Billionaires At War

CHAPTER XXV

After pulling away from her, he looked over at her, managing a small smile as he took in her appearance. Hair packed neatly into a hairnet without one strand out of place. Her nails, resting on her lap, remained neatly manicured, but some of the nail polish on it had chipped off after three days. A gas mask meant to be over her mouth and nose hang loosely beneath her chin, and the bags beneath her eyes faded.

"You have every right to be mad at me."

Her eyes lifted as she shrugged her shoulders, keeping an arm securely around her stitched side. "I promise that when all this morphine is out of my system, I would scream at you for as long as my lungs can manage."

"What did the doctor say?"

"Not much I wanted to hear, and mother said too much, I didn't need to hear those. Concerning my ribs, well it turns out that I fell hard enough to break a rib and I needed surgery. Nothing much to be panicked about, but I won't be throwing my arms in anger anytime soon."

"Someone needs to teach you some good old humour. You are lacking in a lot."

"Humour would be me wanting to get off this bed just to strangle the nurse that was assigned to me. She is such a drag, I am not sure where I would bury the body though, but I doubt I would care."

"Murder is a crime."

She shrugged again and dragged the hairnet off her head so she could set her wild locks free of their constraints. She sent her nails through the tick strands and tried, but failed, to smoothen them. Her lips pouted as she watched the lines on the monitor dance around on its screen.

"Well, maybe this particular crime needs committing.."

"Back to the topic of me begging for forgiveness, I do really mean that I am sorry. If I had known all this would have happened..."

"You would still have done the same thing. By the way, I might be a short fuse, but I can be sensible when the situation calls for it. What happened was the fault of no one," she sighed as if the words were hard to repeat. "Everyone is making a big deal about it, and it pisses me off more than anything else. Couples kiss all the time, not that we are a couple or anything, but you know what I am saying."

"You babble when you don't arrange your words before you speak."

"Tell me something about me that I don't already know," she puffed at a strand of hair that snuck out of her messy arrangements. and it floated to the side of her face. "All I am trying to say is that what you did was uncalled for but, the drama afterwards was the fault of other people."

He nodded and pushed towards the door, "I am going to leave you to rest because, by the look of that hand on your rib, you must be very uncomfortable. I know asking you this would be like asking Jupiter to come closer but still, try and get some rest."

"Before you go," she reached out to hold his hand just as he was about to leave. Consciously, she dropped her fingers and laced them together over her blanketed lap. "I do mean it when I say that all this drama wasn't your fault. The thing is, we are going to be working closely now because of this project, and it would be wise, for everyone sake, if you turn down the flirting whenever we are together. I don't want more misunderstandings. Neither with your girlfriend nor with the kind of relationship we share."

Harrison chuckled slyly, drawing closer to her to sit on the space by her hip. He stretched his hand to rest it on the other side of the bed, effectively bringing his face closer to her own. "To start, Josephine is no longer my girlfriend. To end, I have told you many times that I am not flirting with you. Charming is me being my normal self, but you don't seem to be getting the message."