“Vodka tonic, gin and tonic, diet cola, regular cola and a bottle of beer.” The bleached-blonde cocktail waitress snapped her gum and read off her scribbled list.
Trey leaned his forearms against the bar rail. Happy to be clean-shaven again and out of the dusty, ripe cammies from the previous day’s final exercise, he was more than content to simply sit and watch the bartender work.
After picking up two glasses in each hand, she packed them with ice and then lined them up in front of her on the bar. She poured the liquor with her left hand while operating the soda gun with her right. Not even glancing at the bottles in the speed rack, she just grabbed, poured and then returned them to their proper places.
Leaning on the bar next to him, an also-well-groomed Jack watched her too while shaking his head. “Ooo wee, how can someone look so hot and act so cold?”
“She’s not cold. She’s just busy.” Trey kept his voice low.
Jack laughed. “Oh, believe me, she can get cold as ice. Just ask her out a few times and you’ll see.”
Trey had seen each and every time Jack had asked this woman out and gotten a no in response.
“Hey there, darlin’. Couple of longnecks over here when you get a chance,” Jack called out to her.
Trey frowned. “Jeez, Jack. Give her a second. She’s got her hands full.”
“Vodka tonic has two straws, gin and tonic one straw, diet’s got a lemon and regular doesn’t.” Without even glancing their way, the bartender lined a cocktail tray with the drinks, calling them off for the gum-snapping blonde as she did so.
She turned her back to the two of them, reached down into a fridge against the wall behind the bar and came up with three longneck beer bottles in one hand.
Trey had to admit the view was damn nice from there with her bending over in those tight jeans. No wonder she sold so much bottled beer. Pretty much every guy on the base came in when they were stateside and ninety-nine percent of them ordered the bottled beer strictly for the view.
With an economy of motion he had to appreciate, she popped the tops off the bottles using the bar-mounted opener, letting the caps plunk one by one into the garbage pail positioned perfectly underneath to catch them.
She placed one bottle in the center of the drinks on the cocktail tray. “And there’s the beer.”
Finished with the waitress, she slapped two cocktail napkins down in front of them and plopped the remaining two beers in her hand on top of them. “And there are your beers, darlin’.”
Trey had to smile at the verbal slap aimed directly at Jack until she turned to him next. “And I can do more than one thing at a time, but thanks for your concern.”
Just when he’d thought she wasn’t listening . . .
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jack enjoying his discomfort now.
Trey shrugged. “Looked more like seven things at once to me.” He raised his bottle in a mock toast to her and drank.
“Hey, darlin’. Why don’t you give in and go out with me? Give up all this cat and mouse. Playing hard to get is fun and all, but I know we could have a lot more fun together.” Jack waggled his eyebrows.
Would Jack ever stop trying? His resilience never ceased to amaze Trey.
“Okay. I’ll go out with you.” She walked over to them and leaned up against the bar, her well-rounded breasts pushing the boundaries of the neckline of her tight T-shirt. “On one condition.”
Trey had never seen Jack so flustered before in all the time he’d known him. Jack had been asking this woman out for years now and this was as close as he’d ever come to an actual yes.
Jack swallowed and finally wrestled his eyes up from her chest. “W-what’s that, darlin’?”
“What’s my name?” She slapped each palm flat on the bar and waited for the answer.
Jack opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Trey paused for a moment himself. She had a good point. They’d been coming here a good two years now and she’d served them most times, but he’d be damned if he knew her name.
Shaking her head, she smiled. “Didn’t think so.”
She walked away as the waitress returned to give her money for the drinks. Trey watched her glance at them in the reflection of the mirror behind the bar as she opened the cash register and made change.
“Why didn’t you remember her name?” Jack backhanded Trey’s leg. “Dang it. I was as happy as a puppy with two peters when she said she’d go out with me. I nearly shit my pants. Then she comes up with some stupid question. I didn’t think there’d be a test first.”
As Jack scowled, Trey shook his head. “It wasn’t a stupid question. She’s right. We should know after all this time. Besides the team, we probably spend more hours here with her than with anyone else in our lives and we don’t even know her name.”
Jack frowned and broke his gaze away from watching the nameless bartender. Staring right at Trey now, Jack cocked his head to one side. “What is all this tonight? First it’s ‘Don’t bother her, she’s busy’. Now it’s ‘She’s right, we should know her name’. You better not be snooping around my girl. Teammates don’t steal each other’s women. It’s in the code.”
