guys up-to-date.”
“Good,” she said, a hint of color returning to her face.
Gus swallowed hard. It was now or never. “You know, when all this is behind us…”
She looked up at him sharply, suspending his suggestion. “What?” she prompted impatiently.
Maybe she wasn’t in the right mood for him to suggest a date. She seemed a little irritable. “Nothing. It’ll wait,” he decided.
With her hip throbbing painfully, her eyes burning from lack of sleep, and her stomach rumbling for the meal of rice that wouldn’t be ready for another half hour, Lucy’s patience was too thin for her to tolerate guessing games.
“Just tell me,” she insisted, feeling crabby and angry at herself. Damn it, she couldn’t even sleep without the comfort of Gus’s arms around her. What happened to being completely self-reliant?
He sent a nervous glance at the door. “Well, I was thinking, when this was over, we could maybe see each other, socially,” he suggested with watchful wariness.
He sounded like the shy college sophomore who’d asked her out when she was just a freshman. Even as her heart took wing, Lucy’s stomach sank like it was weighted with concrete. She stared at him, speechless. They were in a war zone, living on borrowed time if the Elite Guard outed her, and he was trying to ask her out on a date? If they both lived through this op, the chances of them staying on the same continent for the next assignment were slim to none. How the hell was romance supposed to fit into that picture?
At her continued silence, Gus shifted uncomfortably. “You still like pizza, right?” he continued bravely. “I know this new pizza place near Tyson’s Corner—”
She put a hand up, suspending his persuasions. “Stop,” she begged. “That’s enough. Just…don’t say any more.”
Jamming his hands into his pockets, he frowned down at her. “You’re the one who insisted I spit it out,” he added, his eyes dark with disappointment.
“My fault,” she accepted. “And don’t look at me like that. It’s nothing personal, okay? People like us don’t do relationships, Gus. I can’t even keep a houseplant alive.”
Rolling out of the hammock, she pushed abruptly past him, afraid he’d see the confusion in her eyes and pounce on it. Her knees felt strangely weak as she headed toward the door to jam her feet into her boots. A part of her longed to turn back, to hurl herself into his arms and say, “Yes, I want to date you!” But the smarter half prevailed. Squaring her shoulders, she marched out of the casita without a backward glance, nearly knocking down S¸ukruye, who was on her way in.
“Careful!” the woman cautioned as Lucy bumped her bucket of water.
“Sorry,” she muttered, fleeing the building. Hurrying past the others, she pushed blindly into the blur of vegetation, remembering at the last second to mark her trail by bending branches.
Gus’s suggestion, coming on the heels of a poor night’s sleep, had thrown her thoughts into turmoil.
Hell, she had nothing against casual dating. She’d been known to dazzle the opposite sex from time to time. But there would be nothing casual about seeing Gus socially, as he’d put it. This adventure in the thicket made it glaringly obvious that they felt comfortable together as boyfriend and girlfriend. If she dated him again, she’d become as wrapped up in him as when she was younger. She’d be picking and choosing her assignments so she could see him, distracted from her primary objective.
Worse than that, she wouldn’t be self-reliant ever again. She would need him to feel complete, just as she had in college. It had taken years to stop missing him.
Oh, no. She’d taken this assignment to find her courage so she could be strong again. She wasn’t going to cash all that in just to grow weak in other ways.
It was best if she didn’t see Gus at all.
The thought stripped her of all happiness, making her realize how far gone she already was. Hey, at least we work for the same people, she comforted herself. We’re bound to run into each other.
Upset with herself for even needing consolation, she snatched a vine out of the way, upsetting the monkey that was clinging to it. Then she whirled around, hunting for a soft-looking leaf to wipe with on the carpet of spongy decay.
God, what she wouldn’t give for a real roll of toilet paper!
Ten minutes later, Gus seemed to have forgotten both his proposition and her flat-out rejection. He sent her a long, thoughtful look