Page 61 of Under Fire

“Me neither.”

She didn’t miss the flush hitting his cheeks as his gaze intensified on her, darting up and down her body. Goosebumps crossed her chest, as if he’d grazed her with his fingertips.

She pouted her lips to say something back, to keep him there, but he shook his head, pulling away. Then he did what he’d done all afternoon. He moved a few feet away to talk to someone else, close enough to keep tabs on her but far enough to make that distance as clear as day. Mere feet between them, she felt like it was a chasm. A canyon. The Grand Canyon.

And she once again stood alone, trying to shrink into the flora so no one would see that she wasn’t talking to anyone—that she didn’t know anyone, that she didn’t belong, that she was an imposter. Unseen, no one approached. And maybe she wasn’t so upset about that, feeling less than equipped to be charming.

As cocktail hour transitioned into dinner, held outside the hotel on an elegant stone patio, Warren did what a date was expected to do—escorted her to their table, poured her wine, helped her do whatever she needed. But his stone gaze barely connected with hers. He played his role well enough, but she grew more embarrassed by the second, wondering if everyone else at their table saw what was so glaring to her—that they weren’t together. They were so separate. She was there for one reason only, and it wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t intimate. It was pure business. Transactional.

The more wine she inhaled at dinner, the less she cared that she had an early shift at the hospital the next morning. That wasn’t her—a dedicated med student. She’d never shown up even slightly hungover. But she’d grown distracted.

Slowly she was forced to admit that the wine wasn’t helping, but she kept hoping it would. It would kick in any second, make her feelless. Because, at that precise moment, she was feeling a hell of a lot more than she’d ever felt since…

Well, since mom died.

Alisa suddenly pushed back from the dinner table, folding her napkin on her half-eaten plate.

Warren turned to her. “What’s up?”

“I’m fine,” she said, chewing her lip in that way she did.

She smiled politely at the other guests at the table, excusing herself as the ocean breeze caught her hair. Then she made a break for it.

The garden around the corner, overlooking the long sandy beach, seemed like a good place to be alone, an easy escape from the nearly concluded dinner. She picked up another glass of something bubbly as her heels clicked on the stone patio, sending her quickly around the corner of the hotel.

Entrenched in a canopy of gorgeous trees, she let out the pain that she’d been holding since Warren had first frozen her out. She was kind of tipsy, really freaked out. She was in crisis mode, living off pure adrenaline. Nothing felt okay.

She stationed herself at a stone bench that looked out over the ocean, inhaling the sweet scent of salt water as the sun gently settled on the horizon, taking a much-needed rest after a blistering day. The residual orange glow across the sky, polluted by the smog of the city, reminded her of her own life—what should be so beautiful, tarnished by toxins she felt powerless to stop.

“Good evening.” A man’s voice echoed through the space as he approached.

Alisa looked up to see a tall, lean man with receding gray hair and a clever face stopping a few feet away, waiting for her response. He swirled his snifter, motioning beside her.

“May I join you?”

“Yes, please.” She nodded to the ample room on the stone bench beside her.

“I’m Travis,” the man said as he sat. “I work with Warren.”

“I’m Alisa.”

“I’ve heard,” he said, grinning.

A calm pause fell between them, and she realized that for a military man, he made her feel quite comfortable. He had the air of intelligence, the air of fatherly wisdom. She found herself turning, opening.

“I don’t want this to come across the wrong way,” Travis started, his eyes twinkling at he looked into her. “But, this afternoon, I’ve been watching, and I see the way he looks at you.”

“Really?” she asked, hoping that was a good thing.

Travis nodded, knocking back the amber liquid in his snifter.

He continued, looking out over the sunset, “I’ve been in the Navy a long time. I’ve worked with Warren a long time. He’s simply my best, and he deserves the best—but, he hasn’t always been given that.”

“What do you mean?” She leaned in, hanging onto every word, hoping to decode the enigma.

The nearly disappeared sun danced its final glow across Travis’s face, illuminating the depth of the worries in his experienced face.

“Warren used to have a girlfriend, used to have a life—years ago,” Travis said. “But, one day that all changed.”

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