CHAPTER EIGHT
NIKI DRESSED FOR work before she went downstairs to breakfast. She’d expected that Blair would be long gone. But he was sitting at the table with a cup of black coffee; her father was nowhere in sight.
She stopped in the doorway, steeling herself not to do anything stupid.
“Good morning,” she said formally.
He looked up. His face was heavily lined. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked as if he hadn’t had a minute’s sleep. He drew in a breath.
“My pilot got a late start,” he said.
“I see. Well, have a good trip home.”
“You’re leaving without breakfast?” he asked curtly.
“I never eat breakfast,” she lied. “Well, not anymore, at least. I get coffee at the office.”
He didn’t answer her. He just sipped coffee.
She stuck her head in the kitchen. “Edna, I’ll see you tonight.”
“You be careful out there,” Edna fussed. “Lots of pollen.”
“It’s spring,” Niki said with a faint grin.
She started toward the front door, pausing just to grab her purse and lightweight sweater from the rack in the corner.
Blair was behind her. She could feel the heat of his big body.
She couldn’t bear to look at him. She opened the door and went out.
He followed, closing the door behind him.
She stopped and turned, resigned, miserable. She couldn’t force her eyes any higher than his paisley tie. “Was there something else?”
His hands, in his pockets, were clenched. “Yes. I wanted to make a point. What you feel is infatuation, Niki. It’s flattering. But it isn’t real.”
Her fingers curled into the soft leather of her purse. She knew her cheeks were flaming red. She couldn’t find the words to rebut him.
His jaw tautened. “For God’s sake, don’t make some great romantic interlude out of a few hot kisses! It was just lust, if you want to label it. Lust! It’s demeaning to try to construe it into romance.”
Demeaning. She could feel the blood draining out of her face. Demeaning. The sweetest few minutes of her life. Demeaning.
“Damn naive women!” he ground out. “Damn juvenile infatuation. And damn you for playing me like a trout, with come-hither bathing suits and Elise’s tactics!”
That shocked her into meeting his eyes. “Elise’s...?”
“Didn’t you realize?” he asked sarcastically. “She got me so hot I didn’t know my name and then drew back, every damned time. She left me doubled over, hurting like a teenage boy. Eventually, I married her just to satisfy the hunger.”
She didn’t know what to say.
His black eyes narrowed. “Janet said that you planned to use the same tactics on me,” he added coldly, “to force me into marriage. Nice try. But it won’t work. I’ve taken the cure.”
Nice one, Janet, Niki thought furiously. It had been Janet’s tactic, but she was blaming it on Niki. Afraid of the competition, maybe, and that was a joke.
She lifted her chin and stared him down. Her heart was breaking, but he’d never know.
“I’m meeting Janet in New York later in the week,” he said. “I should have had better sense when I was younger. She’s twice the woman Elise ever was.”
At least Janet was going to come out on top. The backstabbing turncoat.
“Well, at least if anyone ever attacks you, Janet can Tae Kwon Do them for you,” she said with a vacant smile.
His face tautened to steel.
She turned while he was absorbing that final blow and headed toward her car. The driveway was a little blurry as she pulled out, but she smiled in Blair’s general direction and even waved.
* * *
DAN BRADY WAS concerned about Niki when they had coffee together at break time.
“You’re not yourself today,” he said.
“I had a really bad night,” she replied. “On top of a really bad trip to Cancun. I’m glad to be home.”
His eyes narrowed. “Coleman went with you and your father, didn’t he?”
“Yes. He was meeting an old flame there in the hotel, during the trade talks. She’s very nice,” she said, lying through her teeth. “Apparently, they were almost engaged some years back. She’s still crazy about him.”
“I see.”
His expression was unguarded, and she laughed. “Surely you don’t think I have a secret yearning for him?” she teased. “My gosh, he’s almost forty years old!”
The last worry Dan had left his handsome face. He grinned. “No, of course that’s not what I thought!”
Now they were both lying. But she just smiled and changed the subject.
* * *
BLAIR WAS FINISHING his second whiskey highball on the corporate jet. He hadn’t said a single word to the crew or the flight attendant. He refused food, buried himself in his computer and put Niki in the back of his mind.
He hadn’t meant to hurt her. But it had been necessary. He couldn’t let her sink into a relationship with him, give up hopes of a young and energetic husband who could give her a home and children.
