Muffin Top

Of course, if she’d been throwing up as much as it seemed like 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 for eons to ease nausea symptoms,” she said as she took out the little spiral notebook and pen she always had on her during a shift. “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 bad 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 around 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? 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?”

“A few hours.” He whipped back around, groaned—no doubt because of the quick movement—and closed his eyes. “Do you think she poisoned them? She did have a Cajun Rage tattoo.”

Besides her family, nursing, and the trio of women she called her best friends, there was nothing in the world Fallon cared about more than the Ice Knights. She wasn’t just an everyday fan. She was a superfan. She knew every stat and every factoid, right down to the fact that Coach Peppers had a sixth toe. And the Rage? There was no bigger rivalry in sports than the one between the Knights and the Rage. The Rage played dirty, and their fans were obnoxious.

She snapped her notebook shut. “You slept with someone with a Rage tattoo?”

“Well,” Zach said as he curled his lips upward into the signature smirk that had gotten him a huge endorsement deal, since it hadn’t been his playing in Harbor City. “We didn’t exactly sleep.”

What was it with dudes always having to pull out their metaphorical dick to show how big it was? Be it hockey players or the doctors she worked with, she was so done dealing with the male ego.

“Yeah well, if it gets out that you bang Rage fans, the tri-state metro area will be lining up to poison you.” She stood up and picked up her chair, carrying it back over to the card table, which was sitting underneath a for-real chandelier. It was a small one, sure, but still a chandelier.

“Like they need another reason,” Zach grumbled as he got up from the couch. “So what do I have to do to get over this?”

“Unfortunately,” she said with a smile that went to show exactly how not sad she was about it. Sleeping with a Cajun Rage puck bunny really was a step too far. “You just have to wait for it to clear your system. It’s probably a minor case of food poisoning. You’ll be fine. We just need to keep you hydrated and make sure it doesn’t get worse.”

“We?” he asked, crossing over to the island and, like the prima donna he was, leaving the empty mug on the coffee table by the couch.

“Yeah. We. I promised Lucy I’d stay until you were out of the woods, and I’m sticking to it.” Unlike some people, she didn’t have a lot, but she had her word and she didn’t break it.