She sipped her wine. “They were approached by several professors at the university. I was to study with them, learn as much as I wanted, and in return they would try to understand what made me different.”
Her parents had signed her over to be a lab experiment, she thought, telling herself it was fine. She was fine.
“I had access to every class on campus, to the finest professors. I studied with Nobel prize winners and scientists. It was an amazing opportunity.”
He looked at her. “You were by yourself.”
“There was always adult supervision. The staff made sure of that.”
“But no family. No friends.”
There wasn’t any pity in his voice, but she braced herself for it. “I wasn’t in a position to have friends,” she admitted. “I was too young for the other students to relate to and the adults saw me as someone to learn from, not an equal. Some of them were afraid of my intelligence. I became an emancipated minor when I was fourteen. I published papers and wrote a few books to pay the bills. When I was sixteen, I decided I wanted something else.”
“I knew you’d gone to college when you were young, but I didn’t know...” He trailed off with a sympathetic look on his face.
“You don’t have to feel sorry for me,” she told him. “I was happy. Yes, I lived a more solitary existence than most, but I’m not sure I would have done any better with a normal upbringing. I’ve had the most extraordinary education.”
“There’s more to life than what you learn in school.”
“I agree. Some of the students made an effort. One of them had been a soldier. He was wounded, lost his legs. Getting around was difficult for him, but he never complained. He was nice and funny and treated me like a kid sister.” Her mouth twisted. “He died of complications from his injuries. I was sixteen. The following week I faked my ID and joined the army. I never told them about my various degrees. To them, I was just someone who had enlisted.”
“How long did that last?”
She grinned. “Long enough. I was able to fit in. There are rules and I do well with rules. My interest in logistics led to me being assigned to a Special Forces team, and you know the rest.”
She glanced toward the trees. “I’m sure there are owls in the forest. I wonder if we’ll see any at dusk.”
“Felicia.”
She turned to Gideon. His gaze was intense, but she had no idea what he was thinking.
“I’m fine,” she told him. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Then I won’t.”
But she wasn’t sure he was telling the truth. More confusing, the idea of him being concerned actually made her happy. Shouldn’t she want a man to believe she was completely self-sufficient? She sighed. Mating rituals were complicated in every species, but with humans, the rules were always changing.
* * *
GIDEON SLID THE steaks onto plates, and Felicia carried them over to the table. They’d prepared a salad together, and then she’d made a dressing while he’d put the meat on the grill. They sat across from each other as the setting sun cast shadows on the deck.
She cut into her steak. “Perfect,” she said. “I understand the conditions required to cook food, but I can’t always make the transition from theory to practice. Baking continues to elude me. Consuelo says my flaws keep me likable, but I’m less sure that’s true. Even if nobody likes a know-it-all.”
He shook his head. “You’re not a know-it-all. It’s an attitude thing.” She was painfully brilliant, but in a way that made sense. With her, it was like being tall, or having perfect pitch. It simply was.
“I hope you’re right. I want people to like me. That’s one of the appeals of this town. I have friends.” She sighed. “Girlfriends. We have lunch and get drinks together after work.”
Normal, he thought. What she would have missed while growing up. The army should have offered her the opportunity, but in Special Forces, there weren’t many women. Between her long hours and constant traveling, she wouldn’t have had the chance to find other women to hang with.
She smiled at him, her green eyes bright with amusement. “You’re a frequent topic of conversation,” she told him. “Women find your voice sexually appealing. Plus they admire your physique when you walk around town.”
He managed to swallow his bit of steak without choking. “Don’t tell me that.”
“Why not? It’s true and you should be flattered.”
“I don’t think so.”
She glanced at his left arm and lightly touched the tattoo visible below his shirtsleeve. “This also intrigues them. The older women equate tattoos and your former profession with danger. The younger ones simply find you sexy. Yet both can listen to your voice every night, which makes you more approachable. It’s a tempting combination.” She paused for a second, then laughed. “Like catnip to a cat.”
“Look at you, all one with the clichés.”
“I find them helpful in social situations. The structure of my speech is on the formal side.”
“It might just be your word choices.”
She nodded. “I agree. I know too many words, and I enjoy precision in my speech. But others find it off-putting.”
“They need to develop a sense of humor.”
“I wish I had one. I don’t always get the joke. I have trouble with cultural references. I’ve caught up on the television I missed while I was growing up, and I’ve read the significant books.” She flashed a smile. “I understand the worlds of Harry Potter and Twilight.”
“Magic and vampires? Not my thing.”
“Yes, but you’ve proven my point. You know what they are, even without having read the books or seen the movies. From the time I was small until I was sixteen, I missed out. I could tell you about the progress made in work on the origin of the universe, but I completely missed the rise in popularity of the American Girl doll.”
She started to say something else, then stopped. Her gaze sharpened. “You know exactly what I’m talking about,” she said quietly. “While you were held by the Taliban, you experienced the same phenomenon. Existing out of time.”
She touched his arm again, her fingers warm against his skin. “Not that I’m equating what I went through with what you did.”
“I wasn’t getting USA TODAY delivered, if that’s what you’re asking.”
He kept his tone light and was prepared to deflect any questions. He didn’t talk about his past—not with anyone. It was done, he’d moved on. He wanted to say he’d healed, but he knew that would never happen. The nightmares were proof. Some wounds stayed open forever. But he got by and, for the most part, managed to fool everyone into thinking he was just like them.
