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“Wow, I didn’t know that you hated my sister that much that you’d willingly subject her to my cooking,” he said conversationally as she turned around and discovered that he was blocking the only exit from the room.
As much as she appreciated the fact that he’d left the door open, it didn’t make her feel any less trapped. Normally she could deal with having someone standing in the doorway, but not today.
“Move,” she said, shifting the heavy bag over her shoulder as she moved towards the door and the large man blocking it.
Christofer shook his head. “Not until you promise not to leave.”
“If you’re not going to fire me, Christofer, then I quit. So please move away from the door so that I can say goodbye to Marta and be on my way,” she said, forcing herself to ignore the panic that began crawling up her spine and the breaths that were coming too quickly to do her any good.
“Cloe?” Christofer said, sounding worried and so far away.
“I’m leaving, Christofer,” she said, noting that her words sounded slurred right around the time that she stumbled slightly to the right.
Her arms and legs went numb, the bags dropped to the ground seconds before her legs gave out to join them. The room spun violently as the floor rushed up to greet her, but before she could become better acquainted with the hardwood floor, she found herself rising and moving towards the door.
“You’re not going anywhere, mein Schatz,” Christofer said as he headed for the stairs. As much as she would have loved to have been able to come up with a smartass remark to tell him exactly what she thought of his highhanded ways, sadly all she could come up with was a muttered grumble that had the bastard chuckling.
Chapter 13
“I’m fine. You can put me down,” Cloe said calmly and he probably would have believed her if she hadn’t been squeezing her eyes shut or gone deathly pale on him.
He didn’t bother arguing with her as he carefully placed her in a chair at the kitchen table. When she leaned forward and laid her head on her folded arms instead of getting up and storming off to make another attempt to leave, he wasn’t exactly surprised. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning and now that she was over the initial stress and drama from last night, her body was finally making its demands for food known.
Now that she’d stopped giving off the scent of fear and anxiety, he could smell how low her blood sugar actually was. She needed to eat something before she made herself sick or passed out again. Instead of coming up with a bullshit story to explain how he knew that her blood sugar was low, he simply focused on getting some food in her.
After he made sure that she wasn’t going to fall out of the chair, he grabbed a glass, a bottle of orange juice from the fridge and the sugar bowl. Keeping an eye on her, he quickly filled the glass with orange juice and dumped in a large scoop of sugar and mixed it before placing it on the table in front of Cloe.
“Drink it,” he said softly as he returned to the counter to clean up the small mess that he’d made.
“What is it?” Cloe asked, not bothering to raise her head as she opened her eyes and shot the glass of juice a wary glance.
“Orange juice and a little bit of sugar,” he said, replacing the cap on the orange juice bottle and returning it to the fridge. “Drink it. It will make you feel better,” he said absently as he looked over the contents of the fridge.
It was practically overflowing with food that he didn’t recognize, never mind knew how to cook. Milk, juice, water, a jar of mayonnaise, cheese, eggs, and what appeared to be some kind of brown deli meat were the only things that he recognized. Deciding to keep it as simple as possible, he grabbed the cheese, mayonnaise, and deli meat and placed them on the counter.
After hunting down a half loaf of bread, he started making a sandwich. He grabbed a large serving spoon and scooped up a big spoonful of mayonnaise and dropped it on a slice of bread, careful to make sure that the mayonnaise didn’t pour out onto the plate. That was followed with a half-inch of cheese, an inch of deli meat, and a few good shakes of salt and pepper between every layer.
He wasn’t an expert on sandwiches, but he thought it looked pretty good. It would at least fill her up, he mused as he topped the sandwich with the second slice of bread. For a moment he considered cutting the sandwich in half, but he didn’t want to risk any of the mayonnaise escaping.
Cloe was slowly sipping the orange juice when he placed the sandwich down in front of her. Her brows pulled together as she looked down at the sandwich.
“This will make you feel better,” he said, gesturing to the sandwich as he leaned back against the counter.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Cloe murmured, her lips twitching with amusement as she inspected the sandwich, layer by layer.
“Did, um,” she said, clearing her throat as she bit back a smile that had his eyes narrowing, “did you make Marta’s sandwiches like this?”
“Yes,” he answered defensively, wondering what her problem was. The sandwich had everything that she liked to eat and would fill her up quickly. It was the perfect meal in his book. It was easy to make, cheap and provided everything that she would need; bread, meat and cheese. What more could she ask for?
“I see,” she said as a smile broke free before she managed to pull it back. She lightly touched the top of the sandwich which caused an obscene amount of mayonnaise to seep out and pool on the plate.
Sighing in irritation, he grabbed a spoon from the drawer and grabbed the plate away from her so that he could fix the sandwich for her. He pulled the top layer of bread off and quickly scooped up the mayonnaise that had escaped and put it back in the sandwich. When he was done, he pushed the plate back to her.
“Um, thank you,” she murmured as she looked around the kitchen. “Where’s Marta?”
“I dropped her off at the Senior Center this morning,” he said, moving to clean up the mess as he waited for her to finish her sandwich.
“Oh,” she said, looking oddly disappointed as she slumped in her chair and focused her attention back on the sandwich where it belonged.
“They’re having a spaghetti dinner there tonight and she wanted to help,” he explained, frowning when he caught her poking the sandwich and watching with fascination as more mayonnaise poured out.
He was just about to demand that she eat the wonderful sandwich that he’d made when he heard her stomach growl, demanding that she eat the sandwich and doing his job for him. Since she was now his responsibility that meant that he had to make sure that she was well taken care of and he had to admit that he was doing a damn fine job of it so far.
