Chapter 16
Abby had been exhausted after the long training flight and her constant conversational screwups over dinner.
Which should have meant only one thing, she wasn’t going to sleep a wink.
Past history taught her that she’d replay every step of the former and every misstep of the latter throughout the day when she was supposed to be sleeping.
What in her past had ever taught her to deal with an attractive man?
Mum had died when she was a toddler and Gran’mum soon after.
The two funerals were her first two identifiable memories.
She’d been raised in a house of men: brothers, cousins, even neighbors.
She was the only female of her generation for a fair way round the family tree.
Which taught her all the rough-and-tumble lessons as a child and prepared for nothing that happened when she hit her teens.
Deal with them in banter, barter, or a brawl? No problem. Ones she was attracted to… Yeah, still no ideas.
How many times had she proven that with Captain Kylie last night?
Out of his fearsome D-boy mode, he was funny, polite, and interesting.
His brown hair tended to curl, which made him look more disheveled than scary, even though he kept it short.
It goes nuts if I let it grow another inch.
I swear, it’s trying to stage a rebellion.
That, or Mama and Papa were lying and I’m part sheep.
He laughed easily…and he listened. Yet she kept tumbling out of the conversation with all the grace of a busted helo.
And after that kiss and promise to buy her a mere, she should have had ten times the trouble sleeping. Instead? She’d crashed into her bed for the best eight hours she’d had in a long while.
For her late-afternoon breakfast, she’d hit the mini fridge for fruit, yogurt, and granola, with a splash of honey. She stuck with hot cocoa because coffee shifted her up, then down, and she didn’t like the variability when flying.
Not that she was avoiding Captain Derek Kylie, who would have eaten in the DFAC. And she hadn’t sat between Ethan and Sam in the front row of this morning’s debriefing or this evening’s briefing to shut Derek out; it’s where she always sat.
Trisha had other ideas.
“Due to last night’s success by your team,” as if she and Derek were linked by their survival, “you’re taking the lead on tonight’s training op.”
And it was a doozy.