She tipped her face up.
“What promise?”
Rome’s hand settled at the back of her neck. “That I’d do everything in my power to bring you home.” He held her for a long minute until the emotional moment passed.
After he released her, Stina moved through the rest of the meal like a woman in her element—garlic and butter in the pan, clams added at precisely the right moment, white wine also looted from the resort deglazing the bottom with a hiss that filled the kitchen with steam and the smell of the sea.
He gave up trying to make himself useful and watched her move around the room like she was born to be here.
He could stand here and keep watching her do this very thing…forever.
The thought struck him square in the chest with more force than he expected.
He didn’t get this. He didn’t get flour fights with a woman who named sourdough starter.
He’d long ago accepted that Blackout was his life, the same way every man in his position did.
There was no room left for anything that could be used against them.
Except…some of the guys had made it work. Alpha and Charlie. And right here, Monk and Jolie defied the restrictions.
That could be him and Stina.
Rome shut down the thought before it could gain traction.
When he focused on Stina again, he saw she’d set two plates on the table. The linguine glistened with butter and white wine, clam shells scattered in an artful array across the top. She’d sliced crusty, golden bread and it sat on another plate.
She took her seat, and he could barely make his body move, he was so frozen by what was going on in his head but he sat across from her.
She grinned, entirely too pleased with herself. She had every right to be. She was fucking amazing.
“Well? Have a taste and let me know your opinion.” She gestured at his plate.
He picked up his fork, twisted it through the pasta and took a bite.
He groaned without meaning to. It was, without question, one of the best things he’d ever eaten.
But he knew that under the taste of garlic and butter and good bread, that the meal wasn’t the thing he was going to remember most about tonight.
He swallowed and smiled at her. “It’s good.”
He might be downplaying his reaction just to get a rise from her. To see that little lift of her chin.
It worked.
“Just good?”
His smile softened. “Edna would be proud.”
Her laugh filled the kitchen, and he sat there across from her with flour still clinging to his hair and felt the ground under him tilt a few more degrees in a direction he had absolutely no idea how to walk back from.
* * * * *
Stina braced herself for dinner with the Sierra team. Last time, she made pork chops and it had been a free-for-all with elbows on the table and people stealing food off each other’s plates.
This time, they must have been ordered to behave because they all remained standing. She and Jolie exchanged a look and moved to their chairs.
Someone pulled out her chair.
