How to Get Over Your Ex by Nikki Logan

When it came she surged to her feet and sprinted across the
open courtyard, as damaged and rubble-strewn as the rest of the set, with Zander
hard up behind her. Halfway across, one of the yellow team popped up out of
nowhere and aimed right at them both. Georgia dived to her left, crashing into a
fake rubbish skip and sliding around behind it only to come face to face with
one of her instructors, kitted out in the garb of the yellow team.
    ‘Bang,’ he said, popping the barrel of his fake gun hard up to
her laser-tag and firing. The lights came on in the arena. He gave her his hand.
‘The good news is, you were the last of your team to die. If that’s any
consolation.’
    Yay for her! Last woman standing.
    ‘What happened to Zander?’ she puffed.
    ‘The big guy? He got hit by the shot you dodged.’
    Her breath caught. Whoops .
    Sure enough, the look Zander threw her as she stepped out from
behind the skip was incredulous. ‘I can’t believe you let me take that hit!’ he
accused.
    She lifted her weapon and unclipped her body harness. ‘I would
have died.’
    ‘But I’m your superior.’
    She tipped her head back and threw him her sweetest smile.
‘Superior at dying, maybe...’
    He snagged her arms and pinned them behind her, stepping in
hard against her body and glaring down on her. ‘Isn’t that just like a
woman?’
    The hardness of his body—all strapped up in military chest
plate and pressed up so firmly against hers—stole what little breath she’d
managed to recover. ‘The sarcasm or the faithlessness?’ she whispered.
    He tightened her hands and his eyes bored down into her soul.
‘Both.’
    ‘Just because I wouldn’t die for you? Is that what you expect
of people?’
    A shadow crossed his features and he let her hands go. ‘Is a
little loyalty too much to ask?’
    He was taking this very seriously for a game. ‘We’re highly
trained agents. Loyal to no one but Queen and country.’
    He grunted.
    ‘Besides,’ she breathed, ‘just think how guilty you’d have felt
for the rest of your military career, letting a woman die for you. It would eat
you up and you’d find yourself a hermit, living in a mountain, loving no one and
letting nobody in. All bitter and twisted. Useless to MI6. I saved you from a
fate worse than death, Agent Rush.’
    Although it occurred to her that the description wasn’t all
that unlike the real him. Minus the mountain.
    His eyes narrowed. ‘Also just like a woman, spinning it so I
should somehow be grateful.’
    ‘All right, people,’ the instructor shouted over the din, and
she stepped away from Zander’s warmth, reluctantly. ‘Great to see that a full
day of spy training has taught you all absolutely nothing about field
survival...’
    Georgia laughed along with everyone else and glanced at Zander.
How long had it been since she’d felt this...light? He took her weapon for her
and just held it. As though it were her hand.
    Of course it wasn’t.
    ‘Next week we’ll be looking at surveillance gear,’ the
instructor continued, ‘and having a go at planting a bug on someone.’
    She rounded on Zander, eyes wide, and mouthed, Yay!
    He shook his scraggy head, laughing, and stood back to let her
pass in front of him back to the classroom. They stripped off their borrowed
military accoutrements—very reluctantly on Georgia’s part because she’d been
having herself a nice little fantasy about Zander doing that for her—and
collected up their belongings.
    ‘Would you truly have wanted me to take that hit for you?’ she
queried as they walked back towards his Jag a little later.
    ‘It’s nice to think someone would.’
    She lifted her eyes to his.
    ‘Isn’t that what anyone wants?’ he said. ‘Someone to sacrifice
all for them.’
    ‘You don’t seem the type,’ she murmured, sliding into the
passenger seat next to him.
    ‘I’m as susceptible as anyone to grand gestures.’
    She laughed as they pulled away from the kerb. ‘And you wonder
why