Page 4 of Deadly Threat
He grinned and her mind went blank, feet and limbs still on strike and refusing to let her escape. “No need.” He used his foot to hook the chair and bring it closer to the table. To him. He sat up straighter. “We can share. I’ll be done in a few minutes and you can have it all to yourself.”
Her pulse kicked.Run, it said.Stay, her body begged.Threat, her mind screamed.
She swallowed hard. The table beckoned to her, the words dozens of stupid college students had carved into it welcoming. The light was perfect, the chair hard but suitable. She felt safe in this spot.
Ladybug stood and tugged gently on her leash, leaning toward the guy.
Even the dog was a turncoat.
A few minutes. She could stand him for that long, right? Then the space would be hers once more.
Taking a focused breath, she found the old Mia, the one who would have marched to the seat without a hint of doubt, and slowly lifted a foot.
It moved. She did the same with the other.
Two more steps and she was within spitting distance. The man half-stood and leaned forward, reaching out to help her with the books. Her instinct was to pull back, but she didn’t. She simply stopped, shook her head, and proceeded to put the volumes down herself. He seemed to respect her space and sat once more.
Ladybug scooted to her normal spot and Mia hesitantly sat, not in the chair the stranger had indicated, but next to it, farther from him by a few inches.
Control. She just had to retain a bit of it.
From under her lids, she noticed him hiding a smile as he returned to his typing. He didn’t say a word about the dog, or ask questions about her choice of research material.
That was good.
He did, however, put his earbuds away and sneak a peek at her.
She made a show of fishing out her own laptop and opening her document. Then she ran through Coggins’ list of questions. While she didn’t catch him staring directly at her, she could sense every time McHottie chanced a glance her way.
Unfortunately, unless she jumped and ran, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.
And she was done running.
Two
Malachi covertly watched the woman stack her books like a wall between them. She looked familiar, though he couldn’t place the red hair and green eyes.
Sexy as hell, but he wasn’t here to pick up some twenty-something college girl. Besides, she had issues. Who ever heard ofowninga table at the library?
I’m special. Her words rang in his ears. Yeah, didn’t everyone think that?
Her odd reaction to his presence was a tip off she had a screw loose. The dog gave substance to the theory, although he thought therapy dogs were trained for visiting nursing homes and schools. Maybe the scruffy terrier was her emotional support animal as well. One of his friends from the Corp had an ESA. The guy suffered from surreal nightmares and social anxiety.
Either way, her selection of reading materials confirmed his suspicions. He scanned the titles of the book wall:Ancient Medicine: From the Beginnings of Civilization; Egyptian Medical Papyri Science and the Art of Healing; Plant, Animal, and Mineral Ingredients Used in Egyptian Medicine.
None of his beeswax, but her interests sounded like a yawn fest in the making.
Resuming his night classes in Behavioral Psychology had seemed to be the perfect way to fill his lonely evenings. Since both of his brothers had settled down, Mal had been twiddling his thumbs and ending up at his parents’ house more days than not for dinner. His mother kept trying to set him up with women, and bless her heart, she didn’t have a clue about who and what attracted him.
He’d thrown himself into training for the San Diego marathon, and that took plenty of time every day, but his brain needed to work. He needed something to think about while running, swimming, and biking, when it was just him and the road, water, and nothing else.
The flood of endorphins gave him the zen feeling he craved, but after the initial hour or so of exercise, his brain would start in on the woulda-coulda-shouldas, and old memories would surface. While he’d loved being a Marine, some of his missions had left mental scars and battle wounds he might never recover from.
His current college assignment, however, might dump his 4.0 GPA down into no-man’s land. The final report was due next week and he hadn’t even started. He needed a volunteer for a study, and he didn’t have a single friend that fit the parameters.
So he’d made one up. As he typed the next bullshit line into his document, he tried to think like his fake guy, Homer. He’d just finished taking another of the online personality tests to get into character and answer the assessment quiz he’d designed himself.
Which was making his brain go in circles.
