Page 65 of Silent Threat
For a long moment, Cole didn’t respond. Then he said, “You don’t like blood.”
Oh.Had that been why he’d barreled into the situation? To get Dale’s bleeding foot away from her as fast as possible? Had he done it to spare her?
“Why?” he asked.
And because her defenses were suddenly down, she responded. “Childhood trauma.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Hey, who’s the therapist here?” She tried to regain their earlier, light tone, resisting the dark memories that threatened to pull her back into the past.
“Hey, look who’s stalling.”
When she still wouldn’t say anything, he asked, “Would this be related to Randy?”
Her chest clenched. “Do you always remember every word everybody says?”
He shook his head. “I remember the people I want to kill.”
“Don’t make me puthomicidal impulsesin your file.”
“Those threats are getting old. You’re not my therapist.”
“You should keep up with the green therapy on your own.” She jumped on the subject change. She didn’t want to talk about Randy.
Cole huffed. “Let me guess. Barefoot. Will the earth absorb my murderous impulses through the soles of my feet?”
“Laugh all you want. It works. Ecotherapy solves problems.”
“So does a nine-millimeter bullet,” he said under his breath.
His massive biceps stretched his navy cotton shirt. He was 100 percent male, 100 percent soldier. Nothing she said was going to soften him. And she didn’t really want him to change. She liked him way too much the way he was.
Once they arrived at her house, Cole helped her muck the soiled straw out of the garage and lay down new bedding.
“You need a barn,” he called after her as she picked up the wheelbarrow handles.
“It’s on my wish list.”
“So what’s this Randy guy’s last name again?” he asked in a way-too-casual tone as she passed him.
She turned so he could read her lips. “Give it a rest.”
She came back in, warm from all the physical work. She’d be more comfortable finishing up in fewer layers. She stopped inside the open garage door and started to pull off her sweatshirt.
“Stop.” His voice was strong enough to freeze her with the shirt over her head. “Don’t move.”
“Is it a spider?”
She loved all God’s creatures, but ... she had nightmares that the tarantula she’d rescued last month had hidden her eggs somewhere in the garage before her untimely death. In those dreams, the eggs hatched, and the baby spiders came to get her for not protecting their mother from the goat’s chomping teeth.
“Get it off! Please get it off.”
Dammit, he couldn’t see what she was saying. She tried to wiggle her face free, but he was next to her by then, and he caught her wrist.
Thunder rumbled through his voice, the tone sharper than she’d ever heard from him. “Who did this?”
She had no idea what he was talking about until his finger glanced over the naked skin of her rib cage. Obviously, her T-shirt had ridden up. Then she forgot about the T-shirt as she realized what he was talking about. She’d been put off too, when she’d changed earlier and seen all that black and blue on her side.
