The Best Candidate

Chapter 14

A/N: This is a reprint of part of chapter 13 that had been left out in error when it was first published. Author noted that the incomplete chapter had immediately gotten reads and votes and readers might have missed the parts that were printed in the re-published one so here's the part that some readers might have missed out on.

(Max's POV)

"I asked if you kissed me just now," I said. "Were you dreaming?"

I wanted to ask whom he was dreaming of but I was afraid to know the answer.

"I ... I ..." he started to scratch his head.

I gave an awkward laugh.

"It better have been a lady but with a lovely face like mine," I teased, but my chest ached a little at the thought that he surely had someone else in mind.

"I can't remember what I was dreaming about," he said. "Does your wound still hurt?"

Slick. Very slick. The change in topic distracted me.

I placed my fingers lightly on the bandaged area of my head.

"It still hurts," I said. "But it's a dull kind of pain. Tolerable."

"Do you want to take a regular pain pill for it?" he asked.

"Nah," I said, "I can tolerate the pain."

I almost added, but not the pain in my heart.

"Alright then," he said. "Don't hesitate to wake me up if you need help with anything."

I almost said, "Can I wake you up with a kiss the way you woke me up with one?" But of course I had to keep it hidden in my heart.

I could tell that Tul was not affected at all by me lying beside him in bed because in a short time he had fallen asleep once more, snoring softly, but not loud enough to keep me awake.

I lay awake beside him wondering who the person was in his dream. Could it have been Ella?

If it had been Ella, I shouldn't be too surprised because after all Mook and I had brought them together with the goal of him becoming Ella's boyfriend.

Then it occurred to me that since they had spent hours at the beach today, there was the possibility that they had eventually shared a kiss. And that kiss must have been so memorable for Tul that it had wandered into his dream.

Finally, out of mental exhaustion I found myself drifting off to sleep.

I was awakened by a clinking sound.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," Tul said with a smile. He was standing beside my bed holding a bowl. "I made you a bowl of seaweed and egg drop soup."

He was scooping some of it into a spoon and then dropping it back into the bowl to speed up the cooling. That accounted for the clinking sound that had woken me up.

I tried to scoot up towards the head board of the bed to go into a sitting position.

When Tul saw me wincing in pain, he set the bowl down on to the bedside table and helped me to sit up properly.

The nearness of him, the feel of his arms around my chest and back was doing all sorts of things to my emotions. It was all I could do to keep me from putting my arms around him too.

When he thought that I felt comfortable enough in the sitting position that he had helped me get into, he retrieved the bowl from the bedside table and scooped some of the soup with the mini ladle.

"Open up," he said as he brought it close to my mouth.

I made a face at him.

"My arms did not suffer any injury," I said, "I am perfectly capable of feeding myself."

"Let me pamper you today," he said with a smile.

What he just said made me recall that night when we invited him to dinner to meet Ella and he was cutting Ella's meat into bite size pieces for her. Mook had told him not to spoil Ella early on but Tul had insisted saying that he liked to spoil women.

Was he trying to spoil me as well?

But then again I realized that he would only spoil the person whom he loved, and that person definitely was not me.

"No," I said to him. "I don't want you to pamper me."