A ghost of a smile appeared on her lips. She took another sip, closing her eyes and sighing as she did.
“How’d you meet him?” she asked. “I mean, obviously you met in the military. But what were the circumstances?”
“He was my warrant officer.”
“Warrant officer?”
“He was like the team leader’s second-in-command.”
She nodded, watching me with naked curiosity in her eyes.
“It was my second tour of duty and I was assigned to Ash’s team. We spent eighteen months together, him and me and the rest of our team. Did things…” I hesitated, but she didn’t seem to notice. “When I re-upped for another tour, I was assigned to the same team.”
“How many times did you go over there?”
“Four.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Why?”
I looked down at my glass of wine and swirled the bloody red liquid around the clear crystal bowl. I’d asked myself the same question a few times. But I never really came up with a satisfactory answer.
“I guess I didn’t have a reason not to.”
She didn’t say anything. I didn’t really think she would.
I got up to check the meat, turning it over to keep it from burning.
“What about the others. How do you know them?”
“I didn’t. Not until Ash called and said he was starting a security firm.”
“Really?”
“I’d heard of Kirkland. He was a Green Beret with another team. But, as you’ve seen, he tends to be memorable. People were talking about him over there, over here, talking about his charm and his recklessness. And, I guess, Ash reached out to him because of that.”
“What about Joss?”
“Ash knew her in boot camp.”
“Was she a Green Beret?”
I glanced at her. “Unfortunately, Uncle Sam doesn’t allow women to be Green Berets. But she would have made one hell of a team member.”
A cloud of jealousy floated across her eyes. Did she think my admiration of Joss meant something more than it did? Did she really care enough to be jealous?
She turned slightly and took another long drink from her glass. I picked up the bottle and carried it over to her, pouring her another healthy slug.
Drunk might not be such a bad thing for her tonight.
“Do you remember the summer the three of us spent at that summer camp in San Francisco?” she asked a couple of minutes later.
“I do.”
“Do you remember the sunburn I got that day on the beach? I was so arrogant; I thought I knew what I was doing when I went out there without sunscreen because I live on the beach in Santa Monica. And that counselor kept telling me it was different down there, that the overcast was sometimes worse than a bright, sunny day?”
“You spent the first night in the infirmary with tea packs on your back.”
“And you snuck in and sat with me until the pain pills the nurse gave me kicked in.”
“I stayed the whole night. I didn’t leave until I heard the nurse coming in the next morning.”
“Really?”
I nodded as I turned to lift the steaks off the grill. “I knew if I got caught, we’d both be on the first bus back home. So I climbed out the window, but my shoe got caught on the sill. I thought for sure we were screwed.”
“How did you get out?”
“Shoe popped loose at the last second.”
“Lucky.”
“Always was back then.”
I set a plate in front of her and took a seat across from her, cutting into my steak to make sure I hadn’t overdone it.
“I think that’s when I started to think of you as more than just my brother’s bad-boy friend.”
I looked up. “That was eighth grade.”
“It was.”
She blushed a little as she turned her attention to her food.
We both ate a few bites before she finally looked up at me again.
“Did you ever tell Joshua about us?” she asked.
I studied her face, wondering if she really wanted to know. Then I leaned back, setting my utensils down on the edge of the plate.
“I started to a couple of times, but it seemed like something always interrupted.”
“I did, too. But I would chicken out right before the words came out. I didn’t want him to look at you different, you know?”
I nodded. “I didn’t want him to feel differently about you.”
“Do you think he ever suspected?”
I thought about all the times we would steal kisses whenever Joshua left the room, how many times he came back sooner than we expected and found us sitting too close together. There’d been a lot of that the last few months of school. A lot of excuses and outright lies.
“He might have, but if he did, he never said anything to me.”
“Me either.” She pushed the greens around her plate as though she’d lost her appetite. “I regret not telling him.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I think he had a right to know.”