Page 19 of Her Delta Force Protector

Katie laughed. “True story, but they should know by now they’ll get nothing from me.”

“If any strangers come in asking about her, you’ve never seen her before.”

“Seen who?” She winked at Harper. “Your food will be up shortly.” She chuckled as she walked away.

“What about everyone else in here?” Harper said after Katie left. “Maybe it was a mistake to come to town.”

“You’re with me,” Kade said. “That makes you one of us, and not a person in here will take kindly to a stranger asking questions about you, Petunia.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Petunia? Really?”

He swallowed a laugh. “You have a problem with petunias?”

“Not when they’re not my name. I don’t think Katie believed you.”

“But she was amused.” Because Katie knew he’d made the name up, she’d understand Harper wasn’t to be talked about and would put a stop to any questions.

“She seems nice.”

“That she is.”

“And she’s pretty.”

“She is.” He chuckled. “You’re dying to ask if I ever dated her.”

“No!”

Her gaze lowered to the table, and he outright laughed. “Yeah, you are. The answer is no.” Was she a little jealous, and was that relief in her eyes? He’d examine how he felt about that later.

She glanced around. “Why is everyone staring at us?”

“Because they’ve never seen me with a woman before.”

Her eyes snapped to his. “Never?”

“Yep.” He knew everyone in Marsville, and most of the people in the diner were locals. The few out-of-towners would be gone before anyone came around asking about her. If the locals believed she belonged to him, they’d close ranks if any nosy strangers showed up. There was one way to do that.

“You want to really give them something to talk about?”

Chapter Nine

Mischief danced in Kade’s eyes, a look Harper knew well. There was nothing he loved more than stirring up trouble. How many times had he goaded her into doing things she’d never consider doing, pushing her out of her comfort zone? Too many to count.

The thing was, she’d never been able to resist that fun side of him. And not once had she regretted going along with his shenanigans. His pranks were never harmful, but they were almost always sidesplittingly funny.

Like the time in Fayetteville when he’d called her in the middle of the night, asking her to come to his house, that it was an emergency. The emergency had been to help him hide the door of the bathroom with plywood that they painted to look like the wall, and to draw a fake door next to the real one. He’d actually screwed a doorknob into the fake door. Then they’d sat next to each other at the end of the hallway, drinking beers as they waited for his drunk roommate to go to the bathroom.

During the hour they’d sat there, they’d whispered stories from their childhoods to each other. Most of his stories had been of the pranks he’d played on his brothers, but there was one that had broken her heart. That was the night he’d told her how his mother had abandoned him and his brothers, how she’d left them at her sister’s house, promising to come back in a few days. She never had, and their aunt had resented being stuck with three young boys. It was the one and only time he’d talked about his childhood.

Harper had somehow managed not to cry as she listened to him talk of a life where no one wanted him and his brothers. It had been hard to relate to that kind of rejection because all her father had ever wanted was for his daughter to be happy. She’d been too young to remember her mother, so she didn’t really miss what she’d never known. But there had never been any doubt that her dad loved and wanted her, so to think of her father rejecting her...it just didn’t compute. She hadn’t cried that night listening to him talk of being unwanted, but she’d wanted to.

She didn’t know why he’d told her any of that because that was not Kade. He didn’t share, so it made her feel special that he had confessed something that was very private to him. Before she could tell him how amazing he was, considering the obstacles he’d had to overcome, his roommate staggered out of his bedroom.

Kade had elbowed her to hush her as they watched Reid zigzag his way to the fake door. She and Kade had fallen against each other, uproariously laughing as Reid tried to open the wall.

“Don’t think about it.” Kade leaned closer, interrupting her trip down memory lane. “Just say yes.”

She grinned. “Sure, why not. Let’s give them something to talk about.”

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