Chapter 2
"Hurry up, gorgeous, I'm starving."
"You're always starving." Logan held the door to the restaurant for her.
"Pot, kettle. Exertion, appetite." She gave him a significant look. "You do the math, pretty boy."
"Two for breakfast?" The hostess smiled at Logan, the stars in her eyes glittering bright enough that Veronica tried to step in front of her new husband. Only to glare even more when she wasn't tall enough to actually block the other woman's view of his face.
"Just two," Logan confirmed, gazing down at Veronica with a fond smirk at her antics.
"Great! That'll be about a forty-five minute wait, we're a little slammed this morning with the cruise ship coming in."
"Logan!" Veronica groaned. "Can't you spearfish me something faster than that?"
"Sure." Logan shrugged. "But it'll take me a minute to get my scuba tanks on, and then I'll have to clean the fish before we can make ceviche, so forty-five would be faster. Plus, I can't spear pancakes, and I think that's what you really wanted."
"I was joking. You can really spearfish?"
"Uh, yeah." He looked at her like she'd just asked if he could use a crosswalk.
"Fuck, that's sexy," she muttered.
"What?" He bent a little closer to her height.
"I said, can't you bribe somebody to build us our own table? Or serve us on the beach? I can eat pancakes with my bare hands, no forks required."
Logan looked to the hostess. "Any chance you could help us out? My wife's been known to get violent when she's not fed and I don't think anybody's idyllic tropical getaway is going to be improved by a Mars on the warpath."
"Violent, huh?" The statuesque brunette hostess looked down at Veronica and tittered. "I'll alert security."
"They'd never get here in time."
The brunette blinked, taken aback by Logan's warning, but Veronica just gave her best Amber smile and slapped Logan's arm, giggling. "Oh, you. Don't scare the nice woman, now."
He took a firmer grip on her waist, his nerves coming alert at the appearance of the Amber persona, and slipped the waitress a folded couple of hundreds. "Could you at least sneak some bacon out of the kitchen while we wait? Just a pound or two should do it."
"Well, there's a bit of room at one of the communal cruise ship tables," the hostess said. "I'm sure they wouldn't mind if you joined them. They're a friendly bunch."
Logan smirked down at her. "Well? What's it going to be, my little bluebird? Company or starvation?"
"You know what they say about company!" she piped back.
"It loves misery?"
The hostess looked confused. "Was that a yes or a no?"
"Definitely a yes," Logan said. "Looks like the bacon won't come soon enough to avert disaster, at this point. She's been getting a lot of exercise lately."
"I can tell by the sunburn," the hostess said, grabbing a couple of menus. "You should really flip over sometimes, honey."
"Oh, honey, if you could see the view I had, you'd never flip over."
Logan choked on his laughter as the hostess led them over to a big table currently occupied by two men in their early thirties.
"We were wondering if you might be willing to share your table since we're running low on seating," the hostess cajoled. "These two are on their honeymoon…"
"Oh, sit down, sit down, we'll take good care of them," one of the men said. He had expensively cut hair and the most beautiful crème-colored linen shirt she'd ever seen. His partner was wearing a loud Hawaiian version and swiped a strip of bacon off his plate while he was busy greeting them. Veronica winked at him and he stole a second piece and passed it to her under the table.
"Do you two already know each other?" Logan asked.
She pretended to cough and stuffed the bacon in her mouth under that cover. "We're fast friends," she said around the pilfered meat.
"She's Veronica," Logan said. "And I'm just along for the ride."
"I'm Rishi," said the man in the linen shirt, shaking Logan's hand.
"And I'm definitely here for the ride," purred Hawaiian Shirt next to him.
Veronica laughed and he turned his eyes on her.
"I'm Brian," he said, "and congratulations on locking that down, honey."
"All congratulations accepted. You wouldn't believe what I had to do to coax this man to the altar." She fanned herself. "Penthouse Letters would blush."
"That wasn't the half of it," Logan said, pulling her chair out for her before nodding politely to the waitress's offer of coffee. "She also had to ask me eight times and upgrade the ring twice."
"And that was after the Penthouse Letters part." She sighed. "I'm exhausted."
Rishi's lips twitched, and the faintest hint of a blush was starting to show under his light brown skin. "So, um, what do you do?"
"Well, I started by working my tongue in under—"
"She's a Naval intelligence officer," Logan interrupted.
"Oh!" Rishi tilted his head. "Would you believe, I have no idea what a Naval intelligence officer actually does."
"I could tell you," Veronica said, "but then you'd have to do enough security clearance paperwork that you'd want to kill yourself."
Brian laughed. "That sounds about right."
"Lets just say if you see any international hotspots down to room temperature?" She winked at Logan, eyes gleaming wickedly. "That was me."
"Really?" Rishi leaned forward. "Well, that's just fascinating."
"Oh, it's incredibly dangerous and cosmopolitan," Veronica said, helping herself to the platter of fruit in the center of the table and feeding Logan a grape. He bit into it, a smirk playing around the edges of his mouth.
"I don't know if it's that cosmopolitan, honey bear," he murmured.
"No, it is." She grinned, batting her eyelashes at him. "Remember that time last summer when they had to get me that bespoke suit and the delicious shoes to go with it, and I pretended I was heading to Russia but we all know those shoes were in as hell in Paris last summer. It's like undercover work, but with a few more stamps in its passport and a few more dollars in its costume budget. The Navy gets around, boy, you wouldn't even believe."
"I didn't realize you'd been tracking what the Paris fashions were," Logan said, his jaw tensing just for a second.