He was more suited to brief affairs. After Elise, he was certain that he could never stomach the thought of marriage again. Certainly not with Niki.
She’d turn to that young man at work, the one Jacobs had told him about. Dan Brady. The health nut. His teeth clenched. Well, he and Niki seemed to get along very well, and the man was young and intelligent and ambitious. It would be a good match.
He stared at the laptop screen without really seeing it. He was reliving those last few painful minutes with Niki, lying to her about what he’d felt, taunting her for being infatuated with him, for trying Elise’s seductive tactics on him. Infatuation. That was all it was. Of course. She was far too young to feel anything permanent for a man. He’d introduced her to passion and now she was curious.
He flushed, remembering how it had felt to have her in his arms, to feel her mouth so hungry and eager under his own. He’d wanted her so desperately that he’d have done anything to get her.
Janet had warned him that she might try that trick. She’d been bragging about it on the beach, she’d said at the dinner she’d shared with him and Todd in Cancun. According to Janet, Niki had told Janet that she wanted Blair and she could get him. It would be easy because he was older and already drawn to her physically. It would be fun to make a man like that, a worldly, sophisticated man, fall at her feet. It would amuse her to try. He was vulnerable, and she wanted to see how fast she could make him fall for her.
Odd, it didn’t really sound like Niki. She was shy and withdrawn with most people. Even with him, at first. But the more he thought about it, the more he believed it. She’d bought the bathing suit on purpose, to tempt him. She’d as much as admitted it.
He hated the way he behaved when she was close to him. He hated being vulnerable. Niki was fickle, like all young women. She was only testing her feminine powers, and he was handy. Probably she hadn’t thought that Janet would tell him what she’d said.
He grieved for the way things had been with Niki. For almost two years, she’d been his confidante, his friend, comforting him, nurturing him, making him laugh. In so many ways, she’d helped make up for the hell Elise had made of his life.
And what had he given her in return? Shame, for responding to his ardor, for wanting him, for caring about him.
He emptied the whiskey glass and groaned inwardly. That beautiful bathing suit, in the trash where she’d thrown it because he’d made her ashamed of wearing it for him. She was untried, innocent, kind, and he’d lacerated her emotions, her pride.
He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anyone in his life. He wanted to take care of her, cherish her, have children with her, comfort her...
He laughed to himself. Janet had said that Niki wanted to tempt him into marriage. But he knew that wasn’t Niki. She was too honest. He’d known that, at some level. He’d used Janet’s insinuations to justify pushing Niki away before she got any closer, before he caved in to his own need and pushed hers aside.
She needed a kind, gentle young man who’d love her and make her happy. Blair was going to make sure she had the chance to find one, by removing himself from the equation. She’d been hiding from the world, from men, by clinging to Blair. But that had blinded her to their differences. They had no chance of happiness together. He hoped he’d made her see that.
He thought about the health nut that she was having meals with, and his heart ached. He was a hard worker, Jacobs had said, curious at the questions Blair had asked about the employee. It was for Niki’s father, he’d lied. Todd had been concerned about some things Brady had said to her.
Jacobs had confessed that Brady was aggressive with both him and Niki about the ability of herbs and exercise and diet to cure any disease.
If only life were that simple, Blair thought angrily. He just hoped that Niki wouldn’t rush into a relationship just to make Blair think she wasn’t missing him. Of course, how could she miss him, after the things he’d said to her? He wished he could take back some of the things he’d said, especially what he’d told her about their interludes being nothing but lustful and demeaning. He’d seen the pain in her young face. But he’d told her he’d be seeing Janet, and he might have to do that for just a little while, just to make her believe he was turning away.
Janet. He laughed to himself. She was a self-contained, ambitious woman who loved the high life and would do almost anything to land herself a millionaire. It had been that way years ago. He’d known it even before his mother had come to her senses and realized that Janet was less desirable as a daughter-in-law than she’d first thought.
But he could handle Janet. He didn’t love her, but she would make a good cover for him while he tried to get over slicing and dicing Niki’s poor heart. He’d make sure Janet had some diamonds to comfort her when he broke it off.
That brought back the unwanted memory of Niki’s utter delight with a rawhide and deer antler bracelet. He lifted his empty glass and had the flight attendant bring him another drink.
