“Huh?” He cocked his head and she nearly smiled. She’d known even before she finished speaking that would be his response.
“That’s what I’ve started calling Kuala Lumpur,” she admitted, knowing her expression was a little sad. She couldn’t help it. Thinking about Malaysia would always be bittersweet. She’d lost so much—her friends and colleagues and the future she’d always thought she wanted. But she’d gained so much too. A chance to know Dan and to forge a life she’d thought was fading beyond her reach. “The Assignment,” she clarified. “Both words are capitalized.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “’Cause of its significance. I get it. I’ve lived through some shit that qualifies for all caps too.”
Had he? She wanted to ask him to tell her about it. She wanted to ask him…so many things. She wanted to know so many things, to hear his lifetime’s worth of stories and dreams and hopes and disappointments. She opened her mouth, but he shook his head as if jostling his mind back on topic.
“Anyway,” he said, “I figured after that, you lost your…uh…I guess you’d say stomach for this kind of work.” He ducked his chin, staring up at her from beneath his sandy eyebrows. “And then you come to me and boom! You’re right back in the thick of it. Am I right?”
“Something like that,” she admitted.
“I’m so sorry.” He shook his head sorrowfully.
“Stop saying that,” she warned him. “Or I’ll have to smack you upside the head.”
A smile flirted with his wonderful, delicious lips. Then he sobered. “So what’ll you do now? For work, I mean.”
Now! Tell him now!
She jumped when the command echoed through her head. The move caused Dan’s brow to furrow. “Penni?” He put a hand on her arm. His palm was wonderfully warm. “What is it?”
What is it? Oh, let’s see… Delayed shock. Two cross-hemisphere plane rides in less than twenty-four hours. A queasy stomach. A voice that kept popping up to give advice when she least wanted it. A beautiful, dear man who hadn’t the first clue that she—
“Hey.” He moved his hand from her forearm back to her face, gently rubbing his thumb along her cheek. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Nope. She wasn’t going to do that until after he’d delivered Winterfield. That’s what she’d decided and she was sticking to it, damnit!
Coward…
Yeah. Probably. But until then, until there was no excuse not to lay her heart open and suffer the consequences, she was determined to distract herself. To give her mind and heart and hands to tasks she could accomplish, to things that didn’t scare the bejeezus out of her. Grabbing the front of his wet wool sweater, she pulled him into the cramped space.
“Ow,” he said when he bumped his head on the top of the door.
“Mother-flippin’ hell!” she cursed when he accidentally stomped on her toe.
“Oof!” he grunted when she instinctively jerked her foot out from under his boot and her knee came precariously close to his family jewels.
“Ouch!” she squawked when he went to protectively cup himself and accidentally elbowed her in the sternum.
“Shit! Sorry,” he grumbled, trying to back up and wincing when the paper towel dispenser dug into his back. He bent forward to avoid it and head-butted her.
“Sonofa—” She went to grab her throbbing forehead and stabbed him under the chin with her fingernails.
He jerked away and banged the top of his head on the ceiling. “Ow!”
“Damnit, Dan. Stop moving,” she told him. And fifteen seconds ago, she wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but she was giggling like a schoolgirl, snorting and snickering and grinning up at his consternated face.
God, it felt good to laugh. Since losing her friends and colleagues, since waving good-bye to Dan, and since trying to come to terms with the new direction she was taking in life, she hadn’t had much occasion to do it. What’s that saying? Oh yeah. More’s the pity. Because laughing at Dan, laughing with Dan felt…freeing, healing.
“I feel like we should be auditioning for the Three Stooges,” he grumped, a lopsided grin pulling at his lips.
“Two Stooges,” she corrected and dissolved into another round of giggles.
“You wouldn’t think it was so funny if it was your back that was trying to become one with a towel dispenser,” he growled. Mr. Growly Growlerton. He was leaning forward to avoid the dispenser in question, and his warm breath tickled her lips. Her laughter disappeared when her blood ignited and started burning through her veins.
“Carefully…” she told him, still smiling, biting her own lip to keep from biting his. That bottom pad was just so plump and delicious and tempting as it shined pink amid all his sandy brown beard stubble. “I want you to shuffle around and sit on the toilet lid.”