“It’s lieutenant,” Chay said coldly.
“Of course. Lieutenant. I forgot. I met you at my sister’s wedding.”
“You met me at Camp Condor.”
Bianca batted her lashes. “Really? Were you the one who went out and got us sandwiches?”
Alessandra made a hissing sound.
Chay’s jaw tightened. “I was the one whose job you kept trying to do.”
“Oh. Right. You were the radio operator.”
“I was the COM Op,” Chay said through his teeth.
“And then,” Alessandra said brightly, “you saw each other again at the wedding. In fact, you guys must have spent a lot of time together that weekend.”
“One red,” the waitress said as she put a glass in front of Bianca.
Bianca raised the glass to her nose, sniffed it, then put it down.
“Did we? Spend time together?” she shrugged. “I can’t recall. There were so many people there, so many men from your unit, Tanner. I know it’s awful to admit, but it was hard to keep track of who was who.”
“How about a reminder?” Chay growled before he could stop himself.
Tanner and Alessandra looked at him as if he’d gone nuts. Bianca turned pink. Chay said something short and succinct under his breath, shot to his feet and mumbled about needing to go to the men’s room.
He stalked away.
The one-toilet men’s bathroom was empty.
Chay locked the door, went to the sink, turned on the cold water and ducked his head under the faucet.
The woman was trying to get under his skin. Under his skin? Shit. She was trying to attach electrodes to his balls.
He straightened up, turned off the water, snagged a handful of paper towels and dried his hair, face and hands.
That performance just now.
San Pellegrino. And a wine list. The LZ was exactly what it was. No pretensions here. That was one of the reasons the place meant so much to the men in the units. What was she trying to prove?
That the queen controlled her world.
And all that crap about not remembering him.
She remembered him, all right, first from Camp Condor, where she’d made it clear she figured she could have handled the communications part of the operation much better than he could.
And she certainly remembered him from the wedding, thanks to that damn kiss.
Chay glared at his reflection in the mirror.
He wasn’t proud of it. He’d never kissed a woman who hadn’t looked as if she’d wanted kissing before, but, dammit, by the time it happened, he’d been going crazy. Not with lust. With more unwanted, uncomfortable togetherness than one human being could handle.
All those hours of tolerating each other. Sitting side by side at a rehearsal dinner that seemed endless. Hitting the dance floor—not slow dancing, for which he’d been almost pathetically grateful—but moving to the music together because it was expected. Smiling phony smiles for a trillion pictures, laughing phony laughs at a trillion jokes.
Bad.
All of it.