Collide Into You: A Romantic Gender Swap Love Story (6 page)

But even the whirlwind of an office romance dwindles into a weak breeze after being caught. We no longer seemed to appeal to each other, and one of us had to end it. Granted, I wish now that Abigail had taken that lead, but she let me do the “breaking up,” and Johnson Brookshire, already angry that his daughter had been taken advantage of—
I entirely disagreed with that assessment
—had it out for me ever since.

Perhaps attaching me to Joy Fromm Acquisitions was a way to fire me. Knowing what I know—that the company probably won’t survive—if I’m on the team to restore the troubled company, Brookshire could use it against LouAnn and her bid to replace him. Or he could just be a vindictive son of a bitch and will enjoy watching me fail. It’s not as if Abigail is around anymore. After the internship, she and her adorable ass returned to her Ivy League university, and I haven’t seen her since.
 

Sighing, I take a look at the roster of Brookshire Mierkle employees working the case. Something is wrong here. I squint my eyes, but it doesn’t change that my name is the
only
name on the list. I lift the paper, hoping another list is behind it.

Nope.

So LouAnn pimped me out on an impossible task that Johnson Brookshire probably wanted me to fail on. Talk about a challenge. The thought reminds me of Ellen’s statement, which makes me think of Keira. I still have to think of a good surprise for her lying to me.

I look at the clock. It is late afternoon, and I can take work home with me.

I wonder if she’d be interested in going out tonight. Not like a date. I’d be showing her some of DC’s highlights, and a good restaurant served a useful purpose. Everyone had to eat at some point.

Knowing what I know about Keira and her intelligence background, I doubt she can leave early and bring anything back to the apartment to work on, and I don’t have her work number. It’s not like I can call her up or even visit her office. No doubt the Pentagon is guarded like a fortress.

Not that I would force my way in just to ask a girl if she wanted to eat at a restaurant with me. Romantic, yes. Legal, no.

I pack up my work, tell LouAnn that I’m leaving to write up my last will and testament, and head home.

Keira

M
Y
HEAD
SWIMS
IN
OVERLY
worded personal letters. General MacWilliams’ windowless, secure office, while well-appointed with gorgeous, dark wood furniture, is on the small side. It’s made smaller by the two large boxes stacked against a wall.

Boxes that I have to go through in this office. Nowhere else.

I suddenly feel like I need more coffee from Ellen’s. Too bad the Pentagon doesn’t have a satellite office for Ellen’s Corner Bakery.
 

I stare at the boxes and I can see the future for the next seven days: me reading every single document contained therein. Sometimes I wish secrets would remain secret.

After the plane hit the Pentagon in 2001, a renovation team came together to revamp the entire Pentagon, one wedge at a time. Unbeknownst to anyone but a select few within the Department of Defense, during the last stage of renovation, a construction worker found an unassuming trunk hidden inside the walls along one of the corridors.

Why no one seemed to question why someone hid a trunk in a wall was beyond me. However, the trunk was locked, and the renovation team, who happened to have a tight deadline, stored it in the nearest secure storage room—the Chief of Staff of the Army’s storage room.

And there the trunk lay dormant for several years. Someone would see it, wonder about it, but never take action. Everyone was busy in those days and no one had time for a trunk that probably contained nothing but old manuals.

Two months ago, a renovation official remembered the trunk just before his retirement and informed the general, who told Staff Sergeant Justin Hauten to find a pair of bolt cutters and open the “darned thing.”

Inside, it contained letters between an Army officer and a woman, whom I could only describe as a young German woman. Years of letters, dated between 1955 and 1957, that, at this point, appear to be more or less pen pal style. But I’m only at the beginning.
 

My job, according to Colonel Benson, is to read the letters in chronological order and determine if any classified information had been passed along in them.
 

This morning, after the colonel gave me the assignment, my first response was that most classified material over fifty years old, minus a few exceptions, was automatically declassified. Colonel Benson, with a chagrined expression, wasn’t interested in my immediate answer and said I was getting ahead of myself.

