“Maman, I like that. You speak French?”
Law nodded.
“More than French?”
“It comes with the territory.”
She raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “You know, you seem to have an aversion to answering questions. I thought we got past that the other night.”
She was right.
“Farsi, Arabic, French, and German. Oh yeah, Spanish of course. I live here in SoCal. What about you?”
“I lived in Houston working as an EMT—how could I not learn Spanish? It’s not great, but it’s pretty good,” she grinned.
“You have a beautiful smile and you bake great cookies. I’d love to take you to dinner tonight.” Law said in Spanish.
“Thank you for the compliments, and I would love to go to dinner,” she responded in kind.
Law laughed and nodded his head in appreciation. “I’d say your language skills are up to snuff,” he switched back to English. “Did you work in the suburbs or the city while you were in Houston?” Law watched her swing her crossed leg and his eye was drawn to her toe ring…again. Was there anything about this woman that didn’t turn him on?
Her leg stopped swinging and she stared at him. “I worked downtown, but remember, you were going to tell me the complicated story?”
“You’re right. Talking about myself goes against the grain.” He gave her a rueful grin. “I’d promise to do better, but I’m probably going to need to be reminded.”
“I might be up for it. Depends on how good the restaurant is.”
She sure as hell isn’t a pushover.
Oh yeah, I hate it when I run roughshod over women.
“Okay, so Dad talked Maman into coming to the States. She was from a tightknit family and it hurt for her to leave them, but boy, were they something together. You could just feel how much they cared about each other. After the first year here Xave was born, two years after that came Ash, then two years after that came me.”
“So, all of you boys followed in your father’s footsteps by joining the military. He must have been proud.”
“He didn’t live to see it. He was on a helicopter that went down. He and five others were killed instantly. That happened when I was ten, so he never saw any of us join the service.”
An image of his father appeared before him. God, he missed him. That was two men he missed with all his heart.
Lawson felt the soft touch of Jill’s hand resting on his leg. “That must have been so hard for you and the rest of your family.”
“It was. We tried to be there for our mother, especially Xavier, since he was the oldest. But she refused to let any of us try to switch roles. She remained the parent, and we were her boys. Looking back on it, I realize that she went to bed a lot earlier than she had when dad was alive, but that was the only change in her routine. I think that was her alone-time to mourn.”
“She sounds incredible.”
“Maybe,” he said slowly.
Jill lifted an eyebrow in question.
“I think if our family had learned how to process bad emotions after dad died, maybe Xavier would have felt comfortable sharing how much pain he was in and wouldn’t have killed himself.”
Her hand tightened on the clenched muscle of his thigh.
“That’s not the kind of thing they teach in school. Yeah, reading, writing and ‘rithmatic, they’ll teach us that,” she said with gentle humor. “But saving for our retirement, or how to figure out how to deal with what we’re feeling? Nope. Then, if our parents don’t show us the way, we’re shoved out of the nest like blind baby birds.”
“I’ve never really looked at it that way. Those of us who join the military right out of high school sure as hell don’t learn much of that stuff. Sometimes your emotional growth is even stunted. At least Ash and I went to college before we enlisted, but Xave went straight in at eighteen. Ash was the one who took the girly psych stuff. I played ball.”
Jill smirked. “Of course you did.”
“Hey. Should I be complimented or offended?”
“Yes,” she answered with a straight face.
He got up from the love seat and held out his hand. “If I have to put up with your smart mouth, I’m going to need more sustenance, woman. Time for dinner.”
Law had been on a lot of dates, but by far, this was the best. He’d never felt this comfortable just sitting and talking with a woman. It was almost like he was out with one of his friends, not out on a date. Except his body knew for damn sure that she was a woman.
“Come on, you’re kidding me, right?”
“No, for real. They got a camel in the barracks and he spit in the captain’s eye.”
“You are so full of BS.”
“Seriously, it was my friend Clancy who arranged it.”
She picked up her glass of wine and took a dainty sip. Jill arched her eyebrow and grinned at him. “I bet you a hundred dollars if I asked Clancy, on his honor, if this was true, he would say ‘no.’”
Lawson roared with laughter. “How’d you know I was feeding you bullshit? Most people fall for that story.”
“Oh, Law, I believed you, all right. It’s just I worked with so many EMTs, firemen, and policemen who loved to play this game, that I just continued to call BS., and nine times out of ten they fessed up they were pulling my leg.”
“You believed me?” He took another roll and slathered it with butter. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”
“Oh yeah, I believed you. In my house growing up, we were all very serious. Teasing hardly
