6. Clair #2
“Because the aroma permeates the entire laboratory each time you prepare one.”
“And you know I only had a piece of muffin because…?”
“You dropped crumbs on the floor.” He made a face. “I ought to make a rule about that.”
“I cleaned them up!” Clair protested indignantly.
His frown deepened.
“You cleaned the crumbs up eventually.”
Clair put her hands on her hips.
“The point is, you're keeping track of what I eat.”
“No, I’m not,” Kaelus said immediately.
“You just gave me a detailed accounting of everything I've put in my mouth since seven this morning,” she pointed out.
He shrugged, his broad shoulders rolling.
“I am observant.”
Clair couldn't help laughing.
“You're something, all right,” she said.
Kaelus scowled at her.
“Eat.”
“Excuse me?” she raised an eyebrow at him.
“Eat your food, Doctor Donovan,” he ordered. “Your blood glucose is almost certainly low, and you have been making increasing numbers of minor errors for the past hour.”
“What errors?” Clair demanded.
“You attempted to place a used pipette into the sterile container.”
Clair frowned. Had she done that?
“And ten minutes ago, you spent almost a full minute searching for the stylus which was tucked behind your ear,” Kaelus continued.
Clair reached up automatically. Sure enough, the stylus was still there.
“All right, fine,” she muttered.
“Eat,” he repeated.
“You're extremely bossy, you know that?”
“Yes,” he said, apparently completely unperturbed.
The simple answer made her laugh again.
“Fine, big fella.” Clair picked up her fork. “I'll eat.”
“Good.”
Kaelus turned back to his work.
Clair took a bite of the pasta—it was delicious.
She ate the entire plate.
The next afternoon, another meal appeared beside her elbow. And the afternoon after that and the one after that and so on.
Kaelus never asked what she wanted, and Clair never asked him to bring anything, but somehow he always managed to come back with something she liked.
Sometimes it was the blue curry-flavored pasta.
Sometimes it was a kind of roasted alien bird that tasted remarkably like rotisserie chicken.
Once it was a bowl of rich, creamy soup filled with vegetables she couldn't identify but liked anyway.
After a while, Clair stopped asking why he was feeding her. Instead, she started making sure there was always a cup of coffee waiting on his workstation when he arrived in the morning.
Neither of them acknowledged the exchange—it simply became part of their routine.
She made the coffee, and he brought the food.
And though Clair would never have admitted it aloud, there was something strangely comforting about knowing that every afternoon, no matter how absorbed she became in her work, Kaelus would make sure she ate.
It was perhaps another week before the third thing happened. This time, however, Clair was the one doing the caretaking.
She had received a shipment of botanical samples from a newly contacted planet called Luuria and had spent most of the morning cataloging them.
Some were seeds and spores sealed inside sterile capsules, but several were living plants transported inside miniature environmental chambers.
Clair was particularly interested in one specimen—a beautiful fern-like organism with deep violet leaves edged in silver.
According to the accompanying notes, the plant was called a Zillarian velvet fern, though technically it wasn't a fern at all. It had an unusual vascular structure unlike anything Clair had ever seen, and she was eager to examine it more closely.
“Aren't you pretty?” she murmured, leaning over the environmental chamber.
Across the room, Kaelus made a low sound of disapproval.
“You are talking to your plants again,” he said.
“They grow better when you talk to them,” Clair told him.
“There is no scientific evidence supporting that assertion.”
“There are studies.”
“Poorly controlled studies.”
“Don't listen to him, sweetheart,” Clair told the plant. “He's just jealous because I don't talk to him as nicely as I talk to you.”
“I am not jealous of a plant,” Kaelus growled.
“Of course not, honey.”
Clair blew him a kiss and reached toward the access port.
“Wait!” Kaelus said sharply.
She paused, frowning.
“What is it?”
He was already coming toward her.
“I don't like the structure of those leaves.”
Clair looked at the plant.
“What are you talking about? They're gorgeous.”
“They are edged with rigid fibers,” he pointed out.
“They're probably just structural.” Clair waved one hand dismissively.
“Or defensive,” Kaelus said, frowning.
“Oh, don't be such a worrywart,” Clair said. “I have gloves.”
She reached toward the plant again, but Kaelus moved faster. One moment Clair was reaching through the access port and the next his large hand shot past hers, pushing her wrist gently but firmly aside.
“I said wait,” he growled.
At that exact moment, the plant moved.
The violet leaves snapped inward with startling speed and a long silver barb shot from between them.
