They pulled into the parking lot and found a spot near the front. "Not as surprised as my cousin was when you asked if she wanted to come."
He got out of the driver's side and got around to her side of the car when she was already stepping down. "One of the guys in my platoon was standing nearby when I made the reservation.Word spread through the group pretty quickly. A bunch of them wanted to come by. I didn't want you to feel alone. Even though I would have happily told them all to stay away."
She shook her head and leaned in to give him a kiss on his cheek. "It'll be nice to meet the guys you work with. Although I'm not sure how many you're talking about."
"Hey, Pallas!"
Domenico sighed softly. "You're about to meet one of them right now. But I think we're only expecting... six to show up."
"Six." She murmured the word, but it didn't sound all that scary.
"Hey, Pallas. I got your reservation checked in and your key."
Kawehi looked at Dom. Key?
"Kawehi, this is Kid."
The young man that reached out his hand to her was just a smidge taller than Dom and he was already tall. "Hi."
She took his hand to shake it and he blushed a little across his pale cheeks. "Tyler Stephens, Miss. They call me Kid because so far I'm the youngest in the group."
Kawehi looked back at Dom. "Really? That seems a little cruel."
Kid spoke up. "Not really. They could have given me a worse name, so I'm grateful. I think Pallas was lucky that he was born with a great name of his own."
"Born with it? Pallas. So it's not just like someone calling me Phillips for my last name?"
"No, Miss, he-" Kid seemed to hesitate and looked at Domenico for permission which he gave with a shrug. "Pallas is the Titan god of war. So it was an easy choice. At least that's the word around the team."
"Team?" Kawehi was a little confused. "Isn't it called a platoon?"
She almost missed the look between the two men, but Dom wrapped an arm around her and gave her a quick kiss. "Let me grab the stuff from the back and we'll go walk to the beach.
She turned to look at Kid, but he was following Dom around to the back as well.
Shaking her head, she moved around to help get out the food that she'd seen in the trunk area when Domenico had come to pick her up and almost caught them in conversation.
It wasn't that she was trying to hear anything, she hadn't even expected much of anything going on so she just put it in the back of her mind.
"I can carry something."
"We've got it." Kid's answer was a little too quick, but she tried to shrug it off.
"Hey, Kid. Why don't you let some of the big boys help out with that. "
Dom smiled and shook his head. "Another two of our guys." He looked over her shoulder and she turned around to see who he was talking about.
"Guys, this is Kawehi Phillips."
One of the men jogged forward, holding out his hand. "Miss? You can call me Twinkie. Everyone else does."
"Twinkie?" She smiled and caught Kid's sigh of relief out of the corner of her eye. "That's a sweet name."
He lifted her hand to place a kiss across her knuckles. "I like your sense of humor."
"And I think Pallas wants you to keep your lips to yourself, Twinkie."
"That," Dom grinned, "is Riptide."
