Top Priority (The Game 1)

Oh God, he’d killed me.“I should’ve thought about this last night,” I said.

“You were too busy thinkin’ about me.” Colt sent me a smirk over his shoulder and hung my pants over the towel rack in the bathroom.

Meanwhile, he’d graciously lent me a pair of USAF sweat pants and a T-shirt. “I see how it is. Your jeans are dry, so you clearly weren’t thinking about me very much.”

He laughed.

I smiled and leaned against the doorway. I liked making him laugh, I realized.

“Sorry to burst your bubble, princess,” he replied, “but my jeans weren’t that soaked, and the only reason I hung them over the radiator was because I stepped on them when I went to take a leak around three.”

I made a face of disapproval. “You know what you don’t hang on radiators? Clothes. Wet or otherwise.”

“You sound like my mother,” he retorted.

I shrugged.

Colt walked toward me on his way out, and I stopped him with a finger in one of his belt loops.

He lifted a brow in question.

“Let me take you to breakfast,” I said.

If possible, his eyes were a brighter sea green today. They were stunning. “Sounds good. I’m just gonna fish out my flip-flops for you.”

That made me grimace again, though I was thankful. Flip-flops, as much as I disliked them, were better with sweat pants than a pair of damp dress shoes.

Colt dug out a surprising number of clothes from his backpack. Another pair of jeans, a black button-down, socks, a pair of…I wasn’t sure, maybe shorts… Every item of clothing was rolled tightly to take up as little space as possible.

“How long did you say you were in DC?” I asked.

“Four…five days? Here.” At the bottom of the pack, he found a pair of black flip-flops. “I left some shit with Ev, though. He’ll bring it back to base next week.”

“Thank you.” I slipped my feet into the shoes and wriggled my toes, grateful we wore the same size. “Is he being deployed too?”

Colt nodded once and stood up. “His first tour.”

Christ. “I can’t imagine.” I had a feeling I would be following the news more closely in the near future.

Both of us were showered and dressed—and smelling like Colt’s deodorant and aftershave—and we left the hotel room, taking the stairs down instead of waiting for the elevator. We’d experienced how slow it was last night.

It was a hot day in Richmond, the sky bright blue and the sun shining. Unlike Colt, I didn’t have a pair of fancy aviator glasses. I had a phone with very little battery on it, and I was praying Luke from the auto shop would call soon. But the way I figured, I could at least stop by the garage after breakfast to get my bag.

Colt checked his watch. “We should be able to beat the next church crowd.”

I hadn’t thought of that, but I supposed he was right.

We found a diner a couple blocks away, and it was almost empty. The people attending the early services had already eaten and left.

“Can the South play anything other than country?” I muttered as we found a booth.

I eased into my seat carefully and rested my chin in my hand.

“What do you have against the best music in the world?” Colt frowned. “When I get back from Iraq, I’m gonna teach you my ways. If you’re a good boy, I might even show you my line dancin’ moves.”

I drummed my fingers over my lips to hide the smirk. “You own a cowboy hat, don’t you?”

“That’s a stupid question.” He turned his attention to something behind me. An approaching server, it turned out.

“Mornin’, boys,” the woman said. “Here’re some menus for y’all. Are we starting off with coffee?”

“Yes, thank you,” Colt and I said.

I opened my menu and didn’t read a word. Something Colt had said came back to me, and now I couldn’t think about anything else. He’d said he would teach me his ways when he came back from Iraq. Which implied we were going to stay in touch.

“What’re you getting?” Colt asked, concentrating on his menu. “Do I want steak for breakfast? I’m weak when it comes to steak.”

“Do you want to stay in touch?” I blurted out.

His eyebrows went up. “Huh?”

“You said—earlier, you said when you get back from Iraq…”

He remembered now, and he shifted in his seat. In a split second, I was given a rare glimpse of his discomfort. Or uncertainty. “I wouldn’t mind it, no. But we don’t have to—”

“I think we do,” I said honestly. “I think we have to.”

Because there was something here, whether I wanted to admit it or not. I had no idea how or why or when or what, but there was something.

Colt stared at me for a bit, brow furrowed, maybe trying to read me just like I was trying to read him.