Chapter 10
Dove went straight to her room. Alone time was critical to her well-being and, other than while using the restroom, she’d had none since early that morning.
More than that, she wanted to get out of Mitchell’s hair. If he quit on her, she had no idea what she was going to do.
The answers would come. They always did. She knew that.
But she could also reach her demise in the process of finding them. While she was not one to argue with fate, she also understood that self-will had power of its own. And she wasn’t ready to be done with her earthly life.
After a quick shower and then prayer time—focusing fully on her father being alive—her head hit the pillow just before one in the morning. And by four, she was lying there wide awake. With worry bugs starting to creep under her skin.
Throwing off the covers, she tried to meditate but was already too lost in subconscious musings to find her zen. At home, she’d turn up the music and clean.
But she figured Mitchell wouldn’t appreciate the chaos at that early hour.
Opening her door slowly, she crept out into the hall enough to take in the quiet of the house. That’s when guidance hit. The kitchen was the room closest to her but the farthest from the staircase that led upstairs to Mitchell’s suite.
And she had dinner to make. She’d given her word. Had no idea what the coming day was going to bring in terms of claims on her time.
She loved to cook. Found pleasure in the activity itself, the joining of various ingredients to make something that tasted better together than any of them did alone.
And while the sauce simmered, the ricotta mixture softened enough for spreading, and the noodles cooled, she prepared cacao beans for roasting. And mixed up a bowl of fresh, finely cut cucumber, broccoli, kale spinach, and other mixed greens for breakfast. Her own.
Breakfast casserole was on the menu for Mitchell’s.
Even if he liked the idea of salad in the morning, no way she was going to expose the man to her dietary habits. He’d just end up asking questions.
And she’d end up telling him that the foods promoted intuitive abilities…because she knew he’d go look up their benefits—and find them, too. Proving her right.
And while she was not going to change who she was or what she did, she didn’t have to be in his face with her lifestyle, either. Especially as a guest in his home.
That would be just plain rude.
Adding some cheese to her greens for protein, and then, when they came out of the oven, the chopped beans, Dove moved on to the next project. Roasting salmon in the air fryer on the counter. She’d seen a friend of her mother’s use one. Had always wanted to try one out.
With the lasagna in the oven—she’d waited to bake it because it took longer, at a higher temperature than the twenty minutes total for the beans—she pulled out the salmon she’d put in marinade when she’d first come into the kitchen.
Reading the instructions on the front of the air fryer, she set the temperature and time before putting the smaller pan in the middle shelf and hitting Start.
From there, she moved immediately to the refrigerator for the sausage for Mitchell’s breakfast casserole. Putting that on the stove on low, taking time to crumble it nicely, she was just finding a bowl big enough for the egg mixture when she heard footsteps on the stairs.
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.
Maybe it was just her. Not knowing how to break up right…
“I’m waiting on a call back from her.” Mitchell’s words put an immediate halt to her mental throwing up. And drew her gaze up to his face.
“And you wanted to be down here when the call came in,” she said slowly. Because the couple of days they’d spent together had been intense, and his body language was easy for her to read.
Or, more likely, she hadn’t lost her ability to tune in and gain understanding, in spite of her extreme mental and emotional flux.
A fact for her thoughts only. As secret and sacred as the sexual ones she’d been having the past couple of days.
Not to be shared with Mitchell Colton.
Ever.
Mitchell pulled his cell phone out of the pocket of his loosely fitting shorts. Set it on the counter. Wishing, for the dozenth time since he’d come down, that he’d thrown on a T-shirt before leaving his room.
The shorts had seemed sufficient when he’d been thinking that he was pulling them on with the very small chance that he’d see Dove St. James when he went down to make his coffee—a task normally done in the nude, right after he slid out of bed and before he got in the shower.
He’d hoped to be showered, shaved and fully dressed before facing the woman who’d bombarded his life. She’d had a hard few days and had gotten to bed late.
