Mattie mumbled something incoherent. She’d already worked that out for herself, but it didn’t help matters. If anything, it made them worse because it only made him more successful, and therefore that much more attractive to her.
Her main concern was that if she returned to a private room to finish ironing out the new scenarios with Kane she would find herself in yet another compromising situation with him before she could say Case simulation zero one. Again.
Worse, some insubordinate side of her wanted it to happen again.
They were at the mess doors before Mattie could find another excuse. And then, like a parent waiting to watch their kid go into school on the first day, Kath gave her a gentle push and waited at the doors until she stepped inside.
She saw Kane immediately.
‘You’re still in here?’ Sh
e would never know how she made her objecting feet cross the room towards him and fold themselves over the bench so she sat on the opposite side of the table from him in an otherwise empty mess hall.
In a couple of hours it would be heaving again. Just not now.
‘Where else was I to go?’ he enquired smoothly, before lowering his voice so it was just loud enough for her to hear. ‘Besides, after...before, I thought it might be advisable to continue the discussion in a more public setting.’
No one could overhear them where they were, but they could be seen. Privacy to talk, without the temptation to touch. It made complete sense, so why did she feel so suddenly deflated? Mattie forced a bright smile.
‘Yes. Right. Good idea.’
He eyed her darkly but said nothing. There was no need to feel this urge to fill the silence.
‘We have less than twenty-four hours to get through. Then you’ll be back at Battle Group.’
And this time she wouldn’t harbour any foolish notions that they could pick up where they’d left off that night in the hotel. She had to put it out of her mind. Just like she had fourteen years ago.
Because back then it worked out so well, a little voice needled in her head, but Mattie resolutely ignored it, although it made her stomach hurt.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that you’d joined up?’ she asked. ‘More than that, that the army has been your career for the past decade and a half?’
‘I didn’t think it mattered.’
‘You’re a CSM, Kane.’ She shook her head. ‘To make that rank in such a short time means you must have been flying from practically the moment you went on your recruits course. People are in for eighteen, or twenty years and they don’t even make it half as far.’
‘I got some lucky breaks.’
‘It’s more than that,’ she snorted. ‘You’ve dedicated your life to it. And you always dismissed the military. You hated my father being a brigadier, and you slated my dream of being a doctor in the army.’
‘I was an arrogant kid who thought he knew it all.’ Kane barked a humourless laugh. ‘An idiot.’
‘So what changed?’
He sucked in a breath, his wide chest expanding even further.
‘I did, Mattie.’
‘You?’
‘People can, you know.’
Of course she knew that. But it hardly clarified anything for her. Everything was still as murky and confusing as ever.
‘I always thought my father paid you to leave.’
He pulled his lips into a thin line, but it took a while for him to answer.
‘I always wondered what he’d told you,’ he remarked evenly.