Maybe he hadn’t been that different from James Bond after all.
Here they were loaded with gear on a mission, playing cards, oblivious to the savage splendor of the Hindu Kush behind them. Simon looked cold, but it had been freezing. Pierce remembered the weight of that fortified laptop well. They were playing with Sam O’Leary, probably for those horrible French cigarettes that were the only brand he’d been able to buy. Sam had bet with them and he’d tended to lose. They’d all quit smoking by the time they were back at base camp. An embedded journalist had taken that shot but hadn’t been allowed to use it for some reason. He’d been a decent guy and had sent copies to the team of the pictures featuring them.
Pierce’s graduation picture from Annapolis was there, but there was no high school graduation picture. There was a picture of his parents the last Christmas he’d been home, but they didn’t look very merry. He put it aside, not wanting to dwell on that. There was one of Drew, even though he hadn’t technically graduated. It had been taken before the prom, in anticipation of graduation.
Pierce started at his brother for long moments, forever smiling and confident. His hand shook a little when he put the picture down.
He had the prom picture, of course: Drew and Jenny, king and queen of the prom, dressed in their best with a big orchid on Jenny’s wrist, standing outside her parents’ house. Drew had their dad’s new car, the big Cadillac that had been their nemesis. Pierce winced at the sight of its fender in the background.
Hours after this picture, they’d both be dead.
They’d been good together in high school, an obvious partnership since they were the two best-looking and most popular kids in their year. Pierce wondered now whether their relationship would have survived. High school really might have been the best moment for them. He didn’t like to think so, but he couldn’t remember much that they had in common in terms of interests or personality. They photographed well together. They went to the right parties. They wore the right clothes and knew all the trends first. Would that have been enough?
It hadn’t been enough for his parents, not after Drew’s death.
And then there was Midori. With him in the old grove, of course, both of them painfully young. They looked guilty, like they’d just been caught at something, but it had probably just been that they were together. Neither family had approved of their friendship, though it had been a lot more than that. The orange trees were in bloom and the sky was clear blue. Pierce brushed a fingertip across her face, swallowed and put the picture aside.
He would call her and thank her for the oranges. Jacquie was right about that call being overdue.
There was one last photograph at the bottom. It was a posed shot of him and Drew, maybe five and eight years of age—he remembered it but hadn’t known he possessed a copy. They wore matching striped shirts and had the same short haircut. They both smiled for the camera and Pierce was missing a tooth in the front.
Drew had the football in his hands.
That was how Pierce wanted to remember his brother, not with the shadow of doom on him in those other pictures. He set this one aside with care, then considered the pile.
He’d take inspiration from Jacquie and create his own gallery.
Maybe that had been the point of his relationship with her: he was finally shaking hands with his ghosts. Maybe that was good enough.
Even though it didn’t feel like nearly enough.
He wanted that sizzle.
Sizzle.
Damn Pierce and his sizzle.
Jacquie couldn’t stop thinking about his words. She was finally independent—why would she give that up? She knew the inevitable path of relationships and so-called true love. She’d be picking up socks and underwear within three months, and romance would be abandoned. Pierce was attentive because he wanted her but that would end—whenever he started taking her for granted.
Jacquie wanted to be treasured. She wanted to be courted. Because men were the way they were, that meant not committing to just one man, no matter how great he was in bed when he wanted more.
Sex with Pierce had been great, but maybe a lot of that was because she had nothing to compare it with. She’d had mediocre sex or no sex for years. Maybe she was just desperate for a man’s touch, so in need that she couldn’t see that it was, inevitably, becoming less.
By Thursday morning, after tossing and turning all night long, she knew it was time for some compare-and-contrast.
Jacquie asked Meesha for suggestions about members of the club, and Meesha was thrilled. “I’ll go through the contenders and send the hottest guy to your kickboxing studio next Monday night,” she promised. “It’s up to you to make it count.”
Jacquie didn’t see Pierce at all Thursday or Friday, and she was annoyed with herself for looking. Half a dozen times, she pulled out her phone to call him, just to hear her voice. Then she scolded herself—if she had it this bad so early, then more dates were a mistake.
Her apartment got the best cleaning ever that weekend, and every surface was gleaming by the time she went to work Monday. The effort hadn’t taken the edge off anything.
Jacquie guessed who Meesha’s choice would be and she was right—Luke Patrick, a handsome and confident lawyer who’d joined the club two months before, arrived at the studio just after nine that Monday night. By the time he showed up, Jacquie was hot and wound up, having defeated the last three people to challenge her. She bounced on her toes a little bit as Luke surveyed her
