“He got the house in the divorce?”
“It was an asset he wanted and I didn’t. And it was cheaper to buy my share of the furniture from me than to buy new.” The words were simply stated, not emotionally charged, but he didn’t miss the fact that she’d sold everything that might weigh her down—house, furniture—to her ex. “Nora will be back at the end of the summer, so I have to start looking for my own place in a couple of months. Until then, I love coming home to this.” She sipped her whiskey. “Do you know what that is?”
“It’s a hollow log, a form of aboriginal art,” he said. “I saw some in a gallery when I was on leave in Perth. What does she do?”
“She’s a professor of contemporary art at the college,” Erin said. “She’s got a grant to study in Australia this semester and is staying through the summer.”
“Is that why you’re house-sitting?”
She nodded. “I needed a place to stay after the divorce, and she didn’t want to leave her house unoccupied, in case a pipe broke or mice decided to colonize her basement. Australia is too far away to come home regularly.”
Car headlights drove down the street, flashing into the uncovered window. “You should close the curtains,” he said. He wasn’t supposed to be here, and he didn’t want her getting into trouble because of him. At a more primitive level, he didn’t want anyone seeing her like this, a little soft from the whiskey, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright, her hair falling in loose waves around her face. “Anyone can see in, now that it’s dark.”
“I was watching the sky change colors as the sun set,” she replied, but moved to lower the shade rolled to the top of the big picture window. He regretted making the suggestion because she didn’t come back to stand near him, instead perching on the piano bench and looking around the room. “What do you think she’s like?” she asked.
He blinked, caught off guard, then looked around again. “She travels a lot. Reads a lot. Knows how to play the piano. Doesn’t watch TV. She likes to garden,” he said. After growing up with Grannie, he knew Queen Anne’s lace from yarrow, five different kinds of goldenrod, and the difference between bindweed and a morning glory. “And this is a really nice rug,” he added.
“The house is on the Lancaster Garden Club’s tour in a few weeks,” Erin agreed. “She brought the rug home after a summer in Turkey a couple of years ago.”
A sharp pang went through him. “I’ve spent some time in Istanbul,” he said, remembering the reconnaissance trip he took with Keenan back when they were both going to work for Gray Wolfe. “And my sister and grandmother just got back from a trip there. The rugs she bought arrived a couple of days ago. I now know a lot about Turkish rugs.”
“I’m a little jealous of your sister,” she said.
He chuckled. “You’re jealous of someone who spent a week chauffeuring my granny on a speed-dating run through the major historical sites in Turkey?”
“I haven’t traveled much. Done the speed dating, though.”
“How’d that go?” he asked, his voice obviously amused, like he knew what a disaster it had been.
She tilted her glass to her mouth, then said, “I’m a guppy in a Tinder shark world.” She smiled at him, her legs crossed in the tight skirt, making the hourglass curve of her body that much more pronounced. The gold chain around her neck glinted in the lights. “What branch of the service were you in?” she asked, studying the liquid as it swirled in the glass.
“Navy,” he said.
“What did you do? Your … MOS?”
She knew the abbreviation for Military Occupational Specialty, so she’d done her homework before teaching the class for incoming students who were former military. His respect for her tipped up another notch. “I was a SEAL.”
She tipped her head to the side. “A Navy SEAL.”
One corner of his mouth twitched up. “Yes, ma’am.”
For a moment he saw himself as she saw him, shades of Jack flickering past in her eyes: the younger lover drinking whiskey in her borrowed living room, a SEAL, which was for her a possible research subject. He saw those expressions a lot; women were always curious about SEALs, and men were too, curious, wondering if they’d measure up. But there was something else in her eyes, something he didn’t recognize.
“I have a million questions,” she said.
“Fire away.”
“How did you get the scar over your eye?” She was smiling as she asked, head still tilted to the side.
“I was three, sitting in the bed of a Tonka truck my sister was pushing me in. The truck ran into a crack in the sidewalk and stopped. I didn’t. Pitched forward. Split my eyebrow open.”
“The sister who just got back from Turkey?”
“Rose,” he said. “She’s the only sister I’ve got.”
“Jack and Rose?”
“We predate the movie Titanic,” he said, one corner of his mouth lifting in a grin.