Six laughed as he put the spatula down. "Did you just crack a joke, Louisa North? Because that felt a lot like a pun." He began to assemble what looked like BLTs.
"It's been known to happen," she said, grabbing the orange juice from the fridge. She collected two glasses from the open shelves and placed everything by the stools on the opposite side of the island.
Her mouth watered at the smell of breakfast. Bacon was the one reason she couldn't call herself vegan. She'd attempted to give up animal protein for health reasons, but the longer she'd deprived herself of bacon, the more she'd thought about eating it, until she'd conceded that a once-a-week treat was really not the end of the world. Six slid a plate in front of her, and they both sat down on the stools. Louisa bit into the sandwich and groaned. He'd used way more mayo substitute than she would have, but that was probably why it tasted so damn good.
"Thank you," she mumbled through a mouthful of food.
Politely, Six waited until he finished chewing. "You're welcome. Hope you don't mind me using your food. And to answer your question, yes, I did sleep on the floor, but it was no big deal. I've slept in places a lot worse."
Louisa managed to swallow. "You didn't need to do that. You could have slept in one of the spare bedrooms."
"Made it easier for me to keep you safe, having both of us in the same place. But you do need to think about what happens next. What are you going to do today?"
His question drew her eyes to the floor, but the blood was gone, and as she looked around she realized that all the other signs of the break-in were gone too. "Did you clean up?" she asked.
Six looked at his plate and took another bite of food. He shrugged as he chewed, as if what he'd done was no big deal. "Had some of my guys drive some supplies over this morning. There are some things you should never had to deal with in life, and a huge pile of somebody else's blood, especially the blood of your enemy, is one of them."
Louisa placed her hand on his arm. It was soft and warm and covered in soft blond hair. "Thank you for everything you've done for me," she said.
When his eyes met hers, she felt a little kick in her stomach. "Anytime, Louisa."
* * *
There were few things that made Six crave the isolation of being perched on a hilltop with his rifle in a Middle Eastern country, but Home Depot on a Sunday was one of them.
Louisa had headed off to her mom's to take her to church. While she was showering, he'd inspected her car and his truck for any kind of tracking device, not that he'd told her. She'd clearly been shaken enough by the break-in, and the last thing he wanted to do was make her feel unsafe in her car as well as her home.
She'd looked pretty as a picture in that turquoise dress, and he'd wanted to tell her as he'd watched her get into her car, but the words had stuck in his throat. If he'd said them, she might have gotten ideas, and if she'd gotten ideas, then he would likely have gotten on board with them. Instead, he'd followed her to the highway, ensuring she had no tail, where she went north to Torrey Pines, and he'd hit Eagle Securities to provide backup to the extraction of the kid in Mexico. Once the plane was wheels up and on its way back to the US, he breathed a huge sigh of relief. Their first major job was over and it had been a success.
Yet his mind was still on Lou. He pulled another pack of window locks off the shelf. These were a whole heap more effective than the ones she currently had installed, and by all accounts never even used. There were a million other ways he'd rather spend his Sunday than trying to find products in narrow aisles with about ten thousand of his closest friends, but he'd felt unable to just leave her to her own devices. He'd needed to know she was secure. That her damn windows were locked. That she installed CCTV. So here he was, alone, in a hardware store.
Fuck.
A loud clattering noise, like semiautomatic gunfire, sounded to his left, and his heartbeat elevated at a dangerous rate. He forced himself to grip the metal shelf and look in the direction of the noise. A kid, messing around with a shelf full of fixtures and fittings, was being told off by his embarrassed father as loose plumbing supplies fell to the floor, the sound of metal hitting concrete resonating down the aisle. Six forced himself to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth. I'm fine. He repeated it over and over. I'm fine.
If he said it enough, he might believe it. And unlike the plumbing parts, he'd not hit the floor, which was a good sign. Wasn't it?
His phone rang, and he grabbed it from his pocket. The sight of Lou's face on his screen shouldn't be this reassuring, should it? "What's up, Lou?" he said, throwing six packets of the locks into his basket.
"This is going to sound really weird," she said, her voice shaken. "But you didn't ask one of your guys to stay near me today, did you?"