver glanced back at her, she quickly closed her eyes, and he said to Armie, “I’ll call in and let you know.”

“I hate for her to go through that long drive home if she’s not up to it.”

If she’d had the strength, Cherry would have set Armie straight. She wasn’t a frail little girl—but at the moment, she sure felt like one.

“I know,” Denver agreed. “If it is the current bug, she should feel a little better tomorrow. Not as feverish anyway.”

“But still wiped out.” Armie hesitated before saying, “You had, what? A kids’ class and then your turn at the self-defense for women?”

“Intermediates at five-thirty, then the women at seven-thirty.”

Oh wow, Cherry thought. He wasn’t getting any sleep, and then he’d have all that way to drive, his own workout to do, then two classes... Guilt made her feel even lower. All the guys pitched in at the rec center. It was sort of a tradeoff for getting to use the place, being able to mix and mingle with the better established fighters that visited Cannon on occasion, but also because they were close friends with Cannon and enjoyed pitching in.

Armie said, “Why don’t I just cover for you?”

“You’re coming off a tourney,” Denver reminded him.