She eyed him warily. Was that longing on her face? Or irritation? It was difficult for him to tell.
“No, I haven’t. I’ve learned that I can only look after myself.”
“I get that. I used to be the same. But now I have my team and we take care of each other.”
“Must be nice, but I’m not part of your team and I wouldn’t fit in with them, even if I was.” She winced, her hand coming to gently cup the side of her face.
Damn it. What was he doing? He had to get her to Lochlan.
“It doesn’t matter that you’re not part of my team. I’m going to take care of you.”
“So strange,” she muttered.
“Just think about how it would feel not to be alone.”
She simply stared at him.
“But we still need to do something about those pants because you can’t go out in them.”
He moved to the closet. “Did Honey not buy something that would cover you up entirely? Maybe something that would fit loosely from your shoulders to your knees?”
“Like a sack?”
“I don’t think they make clothes from sacks, do they?”
“That was a joke. Are you . . . are you really serious? You think that someone would want to look at my fat ass?”
Turning, he scowled at her. “We need to leave and get you dressed properly before we go, so I don’t have time to address what you just said about your appearance. But at some stage, we’re going to have a chat.”
“A chat?”
“A chat,” he said firmly.
Damn. He was really getting the hang of this guardian stuff.
“And by chat, you mean . . .”
“Chat. Talk. A scolding.”
“Right.”
He gave a frustrated sigh. There was nothing in here to cover her up. He’d need to do some shopping for her, it was obvious that Honey had no idea what to buy her.
“Of course, if you continued to speak badly of yourself then there would be a problem.”
“Problem?”
“Hmm, you would need a reminder not to do that.”
“What sort of reminder?”
“We’d figure that out,” he said vaguely. “I’m going to get you one of my hoodies, that should cover you up. I can barely keep my eyes off your ass. But it is unacceptable that anyone else might stare at it.”
11
Zander needn’t have worried about anyone seeing her ass, since they didn’t see a single person on their way to the dentist’s office.
She supposed she should have been upset, since there went her chance to scream for help. But she was too nervous about what was going to happen to think of anything but trying not to throw up.