Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(72)
Vi grinned at her and held up a hand. Lina slapped it up high. “Fluctuat nec mergitur,” Vi said.
Lina grinned back and nodded to a nearby rack. Where the chocolate hulls of her boat-themed desserts were prepped and ready to be finished on command.
“Shouldn’t you sit down sometime?” Lina said to Vi.
“No. I respond poorly to people trying to cut my head off, too.”
“Nevertheless.” Lina grabbed the stool they had out here specifically for still-convalescing Vi and shoved it at her.
Vi sniffed. But she did lean her butt against it.
It sure as hell was good to see Vi back on her feet. Her hair washed and silky and currently knotted on top of her head, color back in her cheeks. Lina had noticed that Vi never strayed an arm’s reach away from a possible weapon. Easy enough in a kitchen, where nearly everything was a possible weapon, but Vi kept an eye on that door into their kitchen worse than any of them. Ready to fight to protect them all.
Lina smiled at her. “Have I ever told you I love you?”
Vi looked startled, and then actually flushed. Then she got control of herself and sighed despondently. “Damn. I wish you’d told me sooner. I’m afraid I’ll break Chase’s heart if I dump him for you now.”
“It’s platonic,” Lina said dryly. “Get over yourself, you vain woman.”
Vi grinned at her, licked a finger, and touched it to her shoulder with a sizzling noise.
Lina laughed. Which felt so damn good. All the crazy moments of laughter they’d had in these kitchens, all the arguments and the victories and the slump-down-in-a-puddle moments of exhaustion and the pure fun, all flooded back in that laugh, knocking that ghost terror back into a corner to gaze at them sulkily.
“Have you told him?” Vi waggled her eyebrows.
Lina tried not to choke on a sudden onslaught of giggles. Stress was pretty high tonight, and when you added Vi’s attempts to do weird things with her eyebrows, the urge to act out silliness was strong. “Told who?”
“That wall of freckles who prowls around after you trying to pretend he’s shy and geeky.” Vi snorted. “Which is hilarious.”
Lina grinned. “He’s part of a book club.”
And the women exploded into laughter. It rippled out from them through the kitchens, the solemn stress disturbed by it, eager grins breaking out here and there. In a moment, their usual pranksters were cutting up again, eddies of laughter and raucous humor breaking out around the kitchens.
“‘Look! I can read! Doesn’t that count as shy?’” Vi tried to make her voice ludicrously deep, and Lina burst into giggles again. “And did you see those glasses Ian uses?” Vi said. “Does he not even realize we know the lenses are fake?”
“The lenses are fake?” Lina said, indignant. She’d found it so endearing that such a cocky guy had a physical weakness like that. Ian had managed to play her!
“They can’t go into special ops if they have any vision issues.”
“Yeah, but they’re civilians,” Lina said very dryly.
Vi rolled her eyes. But then she sobered a little and gave Lina a quick look. “So how do you think you’ll handle it when he’s gone most of the year getting shot at?”
“The best I can,” Lina said. “The same way I handle everything else.” She focused on her dragon. Which could handle anything.
Vi nodded once, firmly. “That’s what I figured I would do.”
Lina wondered if she should tell Vi about Jake’s talk of possibly getting out but wasn’t sure. Seemed like the kind of thing he would want to break to his team in person, not through rumors spread by girlfriends. In any case, Lina held firm in her belief that she didn’t get to dictate his decision any more than he could dictate hers about her career—she only got to decide whether he was worth sticking with, whatever he chose.
Steady. Strong. Patient. Persistent. All those beautiful freckles. The way his sly humor just slid into a moment and caught her by surprise, so that a laugh burst out of her when she least expected it.
It would be hard as hell to let him go for six months, to a place where she couldn’t keep him safe. But it would be harder still to let him go forever.
Because it might still be scary to try to believe in a future. But she had to plan for one anyway. The one with him in it, somewhere in the world, thinking of her, always heading back to her as soon as he could. Or the one with him in it, the connection between them shattered by fear, trying to get over her while she crouched behind her bed and tried to get over him.
Yeah, f*ck that last option.
The doors that led out onto the restaurant floor opened, and black-clad waiters came through with the first orders. Behind them, Jake slipped in and to the side of the door, the least in-the-way place in a restaurant kitchen in full swing. Lina glared at him, slipping the wannabe-hydra dragon dessert under the counter, and pointed out to the floor again, where he had a table with his buddies. The man sure was hard to prepare a surprise for. He liked to see things coming a long way out.
Jake grimaced, annoyed not to be able to stay and watch, and she pointed more firmly. He looked over everything—from the doors, to the windows, to the behavior of every single person in the kitchens—before he left. That was Jake.
“How do you think they chose which one of them had to sit with his back to the door?” she asked Vi wryly as Jake finally left. She and Vi had reserved them a table in the corner, with a good view of the doors, but the table was still round.