Maybe a big, strong, warm doctor would warm me up.
But it certainly wasn’t going to be a random guy with cold looking eyes.
“I’ll go ask the manager to turn the heater on for us.”
The way he said “us” was like I was meeting him here.
Before I could reply, he left.
I stood up and walked toward the front of the building where I could wait for Odin without some random boy-man making me feel weird.
I spotted Odin and Peanut hustling down the road toward us, and I smiled and waved.
Odin lifted his chin.
Peanut barked in excitement, his floppy ears and loose skin doing a dance as he made his way toward me. The closer he got, the more all of that loose skin jiggled.
It was adorable, and I couldn’t stop myself from pulling my phone out and snapping a short video that I could share with Wendy when I picked her up later.
Odin tilted his head but didn’t oppose the video that I’d taken.
When he got to me, he came to a stop with less than a foot between us.
I took in his face in seconds. “What is it?”
He winced. “Just work stuff.”
I didn’t push.
It wasn’t like he could share with me what was going on with an active open investigation.
That didn’t mean that I didn’t want to know everything that was going on and then some.
If he could just have an open FaceTime call while he did his entire workday, I’d be more than interested to hear his every word.
Not only because he was the most interesting man I’d ever encountered, but because his work was incredibly interesting and he reminded me of Dr. House, only sexier and younger without the drug addict problem.
“You hungry?”
He looked at the doors to The Mercantile.
I could see the exhaustion around his eyes. The little wrinkles there that got heavier when he needed sleep.
“Starving, but the idea of going in there to talk…”
I patted his arm. “Go sit down. I’ll get us some food.” I had my hand on the door when I asked, “What do you want?”
He reached for his pocket and pulled out his wallet, extracting a twenty-dollar bill before holding it out to me.
I decided to take it, so as not to cause a fight that he didn’t look like he had the energy for.
Plus, that twenty wouldn’t cover all the food. Though, it was clear that Odin thought it would.
But with inflation the way it was, nothing was as cheap as it used to be.
I was sure he just didn’t realize how much it would cost to feed two people. He was used to only covering one.
“Anything,” he admitted. “As long as it doesn’t have tomatoes on it.”