* * *
TWO WEEKS LATER he was almost crazy as he tried to adjust to a life that didn’t contain Niki in it. He’d phoned her often just to talk. He’d sent her text messages. There had been constant contact.
Now there was nothing. It was more painful than he’d dreamed it would be. All he had was the memory of her in his arms, holding him, wanting him. He knew her now as he hadn’t before, knew the surge of joy it gave him to feel her soft mouth opening under the crush of his lips, to feel her body lifting, pleading, for his arms to hold her even closer.
His good intentions were making him miserable. He groaned out loud as he recalled that sweet interlude in the rental car with her. Niki in his arms, dying for him. Then he’d pushed her away and told her it was only lust.
He’d taken Janet out a time or two, but she’d realized that he was only doing it for show. In fact, he deliberately maneuvered her in front of a tabloid photographer and put an arm around her.
Janet still had hopes that she could hold his interest. She felt a twinge of regret at the lie she’d told about Niki planning to trap him, and she was fairly certain that he felt more than he’d admit for Niki. She held on doggedly, phoning him when she didn’t hear from him, leaving him text messages, pursuing him as hard as she could. He responded, but only in a pleasant way. He felt nothing for her. He never had. She’d been someone to eat with occasionally, an ear to listen, nothing more than that. He hadn’t even slept with her. Perhaps, he thought, that was why she couldn’t give him up. She was trying to recapture the past. She was, after all, still a struggling filmmaker, and he was filthy rich.
He’d bought her a dinner ring at their last meeting, just a trinket to make her happy. But while she enthused over the most expensive one in the jewelry case, he remembered again Niki rapt with joy over a rawhide bracelet with a medallion made of deer antler. The comparison was actually painful.
* * *
NIKI’S BIRTHDAY CAME, and he couldn’t consider ignoring it, despite all the pain he’d caused her. He sent her a huge bouquet of roses in all sorts of colors, laced with orchids. He enclosed a card, just greetings and his name.
He phoned Edna a few days later to see if the bouquet had arrived, because he hadn’t gotten even a text message of thanks. He hadn’t expected one. The tabloid had hit the stands the same day he sent the bouquet, with a caption noting Blair’s attentions to the up-and-coming filmmaker from his past.
“Oh, hello, Mr. Coleman,” Edna said pleasantly. “Mr. Ashton isn’t here right now...”
“She gave the flowers to the church, and tore the card into a dozen pieces and threw it into the trash, didn’t she?” he asked with a sigh of resignation.
Edna was too shocked even to reply. Just before the bouquet arrived, Niki had tossed the tabloid onto the kitchen counter and pointed out that Blair was making sure Niki knew he was off-limits for good.
He laughed softly, but it had a hollow sound. “I thought as much.”
“She said you’d posed for that picture in the magazine on purpose,” she blurted out.
He hesitated. “I suppose Niki and I know each other very well, don’t we, Edna?”
“I suppose you do,” she confessed.
“I hope it was a happy birthday for her, just the same.”
“Her father took her to a movie,” she told him.
He was relieved. At least she wasn’t going out with other men. Which shouldn’t have made him feel so smug.
“And that Mr. Brady at work took her out to a club in Billings to celebrate her birthday,” she added a few seconds later.
Thunderclouds rolled over him. He felt the words like a knife in his heart.
“He told me she needs to do her own housework, and that me and Mr. Ashton need to stop pampering her,” she said icily. “What a piece of work that young man is!”
He held on to his temper. Barely. “It’s her life, Edna.”
“Some life she’ll have with him,” she replied quietly. “Well, it’s none of my business.”
“Nor mine. Tell Todd I called.”
“Yes, sir.”
He hung up. He had no right to interfere. But Niki was making a mistake. The younger man would bring her nothing except heartache. Then he recalled that he’d pushed her into Brady’s arms, and put the phone down.
He got on a plane for Frankfurt and didn’t remember the plane ride there. He’d never been so miserable in his whole life.
* * *
NIKI HAD ACCEPTED the hiking invitation from Dan Brady with reservations.
“We’re not going to gallop along in a race, Niki,” Dan laughed as she checked her shoelaces at the beginning of the hiking trail. “And we all have cell phones. We won’t abandon you to die on the side of the road!”
She made a face at him.
“All right, everyone, make sure you have plenty of bottled water, and let’s not get separated on the path. Look out for snakes.”
