The price I’ve paid however, is being squashed between bodies and forced to grab the overhead grip that I’m barely tall enough to snag. The train starts to move and sway when I have that awareness of Jacob I’ve had all day. No. Impossible. I scan over the top of heads, and my gaze collides with a set of gray, intense eyes looking right at me, a punch of awareness hitting me that is all about the man he is, not about the incredulousness of his presence. Jacob is here, that rat bastard. He arches a damn arrogant brow, and I gape at him and mouth, “How?”
He doesn’t smile but he mouths back, “Green Beret.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. He’s joking. I know that, but yet this man doesn’t laugh or smile. He’s stone-faced. And while I’d never admit this to him, it’s an endearing reminder of my uncle, who was Mr. Stone Face, who seemed so damn cold, but everything he did was to protect the innocent. And Mr. Green Beret didn’t join the army to protect himself. He’s one of the good guys, and I know this by instinct, history, and actions. I offered him a vacation. He declined. As much as I wanted him to back off at the time, he didn’t, and no man of honor would have.
Nevertheless, despite his honor thus far, macho, alpha guys like Jacob, of which the department has many, push hard when they have a pushover in front of them, I consider giving him my back. But then, I can’t see him either. I miss any chance of reading emotion in those stoic handsome features and can’t know what he’s thinking, if that’s even possible. But more so, I can’t see where he is and with about twenty bodies between us, and another twenty on either side of us, it would be easy to lose him. And so, I school my features to be as stone cold as his, and we stare at each other, in what is the most intimate moment I’ve shared with a man in years. Okay, technically not the most intimate. I’ve had sex. Once. But I didn’t look into his eyes.
The train stops, and I don’t immediately move. Jacob is on the other side of the train, which was a misstep in my book. He can’t get to the door or me in anywhere near enough time to keep up. I watch him. I wait to see the moment he moves. The doors open and the rush to the door erupts. I slide into the center of the crowd, and just as they rush out, I do the same. I’m out of the train long before Jacob and hurrying up the stairs, only to have him step to my side.
He looks over at me and I look at him, and damn it, I smile and shake my head. Damn it, because I’m encouraging him, which isn’t the idea here. We hurry up the remaining steps and then through the station to the next set of steps that leads to the quiet street above, not far from my apartment. Once we are there and past the exit, I turn to him, my hands in the air. “How? How can someone as big as you get around like you do?”
“I lived in a jungle for six months at one point,” he says. “The city is only slightly more challenging.”
“But I can’t lose you and I don’t see you when you follow. How do you do it?”
“I’ll tell you over that dinner.”
“Dinner is already planned,” I say, a chilly breeze teasing my exposed neck, my braided hair and unlike Jacob, who is properly attired, no coat for shelter. But I don’t shiver. I don’t show weakness. I’ve learned that any little blink could get me pushed around, or worse, dead. Instead, I start walking, looking forward to a warm indoor location and food.
“I thought you had court tomorrow?” Jacob asks, falling into step with me.
“I do,” I respond. “But this meeting is business and it’s only a few blocks from my apartment to Nino’s Pizza, my dinner destination, which is amazing by the way. I think you’ll like it, if you give it a shot.”
“You do know that the best way to keep this low key and off everyone else’s radar is for you to communicate with me, right?” he asks, missing my hint that he’s my dinner date.
“The best way to keep this off everyone’s radar, is for you to take a vacation, but I get it. You won’t.” We turn a corner, onto a quiet street that has apartments sprinkled in between random gift shops and bakeries, among other businesses.
“I told you why I won’t walk away from this,” he replies.
“Yes,” I say, giving him a look. “You did.”
“And?” he prods.
“I didn’t say ‘and.’”
“There was an ‘and,’” he insists as we stop in front of Nino’s Pizza, which is more an Italian sit-down restaurant than just a pizza joint.
“And I actually respect you for your obvious morals. It’s inconvenient for me, but you were right earlier. I might not hate you.”
He gives me a deadpan look. No reaction. Just, “Is that right?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I trust you. Not when your military file is top secret. That leads me to questions you won’t answer. But at this very moment, those questions are not on my mind. Food is on my mind. I’m going inside.”
“Are you going to text me when you’re done?”
“There is a zero chance of that happening,” I say, and giving him no chance to argue, I cross to the restaurant door, open it, and enter the dimly lit, and amazingly cozy restaurant.
One of the owners, Rosie, a plump, wonderfully warm Italian woman in her sixties, with white-gray hair she wears to her shoulders, greets me. “Twice this week,” she says. “I love it.”
“I love it too,” I assure her. “All of it. Everything about this place.”
She smiles. “You make me a happy old woman,” she says. “And your regular table is open.”
“Terrific,” I say. “Thank you.”
She leads me to my spot on the opposite side of the restaurant in a back, private corner nook, where the table barely fits four. I settle into the seat with my back to the wall and Rosie chats with me a few minutes before departing. My waiter, Sebastian, Rosie’s good-looking thirty-something son, arrives to greet me. “The lovely detective is back,” he says, his dark hair curling at his temples. “Do you want your usual?”
