Fly With Me (Wild Aces #1)(42)

“Does Dani, uh, hate Mustache March?”

Joker let out a bark of laughter.

“Seriously?”

I guessed that answered my question.

“She f*cking hates it.”

“But you still do it.”

“She deals.”

In the years I’d known Joker and his wife, I’d never heard Dani raise her voice, never heard her curse. Somehow I didn’t think she and Jordan would deal in the same way. Maybe I should have just shaved the thing. I’d gotten caught up in the moment and hadn’t thought about how surprised I would have been if she’d radically changed her appearance or something.

“Let me guess, your girl isn’t a fan?” Joker asked.

“That would be an understatement. She’s pissed. I didn’t handle it all that well, so now she’s really pissed.”

He shrugged. “She’ll either get over it, or you’ll cave. Just pick your battles. Is she coming tonight?”

I nodded.

I felt guilty about that, too. The party at the O-Club had started two hours ago. Maybe I shouldn’t have suggested Jordan go with Easy. She’d definitely been nervous. Fuck. This was why I was shit at relationships. I was so used to just worrying about myself, my focus on my job and the mission, that I hadn’t even thought about her feelings.

Joker grinned. “Good luck. See you at the club in a few?”

I nodded again, my mind back on Jordan. I’d been an * earlier. I needed to make it up to her. Somehow.



JORDAN

I ended up being spared from one-on-one time with Easy when he brought a date, a pretty, dark-haired girl named Sonya.

She talked the whole way to the base, her stories distracting me from the nerves rolling around in my stomach and making my heart race.

It turned out she was in vet school—definitely way too smart for Easy—and from the sound of things, their arrangement, or whatever it was, was really casual. Easy took a call from another girl to set up what sounded like a date while she was there, and Sonya legit didn’t bat an eye. I would have kneed him in the balls, so I figured she was a better person than me. I didn’t really get why he brought her. I mean, I liked her a lot. But Noah had definitely described this as more of a family thing. And neither Easy nor Sonya looked all that into each other besides the obvious physical intimacy between them.

Not my business.

Except she was young and nice, and sort of reminded me of Meg, and I liked her. And I didn’t trust Easy as far as I could throw him, which considering that body, wouldn’t be far at all.

He took both of us to the visitor’s center, repeating the process I’d gone through with Noah in Vegas.

Bryer was a smaller base than Nellis, but it had the same nondescript look. The buildings looked a little rundown, the architecture a hodgepodge that didn’t quite match. Beige colors dominated. Function definitely reigned supreme. Easy pointed out the flight line, the rows of F-16s parked under giant metal hangars.

And then we were pulling into the parking lot of the club, and my nerves picked up.

Sonya flashed me a grin and I figured it was obvious I was freaking the f*ck out.

“The guys’ll be nice,” she whispered as we followed Easy in. “Some of the wives are fun.” She hesitated. “Some of the wives will ignore you ’cause you’re not a wife.” She shrugged. “You get used to it.”

It was a little pathetic how important it was to me that this went well. Meeting the friends was so official, and I’d gotten the impression that because Noah’s job kept him away from his family, his friends were his family. So I really wanted them to like me. Especially since I couldn’t quite get my stride with his best friend.

Easy explained the history of the club as we walked in, and how the building was divided into an officers’ side and an enlisted side, which seemed strange to me, but Easy just answered that it gave guys a place to relax and let their guard down among their peers. Still, weird. The whole rank thing and the way guys had saluted Easy going through the gate was just so different from what I was used to. Despite the manners my mother had attempted to drill into me, I was pretty laid back. The rules and customs overwhelmed me, creating way more opportunities for inadvertently insulting someone than I was comfortable with.

We hit the bar, and the nerves got worse as I surveyed the crowd.

The vast majority formed a sea of green flight suits. While not every guy was hot, there was an overabundance of fit guys dressed in uniform, so I figured anyone who had a man-in-uniform fantasy would be hard-pressed not to feel like they’d hit the mother lode. As long as they were willing to overlook the mustaches. Noah had not been kidding; all of the guys had mustaches, ranging from, desperately trying to grow facial hair to attack of the giant hairy caterpillar.

Interspersed between all of the green were the women who I guessed were the wives. By the look of things, Sonya and I had totally missed the mark on our outfits.

Fuck.

I glanced over at Sonya, who looked like she couldn’t have cared less. I, on the other hand, wanted to sink into the ground. Most of the women were dressed in jeans, their bodies covered in sweaters or fleece. I’d toned it down a bit, minimized the cleavage, made the hair a little smaller, but in comparison I felt overdone and ridiculous.

I so did not belong here.

And then I caught sight of a woman walking toward us, and I figured if there were a poster child for being an Air Force wife, this was it.