Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(16)
Célie looked pleased with herself at the laughter. It had been tough going, pulling a laugh out, those first few days. “Speaking of guys,” she said. “Remember those guys who were trying to pick us up in Italy last month?”
“Oh, those idiots.” Vi rolled her eyes.
“Well, anyway, I put the photos up so you all can download them.” Célie picked up Vi’s tablet and clicked on the shared cloud space they used for photos from trips they took together.
“They weren’t that cute,” Vi said.
“Not the guys! They make Joss get very annoyed.” The three of them had been taking trips together for years, and even though Célie now had a serious boyfriend, she had declined to bring Joss along to Italy and disrupt a female tradition. Joss had been okay with it—which he’d damn well better be, given that he’d disappeared on Célie into the Foreign Legion for five years—but that didn’t mean he loved knowing how many guys had hit on the three women traveling together. “All the photos of Italy.”
Célie called up the first one. Lina stared at a photo of three women laughing in an infinity pool overlooking the Tuscan countryside. Wow. Who was that oblivious, happy, confident, black-haired woman?
She peered at her through that gray fog, but she couldn’t reach her other self. Célie swiped to the next photo, the three of them each with a bright orange spritz, the favorite Italian apéritif, toasting toward the camera as they sat on a restaurant terrace overlooking a vineyard. Laughing. Not a care in the world.
Lina slid a glance sideways at Vi. Did she recognize herself?
Vi’s glance slid sideways to meet hers.
Yeah. Célie was showing them photos of strangers. Strangers they knew they were supposed to recognize, but somehow that recognition just wouldn’t come.
Vi refocused quickly on the photos, grinning for Célie’s sake and maybe also for their own, knowing just as well as Lina did that they had to pretend their way back to normal again. Célie looked from one of them to the other and then focused very fiercely on the tablet screen. She shoved her hand once hard across her eyes instead of breaking down, which Lina appreciated. None of them had better start breaking down.
They were tough. Tough was who they were. They had to handle this.
Célie’s ex-Legionnaire boyfriend Joss came by after a while, to visit with Vi and to give Célie emotional support when she left the hospital room. His big hand closed snug around Célie’s as they left, and Lina’s gaze lingered wistfully on that hand hold.
Probably not surprising that the thought of having a strong man’s hand around hers was enticing right now. And…hey.
Was she actually the only one of the three friends left who didn’t have a guy? That was going to feel funny when they went out together.
Her lips relaxed. Well, look at that. She’d just imagined a moment in the future. It must be pretty resilient, the future. It kept sneaking back images of itself even when you thought it was shot to hell. She scrolled through a few of the photos Célie had left on Vi’s tablet, touching her finger to her own black curls in the image. Then touching her hand to her hair in real life. Same hair. Even if a different person.
Vi was tired and clearly trying not to show it. Lina left her with a stack of the magnetic darts and some fresh movies and went to make sure Chase and his buddies were fed.
Because that was still who she was. The woman who fed people, fed their stomachs, their hearts, their eyes, through the beautiful things she made.
We won, she thought to herself. Never forget that. We fought evil and won.
So she refused to start losing now.
Chapter 5
Lina had been surrounded by too much testosterone all her career, but Chase’s friends really took the prize. So much testosterone packed into that hospital room that it spilled out into the corridor in laughter and male voices and a dark-streaked golden glow of I am a badass; however bad you think you are, I’ve taken out worse than you.
She liked it. Every rough joke said, This is how you deal with a life full of violence and death. You look it in the eye and you laugh.
Her police guards relaxed when they were in the hospital corridor and Chase’s friends were around. They chatted with Vi’s guards and half of them took a break for coffee. Officially, this was because having both Vi’s guards and Lina’s stand watch when Lina was visiting her friend was redundant, but Lina figured even the guards were susceptible to that sense of masculine certainty that radiated from Chase’s team: We’ve got this.
The guys she spent most of her life around, the Au-dessus kitchen brigades, were extremely physically confident. They could juggle hot pans with their bare hands, slice and dice a quarter of a steer into its separate parts in a matter of minutes, fillet a fish, create miracles, and do it all at battle-speed as orders rushed in and the pressure mounted.
But these guys worked at battle-speed in actual battles, when on every reflex, every split-second decision, hung someone’s life. They had never met anything they believed they could not do, because if they could even admit failure was possible, they wouldn’t be here.
Chase and his friends had confidence. It just strode its way through everyone else’s confidence like a lion through a flock of gazelles.
It must take a lot of calories to nourish that kind of confidence, too, because whenever she approached Chase’s room with a case of special treats, they gazed at her as if they were famished.