The Welcoming

hated it.
    The pill Roman had insisted she swallow had made her groggy. She drifted off periodically, only to wake later, annoyed that she didn’t have enough control to stay awake and be bored. Because reading made her headache worse, she tried to work up some interest in the small portable television perched on the shelf across the room.
    When she’d found
The Maltese Falcon
flickering in black and white she’d felt both pleasure and relief. If she had to be trapped in bed, it might as well be with Bogart. Even as Sam Spade succumbed to the Fat Man’s drug, Charity’s own medication sent her under. She awoke in a very poor temper to a rerun of a sitcom.
    He’d made her promise to stay in bed, she thought, jabbing an elbow at her pillow. And he didn’t even have the decency to spend five minutes keeping her company. Apparently he was too busy to fit a sickroom call into his schedule. That was fine for him, she decided, running around doing something useful while she was moldering between the sheets. It wasn’t in her nature to do nothing, and if she had to do it for five minutes longer she was going to scream.
    Charity smiled a bit as she considered that. Just what would he do if she let out one long bloodcurdling scream? It might be interesting to find out. Certainly more interesting, she decided, than watching a blond airhead jiggle around a set to the beat of a laugh track. Nodding, she sucked in her breath.
    “What are you doing?”
    She let it out again in a long huff as Roman pushed open the door. Pleasure came first, but she quickly buried it in resentment. “You’re always asking me that.”
    “Am I?” He was carrying another tray. Charity distinctly caught the scent of Mae’s prize chicken soup and her biscuits. “Well, what were you doing?”
    “Dying of boredom. I think I’d rather be shot.” After eyeing the tray, she decided to be marginally friendly. But not because she was glad to see him, she thought. It was dusk, and she hadn’t eaten for hours. “Is that for me?”
    “Possibly.” He set the tray over her lap, then stayed close and took a long, hard look at her. There was no way for him to describe the fury he felt when he saw the bruises and the bandages. Just as there was no way for him to describe the sense of pleasure and relief he experienced when he saw the annoyance in her eyes and the color in her cheeks.
    “I think you’re wrong, Charity. You’re going to live.”
    “No thanks to you.” She dived into the soup. “First you trick a promise out of me, then you leave me to rot for the next twelve hours. You might have come up for a minute to see if I had lapsed into a coma.”
    He
had
come up, about the time Sam Spade had been unwrapping the mysterious bird, but she’d been sleeping. Nonetheless, he’d stayed for nearly half an hour, just watching her.
    “I’ve been a little busy,” he told her, and broke off half of her biscuit for himself.
    “I’ll bet.” Feeling far from generous, she snatched it back. “Well, since you’re here, you might tell me how things are going downstairs.”
    “They’re under control,” he murmured, thinking of Bob and the phone calls that had already been made.
    “It’s only Bonnie’s second day. She hasn’t—”
    “She’s doing fine,” he said, interrupting her. “Mae’s watching her like a hawk. Where’d all these come from?” He gestured toward half a dozen vases of fresh flowers.
    “Oh, Lori brought up the daisies with the magazines. Then the ladies came up. They really shouldn’t have climbed all those stairs. They brought the wood violets.” She rattled off more names of people who had brought or sent flowers.
    He should have brought her some, Roman thought, rising and thrusting his hands into his pockets. It had never crossed his mind. Things like that didn’t, he admitted. Not the small, romantic things a woman like Charity was entitled to.
    “Roman?”
    “What?”
    “Did you come all the way up here to scowl at my peonies?”
    “No.” He hadn’t even known the name for them. He turned away from the fat pink blossoms. “Do you want any more to eat?”
    “No.” She tapped the spoon against the side of her empty bowl. “I don’t want any more to eat, I don’t want any more magazines, and I don’t want anyone else to come in here, pat my hand and tell me to get plenty of rest. So if that’s what you’ve got in mind you can leave.”
    “You’re a charming patient, Charity.” Checking his