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“Wow,” she said when he opened the door to his room. It wasn’t just a regular hotel room— a suite with a vast living room, a dining table that sat eight, a fully stocked bar, and a private balcony.
His ears turned red as he turned to shut the door behind them. “I wanted to splurge. Too much?”
She laughed. “Oh, definitely.”
He looked around the suite with a sheepish laugh. “Yeah.”
“Well,” she said after a beat of awkward silence and swept her arm toward the bedroom. “Go get changed! We have a river to float.”
“Oh. Right.” He disappeared into the room and quickly changed out of his uniform into swim shorts and a T-shirt.
Then they were off again, leaving San Antonio’s charm behind for the more rural outskirts where nature reigned supreme. The city’s urban sprawl gave way to vast greenery that stretched out on either side of the road, dotted with trees and sprawling ranches. The sun seemed brighter here, hotter, the sky a vivid, cloudless blue.
They grabbed lunch at a roadside barbecue stand and ate their brisket sandwiches sitting on a worn picnic table as the scent of mesquite smoke filled the hot air around them.
“Are you still writing?” she asked, taking a swig of her Dr. Pepper.
He finished chewing and washed the bite down with his soda. “When I can. Not much time between training and missions.”
“This is new.” She reached over the table and thumbed away a bit of barbecue sauce on his chin, covering a thin pink scar that looked freshly healed.
His eyes held hers as her fingers traced his scar. “Yeah, that was a close one.” He couldn’t entirely hide the hint of gravity in his voice, contradicting his grin. “But nothing to worry about. And I saved a life. That’s all that matters.”
It was late afternoon by the time they got to the river.
Connelly was shocked at seeing the crowd amassed along its banks. Families, college students, elderly couples—it seemed everyone in Texas had come out to enjoy the river. It was a sea of people lounging on tubes, boisterous and sun-soaked, as they drifted down the winding waterway.
“Holy shit. This really is a thing here, isn’t it?”
“Welcome back to Texas, Conn,” Veronica said with a laugh as she pulled out their tubes from the back of her pickup truck.
Veronica slipped into the water first, her tube fitting comfortably around her as she kicked off from the riverbank. Connelly followed, a bit more ungainly with his long limbs. His surprised yelp when he hit the cold water made Veronica laugh out loud.
Once they were both in their tubes, she hooked her feet on his and settled back.
“What do we do now?” he asked, bemused.
“We just relax and enjoy.”
The river was a beautiful translucent green, and the late afternoon sun cast golden rays across the water, making it shimmer and sparkle.
After a while, she saw the tension leave his shoulders.
“There you go.” She opened the cooler and tossed him a beer. “Now you’re getting the hang of it.”
She watched him as they floated, taking in how the sunlight gilded his dark hair with gold and all that lean, hard muscle under bronzed skin. His dark eyes were softer now, and he closed them as he leaned back against the tube. One arm lazily trailed in the cool water, fingers skimming through it, causing little ripples.
Damn. He looked good.
She’d missed him. Not Lieutenant Davis, combat rescue officer, but Connelly, her childhood best friend whose laugh was as familiar to her as her own heartbeat.
A slow smile spread across his face. “What?” he asked without opening his eyes.
She realized she’d been staring, and her cheeks flushed hot. She told herself it was just the sun. “What?”
“You’re staring.”
“I’m just... glad you’re here.”