It wasn’t snakes that Niki was worried about. It was something more. Something that she’d only just learned.
“You’re very quiet,” Dan commented.
She managed a wan smile. “Didn’t sleep much last night,” she said.
“Oh, you should try herbal tea,” Dan told her. “Chamomile, with just a drop of honey, before bedtime. It works like a charm!”
It wouldn’t work if they’d found a spot on his lung X-ray, she thought bitterly. Especially with her family history. Her mother’s cancer had started just like that. A spot on her lung on an X-ray. Two years later, gasping and cyanotic, lying on the couch with only twenty percent lung capacity, just trying to suck in enough air to breathe, her mother’s heart had finally given out.
Niki had been there. She’d seen it. Her father had tried to kill himself afterward. It had been Edna and one of the older cowboys who’d found him in time and stopped him. Todd had watched his beloved wife go through surgery, followed by treatment, only to have the spot return four months later and the process start all over again. Twice they’d operated. Twice they’d assured him that they got it all, that she’d be fine. And the third time it had spread to both lungs and they’d abandoned hope.
She knew what it was like to have lung cancer. Despite Doctor Fred’s assertions that it might not be anything to worry about, that a CT scan could easily rule out cancer, Niki wouldn’t be moved. She knew what would happen if it was cancer.
All her life, she’d dreamed of having a child of her own. She browsed baby boutiques. She loved holidays because the ranch hands would bring their children up to the big house for all the celebrations.
Now there would be no children. She’d thought, once, that Blair might turn to her after his divorce. She knew he wanted a child, too. She’d hoped that he might want one with her. But that dream was dead. Dead, like the future, like Niki’s future.
She would never hold her child in her arms. She would never have a husband, a home, a life beyond what she had right now.
So it didn’t matter what happened to her. The hiking trail led right through one of the biggest orchards in the valley, and the late-blooming fruit trees were putting out pollen by the bucketload.
It was a cowardly thing to do. But Niki didn’t care anymore. She’d lost Blair. Life had nothing left for her. She only wanted it over. She’d left her rescue inhaler at home. She felt a moment’s panic when she thought how it felt when she had an attack. She could only get a little air in and no air out. It was like suffocating. But hopefully it would be quick. And they were far enough out that time would be in her favor. It was unlikely that they’d be able to get a rescue team out here before her life drained away. Her asthma was severe. An attack without her rescue inhaler could quickly be fatal.
It didn’t even matter. She moved ahead like a sleepwalker with her fanny pack around her waist, her feet in expensive boots that peeked out from under her jeans. She had on a tank top and no sweater, which was bad because it was a cool morning. That didn’t matter, either. She heard Blair’s voice telling her that it was only lust, that he didn’t care, that he and Janet were getting back together. He must have meant it, because that tabloid photo of the two of them was very informative. Janet had been pressed close to Blair’s chest, looking up at him with pure worship. Blair had his arm around her, smiling down at her, the way he’d smiled at her in the hotel in Cancun when Niki had come upon them unexpectedly.
At least Janet had a future worth looking toward. Maybe she’d make Blair happy, at least.
“Earth to Niki, are you there?” Dan teased.
She snapped out of her reveries and smiled. “I’m here.”
“Great! Let’s go!”
* * *
IT IRRITATED BLAIR that Janet had shown up in Frankfurt. It irritated him more that she had a room right next to his suite.
“I’m making a film here, darling. Isn’t it nice that we’re here at the same time?” she teased.
“I’ve got meetings most of the day and half the night,” he said quietly. “No time to party. Sorry.”
“Oh, that’s all right. Maybe I’ll see you at breakfast,” she added, her eyes bright with hope.
“Maybe.”
He walked away, sick at heart. It should have been Niki here with him, right here, in the hotel, in his room, in his bed, in his arms. He almost groaned aloud. He missed her more than he’d dreamed he ever could.
Now he had Janet stalking him the way Elise had done, trying to tempt him into indiscretion.
She couldn’t know that it would never work. He felt nothing for her. In fact, he felt nothing for any woman except Niki, especially after the taste of her he’d had that haunted his dreams, made him hungry, tortured him in the wee hours of the morning.
He’d been reckless enough to send her a text message, asking how she was. There had been no reply. Well, there had been one. An emoji with the mouth pulled to one side. Expressive. A visual “who cares?”
