"And the apartment that looks like a fancy furniture showroom," she added, hoping he wouldn't be offended.

He laughed and squeezed her hand. "Ma says it's like some guy has on her favorite soap. But yeah, that's why, and that's why I keep it so clean. Ma's a slob - and a rotten cook, which is why I learned how."

"It's handy for me that you did." She heard shouting on the TV and glanced over to see numbers flashing on the screen and the ball of lights in Times Square dropping. "Oh, look. It's almost New Year's."

"I'd rather look at you," he said, bending awkwardly to look at her, facing away from him in his lap.

"Happy New Year, Nikolia."

She squirmed in his lap, eventually managing to roll over and partially sit up. "Happy New Year, Bill."

She wrapped an arm around him and struggled to face him enough to kiss him. He helped her get better positioned and supported her in his arms. "I love you, sweetheart."

Their New Year's kiss was even sweeter and more heart- stopping than their first hot fudge-flavored one.

Bill tiptoed out of the bedroom the next afternoon. Nik was sleeping, as she'd been almost constantly since they went to bed last night. That apparently meant that her down cycle had moved on to the next stage. The first stage, with its increasing muscle pain and nearly-complete insomnia, was over. Nik had warned him that she'd sleep most of the time for the next several days, and that he shouldn't bother waking her to eat. He hated leaving her alone like that, but he'd respect her wishes.

While he had the chance, he'd better call Ma and wish her a Happy New Year. He went into Nik's office/gym and shut the door in order not to disturb her.

Ma answered right away. "H'llo?"

"h.e.l.lo, Ma. It's Bill. Happy New Year."

"Same to you. You been out? I tried callin' you earlier."

He had to tell her at least a little of the story. "I'm staying at Nik's for a while, Ma. She's sick and I'm making sure she eats and all that." She was probably the one person in the world who'd believe that.

He'd done the same thing often enough for her.

"Is she sick or hurt?" Suspicion in Ma's voice now. She still wasn't totally sure he wasn't like Pop.

His stomach knotted. "She's sick, Ma. I - Ma, I couldn't ever do like Pop." She had to believe him!

After a few seconds, Ma grunted her agreement. "I guess you couldn't, Billy. I forget sometimes how much you hated what he did to me."

How could she forget that? All the times he'd tried to protect her, only to get beaten worse for it? All the times he'd begged her to run away with him - even at ten, he'd have run away and taken care of her forever if she'd been willing to go. She hadn't run away, but he was taking care of her forever, anyway.

He suddenly wondered if he'd done the right thing. Had Ma been glad when he got rid of Pop? Should he have left home instead? He couldn't ask her now. "You doing okay, Ma? Should I send an extra check?"

"I'm - all right," she said, noticeably hesitant. "I - ah - well, I'm going to meetings every day."

"Meetings?" Her part-time job at the convenience store didn't involve any meetings, as far as he knew.

"Yeah. What you said last week got me thinkin'. I been hitting the booze pretty hard since your old man kicked, but nothin' don't ever get fixed by suckin' down the joy juice. So I started hitting these meetings instead, and I'm doin' my best to dry out."

"That's great, Ma!"

"It's hard as h.e.l.l, is what it is. This one lady I met over there says I oughta go to one of them clinics like the movie stars do, but that's gotta cost a bundle and it's prob'ly no better'n doin' it alone."

It might be more likely to work, though. "I think it's a good idea, Ma, and I've got the money. Ask herwhere she thinks you should go and I'll set it up."

"I wasn't askin' you to pay for it!" she protested, but he knew she'd at least hoped he'd suggest it.

"I know, Ma, but I -" Well, geez. He might as well say it. "I love you, Ma, and I want you to get better. I know it's tough to stop drinking, and those places know the best ways to help you."

"Oh, Billy," she sobbed. "You're such a good boy."

Geez. Nik talked about him being sweet and a nice guy, and Ma said he was a good boy. At this rate, his reputation would be totally destroyed.

Nik needed to go to the bathroom, and it was no use pretending she didn't. Everything hurt while she was simply lying here, anyway, so it wasn't like she was saving herself any pain.

Okay. First, roll onto her side. Then, inch her legs over the edge of the bed, and use the weight of her legs dropping to help tip her top half into a sitting position. Now rest a minute, so she wouldn't get dizzy when she tried to stand.