Well, you called me in for a reason, right?
But I shut my mouth from saying more.

General MacWilliams wanted three questions answered: One, did the Army officer reveal classified information in his letters? Two, who the hell hid the trunks in the wall? Three, why were both sets of letters together?

Of all the questions, the last one, for some reason, gives my heart a pang.
Why
were both sets of letters together? I’m not necessarily a romantic person, but for some reason, it feels tragic.
 

However, personal feelings aside, one thing is clear to me: I will know the answers in a few weeks, but I wonder if I’ll be happy with my conclusion.

Now, as I sit at the desk reading the letters from 1955, the door to the general’s office buzzes, interrupting my thoughts. Someone swipes their badge against the reader, and Justin appears. He doesn’t open the door all the way. I can tell he doesn’t plan to come in. His body language is fairly easy to read.

“It’s time to lock up the SCIF, Sergeant Holtslander, so I’m afraid that I have to ask you to stop for the day.”

I rub my eyes. I have been reading since eight this morning. Justin doesn’t have to be afraid to tell me to pack up at all.

“I was at a natural stopping point, anyway,” I tell him.

The way he glances at the boxes, I can tell he’s glad it isn’t him working the case. Then his face softens when he says, “Letters have a way of bringing people together, don’t you think?”

I find his question odd, but also a little revealing. Letters must have a special meaning to him. I know Justin has combat experience and I wonder if it was letters from a loved one that kept him sane. I know that the emails I received from my brother during my last deployment got me through some pretty tough days.

“I think letters, and communication in general, help us remember what’s important to us, Sergeant Hauten,” I say, standing up.

He nods. “I’d prefer it if you called me Justin. You must hate being locked away in here all day,” he adds after I put everything away and grab my notebook. Colonel Benson made it clear that while, yes, this was my workspace, General MacWilliams oftentimes had need of the secure room, and that I should keep it clean. Justin looks down at my notebook and makes a face. “If your notebook has work-related notes in it, you’ll have to leave it here.”

I crack a sudden smile. I love it when other people follow the rules, too.

“It’s not my first time in a secure office, Justin. I know the rules by heart. In fact, I wrote a couple of the manuals on this very subject. My notes are on the table. This is my personal organizer.”

He opens the door wider for me, and I pass through. He spins the cipher lock and annotates the date and time on the log taped to the door. I have a meeting with the security team tomorrow to gain permissions as well as the code to the door. I can’t keep asking Justin to open it for me each day, now can I?

We say our good-nights to Colonel Benson and I follow Justin out of the suite.

“How are you liking DC so far?” Justin asks.

“I’ve been here a couple of times when I visited my brother. He’s in the Navy, but is now stationed in Bahrain. I guess you could say I’m getting used to it. Other than my roommate and my brother’s boyfriend, I can’t say that I know many people here.”

“Your brother’s
boyfriend
?”

The expression on his face doesn’t escape me. He’s curious about this fact, but not in that
tell me all the details so I can judge you
way. He seems genuinely curious.

“Tanner’s amazing. I love him to death. Jon and Tanner better get married soon or I swear to God I will strangle one or both of them for being stupid.”

“That’s pretty cool,” he says. I can tell he wants to say more on the subject, like maybe I’ve hit a topic he’s interested in, but he stays quiet. I glance at his ring finger and observe the black band. I shouldn’t speculate, but I do. I wonder if Justin is gay. If he is, at least he knows I’m a fan of gay marriage and that I won’t judge him.

As we move through the corridors, I notice that we aren’t headed in the direction of the Metro entrance. We go up two floors and into a reception area.

I’m about to ask him where we are going when he clears his throat and says, “Some friends and I do this thing every Tuesday. We call it
Tuesday Night Trouble
. Dinner, hiking, a movie, that type of thing. If you’re not doing anything, you’re more than welcome to join us tonight. It’s Nebraska’s turn to pick the venue, so it may not be the best night to join the group, but if you do, you’ll get to know my friends and family. We can be a little…” He trails off, but a humorous voice from inside the reception area finishes the statement for him.

