The Protector by Marliss Melton

tone, the Shepherd mix lay down, put his head between his paws, and gazed up pitifully.
     
    “He’s hungry,” Eryn growled in defense of her dog.  
     
    Ike felt like an ogre. Placing Eryn’s dinner in front of her, he braced himself for a negative response. Being the daughter of a four-star general, he imagined she was used to eating at fancy restaurants and officers’ clubs. He doubted she’d ever seen grub like this before.
     
    When she studied the unappetizing mush without comment, he dropped into the seat opposite hers and dug in wordlessly, watching her reaction out the corner of his eye.      
     
    She lifted her spoon, took a small bite, chewed and swallowed. “Do you always eat MRE’s?” she asked him.  
     
    That got his attention. “How do you know this is an MRE?” She’d been upstairs when he’d dumped the stew out of the Meal-Ready-to-Eat Pouch.        
     
    “’Cause that’s all we ate after my mother died,” she said, stirring her stew. “That’s when I learned to cook.”   
     
    Now he really felt like an ogre. The memory of Stanley’s moist gaze as he talked about his wife at the Watering Hole returned to Ike with clarity. He wondered if Cougar would grieve for Carrie as long as Stanley had grieved for Irene—over a decade now. “You don’t have to eat it,” he heard himself offer. “I’ll find you something else.” Except the only thing growing in his garden was winter squash.   
     
    “You know, I could cook while I’m here,” she suggested unexpectedly. “I make a really mean lasagna.”
     
    Ike’s mouth watered. When was the last time he’d tasted home-cooked lasagna?  
     
    “We’ll buy groceries,” he decided. “Tomorrow.”
     
    “How long am I going to be here?”  
     
    The question agitated him all over again. “Depends on whether the FBI can find the bomber and whether they can prove he murdered your student.”
     
    She put her spoon down, looking suddenly ill. “You heard about Itzak ?”  
     
    “Yes.” Stanley had relayed the story to Cougar, who’d told it to Ike. Her Afghani student had plotted with another man to abduct her on her evening commute, only the kid had changed his mind at the last instant and ended up paying for his loyalty with his life.  
     
    “He had ties to the Brotherhood of Islam. That’s a faith-based group in D.C.”
     
    “I know what it is.” Bunch of homegrown terrorists, he thought.
     
    “The FBI says they want to avenge my father’s actions in Afghanistan by...by attacking me.” She lifted a dainty hand to her neck as if protecting it.  
     
    Disturbed by the look on her face, Ike heard himself say, “No one’s going to find you here.”
     
    She nodded, blinking rapidly to staunch the tears that made her eyes luminous.  
     
    “Eat your food,” he ordered. It annoyed him that he could feel himself getting sucked into her predicament. It had nothing to do with him—not anymore.     
     
    She poked at her stew but didn’t eat. “Listen, I don’t mean to be a nuisance,” she said with hesitancy, “but I don’t have any clothes.” Her gravity conveyed that the world would stop turning. “Plus, I need a toothbrush.”
     
    Her perfect, white smile had probably cost a fortune in orthodontics. “I have an extra. Never been used,” he added when her eyes just widened. “You going to eat that or not?”  
     
    She took a genteel bite to appease him. Ike acknowledged that she’d probably never called anyone crazy in her entire life, nor told anyone his house was a hovel. He had managed to bring out the worst in her, which had amounted to a storm of weeping and mild epithets, making her more appealing than ever, damn it.   
     
    Truth was, she’d been through hell lately—like nothing she’d ever experienced before. He could at least try to be nice, whether she abused drugs or not.
     
    “Did you get a look at the man in the taxi?” They might as well hash it out now