Page 32 of Colton's Secret Weapon
At five thirty in the morning.
And was filled with instant dread. An hour and a half of good feeling dried up as she waited for her host to make his far too early appearance.
While she was at his place, and with his family working her father’s case, it stood to reason that bad news was going to come from him.
It would also be what would get him up out of bed so early in the morning after having gotten to bed late the night before.
That and the fact that he had an office to open that morning, the thought came to her. With clients that could have early appointments before their own businesses opened.
She’d been selfish. Making the world all about her…
And should have put on more than just the pajama pants and cutoff tie-dyed T-shirt she normally wore to bed—and for cooking. Like a bra.
And panties.
She couldn’t very well make a run for it with sausage browning on the stove. Nor was she one to hide from trouble. Most particularly not that which sprang from her own actions.
And if it was bad news coming her way?
Half-frozen in indecision, Dove moved by rote, not thought. Reaching into the refrigerator for the food she knew would give her abilities an almost immediate boost, she grabbed a fork and was standing by the bowl of eggs, chewing, when Mitchell entered the room.
Not in a suit ready for work.
“Something smells good,” he said, seemingly unfazed to walk into his kitchen in a pair of silk drawstring shorts and nothing else to find a woman standing there shoveling salad into her mouth.
“It’s salmon,” she told him, because the fish was the one project she was least confident about so was most on her mind. The whole air fryer thing being an unknown component.
“And lasagna,” she added as he passed the oven on his way to…the coffee maker. She should have made coffee. Hated the stuff. Wasn’t sure how to work the machine. But…
“I couldn’t sleep,” she admitted, as she quickly chewed and swallowed another bite. Nearly choking on a shard of bean.
With a few quick and impressively efficient moves, he had a cup on the plate of the coffee maker, had inserted a pod in the top and was moving over to the stove. “And the sausage?” he asked.
He’d been with her at the store when she’d purchased it—and pretty much everything else she was using that morning—and had tried to pay for it all.
“Breakfast casserole. I planned to have it ready by six. In time for you eat before you have to leave for work.” And then, thinking she sounded presumptuous added, “And it keeps well, in the event you didn’t need breakfast until seven. Or eight.”
The man needed to go. Out of the kitchen. At the very least.
It wasn’t like she’d never seen a bare-chested male in the kitchen before, but Mitchell—she’d never been around a guy who…exuded…on overload. Her nipples were hard and, other than putting her arms up over them to cover them—which would just draw attention to her inappropriate reaction to the man sent to help her through a horrible phase in her life—she couldn’t do a thing about it.
Except stand there holding her bowl in front of her, take another bite and look at Mitchell’s chest again.
To stave off what she knew was coming.
And she’d been so pompous in her self-assertion moments before that she didn’t run from trouble.
Kansas had said she’d be back at it by daybreak. Dawn had hit almost an hour before. “Have you heard from Kansas?” she asked then. Ashamed that she’d tried to hide behind the sight of a chest, rather than face whatever the day was going to bring her.
Or was she hiding behind the day so she didn’t have to deal with what the sight of that chest had done to her? Way more than what she’d felt in the studio the other day.
She could not be sexually drawn to Mitchell Colton. He was her complete opposite.
And she needed him.
Sex was messy. And after the initial pleasure wore off, relationships usually didn’t end well. At least not in her experience.
Every time she’d had to break up with a guy, he’d given her the cold shoulder.
