All Through the Night: A Troubleshooter Christmas (3 page)

“I'm just a little…uncomfortable. Gastronomically. I had this taco as sort of a pseudo lunch,” he tried to explain. “I think it was bad.”

“You think you have food poisoning?” Robin's eyes were filled with such concern.

“No,” Jules said. Please, God, no. “It's just indigestion.”

“Maybe we should go to the hospital.”

“For indigestion?”

“For food poisoning.” Robin was exasperated. “Just because you don't want to call it what it is, babe, doesn't mean you get to change the facts.”

The wind blew, and suddenly Jules was freezing. “Oh, shit,” he said as he started to shiver violently. Just as suddenly, the taco made its play for escape. Jules barely managed to turn away from Robin as he got fiercely sick, right there on the sidewalk.

But Robin didn't recoil. In fact, he got closer, putting his arms around Jules, trying to stop his shaking. “All right,” he said. “Okay.” He took out his cell phone. “I'm calling an ambulance.”

“No,” Jules managed to say before the taco tried for an encore. “Use my phone. Call Alyssa.”

Sam Starrett was a sympathy vomiter. It didn't take him much to join the Technicolor interpretive dance, so he backed way off as Robin pretty much carried Jules into the hotel room.

“Bathroom's this way.” Alyssa took charge. Or at least she tried. Robin refused to relinquish control, even when, from the sound of things, Jules lunged for the toilet and started singing the age-old hymn to the porcelain god.

“Lys, you all right?” Sam called.

“I'm fine,” she called back. What a difference the time of day could make.

Feeling a tad green himself, Sam stepped out onto the balcony, closing the slider tightly behind him.

This was going to be an interesting night. When Robin called, Alyssa had been in the middle of trying to get Sam naked—which was not really that difficult a task. Sam had never been much of a challenge to his incredibly gorgeous wife, particularly in the
let's delay dinner to make love
department.

It
had
been something of a mood-changer, though, when she'd suddenly turned away from him, reaching to answer her phone. Like, there was anything in the world more important than this…?

But then he'd recognized the jaunty melody, too, as being Jules Cassidy's emergency ring tone. And the chances Sam was going to get some before dinner dropped to a solid “probably not.”

Jules and Alyssa had been whispering together a lot recently. Alyssa didn't want to talk about it, but Sam was pretty sure it had something to do with Robin, who was a dysfunctional emotional time bomb, just waiting for the most inopportune moment to explode.

From her seat on the edge of the bed, Alyssa said, “Oh, my God,” and “Of course,” and “A taco? Oh, no. Poor Jules,” and then? The kicker. “We've got two double beds—there's plenty of room. Definitely. Bring him here. The Sheraton. Room 842. Do you need me to come to the lobby?”

Sam let his head flop back against the pillow of one of their hotel room's beds. The place had been out of kings, which was a shame because he was tall and his feet dangled off the end of a double.

But that wasn't as big a shame as the fact that he was not only
not
getting some tonight, he was going to have to endure Jules's misery as he attempted to dry out his alcoholic fuckwad of a boyfriend, who'd no doubt gone off on another binge from hell—his first since getting out of rehab.

“Okay,” Alyssa said into her cell phone. “But if you need any help…” And then she totally surprised Sam with her next words. “Robin, shh, sweetie, it's really okay. We're glad you called. Honestly. Just get Jules over here as quickly as you can.”

Sam sat up. “
Jules
is bingeing?” It was a stupid thing to say—he knew it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Jules wasn't a big drinker to start with, and ever since Robin had gone into rehab he'd cut himself off, too, in solidarity.

Fortunately Alyssa was accustomed to Sam's occasional idiotic verbal explosions.

“Jules has food poisoning,” she informed him as she closed her cell phone. “They couldn't get a hotel room, so they have nowhere else to go. Robin just managed to get them a ride—I think he stood in the street and stopped traffic. They should be here in about ten minutes.”

You better get dressed.
Sam waited for the words, but they didn't come. Instead, Alyssa smiled at him, heat in her ocean green eyes.

Sam thought his wife was achingly beautiful when dressed in bulky cammie-print BDUs. She was gorgeous in jeans and a T-shirt, too, with her long legs, perfect breasts, and athletic build, without even a hint of makeup on her mocha-colored skin, her dark hair cut short and sleek, capping her African-princess face, framing her huge, otherworldly-colored eyes.

She was beautiful, as well, when she dressed up for dinner or a party—his favorite was that red dress with the short skirt. Shee-yit.

But Alyssa, wearing only underwear that she'd clearly bought for his pleasure…

By all rights, Sam should have been struck blind.

But that smile was loaded, and there was no doubt about it, it was his turn to talk, and perhaps say something brilliant this time. “I can name that tune in ten minutes.”

She laughed—which created a phenomenon in Sam's chest that he thought of as a pulmonary triple lutz. “Yeah, but can you do it in five?”

He reached for her, and she slipped into his arms.

Short answer? Yes.

Jules wouldn't stop apologizing.

In fact, the very last thing he mumbled before falling asleep, after the gastrointestinal explosions had stopped, after Robin had gotten him cleaned up, into a borrowed and much too large pair of Sam's sweatpants and a T-shirt, and tucked into bed, was “I'm so sorry.”

Robin sat with him for a while, just stroking his hair and watching him in the light from the bathroom.