Trey rolled his eyes and let out a short laugh. “First of all, I’m not snooping around, as you put it. Second, if she’s your woman, learn her damn name.”
“I will.” Jack banged his bottle onto the bar. He glanced around until his attention landed on the waitress. “Baby cakes, sashay your sweet self on over here.”
The willing waitress arrived immediately after his summons in a cloud of perfume mixed with grape gum. She had on so much makeup her eyelashes stuck together when she tried to bat them at Jack.
“Hey, boys. I don’t get to hang with you two usually. You’re always sitting at the bar instead of at my tables. What can I do for you?”
Jack fielded that question while Trey took another swig of beer. He noticed that while he and Jack had been arguing, the bartender had left briefly. She returned now with a rack of clean, stemmed glasses.
Hoisting the unwieldy item onto the bar with a clang, she started to hang the glasses one by one upside-down above the bar.
Glancing at Jack as he flirted with the waitress, she raised a brow. “Moved on already, has he? I’m heartbroken.”
Trey laughed. He considered telling her Jack was sweet talking the waitress in an attempt to find out her name. Instead, without even knowing why he did it, he extended his arm toward her. “I’m Trey Williams.”
She looked down at his offered hand and then back to his face. After a moment, she wiped her fingers on a bar rag and took his in a firm, strong grasp. “Carly McAfee.”
He smiled and repeated, “Carly.”
“Yeah, short for Charlene. Thank God my parents realized I wasn’t a Charlene pretty early on and gave me the nickname.”
“What’s wrong with the name Charlene?” he asked mainly to keep her talking because he was enjoying the conversation.
She glanced at the miniskirt-wearing waitress still talking with Jack.
“I’d have to look like her to pull off a name like Charlene.” She shook her head. “No, I’m definitely a Carly.”
Trey took in her straight brown hair pulled into a ponytail to fully expose a pretty, fresh face. If she wore makeup at all, it didn’t scream to be noticed. Her girl-next-door looks sat just fine with him. The centerfold-worthy, shapely jean-clad hips, small waist and even shapelier T-shirt-covered breasts didn’t hurt either.
She was a strange cocktail of simplicity mixed with attitude, shaken with killer good looks. More importantly, he could tell there was a brain in that pretty head of hers.
Jack, leaning forward, interrupted Trey’s reverie regarding Carly’s assets. “Hey, darlin’. I want another chance at this date. Come over here and ask me your question again.”
She rolled her eyes and walked to stand in front of Jack. “I’ll give you one more chance, but the question has changed.”
“Lay it on me, sweet cheeks.” Jack grinned wide.
Looking overly confident, Jack leaned back on the barstool and waited for the question. He must have gleaned quite a bit of information from his discussion with the waitress.
Carly covered her eyes with one hand. “What color are my eyes?”
Jack, who never used bad language in mixed company, silently mouthed a vile curse before venturing an obviously blind guess. “Uh, brown?”
“Wrong.” She turned, opened the beer cooler and began checking her stock of cold bottles. Scowling, Jack cursed again quietly. “Watch my beer, will you’? I gotta go take a leak.”
Trey nodded and Jack disappeared into the bathroom. Eyes still on Carly’s back, he whispered, “They’re green.”
She spun, those beautiful jade-colored eyes open wide and staring straight at him.
Damn, she had good ears. He’d have to remember that in the future.
Their gazes collided and his heart clenched.
He reminded himself it was Jack who had a crush on this woman, not him. All of his friend’s going on and on about her must have rubbed off.
What he felt wasn’t real. It couldn’t be, because Trey had no room in his life for a girlfriend right now.
A distracted soldier was a dead soldier. He didn’t want a girlfriend, nor did he need one. Not now and definitely not Carly, the one girl Jack was obsessed with.
So why did he suddenly feel like if he didn’t get far away from her soon, he’d forget his own rule and want a girlfriend? Want her.
Trey took a swig of beer and swallowed hard. He then devoted all of his concentration to peeling the label off the bottle in an attempt to avoid getting pulled further into those eyes of hers.
He was thankful when Jack returned and broke the spell.
