Code Name Ghost (Jameson Force Security 5)

“Bring her to North Carolina for a visit,” he says. “Come see your nieces and nephews.”

“I’ll work something out at Jameson,” I assure him.

“So how did you get around the bro code?” Van asks, and Simone nearly chokes on her beer.

Incredulously, she gapes at her husband. “So, there’s really a bro code?”

Van’s return look is one of surprise she’d even question it. “Uh… yeah. Everyone knows about the bro code.”

“No, not everyone,” she insists, turning her attention to me. “Anna and I talked about it in the bathroom last night, but I think it’s silly.”

“It’s not silly,” Lucas says staunchly.

“Agreed,” Max mutters, holding his own beer up to toast the concept.

“It’s ridiculous,” Simone exclaims, looking around at all the testosterone surrounding her. “It implies women are property. That just because a woman dates a man, it makes her damaged goods or something.”

“No, no, no,” her husband insists. “Got nothing to do with that. And everything to do with jealousy.”

Simone cocks an eyebrow at Van, crosses her arms over her chest, and declares, “Oh… do tell.”

“Let’s just use the Cold Fury as an example,” Van begins to explain. “If you and I had dated and broken up, you would not have been allowed to date any other man on the team.”

I wince, as do Lucas and Max, because that was not the right way to state that to Simone, who is as independent as they come.

She puts her hands to her hips, her head swaying left to right with her attitude. “Excuse me?”

“You see—” Van starts to explain, but he’s cut off by Simone slapping him in the stomach with a backhand.

“Oh no you don’t,” she exclaims. “As a woman, I will date who I want, when I want. I’ll bang the entire Cold Fury team if I want—brothers excluded because eww—and there wouldn’t be a damn thing you could do to stop me.”

My brothers and I wince again, as now Van’s face turns thunderous at her proclamation she’d bang the entire team. “I’d lock you in a damn room and throw away the key before I’d ever let you do that,” he snarls.

She makes a scoffing noise, waving a dismissive hand. “You’d have no say if we were broken up.”

“There’s no way in hell you’d—”

“Okay,” Lucas intervenes, banging his hand on the table. “It’s a moot point, you two boneheads. You’re married, happily, I used to think, so Simone won’t be banging the Cold Fury. Besides, you are tree huggers who live in Vermont now.”

“The real point,” I say to my sister, grabbing her attention before she murders her husband, “is those in the bro code would never act on it. Use the same hypothetical—if you and Van had dated and broken up, another Cold Fury member wouldn’t go out with you because it violates bro code.”

“It’s stupid,” Simone insists, giving a side-eyed glare to her husband. I’m thinking he’s not getting any tonight when he doesn’t agree with her. Her attention comes back to me. “Please don’t let that stop you from staying on this journey with Anna, Malik. You two have something special.”

Lucas, Max, and Van do not share this same sentiment aloud, as they do understand why the bro code bothers me. But I know, individually, they each want my happiness and they’d tell me to go for it.

“I won’t,” I assure my little sister. “While I’m still sensitive to it and what people at work will think when they find out, Anna has insisted I can’t let that be an impediment to what we have. She insists Jimmy would want her to be happy no matter what.”

“So you’ll come out to the people at work at some point?” she asks with concern. “Because hiding isn’t good.”

“Soon,” I promise. “We will. I think we just want some time to be with each other first to make sure this is real.”

“It’s real,” she insists. “I know it.”

“You’re a romantic,” I reply dryly.

“So?” she challenges. “It’s the romance that makes it so great. That makes it sustainable. That makes it the best of stories that are meant to last. Don’t discount that.”

And somehow, the fierceness of her words and the way the rest of the men at the table aren’t rolling their eyes—Van even now nodding in support of his wife—has me feeling she might be right.CHAPTER 22AnnaI curse the invention of toast as I bend over my toilet and throw all my effort into heaving up the doughy ball my body is insisting on expelling from my body.

“Toast is good for nausea,” my mother had said. “It will make you feel better.”

I’m never listening to my mother again.

Granted, it did feel all right for about five minutes before my body said, “Nice try, Anna. But we accept nothing into this stomach today.”

And so, I’m praying to my toilet again.