Alyssa was curled up in the other bed. Robin thought she was asleep until his stomach growled loudly.

She chuckled. “Amazing that you could actually be hungry after that,” she said, speaking quietly so as not to disturb Jules. “I may never eat again.”

Robin laughed softly, too. “Thank you so much for letting us come here.”

“Please,” Alyssa said. “If you're going to be spending time with Jules, you need to understand that there is
nothing
Sam and I would not do for him. Are we clear on that?”

“Thank you,” Robin started, but she cut him off.

“No,” she said. “The correct response is
yes, ma'am, I understand.
”

“Okay,” he said. “Now you're scaring me a little.”

She laughed, but she was still looking at him pointedly, so he said, “Yes, ma'am, I understand.” But then he added, “There's nothing I wouldn't do, either. I know you probably don't believe that yet. You have reason to mistrust me—”

Alyssa interrupted him again. “Once when Jules and I were overseas, he got this really awful stomach virus. It was…bad. I wanted to help him, but he wouldn't let me near him. He can be so stubborn and…I was impressed tonight at the way you just shouted him down. You wouldn't take his shit.” She laughed. “Okay. Bad choice of words.”

Robin laughed, too. “Yeah, well…”

Just stop,
Robin had told Jules at an unfortunately higher volume than he would have liked when Jules had tried to push him away.
I'm not going anywhere, so just fucking get used to it.

Of course, maybe bellowing
Why? Because I love you, okay?
at the top of his lungs, in front of Jules's skeptical best friend, had helped lower her skepticism a little.

“Sam went out to get some sandwiches a few hours ago,” Alyssa told him as his stomach rumbled again. “He thought you might be hungry after the…fireworks ended. He's still out on the balcony, because he's…well…”

“He's Sam,” Robin finished for her. “I know.” Jules had told him all about Sam's tendency to lose his lunch in response to brutal injury or death. It was kind of funny, actually—the big, tough Navy SEAL, on his knees…Of course, during the violence, he was always in the thick of things—kicking ass and saving the day. But after it was over? Vomit time.

He was also, Jules had said, prone to the dread chain reaction. If someone else entered the vomitron, Sam would climb right in, too. Which was why he'd scrambled outside when Robin had carried Jules in.

“If you want,” Alyssa said, “I'll keep an eye on Jules while you go out there and get something to eat.”

Jules was breathing slowly and steadily. He'd been tired before the fireworks—good word for it—and now he was completely wrung out. Robin leaned over and kissed him gently on the forehead before standing up.

“Thanks,” he said, even though he was thinking,
A sandwich with Sam. Oh, boy.
Sam was even scarier than Alyssa. He had this way of looking at Robin as if he were fresh birdcrap on the windshield of his recently detailed sports car.

Still, Robin was going to have to sit down and have a conversation with the big former SEAL one of these days. Why not right now?

He grabbed his jacket as he crossed to the slider. But before he got there, Alyssa said, “Hey, Robin?”

He turned to look at her in the dimness.

“I understand, too,” she said. “How much you love Jules. And for the record? I think it's great. He's been waiting for you, his entire life.”

“That means a lot to me,” Robin managed to choke out, and great. Now as he pushed past the closed drapes and stepped out into the chill of the balcony, he had fricking tears in his eyes.

Sam had the light on out there, and as Robin closed the slider behind him, the former SEAL put down the book he'd been reading.

And there it was, that birdcrap-on-the-windshield withering look.

Jesus, Robin needed a drink.

And okay. Great. Maybe this wasn't the right time for this altercation, if it meant he was going to start thinking
that
kind of bullshit.

“Alyssa said there were sandwiches?” Robin made it a question, but there was an obvious deli bag on the table next to Sam. Maybe the man would just point to it, and let Robin eat in silence, after which he'd go back inside and curl up in that bed, with his arms around Jules.

And sure enough, Sam pointed. But he also said in his Texas cowboy drawl, “Turkey and swiss, roast beef, or veggie wrap. I wasn't sure what you'd want.”

“Turkey's perfect,” Robin said, digging through the bag. “Thank you so much.”

“There's soda, too.” And there was, indeed, a second bag on the floor. “Or bottled water. Have a seat.”

Robin sat, because that was an order, not a request. But he'd never been particularly good with authority, which was probably why he said, “No beer or wine coolers, huh?”

And okay. He was now disgusting purple birdcrap.

“I'm curious,” Sam said when he finally spoke. “Why do you think that's funny? Because I don't find it funny at all.”

“It's not funny,” Robin agreed. “You scare the hell out of me, and not just because you could probably kill me with your pinky finger. I'm well aware that you don't like me—for good reasons and…You know, I could really use a meeting.” He looked up from his sandwich and said around it, “Alcoholics Anonymous. I go. A lot.”

“I know what a meeting is.” Sam managed to look even more annoyed. “I've been to plenty. Both AA and Al-Anon.”

Robin just looked at him.

Sam shrugged. “My mother,” he said. “She's been sober for over a decade. She's still involved in the program, so yeah, I've been to my share of meetings.”

“I didn't know that,” Robin said.

“Jules told me,” Sam said, “that
your
mom didn't make it.”

This was surreal. Of all the topics to broach among relative strangers…Still, Robin managed to nod. “DUI and DOA when I was eleven.”