Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 136425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 682(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 682(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
She sighed, and he felt her roll over. The bed was what passed for a double in the States, so she was always close. “Or you could talk to me.”
“I thought we weren’t doing that.” It wasn’t like they didn’t talk. They had fallen into a completely congenial friendship. Or maybe they were two people existing in what passed for harmony now.
“I think you should go with my flow, Zach. It’s late, and it’s easy for me to pretend the rest of our shit doesn’t matter. What if in here we’re friends? Nothing more. Nothing less. Just friends. I don’t think we’ve been that.”
“I felt like you were my friend. I felt like… I don’t think I’ve felt closer to a person than I felt to you.” The minute the words were out of his mouth he regretted them. He should have talked about what she was working on or the game they played earlier tonight where she’d beaten the hell out of Lacey, who had tried to cover how much it irritated her. Yeah. They could have talked about Lacey and her weird vegan “I love animals but will assassinate a human” vibe.
She didn’t like to talk about them. Oh, she would talk about things related to him. Like finding his mom and how his dad was embedded with Huisman and how worried he was about his aunt who was currently somewhere in the Pacific Northwest living out all her Nomadland fantasies. But when he tried to broach the subject of them, she shut him down.
“Sorry,” he said, not waiting for her to ice him out or tell him he was pushing. “How did the dress design session go? Have you found someone who can actually make it?”
“I know a ton of seamstresses in DFW. Kala is finally happy that I put in some pockets so she can hide weapons, and I made it floor length but with a fuller skirt and a little place where she can tear it away in case she needs to fight hand to hand.”
“Uhm, it’s her wedding not a battle.”
She was quiet, but he could feel her stare. “Tell that to my cousin Carys.”
He winced. Okay. Her cousin’s wedding had been interrupted by a helicopter attack, so he would give it to Kala for being prepared. “Heard. So she’s happy with the design now? Can you get it done in time? I’m still trying to understand why they have to do it now. Shouldn’t they wait until things calm down? The weird thing is I think my…Cooper is the one pushing.”
“Well, when you chase after a woman for as long as your brother did, I’m sure you’re ready to get things nailed down once she says yes. Sometimes less. I think you mentioned marriage on our fourth date.”
He went super still. He remembered the moment. They were sitting in a diner after a movie they’d seen with Coop and Kala, and he’d made a passing remark that he and Devi would probably be married before Tasha and Dare. “I was joking about how long their engagement feels.”
“Were you?”
“I mean I was, but I wasn’t joking about marrying you,” he admitted. “I pretty much wanted to do that when I woke up at your place after that first night and you fed me and immediately put me to work fixing your sink.”
“You did not. You were terrible at it. How can you know so much about computers and stuff and nothing about sinks?”
“I guess because my aunt was sweet on the old dude who lived in the single wide next to ours, and he was always over fixing things. I didn’t want to stand around and listen to the olds flirting. I was more into sports.”
“Sportsball. I can see you playing various sportsballs. Cooper did, you know. Played a lot of sports,” she said quietly. “I played soccer when I was a kid, and I did some karate. My brother played football for a while, but then he got a concussion and my mom freaked out and his playing days were over. I think that was a good thing because my brother hits his head a lot.”
He chuckled because TJ Taggart was on the klutzy side. Oh, he was athletic and deadly when he wanted to be, but there was a lovable goof side to the man. “He needs to stop walking into dosers. Did I ever tell you how Lou accidently knocked him out with a sedative she was supposed to use on the bad guy?”
Her laughter went straight to his dick. “No, but Lou did. I also heard something about you giving them a lecture about making out in the middle of an op. Tell me, have you ever made out in the middle of an op?”
“If I did it was because making out was cover for the op.” He felt tired again. Now that he looked back at the last couple of years, he realized how often he’d put his body out there for the mission. At first it seemed very James Bond and hot, and now that he’d been with her… “It wasn’t glamourous. It wasn’t sexy. It was a job, and at the end of it it’s hard not to feel used.”