I didn’t take my eyes away from the man now climbing down out of the jet.
“I didn’t. Just got sidetracked for a bit,” I admitted, giving him a quick glance.
“Mine’s not any better, unfortunately.” Kansas scrunched up his nose. “On the first flight home after taking the planes up, I got lost.”
“And we call him ‘Kansas’ because that’s where he was on his way to when he realized where he was going,” Toot snorted.
“What about State?” I questioned. “I only ever call him Trouper.”
“State Trooper,” both answered unanimously.
“That’s not so bad,” I admitted.
“No,” they agreed. “Not bad. He’s probably the only one of us here that didn’t get a call sign based on them doing something stupid.”
Trouper’s boots hit the ground and my heart lurched for an altogether different reason.
He was sweaty.
Really sweaty.
And his eyes were lit with an inner fire that I’d never seen in them before.
He was happy.
God, he was so happy that it almost hurt to look at him.
This was the reason that we’d stayed apart for so long.
The excitement in his eyes right now was blatant and rather hard to see.
Why? Because I knew that I wasn’t his one and only love.
Flying was, too.
When he finally made it to us, it was to hear the tail end of Kansas’s explanation of his name.
His grin got wider.
“They explained their names?” he asked.
“They told me why they got their names,” I agreed, sounding somewhat breathless.
He threw his head back and laughed, and I whispered out of the corner of my mouth to Easton.
“Take a photo for me,” I pleaded.
Easton rolled his eyes but did as I asked.
Then he handed the phone back to me.
“I don’t find my brother anywhere near as attractive as you do, so if you want anymore, you’ll have to take them yourself,” Easton grumbled.
When I looked back to Trouper, it was to see his eyes twinkling with mirth.
I shrugged.
Trouper winked at me.
“Ready?” Easton asked.
Trouper’s eyes went to his brother.
“I’ll be back out here in a bit. Then we can go to the house, okay?” he offered.
He had sweat dripping down his neck, and it took everything that I had not to lean forward and run my tongue along the path that the sweat had taken.
I swallowed hard, my eyes once again flicking up to see Trouper’s eyes on me.
And I knew he knew what he did to me.
“Come on, wife,” Easton said as he hooked his arm around my neck. “We can wait over here for my brother until he’s done. Right, wife?”
I wanted to drop an elbow into Easton’s testicles.
I gritted my teeth, and Trouper could see the anger in my eyes.
That had to be why he smiled at me instead of shooting an annoyed glance Easton’s way.
He winked at me and backed away.
It was only as he got close to the door that he did an about face and walked inside, not looking back.
“You know,” Easton said casually as he allowed his arm to drop. “You are really doing a piss-poor job of selling the ‘I’m your husband’ thing when you’re around him.”
I sighed and turned, crossing my arms over my chest.
“It’s hard because I want to just throw myself into his arms and stay there forever,” I told Easton honestly. “I’ve wanted nothing more than to see him all this time, and now that I’m here, I can’t touch him.”
He snorted.
“We have a big place, with quite a large path leading into the woods in our back yard. I’m fairly sure that I wouldn’t ever notice a man coming in and out of them to spend time with my wife,” Easton drawled.
I rolled my eyes, then sobered.
Taking a seat on the large concrete wall behind me that separated the parking lot from the building, I looked at Easton.
“After this job is done… I’m done,” I told him.
His brows rose. “Really?”
I scrubbed my face lightly.
“I’ve had my resignation letter in my email ready to send for about a year now. But it wasn’t until I saw Trouper that I realized that I needed to just grow a pair and send it. I’ve been a bit lost. I have to admit, it’s been like that for a really long time. And it wasn’t until I saw him that I realized why I was lost.”
“You were lost without him,” Easton guessed. “You didn’t realize that you need him to survive. To flourish.”
I turned so that my back was resting against the chain-link fence.