“Like what?” he asked huskily.
I’d gone to college right after high school, and then spent the majority of my adult life chasing stories in the Middle East. “Silly stuff,” I evaded.
“Tell me,” he insisted. “Maybe I’ve done some of them and I can tell you if doing any of those things are worth it.”
I evaluated my list. “I’ve never built a sandcastle on the beach. I’ve never actually spent any time on the ocean. It was one of the many things I thought about while I was a captive.”
“Never done that,” he replied. “Never spent much time on the beach. I spent plenty of time flying over them, though.”
“I’ve never been bungie jumping or zip-lining,” I continued.
“Me neither,” Marcus admitted. “Both of them are pretty dangerous—”
“Says the man who spies as a hobby,” I finished.
“Makes more sense than jumping from a bridge counting on a big rubber band to save my ass,” he grumbled.
I bit my lip to keep from smiling. “I think I can cross out the ‘learn to cook’ item off the list. At least I have been trying.”
“What else?”
“I’ve never been drunk, not even a little,” I confessed. “I was too busy in college trying to do everything I could to try to get hired as a journalist when I graduated.”
“Done it. You aren’t missing anything,” Marcus rumbled. “Hangovers suck.”
“Do you think going into the hot springs naked qualifies as skinny dipping?” I asked, my eyes on my list.
“In the water. Outside. Naked. Yeah, I highly recommend that one, especially if you’re there with a beautiful redhead who makes you crazy.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “I was with a handsome, dark-haired man who drives me insane. Will that work?”
“For now,” he said agreeably. “Go ahead and remove that one. Tell me the rest.”
“They’re personal,” I said hesitantly.
“You don’t want to share?” he inquired, sounding slightly hurt.
“Okay,” I agreed. “But they’re kind of silly.”
“Read them,” he demanded.
“I’ve never kissed a man in the rain. I’ve never had a guy who really loved me. I’ve never been proposed to. And I’ve never had a child.”
“You want kids?” he asked in a low, inquisitive baritone.
I shrugged. “Someday. Yeah. I never really thought about it until I got kidnapped. I guess those are the things you think about when you know your life might be over so early. Did I make the right choice? Did I put enough effort into relationships? Did I love my family and friends enough?”
Marcus leaned back in his leather chair, his entire attention on me. His eyes were intense, as though he was thinking about what I said.
“I can’t say I know how you feel,” he finally admitted. “But I understand reconsidering some of your choices in life.”
“Aren’t you doing exactly what you want to do?” I asked with surprise.
“Not always. I’m not as close to my family as I’d like to be, and I have no idea what I would have done for a career if I’d felt I had a choice.”
“You didn’t want to run your father’s conglomerate?”
He shrugged. “I never thought about it. I was the oldest, and our father died young. He was killed in a terrorist attack—in the wrong place at the wrong time in the Middle East.”
My heart clenched. No wonder he wanted to keep Americans safe. His own father had been a victim of unstable circumstances in a foreign country.
My mother and Marcus’s had been friends. I knew his father had died, but I’d been too young to understand where or how it had happened back then.
Marcus continued, “As far as running Dad’s conglomerate…I guess it was always assumed that I would. I was groomed for it, and it never occurred to me to argue. I know my mother would have wanted me to do whatever made me happy, but there wasn’t really anything else I wanted to do.”
“So you don’t regret doing it?”
“I don’t. I’ve become damn good at what I do. But I do regret the distance it’s caused with my family. Hell, I don’t even connect well with my own twin anymore. I told myself that I was doing it to protect them in case somebody found out about the government work I was doing, but I think I pretty much isolated myself because I knew I’d miss them if I didn’t.”
“Does that work?” I asked.
“Not really. It just makes the empty feeling easier to handle.”
“Traveling around the world is hard,” I commiserated. “Sometimes I’d be gone for months at a time on assignment. I missed my family a lot.”
Marcus shrugged as he replied, “It was great when I was fresh out of college. But just like you, I wonder what I missed by not being here at home.”
“No long-term relationships?” I asked. I couldn’t even remember Marcus being linked with any one female other than my sister. That hadn’t exactly been long-term, and that incident—as I now knew—had been a case of mistaken identity.
He shook his head. “No.”
“Because you were traveling,” I commiserated.
“I don’t think that was the problem, actually,” he corrected.
“Then what was it?”
He shot me a sharp look and then glanced back at his computer again. Still staring at the screen, he answered, “I guess I just never met anybody worth bothering to stay at home for until now.”
Marcus
It wasn’t that I didn’t know I was completely fucked—I just didn’t want to admit it.
I was hiking with Dani the day after she’d spilled some of her list to me, suddenly realizing that I didn’t miss being on an airplane or in a foreign country at all. It was the first time I’d actually been stateside for more than a few days, and I wasn’t the least bit edgy or eager to get back on my private jet and fly away.
I held her hand tightly as we both navigated down a rocky incline, worried as hell that something would happen to her. Jesus! I think I’d be fucking upset if she so much as broke a damn fingernail—not that she had long nails to break.
After everything she’d been through, all I wanted to do was protect her, make sure nothing bad ever happened to her again. I still had nightmares about seeing her right after her brutal captivity, and it wasn’t something I wanted to see ever again. Hell, I didn’t want to see her unhappy in any way.
Maybe she didn’t see herself as strong, but she was one of the gutsiest women I knew. Honestly, she probably should have died while she had been held captive, but she’d pulled through it, and was still willing to risk her ass again trying to take down a man who was hurting other people. Danica’s capacity to care about someone other than herself was probably both a curse and a blessing. Sometimes I almost wished she’d be more selfish, but then she wouldn’t be Dani.
“I’m okay, Marcus,” she said breathlessly beside me. We’d reached the bottom of the rocky area and had our feet on solid ground. “You can stop squeezing my hand. I’m not going to fall.”