“Food helps, except when it doesn’t.” There was no foolproof method for avoiding the spins and the nausea. “With a pill on board and some food, I’ll probably fall asleep.”
“Excellent,” Bartosz said. “Won’t that be excellent, Dmytro?”
“Hanging up now.”
“How far are we going?” Ajax asked.
“Not far. We have a safehouse in the local mountains.”
“Your safe house is at altitude?” Ajax felt anxious already. “I’ll need ibuprofen, vitamin B12, and a ton of alkaline water for the altitude sickness. And it will probably take me a day to get my equilibrium. I don’t do well above six thousand feet.”
“I’ll bear that in mind next time someone asks where we should build a safe house.”
“And no fair! You should have told me where we were going.” Ajax let his head fall back against the seat. “I could have brought my snowboard.”
“That’s the thing about private security. It’s private and secure because we don’t tell everyone everything.”
Ajax didn’t need this.
His parents were going to be sorry they’d hired all these people.
They rounded the block for a third time, and with stop-and-go traffic, they were just passing by when Dmytro came out of the restaurant, laden with food. Bartosz stopped at the curb and waited, earning honks and some cursing from the people behind them. He ignored it and unlocked the door.
To Ajax’s dismay, Dmytro opened the back door. “Scoot over.”
Ajax didn’t move. “Can’t you get back in front?”
“No. Scoot over.” At Dmytro’s long-suffering expression, he unbuckled his belt and scooted. Dmytro crawled in and handed over a drink carrier with three slushes in it. He placed the food bag between them.
This was degrading. Ajax was going to have this man—this hulking, gorgeous, awful man—staring at him the whole time with eyes that said,You are nothing. Nevertheless, he opened the bag. Chicken, tots, dressing. He handed Dmytro his corn dog and poppers. Dmytro gave Bartosz a drink and his food.
Ajax held his food between his hands without opening it. “This is weird. You’re weird.”
“Why?” Dmytro stopped in the process of unwrapping a straw.
“You’re supposed to be this badass bodyguard, but now we’re eating junk food in the back of the car like kids, and—”
“And what?” Dmytro bit the tip off his corn dog with a snap. “I eat junk food. Everyone eats junk food.”
“Guess I figured you must eat clean or paleo or gluten-free or something.”
“Paleo.” Dmytro’s lips quirked. “I look like a paleo guy to you?”
“Sort of.” Ajax nodded. Dmytro looked like a clean-shaven caveman, a warrior, or a barbarian to Ajax. “You look like you should be holding a haunch of venison by the hoof and drinking from some kind of horn.”
“I eat what’s available to me.” Dmytro glanced down at his food and grimaced. “Ugh.The batter inside is still raw.”
Dmytro exchanged a few foreign words with Bartosz. His sentence ended with the English phrase “mustard the color of bile.”
Dmytro addressed his poppers. “These? I like.” He tossed one into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “What exactly is ranch dressing? Was it made on a ranch? Is it only for cowboys? Why does it have buttermilk only sometimes?”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought.” Ajax swirled a piece of his popcorn chicken in dressing before eating it. “I don’t know why they call it ranch.”
“Don’t you think about what you eat?”
The question annoyed Ajax.
“You don’t care what I think.” It was like all the other meaningless questions people threw out to engage him. It wasn’t that they really wanted to know his answer. They mostly asked so they could find a way to exploit whatever he said.
