Chapter 8
Mitchell had had no intention of taking Dove up on her offer to cook for him. Didn’t want to cross paths with her in his home at all, if he could avoid doing so.
But the whiteness around her lips had been so stark, the blank look in her eyes so acute, he’d seen an emotional break down looming and had felt compelled to distract her.
He’d blurted out shopping plans on the fly.
And had forestalled disaster once again.
Because that’s who he was. The prevention guy.
His whole life. While his brothers and cousins went brazenly about their lives, to face danger and win, not just against nature, but against odds, too, Mitchell was the one who watched out for them all.
Looking for dangers that would beat them, and doing all he could to make sure that that didn’t happen.
Just as he did before and during every single time out he took for himself.
Maybe if someone had paid a little more attention to the guy Aunt Caroline had said was stalking her…
What the hell?
Pulling into the grocery store parking lot right behind Dove St. James, Mitchell put an immediate halt on his train of thought. He was the prevention guy because he liked the law. Liked facing cerebral dangers, pitting himself against them and winning.
Just as his family did with nature.
Nothing to do with an aunt he’d never met.
Two days with Dove St. James—three really, if you counted their initial meeting in his office—and he was starting to sound as flighty as she did.
It was one thing needing to put himself into a clients’ mindset professionally in order to predict what might befall them, but quite another to adopt that mindset personally.
But then, Dove wasn’t officially a client yet. And, if Mitchell had his way, she never would be. Whaler might be. Down the road.
They weren’t down the road.
He was walking into the grocery store with the man’s daughter. Preparing to buy food for her to prepare for him.
To keep her focused and as calm as possible while they waited to hear back from Kansas. And Welding. And Eli, who was reporting in on whoever was heading up the Fletcher part of things.
Because, until they knew the extent of the danger she could be facing, he’d opted to be the one to provide safer housing for her.
Right.
She chose interesting food items as she filled their cart. Other than her earlier query as to how he liked his vegetables cooked, she hadn’t deferred to him even once.
About to question and give input, he stood back instead. Literally. Walked a step behind her as she made her way through the store. Curious to see what came next.
And later, after they got home.
If he didn’t like dinner, he’d pull something out of the freezer. Order in. Fill up on trail food, for that matter.
Mostly, he didn’t want to disturb her mojo.
Whatever she had going on in that oddly captivating head of hers, it was working to her benefit.
The color had returned to her face. Lines of strain were dissipating from her cheeks.
Her shoulders had relaxed. He wasn’t going to be the one to mess that up.
Not unless he had to. By way of preventing something worse.
Like the shopping cart that was suddenly flying down the aisle, coming right at the display of cans that… “Dove!” He hollered, and dived forward, catching her around the waist, throwing them both into a ground roll that took them to the end of the aisle.
A woman screamed, cans crashed. Mitchell saw a pair of black boat shoes fly by. Someone running away, not stopping to help.
In the next second Mitchell was only aware of the soft, womanly body clinging to his with both arms and legs wrapped around him.
And for the first time in his life worried about what in the hell he’d gotten himself into.
The screaming stopped.
“Dove! Are you okay?” Hearing the voice from far off, recognizing it but unable to place it, Dove loosened her death grip on the man who’d saved her and rolled off him and up onto her feet.
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 of grief.
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 to show 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?”
“My spirits told me,” she replied, her tone purposefully serious as she kept a grin to herself. Sometimes being perceived as a little odd had its amusing moments.
And sometimes a woman had to grasp at every distraction she could in order to keep her head above water.
While the small bit of earth upon which she stood seemed to be crumbling beneath her.