“Make it an extra-large tonight,” I say. “And I’ll take two Coronas.”
“Two?” he asks holding up fingers.
“Yes. And two plates.”
He wrinkles a brow. “Is it a date and I no longer have a shot at being your one and only?”
I laugh. “You are already my one and only. You make me pizza. I’m easy like that.”
He laughs and hurries away, while I open my briefcase and pull out the Marks file and hang the strap on the seat next to me. I then set the file on the seat. Already, Sebastian is returning with the plates and the two beers. “Should I tell my mother to be on the lookout for your guest?”
“No,” I say. “He’s an expert at finding me.”
“I sense a story behind that.”
“Not a good one,” I assure him.
“Now I’m curious, but I’ll ask questions the next time you’re alone with a full belly.” He turns and departs.
My phone buzzes with a text from my father. I’m stuck in a meeting. Are you okay with everything?
I want to say no. No, it’s not okay. You’ve turned a seasoned detective into a college kid with a babysitter, but Jacob’s words “we’re hard to love” play in my head and I bite back the words. Besides, I’m making this work already. Jacob is going to help me close a cold case. With all this in mind, I type: I’m great. Love you Dad. But I don’t hit send. I really am not that agreeable. I backspace and clear my words to amend my reply to: I don’t like this but I’m working out a livable situation with Jacob for one reason and one reason only. I love you.
He replies with: Thank you, daughter of mine, who I adore and cannot lose. I love you, too.
I can almost feel his relief in that typed message and I am suddenly, incredibly glad that I didn’t say no to this Walker Security intrusion.
Refocusing on my plan for now, I set the beers side-by-side, pull my phone from my pocket, and snap a photo. I then snap a second photo of the empty chair in front of me. I text both to Jacob. I send no caption. He’s smart. He’ll get it. I move his beer to the side of his plate and take a drink of mine.
I’ve just wet my tongue when Jacob appears in front of the table, almost too fast, as if he was already headed to me before I sent those photos.
I set my beer down and tilt my chin up, my gaze admiring the journey upward and over the perfect, hard length of his body, by accident of course. Eventually, too soon really, since his body is the least complicated part of this man, I meet that intense gray stare of his. Eyes that are sharp even in the dim lighting of the cozy restaurant, which in hindsight might have made this a bad choice. This isn’t a date. It’s a business meeting with a man who just happens to be looking at me with the kind of intensity I don’t invite from any man, especially one who is now my personal bodyguard. And yet I’m looking at him just as intensely as he’s looking at me, and I find that I want to know what’s behind his wall and I won’t pretend it’s all business. The truth is, that I want is not a statement I have made in a very long time.
Still standing on the opposite side of the table from Jewel, there is no mistaking the charge between us. “Was your meeting cancelled?” I ask, weighing exactly where that photo invitation she sent me came from.
“It was you,” she says. “It was always you, Jacob King.”
She says Jacob King in a low, raspy voice that has me looking at her mouth, wondering when the last time she was kissed good enough and well enough to forget her badge and just be a woman. A thought I’ve had a half-dozen times just today, but I don’t let her see my reaction. I never let anyone see my reactions, but unlike most, who take my stone face as an invitation to be silent, Jewel, Detective Carpenter I remind myself—not sure why I keep fucking forgetting that—seems to see that as an invitation to push my buttons. And so, it seems, I enjoy pushing hers.
Which is exactly why I lean forward, my hands settling on the back on my intended chair, and ask, “Are you flirting with me, detective?” reversing her question to me from earlier today.
“Of course not,” she says, and then, proving she can give as good as she gets, she turns my earlier statement on me. “Flirting with you, major, would be unprofessional.” She pauses for affect and adds, “And I’m always professional.”
I don’t smile on the outside, but I damn sure am on the inside. I do, however, pull out the chair and sit down across from her. “We have that ‘always professional’ thing in common, then,” I say. Only we both know, whatever this is happening between us isn’t professional at all, nor does it seem to be stoppable.
“That and being hard to love,” she says, which I assume to be a reference to how I’d convinced her to stick this out with me. That is, until she surprises me by adding, “Me more so me than you, I think.”
“Why would you say that?”
“You can choose your assignments, I assume. My job will always be a collection of revolving dead bodies.”
“You can move out of homicide.”
“No. I can’t. This job is who, and what, I am. That won’t change. Which means that I will always have at least one photo of a dead body in my briefcase. And most likely another pinned to my fridge or sitting on my kitchen counter so I can study it over my morning coffee. Or afternoon coffee if I’m at a murder scene all night. Those things are not easy for a civilian.”
“And I’m to believe that’s easy for you? Because I saw more damn bodies some single days in the army, than you will see in your career. I don’t remember ever thinking that was easy.”
“It’s not supposed to be easy,” she says, “nor do people like us take our jobs, thinking otherwise. Our peace is in the peace we give others.”
