His hand tightened slowly on hers.
“I’ll survive this,” Vi told him, her tone adamant. “There’s no doubt about that.”
His eyes opened, and light came back into them as they ran over her. Genuine light, that vivid blue pleasure. “I know you will, honey,” he said. “God, you’re so alive. Life just comes right off you like electricity.” He cupped his free hand just shy of her hair, as if he was savoring the buzz. “Damn, you’re gorgeous."
“You are, too,” she said, and instead of grinning cockily, he flushed a little and gave her a funny, awkward smile.
“In your arrogant, annoying way,” she said, and his smile relaxed a little into more genuine humor. “Did you just one up my own tragedy?”
“Your tragedies are wussy.” But his eyes flickered as he tried to joke, and his attempt at a grand, dismissive gesture came off wooden.
Yeah, so…yeah, she was an idiot, to try humor for that. Some things humor just didn’t work for. She squeezed his hand again and settled onto the floor, leaning against the table.
He was quiet for a long time, just gazing at her hand over his and stroking it slowly with his thumb. “Sorry,” he said eventually, voice a little rough.
“Seriously, don’t make me hit you.”
A little smile came back. He squeezed her hand and let it go, picking up the needles again.
She felt stupid now, to have made such a big deal out of her jacket. Even if he should not take over her choices and ruin her beautiful jacket. But still…it was only a jacket. It wasn’t friends lying dead in the mountains.
But watching him slowly and painstakingly try to heal that unhealable wound in the leather, she didn’t stop him.
Maybe healing unhealable wounds was something they both needed to know how to do.
The reality of this big, sexy, hard-willed man who clowned and teased and who…what? He had to be part of a counterterrorism unit. Or working for the CIA in some capacity. That was the only thing she could figure. What the hell else could a military man from Texas whose eyes flickered when she mentioned Navy SEALs be doing in France breaking into restaurants his president might be visiting and then, if she was right, getting them shut down? Bastard.
A laughing bastard who…had spent most of his adult life in Afghanistan and Iraq, maybe? One of those guys who fast-roped into compounds in the middle of the night and took out the enemies of their country and…got shot at. Stepped on mines. Killed people.
That Hindu Kush event that still ate at him…he was upset because his commanders had refused to let him go die, too.
She rested her folded arms on the table as she watched him. Under the table she shifted just enough that her knee tucked against his thigh. Human touch.
He had gotten the needles threaded and was checking the instructions on his iPad. Now he was starting the stitching, which apparently required two needles going at once in opposite directions.
Blue eyes squinted in concentration, so that she could see exactly how they had squinted time and again to leave those lines at their corners. Sun-streaked brown hair a little shaggy for a military man.
“Did you have a beard recently?” she said suddenly, startled.
He glanced at her, then focused on his twin needles again. “What makes you ask?”
“Your skin is paler on your jaw line. Less tanned.”
He gave a little nod of acknowledgement and a shrug.
“But…you mean you really are a civilian?” Or had been one long enough to grow a beard, tan around it, and shave it off? Did people in the military get to wear beards these days?
He didn’t say anything. She needed to do some Internet research on U.S. special forces.
“You have complete files on me, don’t you? And I don’t know a thing about you.”
“Not a thing?” he asked quietly.
Okay, maybe some things. She knew he was cocky and with good reason. She knew that physically he couldn’t conceive of an insurmountable challenge. She knew that a siren-like alarm in the morning threw him into high stress alert, and that in that state of alarm, his first instinct was to cover her body with his own. And that a minute later, he had played the clown as if nothing of any importance had just happened.
She knew he felt bad that she had gotten hurt. She knew that he wanted to save people, but he didn’t need her to be weak so that he could satisfy his own superhero complex. He wasn’t one of those guys who would try to keep her small to make himself feel strong. No, he’d always give her a wicked grin and a challenge, a yeah, I know you can do it.
She knew he loved the way she challenged him, too. He wasn’t threatened by her strength at all. If anything, he tried to help her be even stronger.
She knew that he was so incredibly pig-headed that he was almost oblivious to opposition. Like it never even occurred to him that he couldn’t stride through any and all obstacles, human or otherwise, and get what he wanted.
Kind of like her.