“And I can’t eat gluten,” Colin added.
“Then you’ll go hungry, won’t you?” Alex said, untying Colin’s ankles, and not gently.
“Just eat the toppings, Colin,” I said.
Dominic hadn’t responded to my personal training comment. I tried again.
“Don’t tell me you regularly eat pizza,” I said to him. “Not with that body.”
“Stop trying to suck up.” Alex yanked me off the couch.
“Who’s sucking up? Your brother’s ripped. So are you.” No lie there. Alex’s muscles put some men I knew to shame. Not my brothers, though. And certainly not Bryce.
I looked over at Colin. He’d been a good-looking man with a great physique once. Tom Simpson had stolen all of that from him. Now he was thin and scarred. A shadow of his former self.
“Just come on. You too.” She yanked Colin up by the arm.
“You’re pretty rough with us for someone who’s supposedly doing this to protect us,” I couldn’t help saying.
So much for trying to be nicer, though Dominic, not Alex, was my target.
“I can get rougher,” she said. “Come on. The food’s waiting.”
I was no shrinking violet, but Alex had muscles on her muscles. She could most likely take me, especially since I wasn’t at full capacity. I smiled—sort of—and followed her to the kitchen.
Dominic and Dave were already at the table.
“Help yourselves,” Dominic said. “There’s only water to drink. Sorry.”
“Water is the best way to hydrate,” I said sweetly. Sort of. “As a trainer, you should know that.”
“It is, except when extra electrolytes are necessary,” he said. “You two should be fine with plain water, though.”
“How did you get us here?” I asked. “My head doesn’t hurt, so you couldn’t have knocked me unconscious.”
“A small injection in your neck,” he said.
I trailed my fingers to my neck, feeling around. Sure enough, there was a tiny area of irritation. “You drugged us.”
“Very safely,” he said.
Again, I held back the words I wanted to spew at him. “What if one of us had had an allergy?”
“Unlikely,” he said.
I inhaled. The pizza smelled good to me, and my stomach growled again.
Dominic chuckled. “Go on. I can tell you’re hungry.”
“I need a fork,” Colin said. “I can’t eat the crust.”
Alex with the eye roll again. She opened a drawer and shoved a fork at Colin.
He grunted a thank-you.
I took a bite of pizza and nearly swallowed it whole. Run-of-the-mill pizza wasn’t really my thing. When I made pizza, I did it with style and panache—prosciutto and provolone, or kalamata olives and goat cheese. But damn, regular old pizza—pepperoni and mozzarella—was totally hitting the spot.
I had downed one piece and half of another before I spoke again. “Why is it unlikely that we’d have an allergic reaction to whatever you stuck us with?”