“I would have kept looking,” she said, returning her attention to her dinner. “If you’d been one of my team. They were wrong not to keep looking.”
He noticed that while she seemed fascinated by her steak, she wasn’t eating.
“No one knew,” he told her. “That was the point of my assignment.”
“Someone always knows. Someone has to get you in and have a plan to get you out. Equipment is supplied. They shouldn’t have left you.”
She didn’t know the details, but she could guess. And she was right—someone had known. His team had been dropped off and told they were on their own. But someone had known where they were.
“Politics,” he murmured and reached for his wine.
“How many others?” she asked.
“Three.”
Three men he’d watched die. Slowly, painfully. One by one, they’d given in to the torture, to the madness.
He set down his glass. “They had families. Some had kids. They talked about them, how they missed them, how they wanted to see them again. They had hope. They believed. They told me it made them strong, but they were wrong. Having something to live for meant they had something to lose. Those bastards hurt them more because of it. I walked away because living and dying were the same to me.”
He’d learned his lesson then. It was safer to just be his own man. To not care. Having nothing left to lose had saved his life.
“Love is death?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
“I want to explain that you’re wrong, but you have no reason to believe me. The mental and emotional scars of your imprisonment would be significant. Lessons learned in traumatic situations stay with us always.” She gave him a shaky smile. “I was trapped in a closet with a spider when I was five. It was only for a few minutes, but I still remember screaming.”
She angled her chair to him. “Am I correct in assuming that you’re not interested in any kind of emotional commitment? That even though you enjoy my company and find the sex very pleasurable, you don’t want to form an attachment?”
Not exactly how he would have phrased it, but, “Yes.”
“I want to belong,” she told him. “I want to fall in love. I understand much of the feeling is chemical, but I still want to know what it’s like. Eventually I want to get married and have children. I want to be part of a family. I want roots. Nothing you’re interested in.”
“No.”
“Then spending time with you doesn’t help me achieve my goal.”
Stark words, he thought, surprised at the kick in the gut he felt. But she knew what she wanted, and he had no right to keep her from it.
“I told you before, I’m not the forever guy.”
She nodded. “Even so, I find myself reluctant to stop seeing you. I wonder if I’m attracted to the traditional bad-boy elements of your personality. Or it could be our sexual compatibility. I do like thinking about us making love and having orgasms together.” She sighed. “I’m not sure what I should do.”
His suggestion, mostly screaming from his suddenly hard dick, was that they practice a few of those orgasms right here, right now. Dinner and her life goals be damned. But he liked Felicia nearly as much as he wanted her, and there was no way he was going to screw up everything because he needed to get laid.
“You should walk away,” he told her, the words physically painful to speak.
“A sensible solution.” She stared at him. “I don’t want to be sensible. Why is that?”
“You’re a woman?”
She laughed. “I believe my ability to reason is far greater than yours, but the sexist comment is charming.” She nodded. “I need to consider this. Do you mind if I think about what I want and then get back to you?”
She was like no one else he’d ever met. Damned if that didn’t make him want her more. “Take your time.”
“And it’s all right if we finish dinner?”
“Sure.”
“Good.” She smiled. “Would you like to talk about sports? I have a working knowledge of baseball and can discuss team rankings along with player statistics.”
He started to laugh, then leaned close and kissed her. She stared at him.
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I couldn’t help myself.”
She smiled. “What else can’t you help doing?”
“No way, young lady. You have to make your decision first. No-strings sex and practice dating, knowing it will never last, or walking away and waiting for Mr. Right.”
She nodded. “Yes, that’s the sensible course.” Her eyes widened. “This is what women mean when they talk about Mr. Right Now. They’re attracted to a man like you.”
“Not exactly,” he murmured. “But close enough.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“THIS COULD BE higher,” Ford yelled from the top of the rope hanging from the base of a thick tree branch a good twenty feet off the ground.
“It could,” Consuelo shouted back to him. “We could also dig a moat and float a few alligators. How does that sound?”
“Sweet!”
Gideon shook his head. One day Ford and Angel were going to kill each other with their brainless competition. But as they’d been trying to best each other for years, he knew he wasn’t going to change anybody’s mind. As it was, he’d been brought in to offer suggestions for ways to make the obstacle course more challenging for the professionals while keeping it doable for “normal people.” He wasn’t sure why anyone thought he would know more than either Ford, Angel or Consuelo, but, if nothing else, he would enjoy spending a morning in the forest.
Angel patted one of the larger trees. “The trunks tend to have a flat side. We could set up targets.”
“No shooting in the forest,” Consuelo snapped. “Do you want to get someone killed? We’ll have a special shooting range on one side or the other of the warehouse. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Angel stared at her. “What?”
“Tell him,” Consuelo demanded, pointing at Angel. “Tell him he’s an idiot.”
“You’re an idiot,” Gideon obliged.
Angel glared at him. “Hey, what’s with taking her side? We’re friends. You just met her.”
“I like her better.”
Consuelo grinned. “Likewise,” she told him.
Angel snorted in disgust and stalked away.
Gideon chuckled, remembering that this was what it was like in the field. Sure there was danger and stress, but in the downtimes there was fun. Life had to be lived all the more because it could end at any second.
Consuelo was short, but she was strong and moved as if she knew what she was doing. Ford had introduced him, saying she would be teaching hand-to-hand and street fighting, along with a few tactical classes. Gideon would guess she knew ways to kill a man that would make the hardiest of souls shudder.