Page 36 of Rock Bottom

I swallowed and shook my head. “Just tea, toast, and my post-workout shake. Nothing unusual.”

“I’m going to need to take the tea and your protein powder with me,” Wattson said, making a note on his iPad.

“Take the powder, but you can have my tea over my dead body,” I growled.

He sighed and turned to Dante. “Bring me the tea, would you?”

Dante nodded and hurried off to retrieve the tin.

“I’m not allergic to my bloody tea!” I grumbled.

“I didn’t say you were,” he said and poked a finger against my swollen lip. “I don’t think these are hives at all. I think you’ve been poisoned.”

“Poisoned?” The news came as a sobering slap. “By who? How?”

He shrugged. “It’s common, especially with herbal teas that are imported from China.”

“I import my tea from London, you wanker, not Shanghai.”

Dante appeared with the tin of tea and held it out to Wattson, who snatched it up. “Either way, I’m taking this for testing. I’ll have Bowie pick up some Earl Gray at Walmart and you can drink the bagged stuff until I get the results back from the lab. Is your urine brown?”

“Brown?” I wrinkled my nose. “No."

“Good. Means your kidneys still work. Take two of these every six hours and one of these. They’ll bind to the arsenic you’ve ingested and clear it from your bloodstream.”

He pulled several prescription bottles out of his black doctor bag. Bowie was convinced Wattson’s t bag was actually a TARDIS, since he always seemed to have an impossible amount of medications with him. I figured he was just better at organization than most of us.

“You’ll probably get a headache,” he added. “Drink extra fluids, and I mean extra. You, make sure he’s drinking water like there’s no tomorrow.” He pointed at Dante.

Dante nodded. “When will you know? About the tea.”

Wattson closed up his bag. “Hard to say. I’ve got an ex who works in a lab and I can probably pull some strings to push it through, but no promises. Depends on how she’s feeling about her alimony today. I’ll call you when I know more.”

Dante frowned, but stepped aside so Wattson could pass. As soon as the doctor was gone, Dante was right back at my side. “My poor kitten. I’m sorry about the tea.”

I waved him off and shook my head. “I doubt there was anything wrong with it, but Wattson’s right. Better safe than sorry.”

“Why would anyone want to poison you?” he asked, taking my hand.

I shrugged. If I’d been poisoned at all, it was probably by accident. “You heard what Wattson said. Maybe there was a mix-up with the tea and I got a bad batch. It happens. I don’t think it was malicious.”

He frowned. “But what if it was? What if someone found out you were working for me and they—”

“Stop it, Dante.” I squeezed his hand. “It isn’t your fault. It’s just a bad batch of tea. That’s it. Accidents happen.”

“I know, but poison? Fuck, Church.”

“I’ll be fine.” I insisted. “There’s a reason Wattson works for the Junkyard Dogs, Dante. Boone only hires the best of the best. He’s good at what he does. I trust him with my life.”

He squeezed my hand and leaned in to press a kiss to my forehead. It was as chaste a kiss as he could manage, and it still sent my heart racing. “All right,” he said. “I’ll get you some more water. And you’d best take those pills religiously, Church or so help me…”

“You’ll tie me up and make me?”

He smirked and purred, “Almost sounds like you like the idea.”

“Maybe. When I’m feeling up to it.”

“Maybe we could get that thing we’re not supposed to talk about in on the action?” he said, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. “The one in your underwear drawer?”

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