She laughed. “Hotel gift shop.”
Not just the dress—sure, he liked the pink sundress—but Jayden had done something with her hair, put it up into a messy bun, tendrils falling loose around her face. She looked . . . softer.
Sweet.
Feminine.
She ordered a glass of Semillon wine, and when the barkeep poured it, he told her it was a local Queensland white, this label a mix of sauvignon blanc. “It’s crisp, with a touch of lemon on the nose.”
Whatever that meant. But he ordered a glass too.
They found a table and ordered barramundi—a local grilled fish.
“You been reading up on Cairns?” he asked.
Jayden lifted a shoulder. “Hazard of the profession.” She swirled her wine, watching the light play through the glass.
Jayden was quiet for a long moment. The pool lights shifted from purple to blue and back again.
“I’ve been thinking about your nightmare. Your, um, memory. That’s a heavy thing to carry,” she said finally. “Knowing you were right and no one listened.”
He nodded, looked up, met her eyes. The pool lights rippled. A couple at a nearby table laughed at something. The warm night pressed in, thick with humidity and the scent of frangipani flowers.
Suddenly, the telling didn’t seem so raw, so terrible.
“I left the military after my first tour. I just couldn’t . . . well, three of my buddies died because I made the wrong decision.” The names surfaced without permission: Martinez. Torres. Beckwith. “The nightmare is—it’s always the same. Running the analysis. Knowing it’s wrong. Watching my buddies die.”
She leaned back, her mouth a tight line. The wind played with her dark hair, and he pushed away the urge to reach out and wrap a thick lock around his finger.
“Thank you,” she said. “For telling me.”
Dakota nodded. Took a sip of wine. Let the moment settle into something that felt almost like peace.
“What about you?” The question came out before he could stop it. “Any nightmares?”
Jayden’s expression flickered. Just for a second—a shadow crossing her face. There and then, just like that, gone, replaced by that warm, practiced smile.
“No.” She laughed, short and sharp. “All my nightmares I live out loud. Or at least on inspection reports.”
Still, he longed to chase the shadow. “Really,” he said.
She lifted a shoulder. “Oh, you know. Cockroaches in the bathroom. Mold behind the wallpaper. Mice in the kitchen. I did a resort in Bali once where I found a gecko in my bed.” She shuddered theatrically. “The real horror stories are always in the hotels.”
All my nightmares I live out loud.
He didn’t buy it. That wasn’t about cockroaches. That was something else entirely. Something she’d buried so fast he’d almost missed it.
Something about her didn’t feel . . . right.
Aw, it was just his scars, his wounds. She had done nothing to make him suspect her of anything. Including being the owner of the gun secreted in the suitcase.
So calm down, South!
“Geckos,” he said. “Terrifying.”
“You laugh, but they move fast.”
They finished dinner as the sky turned dark and star-studded. The pool lights shifted through their purple-blue cycle. The conversation stayed lighter after that—travel stories, hotel disasters, the time Dakota had gotten food poisoning in Morocco and spent three days convinced he was going to die in a riad’s bathroom.
