Page 67 of Keeping Laryn
She chuckled at that. “As settled as I’ll get, I guess. You guys?”
Everyone agreed.
Laryn ate quickly, which Casper assumed was because, like him and his fellow pilots, she could get called away for an emergency at any time. Really, when they were onboard a ship, they were all on call 24/7.
Talk at the table turned to the choppers she maintained, and Laryn reassured everyone that things looked good for both the morning flight and the actual missions they’d be going on the next evening.
“You done for the night?” Casper asked. “With maintenance, I mean.”
“Yeah. Unless I get paged.”
“Shall we go find our berths?”
She gave him a side eye. “If that was code for hanky-panky, I’m thinking…no.”
Everyone at the table laughed.
Laryn’s cheeks were pink, but she met Casper’s gaze without backing down.
“No funny business. This isn’t the time or place. But I do want to make sure you’ve got everything you need and that we know where you are…just in case.”
She tilted her head and stared at him without blinking for a long moment. Then she said, “You really were serious about things being different.”
“Definitely,” Casper told her with a firm nod.
“I’m good. I have everything I need,” she said.
“Give it up,” Chaos said. “When Casper gets something in his head, there’s no convincing him otherwise. If the man wants to make sure you’re settled in and don’t have a bunk on the bottom level of the ship, where it stinks like fuel and is noisy as hell, you should let him.”
“Wait—you can get me moved if I’m under the water line?” Laryn asked. “Why didn’t you say so? Let’s go!” She smiled to let everyone know she was joking.
But he figured there was probably an ounce of honesty in her words.
Buck reached over and grabbed her now-empty tray and stacked it on top of the other six trays in his hand. He carried them over to the bins, where he threw away their trash, then put the trays on the belt to go into the kitchen to be cleaned.
Casper’s fingers itched to grab hold of Laryn’s hand as they all stood to head out, but he refrained. Instead, he leaned close to her as they walked and said softly, “Long day, huh?”
She nodded as she looked up at him. “Yeah.”
“Did all your equipment make it all right?”
“Uh-huh. How were your meetings?”
“Long. But informative. The mission will be tough, but nowhere near the most difficult we’ve had. It’ll be fun to fly at night through the mountain passes.”
Laryn rolled her eyes. “Fun. Yeah, right. You’re a weirdo.”
Casper merely smiled. “Takes one to know one.”
She huffed out a breath of laughter. “That’s mature.”
Casper was having fun already. Maybe that was why he’d needled this woman so much in the past. One, because she never seemed to take offense to his teasing, and two, because he loved seeing her exasperated responses.
“What’s your berth number?” Casper asked.
“Four A.”
“We’re twenty-six A and B. We’ve got three-man berths.”
