He held up his hand. “I’m always looking for food, woman. I think I’m always starving, and my grandmother says with what I eat I should weigh a thousand pounds.”
Marie laughed. “I can cook. I’ll make certain you have plenty of food.”
Amaryllis must have set a record for running, or her small tablet was close. She rushed back into the room and pulled up short when she heard Marie laughing. Malichai glanced at her and his breath caught in his lungs. It was the first time he’d allowed himself to really see her body. She wore a pair of yoga pants that fit her like a glove. The little racer-back tank clung to every curve—and she had them. She might be on the shorter side, but she was breathtaking.
He peered into the machine as if it were his life’s work. He wasn’t going to get caught staring at her and reveal that she had the upper hand. That woman had an impressive body packed into those yoga pants and that tank.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” Marie said. “No worries, though, Amaryllis, I haven’t forgotten I owe you hours of time, including last night and this morning. I’ll bus tables and clean up the dining room while you do this. I have that appointment with Jacy’s doctor this afternoon, but I can do dinner . . .”
“I’m fine with cooking dinner,” Amaryllis said. “I haven’t poisoned anyone yet.”
Malichai thought that might be a pointed jab at him, but Marie didn’t seem to take it that way. She laughed as if she found Amaryllis very funny.
Malichai waited until Marie was out of the room before he turned and looked at Amaryllis again. She gave off the kind of energy he felt when he faced an enemy in combat. There was something else as well. If it was at all possible, he would have thought she felt very much like a fellow GhostWalker. They normally recognized one another, although there were a few who were shielded from the others, and they could shield an entire team when needed. He was far from home and the only women he knew who were GhostWalkers had been previous experiments Whitney had deemed failures.
He ignored the little lift to her chin. “You got anything for me, a starting point, because just looking at this, it all looks good. She said it worked fine last night, but this morning . . . nothing.”
“You’re really going to fix her dishwasher for her?” Sarcasm dripped from her voice.
Malichai looked her up and down. “I don’t know what your problem with me is, and frankly, I don’t care, but Marie seems like a very nice lady with too much work and too many problems. If I can fix her dishwasher, it’s a very small amount of my time to help someone who seems deserving. If you don’t want to help me, that’s okay. I’m capable of looking up the same things you are.”
She stared at him for a long moment, the clock ticking in the background. She blinked, a sweep of her long lashes. “You really are planning on fixing it for her, aren’t you?”
“I told you so.”
“Men like—” She stopped what she’d been going to say. “People aren’t usually that nice.”
She’d been going to say men like him. He didn’t ask questions. “I told you, my grandmother wouldn’t like it if I didn’t help.”
She studied his face. “You don’t have a grandmother.”
“Technically, she’s not my blood, but I claim her and, thankfully, she claims me. We all call her Nonny and she’s the center of the family. A good woman. She’s lived her life in the swamps of Louisiana, is as smart as a whip and about the kindest woman I know.”
Amaryllis glanced down at her tablet. “Start with the switch on the door. The latch, I mean. No, wait. It’s an assembly of latch switches.” She held out the tablet. “Like that. It says if it’s defective then the door can’t lock, and the dishwasher won’t work.”
Malichai watched the little video providing information on the door latch switches before carefully inspecting the assembly. “Is Marie really okay? She looks very upset, too upset to be frazzled over a dishwasher breaking down. It also sounds like you’ve been pulling extra duty to help her out quite a bit.” He kept his voice low as he examined the switch housing.
“Jacy’s been pretty sick again. She has a heart condition. Marie lost her husband and Jacy’s all she’s got. She’s very worried.”
“Is it her heart again?”
“I have no idea. I don’t think Marie does either. But she’s scared.”
“That’s too bad.” He didn’t know what else to say, but it worried him. It wasn’t right that the widow of a man dying in the service of his country was facing financial ruin and the possible loss of her daughter because Jacy had a heart problem. “Give me something else to check. This looks good.”
“The thermal fuse. You’ll have to access the control panel and you’ll need the meter. Do you know how to use that thing?”
“I’m surprised she has such good tools.”
“Her husband had them. He was really the one to come up with the idea of a bed-and-breakfast. He would be the maintenance man and she would be the cook. They’d both do the household chores together. They bought this place as a fixer-upper and just when they had everything in place, he was killed. His teammates still drop by occasionally, but she never asks them for help.”
He checked the thermal fuse twice before ruling it out. “I don’t think this is the problem either.” He glanced over his shoulder as Marie came in carrying far too many dishes. “Whoa, woman, you’re not a pack animal. You’re going to hurt your back. I can get those for you.”
Marie laughed. “Malichai, that’s silly. I do this every day, or Amaryllis does.”
Marie had registered him, but still, just hearing his name said in such a friendly tone surprised him. Some of his teammates were married. His brother Ezekiel was married. The women in their “family” were also GhostWalkers, every bit as lethal as their male counterparts. They sometimes joked and teased with him, but outsiders, as a rule, didn’t. He put it down to his looks. He knew he was intimidating.
“That doesn’t mean you should, ma’am,” he countered.
“Marie,” she corrected again. “Just please, call me Marie. If you call me anything else, I’ll feel far older than I already do.”
He doubted if Marie was even thirty yet. He glanced at Amaryllis. “We’re narrowing this down fast. Hopefully, if we don’t need a part, we’ll be using the dishwasher for all these dishes. Otherwise”—he lowered his voice as if entering a conspiracy—“I haven’t told her yet that I volunteered the two of us to do the dishes for you.”
Amaryllis covered her smile with her hand. “As I often clean the kitchen and do the dishes that don’t fit into the dishwasher, it isn’t unexpected.”