Page 17 of Indirect Attack
Our words came out simultaneously, and we both stopped, then started talking at the same time, then stopped again.
“I feel like an idiot teenager again,” I admitted with a nervous laugh.
“Yeah,” Ben agreed, but he was grinning, the first genuine grin I’d seen in years.
Shaking my head, I looked up at him. “Do you have any time off?” I repeated.
Ben nodded. “I do tonight when I’ve finished with my duties for the day.”
“Do you want to have dinner? Maybe catch up? I hear the food here is good. My treat?” I indicated the direction of the hotel’s restaurant with a wave over my shoulder.
But a hesitation greeted my offer, and I nearly recanted, saying that we could do something else. Then Ben nodded, an odd furrow to his brow and a peculiar downward quirk to his mouth.
“Yeah, sure. That would be nice. You should bring your boyfriend, too.”
I stopped, tilting my head, the words catching me entirely off guard. “My boyfriend?”
“Yeah, your boyfriend.” Ben ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “I’d like to finally meet him somewhere other than a lawn on a dark street.”
Though the words began to make more sense with that last statement, I wasn’t sure enough of Ben’s original point to be sure my assumption was correct.
“What boyfriend?” I asked, cautious.
“Greg—what’s his last name?” Ben’s eyes lifted to the ceiling for a moment as he thought. “Greg Rawlins? He’s here too, right?”
I felt my eyes widen, and I had to bite back an incredulous laugh. “Greg?”
The thought was ridiculous, but knowing how our last meeting had gone, I supposed I couldn’t blame Ben too much for thinking we were together. Instead, I shook my head again.
“No, we’re not together. Greg is very much not my boyfriend. I don’t have a boyfriend.”
I was sure I would have missed the way he stiffened if I hadn’t known Ben so well, even after all these years. And the flicker of some emotion over his face that was gone too quickly to name.
“Oh.” He said the word casually. Almost too casually. “Okay. Well, see you at eight?”
I couldn’t help the grin that spread across my face. “Yeah, at eight. My treat, right?”
Ben nodded, gave me an odd salute, and left. I watched his form disappear through the hotel’s double doors, my grin so large it hurt my cheeks. But I didn’t care. Instead, I clutched the drawing to my chest and ran back to my room. I wanted to put it somewhere safe before I changed and went to work. When I’d caught sight of Ben, I’d been on the way to breakfast, but I felt too giddy to do more than stare at the drawing and read the note in Ben’s masculine writing over again until I had to leave.
Chapter 9
Ben
SHE DOESN’T HAVE Aboyfriend. Son of a bitch, she doesn’t have a boyfriend.
The words ricocheted repeatedly around my head as I made my way back to the base, along with a giddy feeling skipping through my veins, making it difficult to concentrate on the road. My fingers kept tapping a beat on the steering wheel, and I could have sworn I was almost smiling.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this way.
It had occurred to me that Jasmine could be lying. But honestly, if she had changed so much that she wouldn’t be truthful about a boyfriend, I didn’t know if anything would work out between us.
But at my core, I knew she wasn’t that kind of person. I knew Jasmine too well—there was no way the girl I had grown up with could become that cynical, that calculating, that unpleasant. Her smile was still as bright as ever, her eyes clear and warm, and I didn’t think there was a thing in the world that could change her into something that, at her core, she wasn’t.
In school, Jasmine had always been the cheerful one, the one who everyone liked, who had flitted from social group to social group without being part of any specific clique. This socialbutterfly could talk to anyone and learn their life story within an hour.
I had been the opposite: quiet, socially awkward, wanting to be on my own. Jasmine had dragged me along when even my brothers hadn’t been able to—I just hadn’t been able to say no to her. And, more often than not, I’d had fun. Although the fun had more to do with being around Jasmine than anything else, she’d opened the world to me when I would have been a complete recluse outside of school.
But as social as she’d been, Jasmine had always found time for me alone. Even in high school, she’d had the rare ability to make me feel like I was the only important thing to her at that moment, no matter how much of a social butterfly she was, no matter how many people wanted her time.
