Page 34 of Anything for You (Veterans of Silver Ridge #7)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Dove

I t’d been years since I’d been this sick.

It’d also been a long time since someone had taken care of me.

My parents really never had. It wasn’t the way they did things.

I’d go back to our cabin and sweat out a fever.

Usually, the camp doctor would bring ibuprofen or whatever.

I thought I got antibiotics once, but I was seven or eight, so I didn’t know for sure.

When I’d moved in with Nan and she’d doted on me when I got a bad virus just in time for my eighteenth birthday, I’d almost been confused. I’d gotten so used to being alone when I was sick, I hardly knew how to let someone help me. But she did.

And now, Dorian had taken the job.

Next to me, Bear’s collar clinked. Apparently, I’d asked for him in my most fever-delirious state, and Dorian had brought him to me. What if he’d needed him ?

What did it say that not only the man did what I asked, but also that I asked him in the first place? I trusted him, yes, but asking him for things? I’d been doing it since practically the day I moved in here, but it still astounded me.

“How are you today?” Dorian asked as he stepped inside the front door with hands full of reusable grocery bags and a small bouquet of fall flowers.

“I’m doing better than I have in a few days. My head is clear, I think, and my body aches are gone.” What a relief. I still didn’t have energy, based on how exhausted I felt after just a few hours interacting with people, but I didn’t feel the need to instantly pass out either.

“Good. Do you need anything?” He settled the bags on the counter and came to sit in the big chair next to where I’d made my place on the couch.

Or rather, where he’d helped me do so. Sometime yesterday, I’d gotten tired of being alone in my bedroom and asked if it was okay if I moved to the living room so I’d have the TV and be near the kitchen and, frankly, nearer to him.

Apparently, the novelty of having him here had a grip on me and I wanted to soak up every second.

He’d simply looked at me with those soulful eyes and said, “Anything you want, Dove.”

“I’m okay, thank you. Jo and Liz refilled my drinks and fed me lunch. It was great, by the way.” No surprise, Dorian’s food was delicious.

Oh, and Elise had texted about ten times, but she was in the throes of excitement over the recent engagement and fulfilling some huge donut order, so she couldn’t make it.

Jess was the same—tons of texts, but I refused to let her feel bad.

She should stay far away from me so Baby Will didn’t get whatever this was I had.

“Glad you liked it. ”

He had that lightly pleased look he got whenever I mentioned how good his cooking was, though it’d gotten more and more subtle the last few days as my ability to actually eat had all but disappeared.

My appetite had finally reemerged late last night, and I was relieved to find it still in full force today as evidenced by the two bowls of soup and three slices of fresh bread I’d eagerly downed.

The real surprise had been when my friends had come knocking right as he’d been leaving earlier.

He’d mentioned having errands to run, and apparently he hadn’t wanted to leave me alone, so he’d roped my friends into looking after me while he was away.

They’d agreed to risk it and help me out, the dears.

I’d already suspected it, but Dorian Forrester was looking more and more like a mother hen.

“Errands go okay?” I asked, curious to see if he’d say… anything.

Face suddenly curiously impassive, he said, “All good. Let me get the groceries put up.”

And then, he got up and scuttled into the kitchen as though he really thought my nan hadn’t texted me.

“Are you really not going to tell me what you did?” I pressed.

He froze for a heartbeat. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been looking directly at him, trying to read his body language. Got him!

He removed items from bags and shrugged one shoulder. “Grocery, stopped into Bloom, swung by Saint. A few other things.”

“Like?” I was pushing it, but seriously? Was he really not going to say anything?

His gaze swung to mine, eyes narrowed. “Things.”

I huffed and shoved off the couch in one swift, too-fast movement. “Are you really not going to admit you went to see Nan?”

But before I reached him, I wobbled, a wave of dizzy, world-tilting vertigo sending me sideways. As though in slow motion, my head swam, and I pitched backward instead of continuing toward him. Somehow, he reached me and steadied me with an arm around my back and one warm palm pressed into mine.

“Whoa there, killer. You’re going to need to move a little slower.”

I could hear a smile in his voice though I had my eyes crushed closed against the nausea.

I groaned, and my head dropped against his shoulder.

We stayed like that, him supporting me, until the world shifted again, and I was in his arms. A brutally short few seconds later, he settled me back on the couch, then scooted back to give me space and sat on the coffee table across from where he’d laid me, one hand pressed to my shin like it might help ground me.

“Ugh, that was so dumb and so dramatic,” I moaned, gingerly opening my eyes to test whether the dizziness had faded. When my vision no longer swam and Dorian materialized, his handsome face etched with concern, I let them open all the way.

“Maybe not your best move.”

I glared at him. “Maybe not, but I was trying to get you to admit you went to visit Nan and are for some reason not telling me. Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

I’d gotten a text that simply said, “Best soup I’ve ever had.” And I knew.

“I wasn’t trying to keep it from you. Just didn’t want you to worry about it. ”

“Why would I worry about you seeing Nan?” He didn’t make sense.

He squeezed the place on my calf where his hand had been resting, then removed it. Tragic. Resting his elbows on his knees, he knitted his fingers together.

“I know it’s hard for you to have someone taking care of you. I didn’t want it to feel like it was one more thing you need to keep track of.”

Oh. Was I that obviously uncomfortable?

“I don’t want you to feel bad. I just… I want to thank you properly. I can’t believe you went to see my grandma and you’ve never even met her.” Like, who did that?

Who just up and took homemade soup to someone’s grandparent?

“You go see her every few days. You have lunch with her at least once a week. I figured she’d be missing you and wanted to let her know you were okay.”

His gaze avoided mine as though his choice might’ve embarrassed him now that I knew.

And me?

I could hardly breathe through the crushing, aching, smothering kind of love exploding out of me for this man.

“That’s so ridiculously sweet,” I eked out, stapling my mouth shut to avoid blubbering.

He heard it, though. Of course he did, and so did Bear, who edged himself closer to my hips and settled his head on my thigh, brows knit with that dog empathy he brought just by being nearby.

Dorian plucked up one of my hands after I swiped at some tears.

“If I’d known it’d make you cry, I wouldn’t have admitted it,” he said, looking borderline agonized tracking one tear as it slid down my cheek and caught on my chin .

I chuckled out a messy laugh-cry and ducked my head into my shirt in a most ladylike move. With the help of my shirt, I dried my tears and emerged from my little turtle shell a complete wreck of emotions.

“Why are you crying, Dove?”

His voice was so, so gentle. His expression echoed that careful tone.

“I can’t tell you.” I couldn’t blurt out my feelings for him right here in the middle of my veritable sick bed. I couldn’t tell him how much every single thing he’d done for me meant, or how much I admired him, or how often I thought of him.

His gaze didn’t waver, didn’t leave mine. He stayed focused, studying me and clearly desperate to understand what was going on inside this cuckoo little brain of mine.

“Promise me you’ll tell me if I can help, okay?”

I nodded, and eventually, he seemed convinced after I verbally promised.

I could say the words with honesty because I had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before I had to let the truth come out.

I wouldn’t be able to resist telling him how I felt, but I had to try not to scare him with the ferocity of my feelings, and letting them fly now would do exactly that.

He’d gotten me medicine and nursed me through an awful fever. He’d loaned me his dog. He’d visited my grandma. He’d arranged for my best friends to keep me company while he was gone. He’d fed me and refilled my water and clucked at me when he worried I wasn’t drinking enough.

Maybe it was the illness-induced exhaustion that had me feeling downright nineteenth century about all of this, but right now I was absolutely overwrought .

I’d never felt so much, so viciously, ravenously much, for someone, and I had no idea what to do about it.