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“But that’s not the first attempt,” Royce prompted. “Andrei mentioned something about poisoning.”
When Marc looked up, he found Royce back beside the bed. He hadn’t even heard him move, but then the dominant sound in his ears was the frantic pounding of his heart.
“I’m allergic to nuts. Someone put finely chopped nuts in a chicken salad in my fridge.”
“Fatal?”
Marc nodded. “Could be. I have replaced all my epinephrine pens around the house. I’ll show you their locations when we get there.”
“Get a spare. I want to carry it on me at all times, just in case. What else?”
“I…I think someone messed with my heart medication.”
“What?” Royce snapped so loudly that Marc jerked in surprise.
“The medication I take to regulate my heart rate. Someone replaced it with something else. I don’t know what. I threw it out.”
Royce stalked back across the room, his eyes wide and his face paler. “What’s wrong with your heart?” His voice was low and rough. Marc fought the urge to reach out to Royce, to comfort him when he looked so shaken, but Marc didn’t think his touch would be welcome.
“Just an irregular heartbeat. It’s serious, but easily regulated with one pill a day.”
“When did you last go to your cardiologist?”
“Nine months ago, but—”
“Isn’t that too long? Shouldn’t you be checking in more frequently?”
Marc stared at him in surprise for a moment. He actually sounded as if he was on the verge of panic.
“No, it’s fine. I go once a year. He listens to my heart. Runs a quick test. If everything is still fine, he writes me a new script.”
“Fine,” Royce bit out. He returned to the bed and zipped his roller bag closed. “Take your pills and no nuts. Anything else?”
Marc bit his tongue against a joke that he wasn’t banned from all nuts, but Royce didn’t look like he’d welcome that particular quip, so he just walked over to the bed and picked up the garment bag with his right hand.
“No, sorry. No more weaknesses for the art nerd.”
Royce rolled his eyes as he put his bag on the floor. “Why fucking art?” he muttered under his breath, leading the way out of his bedroom.
“What do you have against art?” Marc asked as he trailed after him.
“You mean other than the fact that you can never tell what any of that weird shit means?”
Marc bit his lower lip to keep from laughing. “It’s not all like that,” he said. He had to agree that there was some really strange, obscure art that he didn’t understand, but he tended to avoid those pieces. “A lot of it is emotionally evocative. How could you not like a piece of art that makes you think about something differently or feel an emotion without ever saying a word?”
Royce paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at Marc, one eyebrow raised. “Maybe I’m more concerned about Quinn’s crazy plan for me to impersonate a sculptor when I don’t have a creative bone in my body.”
A broad grin spread across Marc’s lips and he continued down the stairs. “Well, I can keep you out of trouble there. No worries.”
A low snort escaped Royce as he turned around and walked back toward the living room. Marc slung the bag over his right shoulder and followed. He was having trouble getting a read on Royce. It was like he was waffling between wanting to tell Marc to fuck off and wanting to shoot him with brief flashes of off-the-charts heat and glimmers of what might be called a sense of humor.
“I guess we should learn some stuff about each other. What’s your favorite food?”
Royce rolled his eyes and groaned. “Really? What are we? In grade school?”
“What? That’s the kind of shit people learn about each other when they’re dating.” Marc huffed a laugh. “But let me guess, you don’t date. You just pin ’em against the wall and fuck ’em hard.”
“I’ve never had any complaints.”
“Kind of difficult to hear complaints when you’re out the door before your pants are even closed again,” Marc snapped. Royce had stopped walking when they reached the kitchen and Marc now stood only inches away from him.
Marc closed his mouth with an audible click of his teeth in the deadly silent room. Royce stared at him with his too-perceptive eyes, his face utterly unreadable.
“Fuck it,” he whispered. Stepping around Royce, he started for the garage door. “It’s just my life. I’ll make it up as I go.” He’d barely gotten his fingers wrapped around the door handle when Royce’s voice broke the silence.
“Cheddar-cauliflower soup.” Marc’s entire body tensed as he waited for Royce to continue. He couldn’t figure out if the man was telling him his preference for dinner or…“I love cheddar-cauliflower soup. I found the recipe about a year ago, and I eat it about once a week. I eat healthy. I try to limit fried foods to once every other week. Very little red meat, sugar, or caffeine. Lots of chicken and fish.”