It disturbed him enough to phone Todd, on the excuse of business, from his hotel room.
“How’s that equipment sale to Mexico coming along?” he asked on his way down the street from yet another meeting with a European distributor.
“Slowly,” Todd chuckled, “like any business we do south of the border. They’re a lot more cautious than they used to be.”
“Mexico has had her problems with outside interests, and it goes back a long, long way.”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “How are you and Janet doing? I heard she was making a commercial in Frankfurt.”
There was a long pause. “She’s fine, I suppose. I’ve been too busy to see much of her.” He hesitated. “How’s Niki?”
“Quiet.”
He frowned. “That’s not like her.”
“I know.” Todd’s voice was laced with concern. “She’d just come from her physical. She didn’t say there was anything wrong, and I can’t intimidate Doctor Fred enough to make him talk to me. Maybe some female problem she didn’t want to discuss with her dad,” he chuckled. But he was worried. Even the humor didn’t hide that.
“It’s spring,” Blair pointed out. “She always has trouble with her lungs in the spring.”
“I know. Just like her mother,” he added involuntarily.
“You never talk about Martha,” Blair replied quietly.
“Hurts too much,” the older man confided. “I went off the deep end when I lost her. It was the last thing on earth I expected. She was so much younger than I was. I always thought I’d be the one to go first.”
“Younger?”
Todd took a deep breath. “Eighteen years younger,” he said. “I had all these worries about the age difference, what people would think, what if I ended up in a nursing home while she was still young enough to date...that sort of thing.”
Blair’s heart was pounding. “But you married her anyway.”
“Against my better judgment. Of the two things in my whole damned life I got right, Martha was one of them. Niki’s the other. We only had eight years, but they were the best, most beautiful years of my life. I’d give anything, anything, to have her back!”
“What happened?”
Todd swallowed. “Lung cancer. She was frail, like Niki. Pollen bothered her, and she had asthma, too. I spent many a night in emergency rooms with her when the attacks got too bad. She hated that,” he laughed softly. “She felt like she was a burden. I told her that she was the sweetest burden any man ever had, and why couldn’t she consider it a date? We were touring emergency rooms and getting familiar with new equipment and meeting people. That always made her laugh.”
Blair felt the other man’s pain to his bones. Niki was fragile like that. He thought about losing her, and his whole body clenched. He could only imagine what it had been like for his friend.
“I went crazy when she died,” Todd recalled. “Stayed drunk for two weeks and tried to get myself killed any way I could. But Edna had just come to work for me, and she reminded me that Niki only had one parent, and why wasn’t I thinking about her instead of myself. So I came to my senses.”
“You never remarried.”
“No,” Todd said softly. “And I never will. I had the most wonderful marriage any man ever dreamed of, lived with the sweetest, kindest woman on earth for eight beautiful years. Why the hell would I want to trade that memory for some woman who wants minks and a Cadillac?”
Blair took a long breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you then.”
“It was a long time ago.”
Blair was thinking. Quiet. “Is Niki there?” he asked, because it was very early on a Saturday morning. Perhaps they could talk and make peace.
“No,” came the reply, and there was concern in it. “She went hiking.”
“Hiking?” Blair asked, frowning. “Isn’t that tricky, when the pollen count is so high?”
“Our Mr. Brady thinks it will be good for her not to pamper herself,” Todd said coolly. “She took plenty of water along.”
“And her rescue inhaler?”
“I’m sure she did,” Todd replied. “She knows better than to leave home without it this time of year.”
Blair hesitated. “I might come down for a few days next week. If it’s all right.”
“It’s all right with me,” Todd said. “On the other hand, you might want to make sure it’s okay with Niki. She’s been rather vocal about you lately, and not in a good way.”
He grimaced. “I’ve made some mistakes with her. Some bad ones.”
“You might want to patch them up before she ends up married to the California health nut,” Todd said curtly. “She spends too much time with him, and he has an influence on her that I don’t like. Asthma isn’t just in the mind. A man like that could push her over the edge. She had an attack once that almost killed her when she couldn’t get to her inhaler, and she was even at home at the time. Tex, God bless him, was quick on his feet or we’d have lost her. Got her the inhaler, had the ambulance there in a heartbeat.”
“He’s fond of her,” Blair said, and couldn’t manage to keep the edge out of his voice.
“He’s crazy about her,” her father corrected. “But Niki likes him the way she likes most men. He’s just a friend.”
