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He sneered at her joke. “Harry’s got that angle and he’s not here.”
She glanced to the window, resting her weight on him. “You think someone out there might hurt me?”
“I think I want eyes on you at all times.”
“I don’t mind your eyes on me,” she said, straightening when a server brought over a tray of shakes.
Once both were down, the server left. Daire took the cherry from his shake. He licked the cream from it before holding it up for her to bite it from the stalk. Just like at the roller-rink.
“How can you not like cherries?” she asked, pushing the stone out of her rounded lips for him to liberate it from her suction.
“I do,” he said, tasting his shake. “But any time I can make that mouth suck for me…”
Daire was a flirt, he played with her, like Danny played with her. The serious Daire, the professional who understood urgency and cared about things… beyond how neat they were, he was nothing like Danny. But when he let loose, when he relaxed…
She kept saying she missed him. That was never truer than when they were alone. Cutting out all the BS, thoughts of their past gave her a forlorn craving for a simpler time.
“If you ever got shore leave… I know you don’t, but if you did…”
“You’re thinking about South America,” he said, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“If that guy hadn’t been looking over my shoulder…” Something occurred to her. “Was that you? Was he you?”
“If we didn’t leave then, I would never have let you go,” he said, opening his fingers in the length of her hair. “Only time I forgot who I was, what I was, was with you.”
Easing his hand down, she wound her little finger around his. “This is where I use my feelings for you to forgive you for duping me… again.”
“Comes in useful.”
He pushed her closer to the window and then eased her glass nearer the edge. A few seconds after she laid a questioning frown on him, Harry came striding up to the table. It amazed her how Daire could do that, how he could be aware of everything all the time.
Harry slid into the middle of the opposite seat again. “Better late than never,” he said. “Shakes for the kids. Only about twenty years too late.”
Daire laughed. Nice that someone could find that funny rather than creepy.
“You never took us for burgers and shakes, old man,” he said. “Talk about rewriting history.”
“We went out,” Harry said. “What about the place with the three-sided tables?”
“That was a strip joint,” Daire said, swiping up his shake.
“It was?”
Drinking from the straw, Daire nodded. “After our first successful joint mission.”
Harry’s smile burst with pride. “That’s right! You were what, sixteen?”
“Iwas sixteen. It was July.”
“So your brother hadn’t turned yet,” Harry said.
“I keep hearing about this brother,” Tess said, stirring the shake with her straw. “I wish I could meet him.”
“He’ll show up eventually,” Daire said.
The ease with which he could shrug off his brother’s safety surprised her given how he worried about everyone else.
“It’s the way they are,” Harry said, startling her. By the way he was looking at her, she guessed he’d noticed her confused surprise. “They spent more time sparring, trying to kill each other than they did playing ball.”
