Page 26 of Colton's Secret Weapon
Recognizing the wide-eyed woman who’d approached, she immediately filled with a semblance of calm. “Cindy, yes! I’m fine,” she said, brushing herself off.
Cindy Morrison had lost her husband and young son in a boating accident the year before and had been on the verge of a breakdown when she’d come to Dove’s studio just after Christmas. In the eight months they’d had together, Cindy had finally been able to allow herself to travel through the stages ofgrief. To begin the healing process. Letting go of the negative energy one breath at a time.
Seeing Dove hurt could set back that process. Not that Dove was some kind of guru protected by her angels, but because she was lending Cindy some of her own strength. Support from one human being to another. She didn’t want Cindy to even entertain the idea that anyone else she leaned on or cared about would end up dead.
Store personnel came running up the aisle, darting around rolling cans, and as Mitchell approached one of them, Dove led Cindy around to the next aisle. Away from any hint of danger. To get herself out of the chaos and to tend to Cindy, too.
“That was wild,” she said, breathing back a shudder and managing a ragged chuckle. “I’m guessing whoever stacked those cans is going to be getting a demerit today.” Making light of the situation helped. Asking Cindy how she was doing helped more. Gave her mind focus while her body’s physiological state righted itself.
When Mitchell and the store manager came around the end of the aisle to find her, she felt better equipped to make her statement. And insisted on finishing her shopping, albeit quickly.
“Dove.” Mitchell called her gaze to him as the manager left them. “You should have let him call the police.”
“I didn’t stop him,” she pointed out. “I just said I didn’t feel a need to report the incident.” She started to push their cart that another store employee had brought around to her—still bearing her beans, greens and natural proteins. All foods that enhanced intuitive abilities. She’d roast the raw cacao beans first chance she got.
Her mother’s first go-to anytime things were out of whack.
Sticking to her side, Mitchell pulled out his phone. “I’m calling Eli.”
“I expected you would,” Dove told him, feeling oddly calm as she pushed the cart. “Which is why it made no sense to call in yet another police officer.” She stopped and looked at him. “Unless you hurt something when you took the brunt of the fall for both of us?”
He shook his head as he lifted the phone to his ear and gave his brother an account of what had just transpired.
Hearing Mitchell describe the episode, the basket that came forcefully at her, seemingly out of nowhere, set to knock her into a display of cans that would send her into a fall that could easily break bones or inflict other bodily harm, the black boat shoes he’d seen fleeing the scene…
What?
She stopped. Watched a couple of other shoppers pass, who turned to look at her—because of the incident in the canned vegetable aisle, or just because she was her and she’d always been stared at, she didn’t know. Didn’t much care.
And pinned Mitchell with a stare the second he ended the call. “You think someone deliberately tried to hurt me?”
“I think it’s way too much of a coincidence that that cart just happened to come out of nowhere, heading straight toward you, while you were standing directly beside that display.”
Fresh fear sluiced through Dove, but she quashed it. Thought of Cindy. Of her mother’s roasted cacao beans. And said, “It’s called karma, Mitchell. It comes to pay back bad as well as good.”
He stared at her. His eyes narrowing. “Which debt did you just pay?”
“Good,” she said, needing to believe herself more than she ever had before. “I went to see you even when I so didn’t want to. And ever since, you’ve been like my guardian angel. I don’t know what’s happening with my dad. But I do know that you were meant to come into our lives. That things are happening toshow me that I need to trust you. And to believe that whatever the outcome, it was meant to be.”
“You didn’t want to come see me?”
“You think I didn’t know how much you did not want to agree to help us?”
Mitchell started moving slowly up the deserted aisle in which they’d been standing, and Dove stayed right beside him.
Shoving the tips of his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans, he said, “It’s not that I didn’t want to help, Dove. It’s that I didn’t see much likelihood that my skill set would fit your needs.”
He’d deftly owned his lack of enthusiasm to come to her aid. She gave him credit for not denying what she’d sensed. And all that mattered was that she’d sought him out against her own best wishes. And in spite of his doubts, he’d been fully present every time she’d needed him since.
Heading straight for the ground beef, and then to the pasta aisle, followed by the dairy, Dove gathered what she needed for dinner, trying not to notice how closely Mitchell stayed beside her. A reminder of the heat and strength of his body as he’d saved her from being scrunched between a runaway basket and the cans of diced tomatoes that, had she fallen into them, could have caused her serious harm.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked then.
And she almost smiled as she said, “Lasagna.”
He’d paused over the menu item at lunch, before he’d chosen the lighter, more lunchlike club sandwich.
“How do you know I even like lasagna?”
