Page 46 of Fast Fury

Trying to put his annoyance aside, Kai changed the subject. “You hungry?”

She gave him a grateful smile that reassured him there were no hard or hurt feelings. “Starved.”

“There’s a bakery I love a couple minutes up the road. We can grab some coffee and pastries and still have you back at the resort in plenty of time to get ready.”

“Sounds good.”

The little roadside bakery made the best caramel-macadamia sticky buns in the universe, fresh every morning. Kai ordered two for himself and one for Abby, a black coffee for him, and a vanilla latte for her. He sipped at his coffee back in the Mustang while she nibbled her bun and sipped at her latte.

“Oh, wow, this is insanely good,” she mumbled around a mouthful of caramel and sticky bun. He wanted to lick it off her lips so bad.

“Best ever.”

She licked her fingers, cast him a curious look. “Can I ask you something?”

Automatically his shoulders tensed, bracing for her to say something uncomfortable. “Yeah.”

“What’s a FAST team?”

The question took him off guard. He’d assumed she’d been about to ask something about him and Hani. Under normal circumstances he would say he couldn’t tell her, for security reasons, but these circumstances weren’t normal, and after this morning he didn’t want secrets like that between them any longer. He trusted her, wanted something real with her. “It means Foreign Advisory and Support Team.”

She watched him steadily, swallowed another mouthful. “I’ve never heard of it.”

He took the turn toward Wailea. “No, most people haven’t.” So how had Hani? That unsettled him almost as much as what Hani had said. He had to tell his commander about it. “There are five teams, all of us tier one units. I’m on FAST Bravo. Each team is responsible for a different geographic area, helping foreign governments and units conduct counter-narcotic and counter-terrorist missions. For us, it’s all over the place, but we do an annual four-month-long tour in Afghanistan in addition to whatever missions we’re given elsewhere.”

Her eyebrows went up and she stopped chewing. “Huh.” She ran her gaze over his shoulders and chest. “That makes a lot of sense, though, and the deployments explain a lot about why you’re sometimes gone for so long. Because I can’t picture you sitting behind a desk.”

He snorted. “Yeah, no. I’d lose my mind.”

“So you guys are all former military? Or maybe…more?”

He loved how quick she was, how she was able to read between the lines. “Yes. Well, most of us. Granger—the guy who was doing a terrible job at lip-syncing to AC/DC—isn’t former military. He was former DEA undercover.”

“You said counter-terrorist missions. So that means the same kinds of things as the SEALs and whoever do too, right?”

A grin tugged at his mouth. Yep, she was quick on the uptake. “That’s right.”

“So you work with those kinds of units, then. Or at least train with them.” At his surprised expression, she added, “I saw a documentary talking about that kind of thing a couple months ago.”

He shook his head, glanced over at her. “Why are you so damn smart?”

Abby cocked her head, gave him an adorable smile. “Just am.”

He stopped at a red light. “Well, since you are, I’ll only say that what I told you is all classified info. Normally we can’t tell our significant others what we do unless we get engaged or married. And even then, there are certain things we can’t talk about.”

She drew her head back in pretend shock, eyes wide. “Whoa, slow down, big guy. We said one day at a time. So that kind of talk is moving way too fast for me.”

A bark of laughter escaped, stunning him. How the hell had she made him laugh when he’d been so damn miserable fifteen minutes earlier? “I needed that, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She leaned across the seat to kiss him, her lips lingering on his for a moment before she settled back against her seat. “And thank you for trusting me. I promise not to tell anyone that you’re a badass DEA operative. But now that I know…” She shook her head ruefully, watching him with an appreciative gleam in her eyes. “Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly be any hotter.”

The compliment shouldn’t have inflated his ego to ridiculous proportions, but it did. “Yeah? Hell, if I’d known that, I would have told you earlier,” he joked.

“No, it means more this way.” This time she reached for his hand, twined their fingers together. Kai wished they had more time together right now, but the resort was only a few minutes away.

“How did Hani know?” she asked. “I mean, he kind of flung it out there like he was proving a point and you seemed surprised.”

“That’s a damn good question. Not even mytutuknows what I do.” And he dreaded the answer. Although he had a pretty good idea of what it was.

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