“Nothing about what I did, is like what you do,” I say, thinking of the thankless job that took me all kinds of wrong places. Too many wrong places. Places I’m not going with her, or anyone else, which is exactly why I pick up my beer, tilt it back, and take a long, deep drink, with one intent: shutting her out. She knows it too. I can feel her watching me, trying to figure me out. She’ll fail, but she’s a detective. She has to try.
I set the bottle down to find that sure enough, she’s unapologetically staring at me. “What do you want to ask me, detective?”
“Is every Green Beret’s file top secret?”
“Missions are top secret. Anything that ties to those missions is also top secret.”
“Is that a yes?”
“No,” I say.
“Why’d you get out?”
“It was my time.”
She slides her plate to the left and flattens her hands on the table. “Tell me again how talking to you helps me get to know and trust you?”
I slide my plate to my right and rest my arms on the table, fingers laced together. I lean forward, so close to her now that I can smell the sweet, floral scent of her that softens her, and defies her tough exterior. “You’re asking the wrong questions,” I say.
“The wrong questions,” she repeats, narrowing her eyes on me.
“Yes,” I confirm. “The wrong questions. Ask me something I can answer.”
“In other words,” she says, following my lead, “your time in the service, and your reasons for getting out, are top secret.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay then,” she says, never missing a beat. “Why’d you enlist?”
“My father and brother were both Green Berets.”
“Why did you enlist?”
“Enlisting is what the men of my family do,” I say, unsurprised that she’s seen past my standard answer. It’s my wall and she’s damn sure got experience with that, with one of her own.
“That’s not a real answer, major,” she says. “Especially since you went to college to be an engineer.”
“I told you I’m not a major anymore.”
“That’s still not an answer, but you know what? That’s okay. I get it. You barely know me and there are just things we don’t like to talk about ever. Or with anyone.”
Any other person who pushed me for more anything would get more nothing, but every pass I take with this woman, offers her a pass. I don’t want to give her a pass. And so I give her more. “I was raised by my grandmother,” I say. “She needed me. I stayed for her.”
“And when she died, you enlisted,” she assumes.
“No,” I correct. “I enlisted six months before she died.”
She frowns. “But you said—”
The pizza is set down on our table in that moment, saving me from the rest of the question. Hand delivered by the owner’s son, which I know because this is Detective Carpenter’s regular spot. “Can I get you anything else?” he asks us both.
The detective—Jewel, I think—because she’s more than the damn detective shield she wears, looks at me. “Pepperoni okay?” she asks.
“My favorite,” I say, glancing at Sebastian. “Thanks, man.”
He gives me a nod and looks across the table. “All is well, detective?” he asks.
“It’s perfect,” she assures him, and he hurries away, while she points at the pizza.
“I normally get a large” she says, “but this time, I got an extra-large, so you can have like two slices.” She pulls her plate in front of her and reaches for a slice.
“I think I need at least three,” I say quite seriously.
She considers me a moment. “Right. Because you’re so damn big.”
“You keep saying that.”
“It keeps becoming relevant.” Her lips that I still fucking want against mine, curve ever-so-slightly. “You can have more. I can’t eat this whole pizza anyway, but my eyes always want more than my belly.”
“You eat like shit,” I comment, picking up a slice and taking a bite that’s so damn good I swallow and add, “And I now see why. This is damn good.”
“The best,” she says, “and you’re wrong about my eating habits.”
“I’m always wrong, right?”
“Finally, we agree on something.”
“You do remember that I’ve been watching you for four days, right?”
“To the point that I can’t stop thinking about i
t,” she says, and she doesn’t give me a chance to clarify the meaning of that statement, as she quickly, intentionally I’m certain, refocuses on the initial topic. “I do a once a month clean-up diet week which means eating egg whites, salads, and protein. It works for me. I suppose an ex-Green Beret, who obviously is in good condition, eats only egg whites because you’re just that kind of disciplined.”
“Depends on the job,” I say, indicating the pizza in my hand. “Sometimes it’s impossible.”
“Now I’m a bad influence?” she challenges.
“You are most definitely a bad influence,” I say, reaching for another slice, and thinking about my damn obsession with her mouth.
She thankfully changes the subject. “How long have you been with Walker?” she asks, downing a swallow of beer.
“Two years,” I say, sprinkling red pepper over my food and then offering it to her.
She accepts it, our fingers brushing in the process, the charge between us sending her gaze to mine, the impact a punch of awareness. She fights it the way I should be fighting it, her gaze quickly cutting sharply to her plate. She hyper focuses on that shaker, and not until she sets it down again does she look at me. “How long since you got out of the army?”
“Three years. I went back home, and the owners of a high-end apartment complex recruited me to help out.”
“You were over qualified.”
“Very, but Blake Walker was working with one of the tenants. I met him, helped him with that job, and one thing led to another. And here I am.”
She slides her plate to the side, and once again, she’s unapologetically staring at me. I, too, slide my plate aside. “What do you want to ask me this time?”
“You said that you stayed with your grandmother,” she says. “That she needed you, but you left long before she died.”
“And the detective in you can’t stand the contradiction.”
“I want to trust you, Jacob, and to let you into my world, which is a law enforcement world, I also need to trust you.”