Okay, he was still the jerk whose selfish play resulted in the end of the Ice Knights’ playoff dreams last year, but the man was obviously hurting, and she couldn’t just turn off the nurse thing. It was who she was, so much so that she’d even force
d her siblings to play hospital with her growing up.
She picked up the folding chair and carried it over to the sitting area, along with a cup of warm peppermint tea. She handed him the tea and set up the chair in front of him before sitting down on it.
He looked at the Ice Knights mug in his hand as if it were a live grenade. Of course, if she’d been throwing up as much as it seemed 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 to ease nausea symptoms for eons,” she said as she took out the little spiral notebook and pen she’d stuffed in her scrub pants pocket. “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 ill 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 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, or 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 she 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 Ice 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 sexy smirk that had gotten him a huge endorsement deal, since it obviously 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 and carried her chair back over to the card table that was sitting underneath a for-real chandelier. It was a small one, sure, but still a chandelier.
“Like they need another reason,” Zach grumbled. “So what do I have to do to get over this?”
“Unfortunately,” she said with a smile 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, pushing himself up from the couch with a groan, 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.