Her eyes wet, she turned to press her face against his chest with a little sound of misery, and felt his palm tighten on her head.
“When did you start feeling rubbish?” His voice was low and soothing, and her eyes prickled.
Through clenched teeth, she managed, “I felt fine when I went to sleep and then . . .” No. Wasn’t going to be able to finish that sentence.
Her stomach had clearly been biding its time since the assault of Byron’s scone and was now exacting its revenge. As she put her hand over her mouth and surged upward again, Dominic tucked her unraveling plait out of the way and held her.
The next half hour was a blur. She was making the executive decision to strip all thirty minutes from her memory. They had never happened.
After the experience of which she had zero recollection and definitely wouldn’t still be cringing over in her aged care home, her grand plans for the rest of the night involved curling in a ball and awaiting the arrival of the Reaper. When Dominic picked her up in his arms and carried her back to bed, it wasn’t quite as sexy as the first time he’d swept her off to his room.
Yet, for every kiss earlier tonight, every thrust of his body, every time her neck had arched and her lips had parted, somehow as she crawled beneath the sheets and he lay beside her—this was the most intimate and significant moment she’d ever had in bed. As he tucked the blanket around her shoulders, touched his lips to her temple, and held her hand.
She couldn’t think of a single man from her past that she would want anywhere near her when she was sick. And if she had the energy to move her limbs, she’d probably wind them around Dominic like an octopus.
For the remaining dark hours of the night, he didn’t leave her side. He murmured comfort in her ear, he held her up through the utter bliss of a shower and found her one of his shirts to wear. Finally, when her continuing misery left him repeatedly pacing, he wrapped her in a quilt and took her out to the lounge. Settling her on the couch with the most infinite care, he sat down at the piano and he played her favorite Bach for her.
As a pianist, he wasn’t quite at the level of Patrick. But it was very close.
And as Sylvie lay drifting with her cheek against a cushion, the music wrapping around her, and tears slowly sliding over the bridge of her nose, she felt the tether on her heart start to fray, that guarded thread that had kept it in her own possession, lonely but secure. Protected. At no risk of shattering into infinite pieces like the little glass deer.
By half past six, her stomach felt raw and battered, but finally like the calm after the storm. Back in bed, she lay like a rag doll, barely able to lift her hand and scratch the itch on her nose.
When she vocalized that thought, Dominic, stretched out on the bed beside her again and looking equally tired, rubbed the tip of her nose with exaggerated care.
The backs of his fingers touched her forehead. He frowned. “You’re not hot, at least. Still no sore throat? Headache?”
She shook her head. “No. Just the nausea.”
“Some of my staff are out with the bug that’s going around, but it doesn’t sound like . . .” He broke off. “Just a minute.” He slipped off the bed. “I’ll be right back. Rest.”
He touched her curled hand as he strode out with enviable vigor.
While he was gone, the door creaked, and Sylvie heard the sashay of fur brushing past wood.
Seconds later, her second main man Humphrey came flying onto the bed in a blur of tabby bulk and immensely long whiskers. He marched triumphantly up and down her body a few times, kneading her through the covers.
“You look right at home for a cat I suspect is not allowed on this bed,” she informed him, scratching his ears.
An assumption confirmed when Dominic came back in and exchanged looks of mutual loathing with his reluctant family member. The irascible furry son with the best feline real estate this side of Notting Hill.
“Since she’s relaxed for the first time in hours,” he said to Humphrey, “you can stay for exactly five minutes.”
Humphrey flicked an insouciant tail.
Dominic held up the box in his hand. “The cheesecake with the ‘horrible aftertaste.’ Which also has a strange smell that doesn’t belong to any of its myriad ingredients.”
Sylvie put a protective hand over her poor stomach. “But we put it in the bakery fridge right away.”
“I suspect it came complete with off taste and smell at point of purchase.”
Unbelievable. “So he’s given me food poisoning now.”
“I wish I had punched the prick,” Dominic said, coming to sit on the side of the bed again. Despite the cold dislike in his words, his hand was very gentle on her skin as he ran it down her upper arm.
Sylvie tucked her arm under her head. She was too exhausted to indulge her usual Darren wrath. Too exhausted even to argue when Dominic had told her he’d left a message with her staff that she wouldn’t be in this morning. She closed her eyes. “He’s bigger than you thought, remember.”
Lips on her browbone.
“He could be the size of a fucking double-decker bus.”
She drifted into her nap smiling.
It was her phone that woke her. Dominic must have set it to silent, but the vibration disturbed Humphrey, who dug his claws into her arm. She opened her eyes with a jump, lifting her head. Her cheek felt hot and sticky, the room a bit too overheated. For a moment, she had no idea where she was.
Voices drifted through the open door. She recognized the cadence of Dominic speaking, and she was fairly sure the feminine response was Pet.
Her phone writhed more insistently, and she blinked away the remaining confusion, snatching it up. Jay’s name was flashing.
“Jay?” She spoke huskily, crackling over the syllable, and coughed as she pushed up against the pillows.
“Syl? Are you okay?” His concern came through clearly. “Mabel took a message that you’re out sick today, but she said you seemed fine last night when you had to pull De Vere’s out of the shit. Very charitable of you, by the way,” he added with a dry edge. “I believe her words were ‘more than fine.’ Have you come down with something?”
“Just ate something that didn’t agree with me.” On a number of levels. “My body rejected it fairly gruesomely. I feel like a deflated balloon,” she said frankly. “And as I’m supposed to shoot Operation Cake tonight and the producers would have my head on a platter if I have to pull out, I think I’d better take the rest of the day away from the bakery if you can cope.”
Tonight was the always-feared night episode—also operating as the semifinal, thanks to Nadine’s early departure and the rescheduling of the location shoot—in which the contestants had to prepare a five-course dessert banquet for a number of celebrity guests. Which this year included the footballer Chuck Finster. Name of a Rugrat, kick of a stallion, thighs of a god.
What a time to be alive and probably looking like something that had recently dragged its way out of a tomb.
And how fortunate that her mind and body appeared to have lost all interest in any other man. She was no longer dancing around it, as she sat here in his crumpled sheets, with her bed-hair sticking to her face and a vile taste in her mouth. She was absolutely mad about Dominic De Vere.
“Of course we can manage. You rest up. But are you sure you’re up to working on the show tonight?”