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She nodded. “I get it. And I’m sorry.”
There was nothing else to be said. Ajax and I left the room, and I gave the door a soft rap on the way out.
“What a mess,” I said on the way down to the first floor. “Good thing she’s feeling reasonable about it.”
“Yeah. All the same, if what she said about her being into it just as much as he’d been is true…”
I trailed off, Ajax nodding in agreement.
“We’ll just have to keep an eye on them. Kid’s good—he wouldn’t be part of the team if he wasn’t. But we all know how dicey things can get when feelings get involved.”
“Yeah.”
We made it down to the first floor.
“I’ll talk to Kid,” he said. “I’ll handle the punishment.”
“What’re you thinking?”
He scratched the back of his head as he considered the matter.
“Put him on underwear washing duty for the squad for the next week.”
I laughed. “Don’t you think that might be considered cruel and unusual?”
That got a smirk from him.
“Nah. Thinking dish duty for the next few days should send the message home. Can’t come down on the kid too hard—we need to be frosty should anything happen. Weareon a mission after all.”
That was the end of the conversation. The rest of the day went by without incident. Whatever Ajax had said to the kid must’ve worked—he seemed good and chastened for the rest of the day, and I didn’t see Ivan and the princess get anywhere near each other. There didn’t seem to be any need to keep them apart, but they both seemed to get that it wouldn’t be a good look to be chit-chatting like nothing had happened so soon after the incident.
Dinner was a big pot roast made by Hud, along with some freshly baked bread. We ate ourselves full, the guys taking the evening off to watch some Jean-Claude Van Damme flick while Kid took care of kitchen clean-up.
I wasn’t much in the mood for a movie, feeling more like an early night followed by an early morning in the gym. Around nine, I typed up the day’s report for review by the crew and the king once we’d sent it off to him. I left out what had happened in the gym, of course. It pained me to lie, but all the same, I didn’t think the king needed to hear about it unless it happened again.
Once that was done, I sent the report to the guys and settled in for a good night’s rest. The moment my head hit the pillow, I realized just how damn tired I was and immediately drifted off to sleep.
The dreams were intense. I had flashbacks of Shannon, my wife, and Connor, my boy. It was hard to piece together, but we were all together on some war-torn, urban battlefield. Enemies were on all sides, gunfire, and explosions so loud that I couldn’t hear a word they were saying. All I knew was that only I could protect them.
I’d fire into the buildings and rubble, not seeing any trace of the enemy other than the orange muzzle flashes that looked like flowers among the debris. I shot and shot, not knowing if I was hitting any of them. However, through the strange logic of dreams, I knew that more would be coming, too many for me to take on all by myself.
Then I turned to look at my family and they were gone. No explosion, no bodies, nothing. They were gone in the dream just like they were gone in real life. But among the debris in the distance, I spotted someone else.Victoria.
She stood on the battlefield like she had no idea where she was. I knew I had to protect her, but she was so far away. I broke from cover, firing blindly at the enemy as I tried to reach her. Explosions began to rock everything, and it seemed as if the world itself were coming apart. The last thing I saw before one of the explosions engulfed me was Vic, reaching out to me as if I were her only hope.
I awoke in a cold sweat, sitting up and looking around to make sure I wasn’t back on the battlefield.
I was alone, back in my room in the chalet.
The images of my wife and son and Vic were still fresh in my mind. I knew they would be for a good, long while.
16
VICTORIA
It was impossible to put into words how silly I felt when I woke up that morning. How the hell could I have been so careless as to let Kid kiss me like that?
I realized right away how unfair it was, however, for me to think of the situation as all Kid’s fault. After all,I’dbeen the one who’d made the crack about wanting him to pin me. And even worse, it’d been true. Sparring with him had been such a turn-on that it’d been nearly impossible for me to concentrate on what he’d been trying to teach me.
