Page 90 of Hold Your Breath

His grin widened.

Callum’s bacon was, not surprisingly, perfect. Her pancakes, despite their unfortunate shapes, tasted good, although Lou was pretty sure she’d like anything she ate in her current happy daze. Once breakfast was done and Cal took over cleanup, however, she started to feel the usual restlessness as she fought off thinking about things like fires and deaths and ex-boyfriend stalkers.

“What are you doing?”

Tugging on her stocking hat, she said with what she thought was a commendable lack of condescension, considering the answer was obvious, “Dressing.”

“You’re going outside?”

“I am.”

“You don’t have to be at work for almost two hours.”

“So?”

“So why are you going outside?”

“I’m feeling twitchy. I need to burn off some energy—and some pancakes.”

His grunt still sounded confused.

“Want to come?”

“Don’t we spend enough time outside on calls and training and doing daily life tasks?” he asked.

“But this will be fun.”

He didn’t look convinced.

“Please?” She tried her most winning smile.

“I still think you’re insane.” Despite his words, he moved toward his coat.

“That’s nothing new,” she scoffed.

Although he snorted, she saw a smile fighting its way to the surface. “C’mon. Let’s go so you can run off that energy.”

Bouncing out the door in front of him, she jumped off his deck into the two-foot drifts covering his back yard. Callum followed more slowly, shaking his head.

“I think you absorb all the caffeine from the coffee shop or something,” he commented, eyeing her as she scooped snow into a mound. “It’s not normal for anyone over the age of five to be this peppy.”

She grinned, rolling her large lump of snow into an even bigger ball. “What can I say? I’m a mutant. This snow is awesome, though. It’s never this wet up here.” Normally, snow in Simpson was either powdery fine or frozen into rocklike drifts.

Once she had a decent-sized ball, she started on another.

“Snowman?” Callum guessed, eyeing the large lump of snow critically.

“Of course.”

“Your lower section is uneven.”

“So fix it.”

So he did.

* * *

They were laughing.Laughing.While Brent was in the woods, frustrated beyond sanity and freezing, they were having fuckingbondingtime. Her gaze turned in his direction, and he shifted behind the trunk of the tree next to him, although he kept her in his sights. She barely paused before turning back to the man.