Kaelus jerked and let out a muffled curse in the Kindred language.
“Kaelus!” Clair exclaimed, worried. “What happened?”
“Exactly what I was afraid would happen.”
He pulled his hand back and she saw a gleaming purple thorn nearly three inches long was buried in the center of his palm.
“Oh my God!” she gasped.
“It is nothing,” Kaelus said dismissively, but he was grimacing in pain.
“Nothing?” Clair demanded. “You have a three-inch purple thorn sticking out of your hand!”
“The wound is superficial,” he growled.
“You’re bleeding,” Clair exclaimed, pointing at the thin line of dark crimson blood that was already running down his wrist.
“I have sustained far worse injuries in battle,” Kaelus said dismissively, which reminded her that he was a warrior as well as a scientist. All the Kindred were warriors first—she sometimes forgot that.
But just because he’d gotten wounded in battle, it didn’t invalidate the fact that there was a huge thorn sticking out of his palm!
Suddenly, something in Clair snapped.
“Sit down,” she ordered.
His eyebrows rose.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me,” Clair said, pointing toward the stool beside her workstation. “Sit down, big fella.”
“I do not require—”
“Kaelus, sit down,” she said firmly.
To her complete surprise, he did.
The giant Hybrid lowered himself onto the stool, though even seated he was taller than Clair was standing. He held his injured hand away from his body while Clair hurried to get the medical kit they kept mounted beside the safety shower.
“Give me your hand,” she said when she came back.
“I am capable of removing the barb myself.”
“I'm sure you are,” Clair told him. “And I'm capable of climbing shelves, but apparently we're not allowed to do everything we're capable of doing in this laboratory, are we?”
His mouth tightened but he said nothing. Good—she’d clearly made her point.
Clair held out her hand.
“All right—let me see it.”
Kaelus sighed, but he finally placed his enormous hand in hers.
Clair had held his hand before—well, sort of. He had grabbed her wrists during the solvent accident and of course he'd held her when he caught her falling from the shelves, but this was different.
His hand was huge and her own looked tiny beneath it.
His skin was warm and slightly rough she noted—callused across the palm and along the base of his fingers. Clair found herself remembering those same hands wrapped around her hips beneath the emergency shower and quickly pushed the thought away.
“I'm going to pull the thorn out,” she told him. “Tell me if it hurts.”
“I will not.”
Clair looked up, frowning.
“You won't tell me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because pain is irrelevant.”
“Oh, for God's sake,” Clair exclaimed. “You are such a man.”
Kaelus frowned.
“I am aware that I am male.”
She shook her head in disgust.
“Never mind. Let’s just get this out of you.”
Carefully, Clair gripped the thorn with a pair of forceps. She looked up at the big Hybrid.
“Ready?”
“Yes.” His expression was stoic, as though he didn’t care what happened to him.
Feeling irritated at his macho display, she pulled. The barb slid free with a wet sound and Kaelus didn't so much as flinch. Well—maybe pain was irrelevant to him.
Clair examined the thorn briefly before dropping it into a specimen container.
“We're testing that later,” she said. “I want to make sure there isn't any venom.”
“It is unlikely,” he rumbled.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Based on what?”
He shrugged, his broad shoulders rolling.
“The morphology of the barb, of course,”
“Mm-hmm,” Clair said. “And since you're apparently an expert Xenobotanist now, I suppose I can just throw my doctorate away.”
Kaelus made a low sound in his throat.
“I merely said it was unlikely.”
“And I'm merely saying I'm going to test it anyway.”
Clair cleaned the puncture carefully with an antiseptic solution, then used a dermal scanner to make sure no fragments of the barb remained inside his palm. When she was satisfied, she spread a thin layer of healing gel over the wound and wrapped his hand in a flexible bandage.
“There,” she said. “Try not to use it too much for a few hours.”
“That will not be possible.”
“It will if you don't want me yelling at you.”
Kaelus looked down at her and for once, there wasn't a scowl on his face. Instead, his golden eyes were strangely soft.
“What?” Clair asked, looking up at him.
“You take very good care of your specimens,” he murmured.
Clair frowned.
“You're not a specimen.”
“No,” Kaelus agreed quietly. “I am not.”
Something about the way he said it made her heart give a strange little thump and it occurred to her that she was still holding his hand in hers.
For some reason, she didn’t let go and neither did Kaelus.
His hand lay palm-up in both of hers, enormous and warm, and his golden eyes held hers with that same strange, intense look she'd seen when he'd caught her falling from the shelves.