The look of amused sympathy on her face restored some of his good humor. If she wasn’t holding this fast- developing fiasco against him, it still wasn’t too late to salvage something from this evening. He shrugged ruefully. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
She grinned back. “Yep. I certainly am. I say we blow this Popsicle stand. I prefer eating without all the pomp, circumstance, and hot air.”
Thorn started to relax. Maybe he’d been trying too hard to impress her. “How about Thai food?”
Helen nodded vigorously. “Now, that sounds wonderful. And the hotter the better.”
“Yes, ma’am,“he said, smiling. “There’s a little mom and-pop Thai place not far from my house that’s pretty good. If you don’t mind following me out there, that is.”
She arched an eyebrow. “I think I can manage it. You are looking at an Academy grad with straight As in surveillance and close pursuit, you know.” She paused. “Do they offer takeout at this restaurant of yours?”
He nodded.
“Great. Then we can eat at your place.”
“My place?”
Helen laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those messy bachelors, Peter. The kind that lets dirty clothes and dirty dishes pile up.”
He felt a slow, wide grin forming on his face. “Nope. I come from a long line of God-fearing men with clean bodies and dirty minds.”
She reached out and took his arm. “Oh, good. Those are the best kind.”
When Thorn first moved to the Washington, D.C., area, he’d seriously considered renting a studio apartment in Crystal City high-rises overlooking the Pentagon. Living there would be convenient and reasonably inexpensive, he’d thought. Three days spent in one of the neighboring hotels had wiped that plan right out of his mind. Holding down a staff billet in the Pentagon’s bureaucratic swamp was draining enough. Combining that with being cooped up in a noisy cage a couple of hundred feet above street level seemed a surefire recipe for going buggy in record time.
Determined to keep as much of his sanity as possible, he’d gone house-hunting with a vengeance, scouring the northern Virginia neighborhoods he’d ringed on a map until he found quarters he could tolerate for a year. He’d finally decided to rent the upper half of a redbrick town house right on the border between Falls Church, Arlington, and Alexandria. It was just off the Columbia Pike and an easy twenty-minute commute to the Pentagon. Better still, the town house complex backed onto a tiny, wooded state park. It was quiet and private enough so that he could at least pretend he wasn’t living elbow-to-elbow with several million other people.
Thorn pushed the front door open with his foot and stepped aside to let Helen in first. His arms were full of warm takeout containers. Delicious smells wafted up from them a mouthwatering blend of garlic, peanut sauce, onion, chicken, and shrimp.
Helen was already down the hall and inspecting his kitchen by the time he finished closing the door. He followed her in and deposited their dinners on a tile counter near the empty sink.
She straightened up from his open refrigerator. “Well, I see you have plenty of the two basic bachelor food groups beer and microwave dinners.”
“Hey!” He pretended to be hurt. “I’m not totally uncivilized. There are plates in one of those cupboards over there. Heck, I’ve even got silverware somewhere around here.”
Her eyes sparkled again. “My, oh, my. I am impressed.”
Helen drifted out into the combination living room while he pulled out plates, forks, and spoons. Except for a sofa, a coffee table, and a wall unit for his CD player and television, the room was empty. Boxes stacked neatly beside the sofa held an assortment of hardbacks, paperbacks, and professional military journals. There were no pictures on the walls. A sliding glass door opened onto a narrow balcony overlooking the woods.
“It certainly looks like you’re settling right in, Peter,” she teased, poking her head back into the kitchen.
“Now, there’s a direct hit,” he admitted. “I left most of my stuff in storage. The people renting my house outside Fort Bragg said they were looking for a furnished place anyway.”
She nodded. “Plus, I guess that moving everything up here and unpacking it would give this new assignment of yours an awfully permanent feel?”
“Exactly.” Thorn smiled at her. “Mind you, there are compensations for being so close to Quantico.”
“Really?”
“No doubt about it.”
Helen lowered her eyes, looking even more pleased. She nodded toward the living room again. “I thought you’d at least have some pictures of you and your father together. You told me so much about him when we first met that I’ve been dying to see what he looks like.”
Dying. Thorn felt the smile on his face freeze solid.
“Peter?” She was staring at him now. “What’s wrong?”
He swallowed hard and forced another faint smile. “Sorry. It’s just that my dad passed away last year. It still takes some getting used to, I guess.”
“Oh, Peter.” Helen touched his arm. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m fine,” he murmured. “I’m fine.”
That wasn’t true, he realized. Whenever he thought the sorrow of his father’s death was finally behind him, some word or phrase or picture would conjure up that whole bleak period all over again. His mind was still wrestling with art ages of the proud, strong man who’d raised him. And with the images of that last terrible year.
His father had fought hard against the cancer that had invaded his body just as hard as he had fought against the NVA in the Vietnamese jungles. In the end, though, even big, tough John Thorn hadn’t been able to beat impossible odds.
Thorn knew that he should have visited the hospital more often during that long, lonely battle. He should have been there when his father died. But he hadn’t been able to stand it. Watching the powerful man who had been his first and only boyhood hero growing weaker with every passing day slipping away by inches had been too painful to bear. And his father had understood, even forgiven, his absence. Somehow that only made his betrayal seem worse.
He forced himself back to the present. His guilt over his father’s death was a burden for him to shoulder alone, not to inflict on Helen.
“Are you sure that you’re okay?” she asked softly, shared sorrow clear in her warm blue eyes.
He nodded decisively, determined to keep his memories and his grief to himself. “Oh, yeah. No problem.” He motioned toward the living room, seeking refuge in rough good humor. “Now clear out and let me work, woman. Unless you want cold food, that is.”
“Oh, no. Anything but that.”
Grateful that Helen understood his reluctance to dwell on the past, Thorn followed her out of the kitchen. He finished laying out their place settings on the coffee table and started opening containers with a flourish. In an attempt to chase away the blues, he announced, “Dinner is about to be served, madam. Would you care for a single main course, or would you prefer a gourmet sampling of the best of Thai haute cuisine?”
“A little bit of everything, of course.” Helen sat down on the sofa and watched him closely. “Does this mean that I don’t get a guided tour of the upstairs~”
“You actually want to see the vast, inner expanses of my mansion? All two bedrooms and two baths?” Thorn asked casually, instantly aware that he awaited her answer with anything but casual interest. He leaned over the steaming assortment of different dishes, carefully doling out portions onto each plate.
“I’d love to.” She watched his head come up in a hurry and laughed gently. “But after dinner, Peter.”
To Thorn’s considerable relief, the Thai restaurant hadn’t let him down. Each dish tasted as good as it had smelled a rare achievement for any prepared meal, let alone takeout.
At last Helen pushed her empty plate away with a small sigh. “Now, that was worth waiting for.”
“Better than Stannard’s?”
“Much better than Stannard’s,” she agreed. She leaned back against the sofa and closed her eyes for a moment. “This is really nice, Peter. It’s peaceful and quiet, and best of all, it’s away from work. Miles and worlds away.”
“Have a bad week?” he asked quietly.
Helen opened her eyes and made a face. “Just a typical week.” She shrugged. “Sometimes I think half the
