she had a point.
And while he wasn’t big on apologies, he did owe her something after the way he’d treated her before. He looked at the muffin in his hand and grimaced. He hated explaining himself. Especially when he didn’t really understand why he was here. Just that he’d needed to see her.
“I didn’t realize how hard things might be for you,” he said slowly. When she frowned and shook her head in confusion, he clarified. “Here, after. I figured you’d skate through, you know? Pampered princess and all that.”
She pulled a weird spoon thing made up of wires out of a drawer, running it through her hands as she considered his words.
“After? You mean when my father shanghaied you into the navy?”
Brody almost choked on his muffin laughing.
“Yeah. After that.” Leave it to Genna to tell it like it was.
“I’m pretty sure you’re the only person in the world who thinks I’m a pampered princess,” she said, rolling her eyes and ignoring the rest of his words.
So. She didn’t want to talk about what it’d been like.
Too bad. Brody did.
“What happened? I thought you were going to some fancy college. Didn’t Joe say you’d gotten into Stanford?” Not that Joe bragged about his sister. If Brody remembered correctly, Joe’d been bitching that Genna’s accomplishments were putting pressure on him. Apparently their parents were starting to nag that he get off his ass and do something with his life.
Genna pressed her lips together, all of her attention on the milky sugar mixture she was stirring with that weird spoon. After a few seconds, she shrugged.
“That didn’t work out. I ended up staying here and did the community college thing instead.”
Maybe it was because all he’d ever wanted to do was get the hell out of Bedford, but Brody just wasn’t buying that she’d given up so easily on leaving.
Or maybe it was the way she refused to look at him.
Deciding this was going to take a while and he might as well be comfortable, he pulled out one of the ladder-back chairs, turned it backward and straddled it.
“Comfy?” she asked, the sarcasm as thick as the cream she was stirring.
“I could use something to drink,” Brody responded. “But otherwise, thanks, I’m pretty comfortable.”
After a long look, she walked over to the sink, took a glass out of the cabinet and filled it with tap water. Since it gave Brody a great view of her butt, he couldn’t complain. Except that he wasn’t here to look at her butt, he reminded himself. He was here to find out what the hell had happened to her life after he’d left.
“You didn’t get to go to Stanford because of what happened between us?” he guessed, watching her face closely. “Was that your punishment for getting too close to a bad influence?”
She sighed, looking defeated for the first time he’d ever seen. Her entire being, face, body and spirit, seemed to sag.
“Do you blame me for your impromptu commitment to the military?” she asked, sidestepping his question. Again.
“No.” For a couple of years, he’d wanted to. But he’d never quite been able to justify it as fair.
“Then you shouldn’t have any trouble understanding that I don’t blame you for my parents going off the deep end with the overprotective control issues.”
“What happened?” Brody was as surprised at his words as Genna seemed to be. He never asked questions like that. He always figured people overshared anyway, so why encourage more? But all of a sudden, with Genna, he wanted to know everything.
Maybe he was suffering delayed reactions from his injuries. Or was in desperate need of a distraction from the upcoming therapy and return to base. But he couldn’t let it go. He had to know what had happened.
The buzzer chimed just then and she slid a thick mitten on her hand to pull out the little cake things she’d put in earlier. She touched the tops, added more water to the pan, then slid it all back in the oven and reset the timer. That should have given Brody plenty of time to talk himself out of the idiotic idea brewing in his head.
He didn’t quite manage it, though.
“Maybe we could try something new,” Brody said quietly.
Spooning the fluffy white cream she’d been stirring into a triangular shaped plastic bag, Genna glanced over. Heat flared in her eyes, making it clear she’d be interested in trying quite a few things. She wet her lips so they glistened, tempting him to ignore his conscience and give in to the need to taste her again. But instead of making any suggestions that could open the door to tasting, touching or anything else that’d feel great and show incredibly bad judgment, she arched one brow in inquiry.
“What’d you want to try?”
Brody tried the words out in his head, but they sounded too stupid to say aloud. Holy crap, he felt like a dorky schoolboy. Any second now he’d be shuffling his feet and, God forbid, blushing.
“Brody?”
He sighed, then faced the words the way he faced Hell Week, that sky full of empty air when he was jumping from a plane, and enemy fire. With a deep sigh, a straight spine and an unbreakable resolve.
“I thought we could try being friends.”
9
FRIENDS.
She and Brody Lane were friends.
Or at least, they were trying to be.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about it, though. She’d agreed because, well, she wanted to know the real Brody Lane. To find out if he was different from the guy she’d spent years fantasizing about.
Over the last couple weeks, she’d discovered three things.
He was completely different from the guy she’d thought he was. He was controlled and strong-willed, and didn’t hesitate to voice his beliefs.
He was exactly the same as the guy she’d thought he was. Quiet, almost to the point of being taciturn, clever and fun when he did have something to say, and so sexy that she got turned on just watching him breathe.
And, over the last few days, she’d come to realize that they actually could be friends. That they had enough in common, similar interests and values. That they’d found a rhythm and flow that felt good. And as great as that was, she would absolutely, positively, unquestionably go crazy if all Brody would ever be was her friend.
Genna peered into the mirror, trying to see if there was crazy shining in her eyes yet. Nope. A few hints of stress and a whole lot of sexual frustration, but no signs of crazy.
Just her normal blue gaze stared back at her, albeit wearing a little more makeup than usual. Her eyes were smudged in kohl, with a dusky gray shadow giving her
