Free Sizzling in Singapore (A Carnal Cuisine Novel) by K.C. Falls, Torri D. Cooke

sounded exactly as if she was terrifically drunk. Slurred and even with a little belligerent. "And you're…you're…the… She looked up at him and he could see her wrestle with consciousness. "You're the…the…new asshole."
    Nick would have dropped her if they had been standing up. Bloody fucking hell. She's half unconscious, frozen nearly to death and she can manage to remember that she thinks I'm an asshole.
    Mae slumped against Nick's chest as if the effort of identifying 'the new asshole' took the last bit of whatever she had left. Her heavy-lidded eyes fought to stay open. The violent shaking was subsiding somewhat and he saw that she was giving in to the exhaustion. Feeling the swollen knot at the back of her head again, Nick was sure that she must have done some damage with a fall. He remembered reading somewhere that people with concussions were supposed to be kept awake.
    "C'mon, girl. No sleeping. Tell me your name. Tell the asshole your name."
    She opened her eyes and dreamily focused on his face. "Mae. Mae Belle Whitten."
    "That's a good girl. We're making progress. Do you recognize where you are now?"
    "My kit…my kitchen."
    "That's right, Mae. You're in your kitchen. Where's your kitchen, Mae?"
    "The Palace. Maurya Palace. Delhi."
    Shit. She's too confused. Where the hell are the paramedics? Isn't Singapore supposed to be one of the most efficient places on earth? It's taking for-fucking-ever.
    Finally, the EMT crew burst through the kitchen doors, stretcher at the ready. They pried Mae from Nick's arms and hoisted her up onto the stretcher wrapping her in thermal covers at the same time. Nick wondered how a tropical rescue crew had warming blankets at the ready. Then he wondered at his bizarre thought pattern.
    "What happened?" The other EMT's were wheeling Mae out to the waiting ambulance while one stayed behind to question Nick.
    "She got locked in the walk-in cooler. I heard her banging on the door and when I opened it, she kind of fell out at my feet. There's a huge lump on the back of her head and she seems really disoriented."
    "How long was she in there?" The EMT scribbled fast on his pad.
    "I don't know"
    "How long has she been out of there?"
    "It seems like forever…honestly, I don't know. Maybe fifteen minutes.. Maybe less." Nick admitted that he had lost all sense of time.
    "That's okay, sir. You did what you should have done. Body heat is nearly the best thing there is for hypothermia."
    "Is she going to be okay?" Nick was surprised at how much that meant to him. Rocking her frozen and nearly naked body next to him had made him realize that, quite without wanting to, and very quickly, he had become attached.
    "I'm not a doctor, sir. We'll give her the best possible care. We should have her at Singapore General in less than ten minutes. There's no traffic at this hour so she'll be in a doctor's care very soon." With that, the EMT turned and trotted after his colleagues. Moments later Nick heard the siren wail and fade into the blackness of the sticky night.
     
    ***
     
    Mae woke up in strange surroundings. She gave a confused look around her and lapsed back into sleep. For thirty-six hours she came into and out of reality, sometimes on her own, sometimes with the gentle prompting of the nurses who were caring for her.
    Finally, she opened her eyes to the afternoon sun streaming orange onto her bed and saw Maribel sitting in the chair next to the bed.
    "Maribel?" Mae was confused by the whole situation. She was clearly in a hospital room and her friend, the office manager from the Elysium was sitting next to her. That's about all Mae could say with any certainty. That and that her head hurt like hell and her hands felt like they were on fire. She groggily looked down at them and saw they were bandaged.
    "Mae! You're awake!"
    "Did I get burned? What happened to my hands?"
    Maribel laughed. "Just the opposite, you got frostbite. But it isn't severe."
    Mae looked at her without showing any signs of