Standing after being in bed for hours was the part she hated the most. It made her feel like an old-old-old lady - not the pain so much as the way she couldn't stand up straight and had almost no balance. She had to stand with her legs a foot or more apart, her knees bent, and the rest of her body hunched over like - well, like a hunchback.

And walking the ten feet into the bathroom was like staggering a mile! She put her hand up and ran it along the closet door as she went, not really supporting herself with it, just having it there in case she needed it.

Bill came into the bedroom while she was sitting on the toilet. He glanced in and asked, "You okay, sweetheart?"

"Sure," she said, wishing suddenly she was wearing a nightgown. She felt incredibly vulnerable, naked on the toilet.

He wasn't looking, though. He was busy smoothing the sheets and rearranging the covers. "Since you're awake, you should have something to eat. What would you like?"

"Oh, I'll make something after I get done in here."

"That's one of the reasons I'm here, Nik," he reminded her. "Just tell me what you'd like. And later, if you want to move around a little, I'll help you do some exercises before you go back to sleep."

She knew he loved her, but still, it was hard to believe he'd continue being this sweet and helpful for her whole down cycle. No point in borrowing trouble, though. "You're going to think this sounds gross, but what I want is milk toast."

"What's that?"

"Well, you start by putting a piece of bread in the toaster. Then you get out this special serving bowl I keep on the same shelf as my plates. You pour soy milk about an inch deep into the bowl and zap it in the microwave for a minute. When the toast pops up, you put b.u.t.ter on it and put it in the bowl of hot milk. The milk soaks into the bread and makes it all mushy, and then I eat it." He turned around to stare at her, his lips pulled back from his teeth. "That sounds awful! Are you sure you don't want something else?"

"I'm sure. It's nutritious and comforting to my system." She'd better explain. "I don't know if I said this before, but my digestion gets really messed up when I'm having a down cycle. I have to be super careful of what I eat."

His face contorted with sympathetic pain. "Okay, but isn't there anything we can do to make this less awful for you? Maybe there are new treatments -"

She hated to dash his hopes, but she shook her head. "I keep up on all the literature, and try out virtually everything the researchers suggest." It was eating at him, she knew, and she needed to make him understand. "What I do isn't elegant, but it works fairly well for me. I know it's frustrating to see this happening and not be able to stop it, but you have to realize - just by being here, you're helping an incredible amount."

His lips pressed together tightly, he shook his head. "I wish I could do more."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

Bill grabbed the phone on the first ring. Nik was sleeping, and he didn't want the phone to disturb her.

"Harding residence."

There was a pause, then Neal's voice asked, "Bill?"

"Neal! You finally got back!" Nik had hoped he'd be back right after New Year's, and now it was a week later. "How did it go with the gallery?"

"Great! The guy up on Vancouver Island took three of my pictures, and he says when they sell, he wants more. And on the way back, we stopped in Bellevue where this woman who comes to Marian's sometimes has a gallery, and she took two."

"Hey, that's great. Say, I wanted to tell you how much I like the sketch of Nik."

He laughed. "Thanks - I knew you did, that's why I switched it on Nik. You wouldn't believe the lecture she gave me on the drive home about it, though! 'If you ever pull that kind of stunt again' - blah, blah, blah. Say listen, I had a message to call her. Is she around?"

He sighed. "Look, Neal, she's asleep right now. How about I tell her to call you sometime?"

"I guess." He sounded suspicious. "But it's only eight o'clock. Is she okay?"

Now it was Bill's turn to say, "I guess - maybe you can tell me for sure. She's having one of those down cycle things -"

Neal interrupted, "Oh, no. How bad is it?"

"How should I know?" he demanded, then caught himself. "Sorry, I just feel kind of lost about the whole thing." Lost wasn't what he felt - gut-wrenching scared was more like it. But maybe Neal's experience would help rea.s.sure him - unless she was sicker than she said and he really should be scared. "She says she's okay, but she's been sleeping every minute she isn't working for a week now, and that doesn't seem right."

Neal sighed. "I know what you mean. It's so hard to see her suffering, and not be able to do anythingabout it. But a week isn't unusual at all - in fact, if anything, it'll probably go on for another week or more."

Just what he wanted to hear! "d.a.m.n. And there really isn't anything I can do? I'm taking care of the place, and feeding her the little she'll eat, but I keep wondering if there's something more she won't ask me to do."

"You're staying there?"

"Yeah."

