Page 10 of Hushed

He didn’t like talking about his wealth, and he rarely flaunted it. Kenzie never understood why. If she had that kind of money, she would never stop talking about it.

And then she would get robbed. So, it was probably a good thing she stayed broke most of the time.

She always put extra money right back into her business, upgrading to the latest equipment, advertising her services. Whatever she could do to improve her earnings. And eventually, she would have the money to buy her own apartment instead of renting.

But that was a long way off. Especially after she got into trouble borrowing money from the wrong person.

It was something she’d planned to talk to Reggie about the next time he came for a visit.

The thought of him never visiting again made her eyes water, and she did her best to hold back the tears. Thankfully, Natalie called Gage’s name in that annoying flirty voice, snapping her out of her sadness.

Gage retrieved their baskets of food and found a table along the wall.

“Let’s sit by the window. It’s fun to watch the people go by.”

Gage frowned. “Never sit by the window in a place like this.”

Kenzie let out an annoyed huff and rolled her eyes upward. He sounded just like Reggie with his safety concerns and ever-watchful eye.

But she sat in the chair he held out for her, because she didn’t want to stand in the middle of the restaurant arguing with him, especially when he was almost certainly going to get his way.

He bit into the sandwich and closed his eyes, nodding as he chewed. “Damn, Kenz. You weren’t lying. That’s amazing.”

“I never lie about food, Gage. Or haven’t you noticed the size of my hips?”

“Oh, I noticed. You’ve got them poured into those shorts. The whole damn world noticed, sweetheart.”

If she wasn’t mistaken, there was a heated look in his eyes as he spoke. Was it lust or annoyance mixed with being an overprotective friend?

The latter she knew how to handle. The lust scared the hell out of her.

Thankfully, she didn’t have to focus on it for too long because he brought her back to reality with a discussion of arrangements for Reggie.

“I was so young I never had to worry about any of this when our parents died,” she said between bites of pastrami. Chewing seemed to be keeping the tears at bay, or she would have pushed the sandwich away by now. Her stomach wasn’t happy with her.

“You shouldn’t have to worry about it now,” Gage said, almost sounding angry.

He had to be hurting just as much as Kenzie. She was only seven when Reggie first brought Gage home with him after one of his tours, and the two men had been friends ever since.

For the most part, Gage ignored her, and she thought he was loud and annoying. But by the time she became a teenager, he came around for visits on holidays so often that he was part of the family. And it was weird when she started feeling attracted to him.

She tried to talk to Reggie about him once and he lost his mind, so she learned to keep her mouth shut and tried to squash the girlish crush.

By the time she finished high school and went off to college, she was convinced she was over her attraction, and she hadn’t seen Gage for several years.

Now at twenty-five, she was fully aware of her likes and dislikes, and Gage Allard definitely checked off more boxes in the first column than he did in the second.

In fact, the only box in the second column was the fact that he was Reggie’s best friend, and they did the same kind of work. Work they couldn’t talk about. Work that could get them killed.

The kind of person she didn’t want to get attached to because there was a chance they just wouldn’t come home one day.

“Earth to Kenzie,” Gage said, waving a napkin in front of her face.

She blinked herself back to the present and tried to tamp down the embarrassment. “Sorry about that. I was lost in memories.”

“Any you’d care to share? It could be good for you to talk about memories of him. Could be good for both of us.”

Her face turned bright red, and she looked away, silently cursing the fact that she didn’t have a window to look out of. “It’s nothing important.”

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