and then dropped his voice. “We still have those guys coming in for some weekend fun?”
“I don’t know. We might want to lay low for a bit after this incident. Mayer really blew it with his need to go against our rules.”
“He paid for it and the others will fall in line. We won’t have any more problems with anyone.”
“Yes, we dodged the bullet…” The man laughed.
“Let’s make this one our last for a while then. To be safe. So, we’ll make it a good one. Just have to make sure we have what those boys are looking for.”
“Oh, I think we can manage that.”
Amber was on the phone again, working out her flight arrangements. The coffee was brewing, and Tristan grabbed a plate and loaded it up with her fluffy pancakes. He tried not to stare at her. It was damn hard, but he managed to pull out his laptop and catch up on some paperwork he had to do before his final class. He’d be ready to go back to Doc Cross in six weeks.
He took a mouthful of pancakes, savored, chewed and swallowed.
The coffee finished brewing, and just as he was going to rise to get himself a cup, her call ended, and she automatically reached for his bulldog mug and poured him a cup.
She walked over to the table and set it down. His heart did a little flip. Okay, over coffee? It was as if they were…cohabitating, as if she didn’t think anything of knowing exactly how he took his coffee.
She huffed as she went back to the stove and dished up her flapjacks.
“What’s wrong?”
“They can’t get me into the hotel tonight, so I will have to wait until tomorrow.”
He intentionally stuffed another mouthful of syrupy goodness into his mouth so he wouldn’t say something and prove to her and himself that he was quite stupid. As soon as he finished the bite and washed it down with a mouthful of coffee, he said, “Ready to get out of the snow and ice?”
She regarded him silently for a moment, then raised her brows as if he might be a slight bit slow. “Does Mickey Mouse have ears?” She snorted. “As I’ve said before, I might have grown up in Vermont, but I’m not a fan of the cold. Except for skiing and snowboarding, ice-skating, too, but then I want a warm lodge and hot chocolate.”
“I haven’t had a vacation in a long time.” He finished the last of the pancakes. She pointed at the stove, silently asking if he wanted more. He shook his head.
“Where was the last place you visited?” Amber took cream in her coffee. A lot. She cut her pancake and he watched as she slipped it in her mouth. He needed to stop looking at her lips.
Snapping out of his ogling, he said, “My parents back in Unalaska, Alaska, a tiny little city two clicks from Dutch Harbor, the busiest international fishing port in the United States.”
Her eyes brightened as if his disclosure of where he’d lived during his childhood was a big deal to her. He didn’t usually have these kinds of conversations with people, but it felt easier with Amber.
“What’s it like to grow up in Alaska?”
“Cold,” he deadpanned.
She laughed and pushed his shoulder. “Other than that, Tris.”
He smiled. His sisters called him Tris. The only women besides his mother that called him by that nickname. Rock called him a pain in the ass, and his brother usually called him jarhead. He rather liked that she used it. “I mentioned my father’s a fisherman and it’s damned hard. Gets harder as the fishing gets tougher. The town is pretty small—about 4,300 people—but it has the distinction of being bombed by the Japanese in World War II, insists on having a separate zip code from Dutch, and is an airliner hub.”
“Dutch Harbor…wait, what kind of fishing?”
“All kinds, and yes, crab, too.”
Her eyes widened and she set down her fork. “He’s one of those fishermen from that Discovery Channel show?”
He shook his head. “He’s not on the show but runs his own boat. He’s pretty disappointed that none of us were interested in continuing on with our family tradition.”
“That must have been hard for him.”
It was the most surprised his father had ever been when first Thane, then Tristan, had opted for the military. “It was. I went into the Marines as soon as I got my high school diploma. Thane had already gone into the Navy two years before and