Page 42 of Stand Fast

She barely kept her horror from showing. “Sure.” She loathed the icky sweet bottled American version, but she just couldn’t force herself to drink any more water today, and even a fake, sugary form of tea was better than coffee. Vile stuff.

“Okay, hang tight.” He walked off, leaving her with Prentiss and six of the other FAST Bravo guys as they gathered around the table.

“So, Rabani. Sure you’re up for this?” Hamilton asked as he pulled in his chair, his dark gray eyes filled with mischief. All the guys were in jeans and T-shirts rather than the usual tactical stuff she normally saw them in.

“I’m not sure. What are we playing?” If it was strip poker, she was outta here.

“Our own version of Taboo. Ever played the regular one?”

“A long time ago.” Growing up, her family used to play games together in the evenings and on weekends. She missed it, and being over here for so long made her miss them all the more. It had been over a year since she’d been back home to Michigan.

“Well, you’ve never played it like this,” Hamilton said with a wink, and downed the rest of his water.

“Why, how do you guys play it?”

“You’ll see. Just waiting on Maka to get us a buzzer.”

“Okay.” She glanced around, found that her analyst had abandoned her for the SF guys on the other side of the room, who were all transfixed by whatever military video game they had going on there. So she might as well have come alone.

She made polite conversation with the others and Zaid finally came back a few minutes later with a bottle of iced tea and some baked goods wrapped in a paper napkin. Cookies and bars. “I saved these for you,” he said as he set them in front of her. “My mom made the spice cookies. Might be a little on the stale side now, but should still taste pretty good.”

He was so sweet, and so was his mother sending him homemade treats. Her family sent her care packages filled with books and treats too, but never any baking. “Thank you.”

“Hey, is that one of my mom’s blondies?” Granger accused as he came back to the table carrying a box filled with bags of crisps—chips, she corrected herself—and at least a dozen packages of red licorice.

“Yep, and I saved it for Agent Rabani,” Zaid said, sliding into the chair beside her. Lord, he smelled good. And every time he shifted his right arm brushed against her left one, sending sparks along her skin.

Jaliya set the light-colored brownie back down on the napkin. “Do you want it?” she asked Granger.

He waved the offer away. “Nah. Just, if I’d known he still had one, I would’ve stolen it from him.”

“They’re that good, huh?”

“Best.”

Well that demanded a taste test. She broke off half and held it out to him. “I’ll share with you.”

He huffed out an embarrassed laugh and shook his head. “No, it’s okay.”

“I can’t deprive you of the whole thing knowing it reminds you of your mom,” she insisted, waving it at him.

Grinning, Granger took it from her and raised it in salute. “Thanks.”

She bit into hers the same time he did. “Oh, yeah.” She chewed it, savoring the buttery, sugary flavor, and moaned. “Oh, God, she used real butter.”

He made a rumbling sound and nodded as he chewed, taking the chair at the head of the table. “Lotsof butter.”

The second bite was even better than the first. She hummed in pleasure and belatedly caught the way Zaid was staring at her as she ate—as though he was imagining taking a bite out ofher. Blood surged into her cheeks and she hoped no one noticed. She’d done more than her fair share of fantasizing about tasting him too.

“Okay, I found it. Game on,” Agent Maka said as he strode up to the table holding something she couldn’t see in one hand. He folded his huge body into the last empty chair, hiding whatever he held under the table.

She started to bend over to peek beneath it, but he cocked his head and raised an eyebrow at her, so she stopped. “So, how do we play?” she asked.

“We all came up with a bunch of words to guess and wrote them down on slips of paper,” Zaid said, reaching out to shake the helmet on the table that was full of little folded bits of paper. “We break into teams of two and each team gets a turn. One player pulls a word from the helmet and has to get their partner to say it without using the word itself, or the five other words listed on the paper. The team that wins the most rounds is the champion.”

“And someone from another team watches from behind the person giving the clues,” Maka added with a sly grin. “If they say a word on the paper, they’re done. Next team gets to go.”

Jaliya nodded, all the rules coming back to her now. “Am I going to know these words?” Because considering all the acronyms and pet names they probably had for things, she might not.

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