"Oh, you'd be surprised what I get interested in, when it's something that affects my work," she said blandly. "I can be very scrupulous about my attention to detail."
"Well," Rishi said, glancing back and forth between them. "It's nice that you have such an, um, healthy self-esteem about your job. What do you do, Logan?"
"He's a private investigator, nothing special." Veronica leaned across the table, focused on procuring a slice of cantaloupe.
Brian shot her a mildly disapproving look. "Well, I think that's delightful, private investigating. You're the ones that always catch the cheating spouses, right? What a public service."
"Think way bigger than that," Logan said. "I basically do the police force's entire job for them, and internal affairs as well. I cracked a corruption case recently and well…" He chuckled. "You wouldn't have believed how rotten that department was. They really had to clean house when I got done with them."
"Really?" Rishi's eyes had gone wide and he was ignoring his plate entirely. Brian took the opportunity to confiscate the remainder of his bacon. "I didn't know private investigators could do that."
"Sure." Logan kicked his feet up onto an empty chair and tossed a grape up in the air, caught it neatly in his mouth. "Matter of fact, I own my own firm and I rescued a whole high school full of kids from a bomber last week. Just squeezed it in before the wedding. Oh, and closed an insurance fraud case on my phone on the honeymoon, right in between couple's foot massages and a marathon session in the hot tub."
"You really are a busy little bee," Veronica said, her voice getting a touch strained. "I didn't even realize you'd left the hot tub long enough to uh, notice that. Or the news. That you said you weren't going to watch."
"Well, it's always good to know who the hero of the week is, and how much legal trouble they might be in." He tossed another grape, dodged to the left to catch it. "It's a hobby of mine. In between saving children and giving heartfelt wedding speeches."
"You truly must give me the name of your therapist," Brian gushed. "I have never seen self-esteems quite so healthy. Have you ever seen self-esteems so healthy, Rishi?"
"Brian…" his husband warned quietly.
"I find, when you've got a good thing going, there's no reason not to brag on it a little." Veronica patted her husband's leg. "Don't you think, sweet pea?"
His lips twitched slightly, but he managed a bland smile. "I do believe my therapist has remarked upon that very thing."
The waitress showed up. "Are you folks ready to order? Sorry about the wait, we're just slammed this morning."
"Don't I know the feeling," Veronica said, with an ostentatious wink at her new husband.
Logan gave a restrained, polite smile to the waitress. "She means yes, we're very ready to order. Why don't you go first, sugar plum?"
"I'll have the lumberjack platter," she said instantly, scanning the menu. "Extra side of bacon, and don't skimp on the whipped cream on those waffles. Oh, and can you throw in a ham steak?" She snapped her menu closed.
The waitress smiled and started to turn away.
"Oh, we're not sharing," Logan said. "I'll have an egg white and avocado omelet. Do you have turkey bacon?" At her nod, he said, "I'll take a half order of that, then. You can hold the toast, please."
Veronica shook her head. "What's a girl got to do to get you to work up an appetite around here?"
The waitress choked. Rishi was blushing again.
Logan grinned. "We've got all afternoon to find out, love." To the waitress he said, "Better bring her an espresso, too."
Rishi and Brian seemed to be having a complex conversation with their eyes, but then Rishi patted Brian's sleeve and sat back firmly.
"So is being a naval intelligence officer very dangerous, Veronica?"
"Being a P.I. is way more dangerous," Logan broke in. "You don't have air strikes for backup, or a team of professionals backing you up. It's very Lone Ranger, dealing with some of the most dangerous people you can imagine. Russian mobsters, Irish drug dealers with hair tempers, trophy wives…" He shuddered.
"No more dangerous than parachuting into hostile countries to do backdoor machinations that could lead to non-Geneva-Convention approved 'interrogations' if I get caught," Veronica interrupted. "Naval intelligence is way more dangerous than being a little old private investigator. I used to fly jet planes, you know," she said to Brian. "Only the tippy top percent of graduates are allowed into the program." She picked through the strawberries. "The adrenaline was great, and I was a highly decorated pilot, medals just all the time but it wasn't enough of an intellectual challenge for me."
Brian coughed. "Well isn't that…very descriptive. How about Logan's job, though? It sounds like he's done some pretty amazing stuff."
She shrugged. "I guess. Saving a single school full of kids isn't much when you've saved whole countries. That's how I got out of flying jets, actually. My CO recommended me for an early transfer after a training mission went off course, and my quick thinking was all that saved us from an international incident that very well could have kicked off a new world war."
Logan put a hand on her arm. "Careful, honey. Aren't you skirting close to some things that might be classified?"
"No, it's okay." Brian put down his napkin and pushed out his chair. "Because we've got to be going anyway."
"Very nice to meet you," Rishi interjected. "Thank you for your service," he said to Veronica.
"Thank you," she said. "It's actually a huge sacrifice, but that's no big deal when you're a real life, actual hero."
Logan's coffee must have gone down the wrong pipe, because he started coughing into a napkin.
"Well, isn't that sweet," Brian said flatly. He touched Logan's shoulder. "Let me give you a little tip, from people who have been married longer than five minutes. A little respect for each other's jobs as well as your own? It goes a long way toward making a healthy marriage." He sniffed.
"Listen, Brian, if our marriage gets any healthier, I'll have to order two Lumberjack platters," Veronica said.
The couple hurried away, looking mildly annoyed, and she smiled.
"And that's how you get a table to yourself," Logan said, holding his hand up.
"No bribe necessary." Veronica slapped him a high five.