Free Sacrifice by Luxie Ryder Page A

ass. After all, he’d just turned up
after two weeks away and pounded on the door at three a.m. until she’d let him
in. Instead she offered, “Suit yourself.”
    Hallie
decided to leave him to his self-inflicted misery, convinced now more than ever
that he was drunk or stoned or something, until another agonized groan stopped
her in her tracks. When it passed, he lifted his head and gazed her way.
    “I’m
sorry…okay? I didn’t mean to shout.”
    She
sighed. “Have you been drinking?”
    The
crooked grin she knew well reappeared. “No, but I could sure use one right
now.”
    Whether
he’d been joking about the drink or not didn’t matter, once the words left his
mouth Ethan passed out almost immediately.
    Hallie
gave Doc Fletcher a call just in case, hoping he could calm her nerves, but
unfortunately, his mention of food poisoning left her more frustrated as well
as frightened.
    “I
don’t think it’s food poisoning, Doc. For a minute back there I thought he was
dying.”
    “Thought
I was dying after I had me some bad shrimp once.” He chuckled as if remembering
it fondly. “Stop worrying. Cold sweat, stomach cramps—sounds like food
poisoning to me. He just got back from
New
Orleans
you say?”
    “That’s
where he said he was going when I spoke to him last week. Said he was there on
business and asked me to take in a package he was expecting while he was away.”
    “Shrimp,”
Doc Fletcher said, as if pronouncing a final diagnosis.
    Hallie
pushed a little harder. “I’d feel much better if you’d come take a look at
him.”
    “Can’t
do that right now, honey. Maisie Johnson is waiting for me to deliver her
twins. I’m pretty sure young Ethan will be okay, but if you’re worried, you
should take him to
County
General
.”
    Hallie
put the phone down before she said something to the kind old man she might
regret later. County was twenty miles away in Tillbrook. How in the hell was
she supposed to convince Ethan to get in her car and stay alive until she got
him to a medic? She grabbed a robe from her apartment and walked back to his bedroom,
regretting—and not for the first time either—that she’d never left the hick
town she grew up in. Fairborne had a population of only two thousand and didn’t
need its own hospital. When her grandmother became ill, Hallie was forced to
make a forty mile round trip everyday to visit her in Tillbrook.
    Ethan
was still in bed but his clothes were strewn across the floor, and he’d pulled
a sheet half over his body. She tiptoed across to look down at him, tempted to
check his forehead again but afraid to disturb his much-needed rest. Her gaze
travelled over his body, to the dark chest hair still glistening with sweat. Ethan
was toned and hard, right down to where the sheet rested on his hips. He
groaned softly and she looked back to his face, afraid he’d caught her drinking
in the sight of his naked torso, but he slept on.
    A
dark, angry bruise on the side of his neck caught her attention. Hallie leaned closer
to look at it but he rolled away, obscuring her view. Maybe he’d scratched it
on the door frame when he stumbled into the room. Her own wrist throbbed from
banging into the wall when she tried to help him.
    After
a while, Hallie grew bored of waiting to see if he would stay asleep and wandered
into the lounge, unsure what she should do. She couldn’t just leave him to fend
for himself. What if he woke in agony again? More importantly, what could she
do for him if he did?
    She
flopped down on a couch and looked around the room. Ethan lived well. It annoyed
her to see he’d done a better job with his half of the house than she had with hers.
So he had looks as well as taste…typical.
    The
walls of the lounge were a subtle coffee shade, complimented by taupe leather
sofas facing each other in front of the fireplace. A large Persian rug covered most
of the stripped wooden floors and a mahogany bookcase dominated the window wall,
facing a plasma screen