Page 87 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
“And this?” She held up the emerald.
“I might have made some improvements.”
“Oh.” She wanted to mock him but she couldn’t quite pull it off.
“Does it play music? Sync to the cloud?”
“It’s waterproof now. Better range.”
“Very convenient.”
“Almost unlimited battery life.”
“Excellent.” But she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “You stole it.”
He smiled down at his feet. “I stole it.” He looked like a little boy who was sheepish and guilty but absolutely going to do it again because getting caught would be worth it. “Are you hungry?” Alex hadn’t thought about it until then, but she wasn’t hungry. She wasravenous. “I made soup. If you don’t like it, I can make something else. Or go pick something up,” he said as she followed him through the nearly empty rooms.
“You don’t have furniture.”
“I have a pot. And some flatware. A couple of bowls.” It was almost cute, how defensive he sounded.
And then it felt almost normal, the way she settled onto the lone chair at the lone table and watched him move around the old-fashioned kitchen. He heated the soup in his one pot and then poured it into his two bowls, and then they ate in near silence as he leaned against the counter, watching her every move.
She ate two bowls because, of course, Michael Kingsley was an excellent cook. She was just contemplating how wise (or embarrassing) it might be to ask for a third when he said, “You talk in your sleep.”
She hadn’t been expecting that. Not because she didn’t know. She’d spent her whole childhood sleeping on the other side of the room from Zoe, after all. But no one else had ever mentioned it before.
“In German. You speak German. When you sleep.”
Oh. “That’s probably because I dream in German.”
His head shot up in surprise. “You do?” It was like it was the first thing she’d ever said or done that had actually surprised him.
“And French,” she added.
“Not English?”
“Sometimes. But mostly... it doesn’t matter. My head translates so fast, they all sound the same”—she tapped her temple—“in here.” King was looking at her oddly, studying her in a way she’d never seen before, as if she’d just become more mysterious, but also, at the same time, suddenly made sense. “What?”
“Nothing,” he blurted a little too quickly. “I just thought I was the only one. I didn’t know...”
And something about that made Alex bristle. “That I was qualified.”
“No. That you were like me.”
Alex was many, many things, but like King? Never.
She wanted to ask him what he meant—if it was a compliment or an insult, if she should have been offended or enraged. But she couldn’t think of the words—not in any language—so, instead, she just said, “My mother was a language teacher. And we lived... everywhere. My father’s job took us all over. Engineer,” she filled in before he could ask. “And everywhere we went, Mom would make us learn the new language, but she also wouldn’t let us forget the old one. For a while, she had a rule that we had to speak Latin at the table.” Alex had to smile at the memory. She and Zoe had made so many Caesar salad jokes. She smiled down at her empty bowl, and for the first time, she felt not empty. “It wasn’t as useful as she thought it would be.”
“I’m sure.”
“What did I say?” Alex asked, but he tilted his head like he didn’t follow. “Last night?”
“Oh.” Suddenly, it was like he didn’t want to face her. He got her bowl and carried it to the sink.
“King—”
“Michael,” he said too quickly. “Last night—when you were sleeping. And before.... You called me Michael.”
