WEDNESDAY, 5:20 A.M.

In all the months we’ve been playing our early morning game of cat and mouse, I’ve skipped plenty of times, but never Andrew. Not on a weekday.

But he didn’t show yesterday morning.

I figured he was pissed, and since he had a right to be, I let it go. Gave him a day.

Today is Wednesday, though, two days after we made out on the sidewalk and then broke the Manhattan gossip circuit, and he’s still not at the front desk.

I was willing to give him one day to lick his wounds and come to grips with what was going on with us, but two?

Not a chance.

I’ve been waiting here in adorably matching workout clothes for twenty minutes, and there’s no sign of his red shoes or his boring travel mug.

“You know, Charles, I just realized I forgot something,” I say.

He gives me a slightly puzzled smile, probably wondering why it took me twenty minutes of making small talk to realize that.

I give him a little finger waggle and head back to the elevators. Charles has already hit the eighty-sixth floor for me, but I hope he’s not watching the elevators too closely, because I take out my key fob and swipe it so that I can access the seventy-ninth floor.

A few moments later, I’m stepping onto a floor that looks exactly like mine. I scan the discreet numbers until I find the one I’m looking for: 79B.

Home of Andrew Mulroney, Esquire.

I knock.

No answer.

I knock louder.

Nothing.

I give in to the immature urge to put my thumb on the doorbell and press it over and over and over and—

The door swings open, and I barely have a chance to register what I’m seeing before I hear an exhausted groan. The second he sees me, the door starts to swing shut again.

“Wait—” I press my palm to the door, a little surprised by how easily I’m able to push it back open considering the man works out like a Viking and definitely doesn’t want to see me.

I push the door wider, and let out a little sound of dismay as I absorb the reality of what I’m looking at.

The man looks terrible.

“Oh, Andrew,” I murmur, stepping into his apartment uninvited and dropping my bag on the floor.

His hand is gripping the door, and he rests his forehead tiredly against it, eyes closing. “Is there any chance that you’ll go away now?”

“Absolutely none,” I say, prying his fingers away from the door and feeling his forehead with the other. “How long have you looked like this?”

“Like what?”

“Regurgitated death.”

He lets out a noise that’s half laugh, half groan. “Go away. I can’t spar with you today.”

It’s too late. I’ve already shut the door and am preparing a plan of action.

He really does look awful. His hair’s a curling mess, he obviously hasn’t shaved in a couple of days, his eyes are red-rimmed and glassy, and I’m not even sure what he’s wearing. Sweatpants, but he seems to have paired them with a godawful, vaguely holiday-looking sweater.

“I was cold,” he said, apparently reading my thoughts even through his illness. “Or at least I was. Now I’m hot.”

“Well, that’s because you’ve got a fever,” I say, gently placing my hand on his back and guiding him toward his bedroom. I figure I’ll have plenty of time to snoop later, so I just take in the basics, confirming that his apartment’s basically exactly like mine, except reversed, bedroom on the right instead of the left, et cetera.

The second we enter his bedroom, I know it’s where the poor guy’s spent the better part of the past two days. His apartment’s otherwise as tidy and anal as I’d expect, but his bedroom smells like a stuffy sick ward.

It says a lot about how just un-Andrew-like he is right now that he doesn’t seem to register how wrinkled and uninviting the bed looks.

“Hold up there, sickie,” I say, grabbing the back of his sweater and pulling him back with more ease than I should. “Let’s just take a pause, sit in this nice chair here for a second.”

I help him toward the black leather chair in the corner, pulling a blanket off the arm and tucking it around him.

“Want to sleep,” he says, leaning his head against the wall.

“I know you do,” I say, feeling a wave of tenderness as his lashes sweep down onto the dark shadows beneath his eyes. I let my fingers touch his hair, just for a moment, before I spring into action. “One minute, ’kay?”

Acting fast, I open the window. It’s in the low forties outside, but the room desperately needs fresh air, and with that hideous sweater and the blanket, he’ll be fine.

His linen closet’s in the same place as mine, right across from the bathroom. His spare set of sheets is dark gray and impressively folded, right down to the fitted sheet.

I rush back to the bedroom, but he hasn’t moved; he’s fast asleep, upright in the chair. Poor guy.

I hurriedly strip the bed of the wrinkled old sheets and replace them with the fresh, clean ones. I fold back one corner to make it easy for him to get in, and return to his side.

“Andrew.” I kneel beside him, touch his arm. “Andrew?”

His eyes flutter open, and he looks surprised to see me there. “Georgiana.”

“Still with that?” I ask with a smile.

“Always,” he murmurs.

I laugh softly. “All right, then. Let’s get you into bed, okay?”

He gives me a sleepy nod, letting me help him out of the chair and shuffle him the few steps toward the bed.

Andrew gives me a startled look, apparently not too sick to register that the sheets have been changed. “You did this?”

“Yup, the Scarecrow figured it out,” I say without heat as I half shove him into bed. I wait until he slowly hauls his legs onto the mattress, which seems to take an eternity in his current state, and then pull the covers up to his chin.

I tuck them around his shoulders, the way my mom always did for me when I was little, and maybe I let my fingers brush against the stubble of his jawline, just a little.

His eyes are closed again, and I think he’s asleep already, but when I start to pull away, he reaches up, grabs my wrist.

It’s like the other day when he was angry, and yet . . . different.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

“You’re welcome.” I bite my lip. “I can leave if you want, or I’m happy to stay—”

“Stay.” His eyes close again, and his next words are a sleep-filled murmur, but they stop my heart for a second anyway. “Need you,” he says, his voice low and exhausted.

Need you.

Andrew Mulroney needs me. And go ahead, call me a sissy, but my eyes water, just a little.

It’s sort of nice to be needed.

Especially by him.