Page 33 of Hold Your Breath
She smiled. “I might take you up on that. Only if you’re especially irritating, though.”
He either grimaced or suppressed a smile—she wasn’t sure which—and then turned to the teenager listening in on their conversation. “Tyler.”
“How’s it going?” Tyler asked flatly, his expression surly again.
Callum obviously took the question as a greeting rather than an actual inquiry, because he turned to Lou and asked, “Ready?”
Nodding, she stood and pulled her coat off the back of her chair. As she shoved her arms into the sleeves, she looked at Tyler. “Thanks for sharing your theories with me. Good luck with that homework.”
“Sure, whatever.”
She grabbed her laptop, slid it into her bag, and gave Tyler a final wave. He just lifted his chin in response without looking at her, his eyebrows pulled down in a glower. He focused on the top of the table, rubbing his thumb over a nick in the wood with almost violent force.
As Callum escorted her past a scowling Bart and through the exterior door with his hand on her lower back, she eyed him curiously. “How’d you know to look for me here?”
He tipped his head toward her truck, parked on the street in front of the library.
“Oh.” She grinned. “Those are quite the investigatory skills. I chose well when picking my HDG research partner.”
He just shrugged in obvious agreement, which made her laugh. The barbecue place was only six blocks away, so they left their trucks parked at the library and walked.
“Did you find out anything interesting from Rob’s kid?” he asked. His hand still hadn’t left her lower back, which was a little distracting. Nice, but distracting.
“Just that he’s lonely, doesn’t like going home to an empty house,doeslike to hit on older women, could be a little jealous of you because you get to eat barbecue with the wonder that ismoi, and works on his homework in the library after school. Also, there are some crazy stories about our HDG circulating around the high school that involve serial killers and devil worshippers. Oh, and the local militia group has a really stupid name.”
He blinked, apparently processing. “He hit on you?”
“That’s what you pulled out of that mess?” She frowned. “The poor kid’s lonely, like I said. Where’s his mom, do you know?”
“Sydney had some mental health issues—probably still does. She’d take off for a week or a month and then come back to Rob and their kid for a while. She left for good about nine years ago.”
“Poor kid,” she said again. “Poor Rob.”
He gave her a sharp look. “Don’t get all sappy for the sheriff.”
“I’m not getting sappy for the sheriff,” she huffed. “I just feel bad for the guy—single dad, messed-up ex-wife…”
“Why do women always want to fix broken men?” he grumbled.
Stopping in front of Levi’s, she turned to face Callum. “I don’t want to fix him or do anything to him. He is nice—and really hot, of course—but he kind of intimidates me, to be honest. He’s so…in control of things. Official.”
“So I’m not official? You’re obviously not intimidated by me.” He nudged her toward the door, and she started walking again.
“You’re official.” As she stepped through the door that Callum held open, she tried to figure out the difference between the two men and put it into words. “You’re just…myofficial. It’s different.” She closed her eyes briefly when she heard the words come out completely wrong. “Never mind.”
But Callum apparently didn’t want to drop it. “I’myourofficial, huh?”
“And I am intimidated by you sometimes.” She waved at Levi’s wife, Bonnie, and took a booth in the corner. Callum did some quick maneuvering so he could have his back to the wall. Since she really didn’t care if she had a clear view of the restaurant and everyone in it, she settled on the other side of the booth without complaint. “Just not so much anymore, especially since we’ve started the HDG research. Now it feels like we’re partners, rather than the drill sergeant/peon relationship we had before.”
Bonnie arrived with menus, a couple of glasses of water, and two straws, dispensing everything with the competence of years of experience.
“Sometimes I think it would be nice to get that intimidation factor back,” he said after Bonnie left. Despite his words, it looked like he was holding back a smile.
“Never going to happen.” She blew her straw wrapper at him, giggling when she hit him on the chin.
“Callum. Lou.” The male voice brought up both of their heads. Lou flushed at being caught acting like an eight-year-old. Animmatureeight-year-old.
“Rob,” Callum said while Lou gave the sheriff a dorky little wave. A few seconds of awkwardness followed when no one said anything further. Although she knew there was no way Rob had overheard their earlier conversation about him and his ex-wife, Lou still felt a little guilty.