He made an amused sound. "Then consider yourself lucky. She's letting you do a lot more than she lets me do. All she lets me do is get her groceries for her."

"I thought you lived with her for a while."

"Yeah, but that was years ago, when she didn't have the fibro under control at all. Once she got onto this diet and exercise kick and started feeling better, she wanted me out of there. I made her nervous, just being in the same house - so don't feel funny if you get on her nerves, too."

She hadn't said anything about it, but he'd have to ask. It wouldn't be right for her to have to put up with that, along with everything else.

These nightly ma.s.sages were addictive. They didn't really fix anything, but Nik thought they helped her sleep a little better. It made sense - a lot of times, pain was what woke her up. She'd be sleeping and go to roll over, and it would hurt, and zap - she'd be awake. Bill's ma.s.sages helped her muscles relax, and relaxed muscles were more flexible and less painful. The effect only lasted a few hours, but a few hours of relief was way better than nothing.

She wasn't getting into that zone of bliss as much as usual tonight, and the reason was incredibly embarra.s.sing. It was totally idiotic, but her body wasn't interpreting Bill touching her as as.e.xual ma.s.sage.

Her stupid body was getting turned on.

Maybe that was understandable. It had been a couple of weeks since they'd made love, yet they were living together and sleeping together the whole time. And Bill was a s.e.xy guy - she'd thought about that this morning when she saw him drying off after his shower.

The problem was that she was still in way too much pain to make love. So she had to forget about this completely-pointless fog of desire he was inadvertently creating and work hard at getting better as quickly as possible.

She shifted slightly on the bed, bringing her legs closer together and hoping that he'd interpret that as time to move on from her upper thighs and b.u.t.tocks. Once he got to her back, she wouldn't need to worry.

Those muscles were tight enough that even his gentlest touch would hurt, and that would blast the arousal away.

He didn't take the hint. In fact, he probed exactly where she didn't want him to, and then he leaned over and spoke right into her ear. "Does that feel good, Nikolia?"

She couldn't lie, so she said, "You shouldn't do that."

He kept on doing it and asked, "Why not? You seem to like it." She tensed her muscles and rolled onto her side, facing the edge of the bed. "Because we can't make love, and all that'll do is frustrate both of us." He was so helpful and understanding most of the time - why did he have to pick now to be clueless?

He was suddenly lying right next to her, his body pressing into her back, and his arm around her waist.

"No need for frustration, sweetheart. I'll just hold you and touch you, and it'll be almost as good as doing it the other way."

And with that, he tipped her partway over on her back, so that her weight was resting on his body. He slipped his right arm between her and the bed, and started using both hands on her most sensitive areas.

His mouth rested just below her left ear, and he somehow managed to transform those few inches of skin into an unbelievably erogenous zone in their own right.

It still seemed wrong, though. He shouldn't go to all this trouble and not get anything out of it. She could feel his arousal through his clothes, pressing into her at just the perfect location - and that gave her an idea. "We could make love in this position."

"That's right, sweetheart. That's what we're doing." He continued making her feel so incredibly good that she could barely believe it.

"No - not this! Take your clothes off!"

He kissed the outer rim of her earlobe. "Baby, just relax. This'll be good, and I won't hurt you this way. I couldn't stand to hurt you."

"You won't hurt me. This position doesn't put any strain on my muscles at all." Well, maybe that wasn't completely true, but it was close enough. He was supporting her body, and she didn't have to hold her limbs in awkward positions.

"Then maybe we'll try it next time. For now, just enjoy."

Suddenly, she almost hated him. He knew her body so well, and he was using that knowledge to cloud her mind and her will, driving her farther and farther, a.s.suming he could make her forget what she really wanted.

She wasn't going to let him win. She shoved his hands away. "Either you get your d.a.m.n clothes off in the next five seconds, or I'll rip them off myself." And that would hurt.

"Okay, okay." He sounded annoyed, amused, and a bit pleased. In any case, he rolled away. He was back in a few seconds, and the warm hard length of him against her body made her want to purr. He groaned. "Geez, Nik, you feel so good."

Right after that, he took her breath away, and rational thought flew out the window.

"Ma, I told you before - I'll call you tomorrow to let you know. I have to see how Nik's doing first." Bill hated being short with her, but she just wouldn't let up.

"Whatever you say, Billy," she said in that meek voice that made him feel like a bully. "Goodnight, Billy."