Free Sweet Affliction [Sweet Awakenings 4] (Siren Publishing Classic) by Nicole Morgan Page A

where he had met and fallen in love with his wife Callie.
    She smiled at the memory of her mother, taken from her when she needed a mother most at the tender age of thirteen all because someone didn’t know well enough to not get behind the wheel of a car after a night of binge drinking. Her parents had loved each other very much. Despite her encouragement her father had never truly moved on from the death of his wife. Even setting him up on a few blind dates over the past few years when she’d become truly concerned that he would spend his life alone, all he’d done was compare each of the women to his Callie.
    Entering the bedroom where her father slept, she repeated what she’d done so many times in the past few days. She leaned over and studied his chest to assure herself it was still rising and falling with his breaths. He looked so peaceful while he slept. So much so that he barely moved. That scared her the most. She feared when the time would come that she would lean over and not see him inhaling and exhaling. Breathing a sigh of relief when she realized this was not that time, she walked over to the small chest of drawers and found a T-shirt and pair of sweatpants.
    She closed the drawer and took a glance back at her father before she headed back downstairs. How she wished he would flutter his eyelashes as though in deep sleep while dreaming, but he just lay there so still.
    She first stopped in the bathroom to grab him some toothpaste, figuring he could use his finger until she could get him a toothbrush. Then she went into the kitchen to grab another bottle of water from the refrigerator. Their patient downstairs was clearly thirsty, judging from the way he guzzled down the last bottle she’d brought him. Not that she could blame him. First he was shot, and then he had nothing to drink for nearly three days. He was a large man. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure that he ate and drank lots more than she did.
    Walking into the small makeshift exam room, she was surprised to see him peeking underneath his bandage.
    “What are you doing? You don’t want to get that infected. The last thing I need is for your temp to skyrocket again. That scared the crap out of me!”
    He eyed her quizzically and replaced the bandage back against his skin. “Skyrocket you say? How high was it?”
    She wished she hadn’t said anything. He took the news of everything else so well she felt like any further bombshells would just be pressing her luck.
    “AJ?”
    Wincing, she answered. “Well, you may have had a slight infection.”
    Leaning against the side of the bed, he crossed his arms and raised a brow. “I may have? Or I did?”
    She set the clothes on the bed next to him and sighed. “Okay, you did have an infection. You and I were talking yesterday morning, and you started acting really strangely. Then you seemed like you were in a trance or something. I can’t really explain it. You were burning up, and I didn’t know what to do. I had to get my father. He found some penicillin in one of these old cabinets and gave you some. By the afternoon your fever had gone down, but we gave you another dose, and for good measure I gave you one this morning.”
    “You gave me one? As in you gave me an injection? Are you qualified to do that?”
    “No.” What could she say? She wasn’t going to lie to him.
    “I see.”
    “It’s not like that. He showed me how yesterday afternoon. Besides, I watched him give you other shots, and it wasn’t that hard. Really.”
    She wondered why he was staring at her like that. Something was on his mind, and the way his eyes never left her made her nervous. Hell, everything about the man made her nervous. He was close to a foot taller than her. His shoulders looked like he should be a linebacker for the San Diego Chargers and not in the navy. Even wounded and donning bandages, he seemed to be a formidable presence looming over her.
    “What else did he give me?”
    Whew. She was strangely