That was a relief. But the California man worried him. A lot. “She doesn’t need some insensitive nut taking her places she shouldn’t be going in the first place. Hiking, for God’s sake!” he burst out.
“Well, I can’t stop it,” Todd replied heavily. “Believe me, I tried. He’s convinced her that she’s just pampering herself, that she’s not frail, that exercise and fresh air will turn her into an Amazon.”
“Not likely.” Blair’s tone was ice-cold.
“You and I know that. Niki doesn’t. She’s been different since we came home from Mexico,” he added quietly. “She’s grown old in front of my eyes. I miss the daughter who was sparkling like a jewel, always smiling no matter how bad things got.”
Blair closed his eyes and shuddered mentally, because he knew why Niki was that way. He knew who’d turned her old overnight.
“It might do you good to come down here for a while,” Todd added. “Just, uh, don’t bring Janet with you, okay?”
“I’d like to leave her in Frankfurt forever,” the other man said shortly. “I know how deer feel in hunting season.”
“She really has the hots for you.”
“She has the hots for my money,” Blair said. “That’s the only thing she wants.”
“I wouldn’t say that, Blair,” Todd replied. “You’re a good man. She’d be lucky to have you.”
He drew in a breath. “I knew her years ago. We were just friends. But she wanted to settle down. I didn’t. At least, I didn’t until Elise charmed me to a wedding chapel in Vegas.”
“That ended badly.”
“Yes, and now Janet’s taking over where Elise left off,” he laughed humorlessly. “It’s not working. I can’t stand the sight of her now. I had my attorney tell her that if she showed up in one more place I was, I’d have the police arrest her for stalking. I could make the charge stick, too.”
“That would hit her right in the pocketbook.”
“It’s the only vulnerable thing about her,” Blair sighed. He looked around the lonely hotel room in Germany and thought absently that he spent his whole life in hotels. He had a house that he never saw. He hated it, because it was empty. Like he was empty. Like his life was empty.
“Maybe I need a break from business,” he added.
“It might help.”
“Don’t let her marry the health nut, Todd,” Blair said quietly.
“I can’t stop her from doing anything she wants to,” came the wry reply. “You know that.” He paused. “If you want to stop her, get down here and do it yourself.”
Blair pursed his lips. “I might just do that. Of course, people would talk.”
“People always talk. So what?”
He smiled. “I’ll phone you the night before I come down.”
“That works. Be careful over there.”
“I’m always careful. See you.”
“See you.”
If he’d wondered how his best friend would feel about him and Niki, he had the answer. He felt as if a weight had been lifted from him. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it could work between them. He remembered the feverish hunger Niki had for him, the love shining out of her bright eyes, the response she couldn’t even hide when he held her.
He ground his teeth together. First order of business was to get home and see Niki.
* * *
“NIKI, YOU’RE FALLING BEHIND,” Dan muttered, coming back to see about her. “You have to keep up.”
“I’m...trying...” she panted. It was hard to even draw a breath. Her harebrained scheme felt more and more ridiculous as she tried to get air into her lungs. The problem was that she couldn’t get it out in the first place. Air came in and stayed.
She felt dizzy. She looked at Dan with eyes that barely saw him through the discomfort.
“I...can’t...breathe,” she whispered.
“You have to just work your lungs,” he said curtly. “Come on, Niki, just breathe!”
If she’d had the strength, she’d have smacked him in the head with all her strength. She didn’t even have enough wind to answer him.
An older woman in the party, Nancy, came back to see about her, frowning.
“Niki, do you have your inhaler?” the woman asked gently.
Niki managed to shake her head. “Forgot...it...”
The woman lifted Niki’s hand and stared at her fingernails, then at her lips. “Call 911,” she told Dan. “Do it right now!”
“But we’re almost halfway through the hike,” Dan said, not comprehending. “She can make it. She just needs to rest a minute or two and concentrate on her breathing.”
“You lamebrained idiot!” the woman snapped at him. “She’s cyanotic, can’t you see?” She held Niki’s blue fingernails up to him. “She’ll go into anaphylactic shock and die if you don’t get help for her right now!”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Dan started to argue.
Niki started wheezing violently and fell to the ground.
“I’m a nurse. I know a medical emergency when I see one!” She pulled out her cell phone and dialed 911.