A Harmless Little Game (Harmless #1)(23)

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I’m having some fun.” We drink our Cosmos and just relax. I don’t ask her what she’s up to, because I have a feeling I’m about to find out anyhow.

I forgot how nice it is to spend time with someone you’re comfortable with. Someone you don’t have to pretend with.

And as if on cue, my relaxation is interrupted by the entrance of a man in a suit.

It’s Drew.

“Damn it,” I mutter, watching him enter and approach Silas. Could they be any more obvious? They look like Secret Service agents.

Jane follows my gaze and does a double take. “That’s Drew!” she gasps. Her face reddens. “Oh, no.”

“Why? What’s wrong with Drew? Aside from the obvious, I mean.”

“It’s just—he—I mean...” The server approaches Silas and Drew, and sets a drink down in front of Silas, who looks super confused. Drew’s face tightens with anger. Clearly, Silas isn’t supposed to be drinking on the job.

“I sent that drink to Silas,” Jane confesses.

“I figured.”

When the server motions to me and Jane, Silas blushes furiously. Drew looks at us. Jane gives a little, silly wave, fluttering her fingers.

Drew gets up and comes toward us as if Jane gave him an engraved invitation. He marches up to her side of the booth and hip checks her, sliding right on in.

“Did you just offer my security officer sex on the beach?”

I spray him with a mouthful of my Cosmo.

Drew looks down at his now-wet chest, which is lightly misted with the fine, fruity droplets of my delicious drink.

“Well.”

Jane bursts out laughing, the kind of nervous giggling you can’t control with a drink in you and a hot guy sitting next to you, covered in your friend’s spray.

I am feeling loose and overwhelmed, silly and slightly panicked, and I can’t stop laughing, either.

Drew stares at me, his face impassive, but I see a smile in his eyes.

“Occupational hazard,” I finally gasp, still hysterical.

“I’ve been sprayed with bullets before, but never with a mixed drink.”

“There’s a first for everything,” Jane says, grabbing the spare cocktail napkins from the table and patting his chest gently.

He watches her, the corners of his mouth twitching with a repressed smile. Silas walks over, holding his drink called Sex on the Beach, and sets it down in front of Jane.

“That’s very kind of you, Ma’am, but I can’t accept this.” He and Drew exchange an unreadable look.

“You sure you can’t have sex on the beach?” she asks sweetly.

Silas’s face turns even redder. I didn’t think that was humanly possible. He’s freaking adorable.

“I, um.” He thrusts the drink toward Jane, who gives him a flirty look. “I just can’t, Ma’am.”

“My name is Jane.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“You can call my mother ‘Ma’am.’” Jane reaches into her purse and pulls out a business card. I realize I have no idea what she does for a living. Last I knew, she was a computer science major at Cal Tech, but as I’m learning every second of these hours home, nothing is the same as it used to be.

She hands the card to Silas. “But you can call me any time.”

Drew groans. I groan. Silas just turns into a beet.

I share a look with Drew. We’re both smiling. It’s like that feeling you get when you come in from the cold, your hands and feet turned to ice, and you sit down in front of a roaring fire as someone hands you a huge mug of coffee you wrap your fingers around.

Like the sun parting the mist covering the bay and making you think you’re catching a glimpse of heaven.

It’s like I can touch normal. Just with one fingertip, but still...

“I see Jane got bold,” Drew says to me from across the table.

“Lots of things changed in four years,” I reply.

“Yes. Lots,” he says.

Silas just stands there, all broad shoulders and dimpled cheeks, his eyes on Jane. I glance over his shoulder as a mane of thick, long, perfectly-highlighted honey-gold hair walks in, topping a body that looks like it stepped out of a Vogue Magazine issue.

A chill runs through me, even though I haven’t seen the woman’s face. I know that hair, though.

Lots of things haven’t changed in four years.

Jane tenses, then looks where I’m looking.

“No way,” she mutters under her breath. “Of all the places one of them could be today, she’s here?”

Drew looks over and goes rigid. Makes eye contact with Silas, who gives him a slight frown, trying to read Drew.

“Mandy,” Drew says under his breath. He looks at me. He looks at Jane. Then he leans over and almost bumps heads with Jane as he says, “You told Lindsay?”

She and I both nod.

“Got it,” he replies. “Let me handle this.”

Before I can ask him what the hell he means by that, he’s up and over to the bar, where Mandy’s settling in on a bar stool. He lifts one leg up and hops into the seat, thigh muscles straining against the cloth of his suit pants, his waistband exposed as his jacket shifts.

I see his gun.