No way he’d expected her to be superwoman in the kitchen, making multiple meals, before six in the morning.
By the time he’d registered the unusual scents wafting through the air, he’d already been detected and could hardly turn tail and run. The explaining that would have required was painful just to think about.
Stirring the sausage that was bordering on being more than merely browned, he turned down the heat and faced the woman who’d kept him up even after he’d closed his eyes the night before.
Standing up straight, holding her bowl like an iron shield in front of her, she asked, “What are we expecting to hear?”
And he gave it to her straight. “Kansas found Whaler’s cap.”
Her gaze widening, her mouth dropped open. No words came out.
“I was hoping to know more before I saw you,” he told her the truth.
“How much do you know?”
“The cap was found half-buried in some leaves, not far from an overhang about five miles outside town.”
“Where? Hanging over what?”
Wishing he was anywhere but where he stood, Mitchell had never felt so underprepared—and underdressed—in his life. “Three miles up the mountain, overhanging the Bering Sea.” He gave it to her straight.
Whether she was ready for the truth or not, she’d made it clear the night before that she deserved his full respect. Which, in his world, meant his full disclosure.
“They think he went over.”
He couldn’t tell her that. Kansas had given facts. Not opinions. “They’re thoroughly checking the area.” And there was more. “It looks like there was a struggle nearby, like someone was lying down.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she took another bite of what looked to be some kind of rabbit food. That needed a load of dressing—for starters. “Were there signs of anyone having been dragged?” she asked.
He shook his head. Knowing full well that the news didn’t mean that no one had been hauled to the edge of the cliff. Only that if someone had been pulled across the ground, the dragger had cleaned up after himself.
Dove nodded, then, setting down her container, moved over to the sausage, stirring it, as she said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to hang close until that call comes in.” And then added, “Unless you have to go up and get ready for work?”
“I’ve got my paralegal handling things at the office today.”
It wasn’t the first time. Or even the fiftieth. He’d always been hands-on when it came to his work. Meeting his clients in their territory, not his. It was the best way to see it all and therefore gave him his best shot at finding ways he could help.
Like the fishing idea he’d come with while talking to Kirk the night before. A way for St. James Boats to make additional revenue.
“Unless something else comes up, I’d like to spend some time at the marina this morning,” he told Dove.
“To get a better look at everything involved in getting it set up for commercial fishing and additions that will need to be added for the selling process.” Standing there naked except for his shorts, he was still a lawyer.
Had to stay focused on business, not on the far too sexy woman standing at his stove, giving him full view of the intriguing butt that her thin pants outlined.
Turning suddenly, as though she knew where his gaze had gotten stuck, she looked up at him, her expression eager. “You really think it’s going to work, don’t you?”
The fishing. Not the sex. “I think it can,” he told her, choosing his words as carefully as always. “We can’t do anything until Whaler’s back to sign off on it.”
Unless the older man was found deceased. His pause seemed to relay the message to Dove, judging by the instant drop in her expression.
Which prompted him to say, “But I’d like to have as much of the logistics ready as possible so that it’s something he can run with quickly, if he chooses to do so.”
Her eyes filled with tears. Because her father was missing and might not make it back? Because she had new cause to hope that if her father returned, life would be better? Mitchell couldn’t read her, which made him uncomfortable in a huge way.
In his own kitchen.
Before breakfast.
He had to stop her before she had a breakdown. Leaked out all over the place.
He had to comfort her before his compassion became more than that and his own heart started to bleed.
Reaching out, he pulled her against him. Just for a quick hug.
Lawyer to aching client.
A business move he’d never made before.
Performed in not-business clothes.
Her untethered breasts pushed against his unclothed chest, with only the thin piece of cotton she wore between them.
Which affected him down below, where he was not appropriately confined.
Made clearly obvious against the thin cotton of her pants.
About to escape from his shorts, Mitchell jerked back abruptly, turned his back and vacated the room.
Leaving his cell phone on the counter behind him.