Page 3 of Keeping Laryn
“I’m not here to check up on you. I was just curious as to what you’d gotten done,” Tate protested. His copilot, Pyro, was behind him. He clapped him on the shoulder and continued toward the chopper Laryn had just left behind.
“I’ve gotteneverythingdone,” she told him with a sigh, and without her usual sassiness. “It’s more than ready for you to test her out in a couple days. And I’ve told the colonel that I won’t sign off on the chopper being ready until I’m one hundred percent sure itisreadyandthat you, the pilot, thinks it’s ready.”
“I know, that’s what makes you an amazing mechanic,” Tate told her.
She stared at him, and a pang hit her as it always did when she looked into his blue eyes. He had a twin brother, Nate, but she thought Tate was the better looking of the two. Which was kind of silly, considering they were identical. But to her, there were subtle differences. Tate was more confident, outgoing, and even though he was only thirty-four, he had a bit of silver in his hair that his twin didn’t, giving him a more distinguished air. His hair was also a little longer than military regulations stipulated, but she supposed as a hotshot Night Stalker, he had a bit of leeway where that was concerned.
And she couldn’t deny the freckles on his face were adorable. She wondered if they covered him…everywhere.
Aware that her thoughts went where they always did when she was around this man, Laryn was more abrupt than usual. “We done here?”
Tate blinked. “Yeah.”
Laryn gave him a nod and stepped to the side and continued on her way. Her skin tingled, as if she could feel his gaze on her as she walked, but she refused to look back at him.
She was going home to heat up a frozen meal, shower, then crash for hopefully a good eight hours.
But her intentions of not looking back at Tate faltered, and before she walked out of sight of the hangar, she couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder.
Her heartrate increased when she saw Tate standing where she’d left him. And he was indeed staring right at her. He gave her one of those chin lifts she saw him and his fellow pilots using all the time. He wasn’t smirking at her, as usual. He looked serious and…concerned?
No, she had to be imagining that, because Tate Davis didn’t look at her with concern. Ever. She was simply the mechanic he relied on to keep his chopper running at top form.
But something about the way he was looking at her, and hadn’t moved from where they’d had their short conversation, struck her as…atypical. In fact, ever since he’d crashed in Iran, he’d been acting a bit differently toward her. She wasn’t sure why, or even exactlyhowdifferent it was until right this moment. Now she realized the old Tate would’ve shrugged off her words and continued into the hangar to check out how the work was progressing on his chopper.
Also in the last month, she’d found his gaze on her more than once. Caught him staring at her, almost as if he was trying to figure her out.
Under no circumstances could he ever learn that she’d had a massive crush on him for years.
Was that even the right word? Crush? She didn’t think so. She wasn’t thirteen. She was a grown-ass woman. She admired Tate. Respected him. Loved him.
Sighing, she continued on toward her car. It was her dad’s old 1990 Honda Civic Hatchback. It looked ancient, but Laryn kept her running as smoothly as a brand-new car. Sure, she’d had to replace the engine and most of the parts, but every time she saw it, she smiled, because it made her think about her dad and all the time they’d spent in it together going to and from races. It was the first car she’d changed the oil in all by herself…under her dad’s watchful eye, of course.
She was barely awake by the time she arrived home. She stumbled up the stairs to her second-floor apartment and decided food and a shower could wait. She collapsed onto the couch after taking off her steel-toed boots and reached for the fluffy blanket carelessly draped over the back, where she’d left it. She was asleep in seconds, not even the mystery of why Tate was acting so differently around her enough to keep her awake.
CHAPTER TWO
Casper stared after Laryn…and couldn’t help but let his gaze drop to her ass. She was a powerful dynamo in a small package, and he couldn’t get her out of his head. It had started on the deck of the naval ship after he’d returned from that goat-screw of a rescue. Thankfully, his brother Nate, the woman who’d been a captive of the Iranian government with him, Nate’s team leader, and Pyro were all fine after their chopper had been shot down and they’d had to land in the mountains of Iraq.
He’d been kind of dreading facing Laryn when she found out her precious chopper had been destroyed. And she’d said everything he’d expected, giving him a rash of shit. But it was the look in her eyes that had stopped him in his tracks. The look of fear.
Fear forhim.
He’d known Laryn for three years, and in all that time, he’d only seen exactly what she’d presented to others: an incredible mechanic. The person who made it easy to be a pilot without having to worry about the inner workings of the chopper he was flying. But seeing the distress in her eyes that day, and knowing she’d actually been worried abouthim, not the machine she lovingly cared for, had shaken him.
It made him realize just how much he didn’t know about the amazing woman who literally held his life in her hands when he flew. One bolt left untightened, one overlooked routine maintenance item, could mean the difference between life or death for him and his copilot.
Casper had dated his fair share of women. But the ones who seemed to want him most were specifically looking to date a pilot. Wanted to be on his arm not because of who he was, but because of what he did, and the status they thought he could give them.
When he’d first become a Night Stalker, he’d soaked up the attention. Reveled in it. Now? Those women annoyed him. When he went to Anchor Point with his fellow Night Stalkers, he wanted to relax. Have a beer or two. Chill. Not fend off women who made his eyes water with the amount of perfume they’d bathed in, or wore clothes that were two sizes too small in their bid for attention.
Those women were a stark contrast to Laryn. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d seen the diminutive mechanic wearing anything but gray coveralls. They swam on her frame, which meant he hadn’t really gotten a chance to see much of her body. Except her ass. She was well-rounded there, which made him suspect the rest of her was much the same way. The thought of digging his fingers into her soft flesh as he held her against him made his cock immediately stiffen.
Which was another change…not the erection, per se, but getting one every time his thoughts strayed even one inch over the line when thinking about Laryn. He’d become extremely curious about the woman who’d been in his life for the last few years, yet who he knew so little about.
He walked toward the chopper she and her team were working on, the one that he and Pyro would be testing soon. His copilot was talking to Sergeant Wells, a younger mechanic who Casper had seen working with Laryn quite a bit.
“How’s she doing?” Casper asked.
