“Maybe you just needed tougher ones, or more consistent disciplinarians.”
“Maybe.”
“What about your family?”
“My parents are gone. I had an older brother who died in high school.”
“I’m sorry.” Those amazing eyes lit and he was impressed again by how clearly they revealed her thoughts. Then he appreciated her compassion.
Jacquie was kind. He hadn’t had a lot of kindness in his own life. No wonder he found her so attractive.
“Thank you. Drew was an inspiration.” Pierce’s throat was suddenly tight and he knew Jacquie was watching him.
“That must have been hard for your parents. I can’t imagine anything more awful than losing a child.”
“It destroyed them,” he confessed without meaning to do so. He realized that Jacquie understood, and maybe saw more than he’d anticipated.
But she let it go. “No other family?” she asked with a smile.
“Not close enough to keep in touch. I probably have third cousins somewhere, but who knows.” He didn’t tell her that his solitude had been carefully cultivated and wondered whether she had guessed that, too.
“You don’t miss having people to call?”
“I don’t know that I ever had people to call. You can’t miss what you don’t know.”
Jacquie smiled. “Oh, I think you can.”
Pierce wasn’t used to having a date call his bluff and he ate his soup, thinking about that.
“No connections from work?” she asked more gently.
“Not anymore. They seem like social connections but as soon as you stop working, those relationships fall away and fade. You lose your common ground, I guess.”
“No man is an island, though.”
“No. Maybe it’s harder to start over when you’ve been trained to assess every person as a potential security risk. That said, I’ve been attending Nate’s weightlifting sessions for vets. They’re people I understand and sometimes I can help out.”
“What else do you do with your time?”
“I take cooking classes. Never learned and it seemed time to be able to make something more than toast.”
“Toast is the cornerstone of my culinary skills,” she said and seemed to mean it. Her smile was warm and encouraging. “Are you any good at it?”
“Maybe I’ll cook for you next time and you can find out.”
She sipped her wine but didn’t commit to a second date. Pierce was surprised that bothered him. He was the one who didn’t need anyone, after all. “That can’t fill all your days and nights,” she said.
“I’m learning Japanese.”
“Why?”
“I always wanted to.” Again, it was a single digit percentage of the truth. “It’s such a different way to communicate, with characters that represent entire words, instead of individual letters that are compiled into words.”
“Is it hard?”
“Yes, but that’s part of the appeal.”
She laughed again. “You sound like Mitchell, which is unexpected.”
“I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
“You didn’t. They aren’t. We were deliriously happy.” She put down her glass and he hated that he’d reminded her—even inadvertently—of another man, never mind one she’d loved madly and deeply. She continued in a soft voice that made him wonder whether he was supposed to hear the words. “Which is why it made no sense that he did what he did.”
Pierce watched her closely, waiting for a hint of what to do.
But Jacquie wasn’t going to tell him that story, not yet. She smiled at him, her composure hinting that she meant to change the subject. “You know, it’s been twenty years since I’ve celebrated Valentine’s Day. I never thought much about it until it was gone. In fact, I thought it was a bit of a rip-off, greeting card companies and florists convincing people to spend money to prove their love.”
“But when you don’t have a sweetheart, seeing everyone else celebrate can leave you feeling disappointed.”
“Lonely,” Jacquie corrected. “And cards from my kids are cute, but not the same thing.”
On impulse, Pierce leaned across the table. “What if I promised you the most epic Valentine’s Day ever?”
Jacquie’s eyes glinting with sensual promise. “Then I’d definitely make it worth your while.”
“Second date then.”
“Looks like it.”
“I can’t say I’m disappointed.”
“Me, neither.”
They smiled at each other for one of those potent intervals. The waiter came to check on their appetizers and Pierce found Jacquie watching him when they were alone again. “You’re scheming,” she accused.
“Planning,” he admitted. “It’s what I do.”
“I like the sound of that,” Jacquie said. “You told me about Greater Alghenia. What about after that?”
“Contract work. I used the connections I’d built in Greater Alghenia. I had a number of one-year contracts protecting wealthy families.” He shrugged. “It was a lot less interesting. I hadn’t realized how Farah kept us jumping.”
Jacquie smiled. “Why did you stop?”
Pierce thought about it for a minute, then decided to give her a full answer, just to see what happened. “Just over a year ago, I was in Abu Dhabi. My contracts always ran for the course of a calendar year and I took my two week vacation at the end.”
“Christmas in Abu Dhabi,” she guessed.
He nodded. “Great hotel. All the amenities. A perfect break. But I was watching the news one day and there was a protest, not a big one, but it got me thinking. One day all of this is going to go sideways. Where do you want to be?”
“Where were you the last time it went sideways?”
“Greater Alghenia on that diplomatic mission.”
“Maybe not the best location in times of trouble.”
He shook a finger at her. “But the difference was that I was enlisted then. The resources of the entire U.S. military were behind me. In fact, extractions were part of what we organized. There was very little danger of any of us being forgotten or abandoned. As an independent contractor, however, especially one working alone, my situation was vastly different.”
“But you said you don’t have a home, so you can’t have wanted to be there.”
Touché. She never forgot a detail.
“I thought not here.” Pierce nodded to himself. “It was one of those realizations that had the resonance of truth.”
“I know the ones you mean.”
“I didn’t sign the new contract, I checked out of the