“Fun, crazy, insane, and extremely good looking. Take your pick,” the owner of the voice says. He’s a tall man with red hair, and if you exchanged his uniform for a plaid shirt, he’d be a dead ringer for the Brawny Paper Towels man. “Though my bet’s on
extremely good looking
.”

“Sergeant Holtslander, this is Sergeant Sean Walker,” Justin says, introducing me to his friend.
 

Or maybe this is his boyfriend.

“Call me Nebraska,” Sergeant Walker says easily. He’s over six feet tall, built like a machine, and handsome in a goofy way. If anything, the twinkling,
I don’t take anything seriously
look in his eyes makes me like him all the more. I can also tell that Nebraska and Justin are just friends, maybe even best friends, and when Nebraska winks at me, it solidifies my impression. The freckles on his face are just too cute to ignore.

“Nice to meet you, Nebraska.” I shake his thick hand. I could easily fit two hands in one of his. He holds my hand for a second longer than necessary.
Is he flirting with me?
The idea is almost laughable. Almost. Other than Dillan, who is way over the top with his antics, men do not often flirt with me. “I’m Keira.”

“Are you going to join us?” Nebraska asks.

“That depends,” I say. “What’s the plan?”

“It will dazzle and inspire you like nothing you’ve ever experienced. Let me ask you two simple questions,” Nebraska says. The way he says it, it reminds me of an announcer for one of those late-night infomercials.
 

“Oh…kay…” I answer haltingly. I’m not sure what to make of him. He’s funny and goofy, but I also get the impression that he’d jump in the middle of a fight just for the hell of it.

“How good are you at bowling?”

I let out a laugh. I suppose I was expecting something else, like
breaking and entering
or playing a game of double-dare across a four-lane interstate.

“Oh dear,” Justin mutters.

I look between the two friends. The taller of the two, Nebraska, is grinning like he’s high on excitement, and Justin, with his dark hair and dark expression, appears ready to enter a dungeon, never to see the light of day again. How could one suggestion garner such two opposite reactions?

“I guess I’m all right at it,” I say. “What’s the second question?”

“We need another person to even out the teams,” Nebraska says. “Got anyone in mind that might want to go?”

“My roommate might be interested. Sounds like fun.”

Justin shakes his head.

“You’ve never been bowling with Nebraska before. By the end of the night, you’ll have a completely different definition of
fun
.”

Dillan

A
FTER
I
GET
HOME
AND
change into casual clothes, I wonder about how to ask Keira out to dinner. Should I make it more of a challenge, like maybe I’m daring her to hang out with me, or should I be nonchalant about it all?

Doubt creeps in.

Maybe I shouldn’t have made reservations.
 

Normally, I’m much more confident than this. I smile, and the girl says yes. Or, the girl
asks
me, I smile, which makes her smile, and then
I
say yes. None of that will work on Keira. In fact, it stands to reason that no matter what I say or how I say it, it will have the opposite effect on her.

Then do the opposite.
Act like you don’t care if she goes or not, Dillan.
 

In fact, I plan on
barely
mentioning it to her. I’ll make it more of an afterthought,
If you’re not busy, Keira, feel free to swing by. But I’m sure you’re too busy for going out tonight.

Of course, the opposite of opposite could occur, meaning she’ll agree with me that she is too busy to go out. Then I’ll find myself sitting alone at a restaurant that I really didn’t want to eat at anyway.
 

Be honest
, Dillan. You want to impress Keira while, at the same time, you want to piss her off, too. You can’t have her, and you want
her
to want
you
.

So much for my oath of ignoring her. She’s not even here and I cannot
not
think about her. In a matter of days, the woman has me unbalanced. She’s strong, smart, highly functioning, independent, sarcastic, cute, and, worst of all, she’s immune to me.
 

It’s no wonder that I’m thinking about her. What I should be thinking about is how to get back at her for lying to me.

“You look deep in thought,” Keira says from the door.

I’m standing in the middle of the living room, gazing idiotically at the damn wall. I didn’t even hear her come in.