Fire and Ice by Portia Da Costa Read Free Book Online Page B

today, oh God, it's like an icebox. Bone-chillingly freezing, as cold as outdoors. A horrible thought occurs to me. Are the actual apartments as cold? If so, no wonder Innes sounds so rough. If he's ill and frozen, it's not surprising his temper's frayed.
    On the landing, I locate his door. Raising my hand to knock, I pause then try the handle. The door's unlocked and I push it open and step inside – where the meat locker chill hits me in the face. Along with another shock.
    I don't know what I was expecting. I've been envisioning the sick Innes as still looking suave and immaculate, as always. I've pictured him in jeans and a beautiful sweater, maybe with a scarf as a concession. Or maybe a sexy, high end robe – thick and deluxe, very masculine, worn over classy sweat pants or something.
    But reality, he looks like a deranged wild man shambling through a disaster zone of tissues, abandoned blankets and empty coffee cups and half drunk glasses of Lemsip. There's even a tangle of forlorn, un-hung Christmas decorations on the coffee table.
    "Oh my God, boss, you look terrible!"
    It's out of my mouth before I can stop it, and Innes scowls as if it's hit home. He does look dreadful, though. For him.
    "Well, thanks for that."
    To offset the biting cold, he's wrapped himself in the duvet off his bed, and he's padding around in his feet bare, the idiot. His usually immaculately groomed black hair is all mad curls and tufts and his handsome face is frighteningly pale, but with hot flags of a fever flush across his cheekbones. Even so, he somehow still manages to look gorgeous, devastating virus or not.
    "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. It's just that I've never seen you ill and you look… different."
    He hitches up his slithering duvet. Oh God, he's shaking. "Well, come on in and shut the door. Wouldn't want to let the heat out, would we?" he finishes savagely, grabbing me by the arm and hauling me inside.
    "But this place is like a deep freeze. What's happened to the heating?" I set down my tote bag in a chair and move aside some cups and newspapers and a bunch of tinsel to put the files he asked for on the coffee table.
    Innes throws himself down in another chair, as if he's finding it hard to stay on his feet. "Everyone in the building's gone away for Christmas, including the landlord." He rearranges himself inside his makeshift tent-come-shelter and pulls it up around his ears. "The guy who usually does the central heating has got an emergency job on, and none of the others I've rung will come out until after Christmas."
    "But don't you have a gas or electric fire?" I look around. The place as obviously been remodeled from its original configuration and I can't see a fire.
    "If I had one, I'd have it on, obviously." His voice sounds really odd, and I realise his teeth are chattering.
    Poor thing, he looks so miserable. How awful it must be for a confident, self sufficient man like Innes to be rendered so powerless by illness and circumstance. Innes shrugs in his cocoon and suddenly gives me a shamefaced grin that melts my heart and sends a sensation like warm honey seeping along my veins to pool in certain places.
    Dear God, I'm a horrible person! I'm getting the hots for a man who's probably quite seriously ill!
    "Sorry I'm being such an ungrateful bastard," he rasps, "Forgive me, Cally. You've been really helpful and I'm being an arse."
    Helpful? I suppose so. But I've got other motives. I can't believe my luck that circumstances have brought me here, alone, and put me in this strange position of power over the very man I adore.
    "You are a bit, but I'll forgive you because you're poorly." I stride across the room and take him by the arm, "Come on, where's the bedroom? Let's get you to bed."
    Wearily he hauls himself up, but for a moment a brighter glimmer flares in his eyes, and they look even bluer than normal. It might be the fever… but it might be something else. He might be ill, but he's still a man. My heart