Free Catching Preeya (Paradise South Book 3) by Rissa Brahm Page A

something added. Yes, an unmistakable glint of pride.
    “Pree, you there?”
    “Sorry, sorry. Yeah. It’s just…Ev. He’s on anchor desk, Channel 4 News.” Preeya pushed out a quick breath and shook her head. Production assistant reporting the news? In only a month? “Amazing. Maybe ending us opened more doors for him, after all? My Aunt Champa always said my flightiness was contagious. So now without me , he can focus and actually move up in his career, huh?”
    Clean slate, Pree. Again, sky’s the limit.
    “Listen, love, your fucking ‘flightiness’ isn’t contagious…your vibrant energy is. And yes, good for Evan, but you are going places, too. Places you can’t even imagine yet.”
    “So…you do know something?”
    “Damn it, Preeya.”
    “Kidding. Just kidding.”
    “All I know is that I know you . And that I love you and all your crazy , too. Your fucked-up family can project their bullshit on you all they want because they’re blind to your dynamic charisma, your brilliance, and your too-big heart. You are going far, my friend. I know it in my gut.”
    “Yeah, hopefully to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico far, if I make it in time,” she said, ungluing her gaze from the TV and moving her ass back toward the gate through the terminal’s maze of people.
    “But before you board, bitch, tell me about Josh already!”
    “Well, the first thing you’d appreciate knowing”—she stole a few sips of coffee so she could be done with it before seeing Leena—“is that I officially have Josh Bolte and any and all representations of him and his type out of my system. Oh and…I got hit on by a lesbian. A pretty cool chick, too.”
    Gigi gasped then giggled and said something that got swallowed up in an announcement that clobbered Preeya’s ears. “Preeya Patel, please. Preeya Patel to Gate S10. Preeya Patel to gate S10 now, please.”
    Leena. “Shit.” She slammed the rest of the mocha in five hard gulps. “Geej, I gotta get on board before they leave me, then fire me.” The flight couldn’t really leave without her, but she couldn’t ignore how replaceable she was.
    “You’re killin’ me, Pree. When you land, then. I mean, chick-love and Josh Bolte!”
    “Gigi, I’ll call you. When I land.”
    “Wait, Pree. You’re okay, though? Josh—he didn’t hurt you or anything? And you’re remembering your pill for God’s sake!”
    No, she was horrible about taking her birth control, but it hadn’t turned out to matter, had it? “Geej, he didn’t hurt me—except for the pain in my throbbing, completely unsatiated clit. But, I’m fine and good…and covered. But I’ll call ya during my layover in Houston with more.”
    *
    Ben sat in a far-off corner until boarding. Only five more minutes or so. Then sleep.
    Until then, he thought he’d people-watch some more, that is, if sleep didn’t take him first. God, he was so tired. The hearing was an early one, but it wouldn’t have mattered. The review board, his in-laws —or rather, former in-laws —their attorney, and even Stanton, were all so draining. His lids felt so heavy, iron and nimbus-cloud heavy. God, weren’t they supposed to be boarding now? A minute ago even? But he couldn’t fight the exhaustion, the gravity, not even for another…his head nodded, chin to chest—
    A loudspeaker announcement rocked his eardrums. He gasped awake.
    Preeya Patel please, to gate S10.
    His eyes open now, dry and wide, he refocused on the scene around him. By the window, his nameless soldier friend was on her phone, only twenty feet away. She paced then faced the window, frozen, her back to him. His heart still raced from the shock of the loudspeaker, but that and his new distraction on the phone had conquered his drowsy spell, at least.
    The soldier, however mellow and calm she’d been while in line with him at check-in , seemed anything but right then. He couldn’t make out her words, but her gestures were animated, staccato and sharp. Her head shook back