Jack sat, frowning. “What’s up with you now? You look like a hog living with a family who’s got a hankering for bacon.”
As miserably conflicted as he felt at the moment, Trey couldn’t help but laugh. Jack’s southern farmisms always managed to lighten the mood. It didn’t matter whether the two of them were on a mission or on a barstool.
Good old Jack. In spite of the fact he didn’t know her name or the color of her eyes, Jack really did like Carly. Or actually believed he did anyway.
Sure, Trey could be attracted to her as far as appreciating her good looks. He was a man after all. It was only natural for a guy to notice a cute woman who also supplied him with all the beer he could drink.
It was no wonder Jack thought he had the hots for her. Trey glanced at Jack and watched him watching Carly as she moved behind the bar serving customers.
“You didn’t answer me.” Jack broke his gaze away from Carly’s butt as she stood at the cash register and turned back to him. He must really be interested in what was bothering Trey to make that supreme sacrifice.
What the hell was he supposed to tell him? That he’d gotten semi-hard just from looking into the eyes of the woman his best friend wanted?
Trey shook his head. “Nothing’s up. It just gets to me when there’s no real action for a while. Training is one thing, but it’s been too quiet otherwise.”
He was good at lying. He’d been taught the fine art of deception well by Uncle Sam.
“Jeez, Trey. Don’t say things like that. You’ll curse us both and we’ll get called in for some big op that’ll take us away for months to some godforsaken place halfway around the world. Just when I’m making some progress with this one.” He tilted his head in Carly’s direction.
“You call that progress, do you?” Trey laughed.
“Hey, it’s the most I’ve gotten out of her in years. I’m one step closer to breaking down the fence to her corral. I can feel it.”
Trey smiled as Jack’s euphemism brought to mind farmers’ daughters and rolling in the hay. There was nothing like some good old farm imagery to put naughty thoughts into an already horny boy’s head. But thoughts of sex and farms would have to wait because just then both his and Jack’s cell phones went off simultaneously.
“Buckets of bull crap. You did this, you know, with all your talk about how quiet it was.” Jack gave him a very nasty look and threw a ten-dollar bill on the bar. “I should make you pay for this round since you’re the one who cursed us.”
Carly came to their side of the bar to clear away the bottles. “Leaving so soon, boys?” Her sweet sincerity didn’t sound all that sincere.
“Don’t you worry, darlin’—I mean Carly. I’ll be back.” Jack winked at her.
“I have no doubt.” Then she visibly dropped the sarcastic attitude and looked somber. “Home safe, guys.”
Trey knew she was well aware they weren’t heading home, but most likely out on an assignment.
There were guys she served who never made it home from their ops. He nodded an acknowledgment for her concern. “Thanks.”
On base, he and Jack strode into the meeting room and found the rest of the team already assembled. He was happy they’d only had time for one beer each, because judging by the look on the commander’s face something was up and it wasn’t good.
“Sit down.” The commander gestured to the two chairs still empty at the long table. He looked directly at Jack. “I’ve gotten a new SITREP. We’ve lost touch with Jimmy.”
At the news revealed in the latest situation report, Trey glanced at Jack as his own stomach sank. Jimmy Gordon was not just Jack’s older brother. He was his father figure, his hero and the reason he’d joined both the military and this team.
Jack shook his head with obvious disbelief or maybe just outright denial. “He’s deep undercover, sir. He can’t be phoning home everyday to ask what’s for supper.”
The commander nodded his head. “I know that, son. But we’ve picked up a lot of chatter on the lines lately. Things that make us believe he’s been compromised.”
“So we’re going in to get him. Right?”
Trey could hear the panic in Jack’s voice.
The commander shook his head. “No, Gordon. We’re not.”
Jack stood. “What do you mean no?”
Trey cringed. Jack was upset and coming very close to crossing the line into insubordination.
The commander stood firm. “Sit down, Gordon.”
Jack set his jaw and sat, but just barely, on the very edge of his seat.
When he was seated again, if not settled, the commander continued, “We’re going to give him some more time to make contact. In the meantime, I want the entire team on standby and ready to leave on an hour’s notice if needed. Got it?”
The group nodded, all except for Jack whose eyes were glazed over.
“Permission to be excused, sir.” When Jack spoke, Trey could hear the strain in his voice.
The commander nodded and Jack was out the door in a heartbeat.
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