Don’t do it.
Oh, I’m doing it.
I’m warning you.
Doing. It.
My mom used to say that as a language, Guy was fairly easy to translate.
“Royal, give B a break,” I say. “You know he’s had a tough couple of days.”
Brendan glances at me in surprise, his hand covering mine where it still rests on his thigh. Because I can’t stop touching him.
Royal shakes his head. “I promise it’s not bad, Miller. Brendan doesn’t want to toot his own horn, but it might give Austen a few of those answers she’s looking for.”
He turns the screen of his smartphone toward the three of us and presses play.
I lean forward to watch a man with a beer gut and an abrasive attitude heckle the woman across from him on the plane. She’s half his size and she reminds me a little of my mother, just watching him rant with a serene expression on her face. Like his words aren’t horrifying her.
She tries to reassure him that she’s simply a passenger, not a terrorist, but her compassion has the opposite effect, working him into a red-faced frenzy. He gets to his feet, and at that point I think he’s on something. He’s not making any sense. I can make out that he wants the rest of the passengers to help him take her down, but the instant he reaches for her, he’s on the ground with two men gently but firmly restraining his flailing limbs.
“That’s Doug, the air marshal,” Brendan mutters in my ear. “He had one of the flight attendants grab me in case he needed backup.”
I’m not seeing anything wrong with this. It happens, right? Crazy people get airline tickets all the time, and no one is being physically harmed. There’s nothing on here that would get him suspended. “But why—”
“Just watch,” Royal says, shushing me with a hand gesture.
They finally get the man back in his seat and he’s nodding as if letting them know he’s in his right mind, but just when Brendan turns to walk back to the cockpit, the jackhole gets to his feet again and decides to accuse him of not standing up for Americans.
Apparently that was the wrong thing to say.
Brendan is suddenly every hero of every war movie I’ve ever seen. Even the ones with aliens. Whoever made the video put sweeping orchestra music behind it, which was genius, because, while I can’t hear everything he’s saying, I know it’s the best, most patriotic speech I’ve heard in my life.
Basically, he let the whole plane know that the woman under attack was more American than the idiot who questioned her based on his own ignorant assumptions.
When beer gut tried to hit him for calling him ignorant, Brendan knocked him out cold with one punch, at which point he received a standing ovation from the rest of the passengers.
I wince.
That’s why he got suspended for two weeks.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he mumbles. “I knew better.”
Screw that. I want this hero to fuck me. Now.
“We need to go,” I say abruptly, pushing back my chair and getting to my feet. “Thanks for the…yeah. We should go.”
Royal covers his mouth to hide what I know is a shit-eating grin, but Austen just looks over at Brendan with her all-seeing, perfectly made up eyes before holding out her hand. “I approve.”
Well, thank baby Jesus for that.
Brendan shakes her hand with a smile and then gets up to stand beside me, his palm firm and hot on my back. “I’ll talk to you later Royal. And by later, I mean tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.”
I think everyone at this table knows what later means.
Even the virgin.
Chapter Six
Ready or Not
I let Brendan drive so I can send out an emergency text to Fred and Heather.
Me: Will someone dog-sit Dix? And then stay away from the house until you hear from me. Thanx
Heather: Does this mean what I think it means?! Brendan? I knew it!
Fred: Well, I’m too young to know it. I’ll take Dix.
Me: I owe you.
Fred: There’s a march next Saturday.
Me: I was thinking pie or pocket change.
Fred: You owe me liberty or death.
Me: Fine. Liberty.
Heather: Don’t worry. I’ll distract Diane and hide the binoculars.
Fred: You have binoculars?
Heather: Yes, dear. We used them before the dinosaurs invented hidden cameras to watch our neighbors do the horizontal mambo.
Me: We’re all too young to know that. Talk tomorrow.
I set down the phone and notice Brendan’s white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. My heart stutters. “Change your mind?”
He reaches for my hand, placing it firmly on his thigh. “Its just nerves.”
He’s nervous? I’ve got thirty years’ worth of inexperience that should be making me a wreck right now. What we’ve done together is more than anything I’ve—
“Flying I can do in my sleep, but I don’t really drive that much anymore. It feels unnatural.”