Page 62 of Winning His Wager

Had she been sleeping? There? “Brat? You okay?”

She blinked those big green eyes that he loved so much at him as she stood. “Just…I think Dorie gave me the flu or some?—”

Just like that, Dylan pitched straight forward.

Martin was closest—he caught her right before she struck the floor.

Fletcher grabbed her from his cousin’s hold and lifted her. She was shaking apart. “Grab a damned blanket!”

Reese grabbed the quilt from the window. He wrapped it around her shoulders. Fletcher tried to adjust it.

“She’s burning up,” Reese almost yelled.

Dylan flinched at the sound but barely opened her eyes.

“I’m taking her to the hospital.” Even if it was the flu, she felt too hot. She was too listless. And…he was terrified. Her eyes were even rolling back. “Dylan, babe, honey, just open your eyes.”

She did. Just blinked. Then closed them again.

“Come on, let’s go.” Kaece already had his keys in his hand. “I’m parked behind you, Fletch. Get her in my truck. I’ll drive.”

Fletcher headed to the door, the woman he loved held in his arms.

“We’ll be right behind you,” Martin said, grabbing Fletcher’s own keys from the counter. “We’ll take care of the place and call her family before we follow you in. We’ll bring her sisters, if we need to.”

Fletcher barely heard. He just wanted to get her to help. As fast as he could. He looked at his cousins. “What if…it’s her heart? Dusty?—”

Dusty had had a heart attack. At fourteen. Right in Fletcher’s arms that day. He would never forget.

He couldn’t lose the woman in his arms. He just couldn’t.

43

Dixie was justabout ready to clock out for the day and get away from Dr. Shane Lowell before she strangled him when the pneumatic doors to the ER slid open.

“Dixie!” a tall, beautiful man yelled her name. She dropped her bag. They’d had yelling in the ER before, of course. Drama went with trauma, after all. But by name? “Dixie, it’s Dylan! Hurry! Help her!”

She stepped closer to the man standing there. “What’s wrong? Is she hurt?”

Fletcher was paler than she had ever seen him, terror in his Tyler blue eyes.

Her baby sister was practically limp in his arms, wrapped in a quilt. Dixie wasn’t even certain she was conscious. “What happened?”

“She just stood up, looked at us and fell forward. She’s burning up, but she’s shivering too,” one of the Tyler twins—guys, not girls—said. He sounded just as panicked. “She’s been like this the entire drive from Fletcher’s. We can barely get her to wake up.”

Dixie touched her sister’s head gently. Not exactly protocol to touch patients right away, but this was her baby sister. Dylan was definitely burning up. “Did she hit her head when she fell? Has she been sick?”

Dorie had had a touch of a virus, as had their mother. Dixie had taken care of and checked on them herself. But this…

“She’s been fine,” Fletcher said. “Or at least I thought she was. I should have seen something wrong. I should have.”

“She was air-guitaring with Reese just a few hours ago, though,” the twin said. So he was Kaece. It was really hard to tell those gorgeous creatures apart, even though she’d known them for decades. “She sounded, looked just fine then. She was talking about making chili and then baking fresh bread and oatmeal cookies. We found her practically like this, about two hours later. We were outside.”

“I should have checked on her,” Fletcher said. “I thought she looked a little tired, I thought it was because she’s worked like fifty hours this week and still helped me at home. I just thought she was tired.”

Dixie winced. That boy was panicking. No denying that. Fletcher and hospitals were not a good mix. But she remembered why and she understood. He’d lost his mother from a bacterial infection when he’d been around eighteen or nineteen. A few weeks later, Dusty had nearly died in his arms. Fletcher had carried Dusty into the hospital that day too.

“What if it’s the same thing that happened to Dusty back then?”