Chapter 22: The Jacket

Imogen's POV

Rory woke at two in the morning with his forehead burning.

I put my hand on it and my heart dropped.

"Mama, my head is hot," he said, in a voice that was too small.

He lay in the middle of the hotel bed, wrapped in a gray jacket that was three sizes too big.

He had refused to let go of it all evening.

It was Lachlan's.

I took his temperature twice, and the number did not change.

Ansel's mother woke and felt his cheeks and told me to call a doctor.

I called the desk, and the desk said a doctor would take an hour in the snow.

I hung up and sat on the edge of the bed with my son's hand in mine.

Somebody knocked on the door.

I opened it with the chain on.

Lachlan stood in the hall in his shirtsleeves, with his collar open and shadows under his eyes.

He had been in the corridor all night.

Two of his security men had moved their chairs to the far end.

He had taken the chair outside my door, and I had not known.

"I heard him cough," he said. "Is he all right?"

"He has a fever."

"I've called our doctor. She's on her way. Twenty minutes."

I took the chain off.

He stood in my doorway, and he did not step in, and I watched him look at the bed.

"Mama, is it the big man?" Rory said thickly. "Tell him he can have his coat. I'm hot."

"It's yours," Lachlan said. "Keep it."

My son's face crumpled with sleepy relief. "Okay."

The doctor came.

She was brisk and quiet, and she looked in Rory's ears and throat.

She said it was a virus and he needed fluids and rest.

By four the fever had broken.

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