Page 67 of A Labor of Hate
At my blatant lie, my stomach growled.I ignored it.
Colt’s frown deepened, and his eyes sparked dangerously when they dipped to my silicone-less torso.“You need to eat, Lex.”
“I will.Tomorrow.”
He huffed in frustration.“You need to eat tonight, too.You can’t keep skipping meals.It’s not good for you.”
I stared blankly at him, my mind puzzling through his behavior despite my resolve to think about him as little as possible.Why did he care so much?One missed dinner wouldn’t kill me, no matter what my stomach had to say on the matter.
Come to think of it, he’d noticed exactly how many times I’d skipped lunch at work before this assignment, too.But why?Was he worried I’d keel over and fail to do my job?
Rather than asking him any of this, though, my attention wandered to the plate again.My eyebrows pulled together before I could school my neutral expression back into place.“You made chicken.On a Tuesday.”
As I’d learned the past few weeks, the lunches Colt brought to work were usually the leftovers from dinner the night before.Last night was chicken Caesar salad, yet he’d made chicken tonight.He’d broken his routine.Again.
He looked away, a faint pink spreading across his cheeks.“Yes.I did.”
“Why?”
The corner of his mouth relaxed.It wasn’t a smile or even a smirk, but at least his frown wasn’t as pronounced.“You don’t have a monopoly on spontaneity, you know.”
“In this marriage I do,” I mumbled, too baffled to hold my tongue.
Was today some sort of fluke?Delaying making dinneranddeviating from his original plans for it?I could barely tell a whisk from a spoon most of the time, but even I knew this meal couldn’t have been the fastest option out of all the alternatives.Getting back on his schedule had nothing to do with it.
His lips curled into a faint smile, and he offered the plate to me again.“Now will you please eat?”
Thunder exploded outside, shaking the walls.I flinched involuntarily.
Colt, naturally, zeroed in on the reflex immediately.His frown returned with a vengeance, and he took half a step toward me.Almost as if he were…concerned.
Before another crack of thunder could expose my phobia even more, I snatched the plate from Colt and stepped back, my hand already on the door to close it.“Actually, you’re right.I’m starving.Thanks for dinner.”
I’d only budged the door a few inches when Colt put his hand out to stop it.The sudden movement, brazen and out of character as it was, stopped me in my tracks, too.He wasfullof surprises today.
Rather than explaining what had possessed him tonight, he studied me closely.Intently.Eerily close to how he’d looked at me outside when I’d decided it was a grand idea to try to kiss him.But it was different, too.More all-seeing rather than appreciative, like he was breaking down whatever barriers concealed my soul, one by one.Picking the locks, cracking the safes, and setting them aside.
My skin crawled from his intensity.A chill danced over my spine, equally delicious and unsettling.But I didn’t let any of it show.
Until thunder crashed overhead, less than a minute since the last one.Lightning flashed with enough violence to illuminate the hallway behind Colt and bleed past the blinds.The lights flickered ominously.
I flinched again and cast a wary glance at the window.What were the odds that the howling wind would turn into a tornado?Did Detroit get tornados?I didn’t want to find out.
“Lex?”Colt asked, inching farther into the room and eying me like I might bolt at any second.When I didn’t, his shoulders relaxed a touch.“You don’t like thunder.”
“Storms,” I finished, white-knuckling the plate and casting a backward glance in the direction of the lamp with the listening device.“Thunderstorms, yeah.As you know, I’m… not a fan.”
That was putting it mildly, considering how I used to hide in Dekker’s room with her whenever there was a thunderstorm.All the way until she graduated high school, at which point I hid alone in her empty room in the basement.
None of which I would tell Colt, in threat of death.
A smile ghosted across his lips, and I narrowed my eyes.Sure, it was odd that a full-grown adult FBI agent was scared of something so commonplace as thunderstorms, but he didn’t have to look so amused about it.
“It’s not funny,” I hissed.
He sobered immediately.“I know it’s not.I was thinking of something else.”
That seemed as likely as me turning into a potato, but, hey, he’d broken his routine twice today, so maybe anything was possible after all.
