“What the hell was your dad doing, letting you go on a date when you were fifteen?”
Eden laughed at the outrage in his tone. “You would get along with the men in my family, I can tell.” She took a dainty bite out of her protein bar and immediately followed it up with some water. “So, Flyridge is a really small town. Mom and Dad are third generation, and I found out from the town librarian that Mom and Dad started dating when Mom was fifteen. Boy, Lori and Jenny were pissed that I got that information and not them.”
“This I want to hear about. Mom’s sister sat at the table with them. Did your brothers sit with you?”
“Our date was at the DQ. They sat in the booth directly behind Clayton. I could see them the entire time, but Clayton couldn’t. I thank God for small miracles, but it was terrible. Bobby kept sticking straws up his nose, but Eddie just glared. He’d been glaring as soon as I came downstairs wearing my pink angora sweater. He told Daddy that he should make me go up and change.”
“But he didn’t.”
“Nope, Mom stepped in. She said it was cute, and it really was. I was flat as an ironing board, so it wouldn’t have mattered if it was three sizes too small—which it wasn’t—it wouldn’t have shown off a damn thing.”
“Still, angora. And pink.”
“Still, no boobs. It was amazing I was asked out. It was because Clayton needed help in Spanish class.”
“Now, I don’t want you to feel objectified or anything, but I might have noticed that eventually, you overcame the ironing board issue.”
“I noticed that you noticed, Asher,” she purred. “I like how you took your time thoroughly taking stock of my attributes.”
Asher threw back his head and laughed. “Being thorough is part of the job,” he was finally able to gasp out.
“Anyway, it took three more years before I was able to start luring boys in for realsies.”
“I bet you had the whole school chasing after you. Were you a cheerleader?”
Eden snorted. “Not hardly. What about you? Athlete?”
“Nope, that was my younger brother, Law. I was student council and I started a group of us who would go volunteer at the local VA hospital.” Before she could question further, he grinned. “I was really hoping to imagine you in a cheerleader outfit.”
“You can imagine me in seven different bridesmaid dresses, does that help?”
He filched some corn nuts. “Depends how short the skirt was.”
“Yeah, trust me, you wouldn’t have been interested in me in any of those. Especially the tangerine-colored one. I don’t know what Kimmie, my sister-in-law, was thinking. My sisters and I blame it on the pregnancy hormones. The next one I’m supposed to wear is green and purple. I’m going to kill my cousin.”
“I want to see you in it.”
“I’m never telling you when and where the wedding is happening, and I’ve bribed every friend and family member a good chunk of money not to post a picture of me on social media.”
He was definitely going to have to put Kane on the job to find pictures.
She pushed the pile of corn nuts towards him. “I’m done. I’m savoring my main course.” She held her protein bar in between her breasts. “This you can’t have, the nutty flavor of trans fat coursing through my veins is too good to be denied.”
“Here I was thinking about sharing, now I’m not,” Asher chuckled. “Mine has the tangy flavor of high fructose corn syrup combined with strawberry seeds. It’s to die for.”
“Yeah, well,” Eden said in English. She set down her protein bar. “Everybody wants a tasty last meal. At least the company is awesome.”
Last meal? Did that just come out of my mouth? By the look on Ash’s face, it had. She reached out and grabbed his hand. “I didn’t mean it. We’re getting out of here. I just let it get to me for a moment. I’ve got my head back in the game now. I promise.”
“Ah, Honey, it’s okay. This is a shit situation, you can have your doubts. Everybody does.”
“I know, but I should remember that the ‘only easy day was yesterday.’” Eden tried to smile.
“You know our motto?” Asher grinned.
She’d totally caught him by surprise. She liked that.
“I definitely have to know ‘to liberate the oppressed’ since that’s the Green Beret’s motto, and Pete is a former Green Beret. But I looked up the others, and yours stuck with me. There were days that I had to lean on it.”
“I think everybody in the world has,” Asher agreed.
“But now I’m living it in a SEAL mission way. Parts of this have been really fun.”
Asher leaned his other arm on the table and stretched forward so that their heads were almost touching. “Do tell. What was the most fun?”
“Seeing Leland go all He-Man on Suzanne. Trust me, she’s been Ms. Control throughout these talks. She didn’t take crap from anyone. You know that she could easily have run this project, but she deferred to Heinrich. Then, seeing Leland do the Neanderthal thing and Suzanne allowing it, even appreciate it, that cracked me the hell up.”
Asher’s thumb rubbed against her palm, and he gave her an appraising look. “It only made you laugh?”
Eden opened her mouth to say yes, then closed it. Right now, in these circumstances, it wasn’t the time for surface conversation. She thought back to Leland’s behavior.
“At first it totally took me by surprise, you know?”
Asher nodded like he could understand. “And later?”
He was so close she could taste his strawberry breath.
“Later,
