“I know, but I got nothing. If I saw something, I didn’t know what I was seeing so it didn’t register. Nothing about the mission was unusual. There were screw-ups, but there are always screw-ups, and none of them were major. We went in, we got the job done, we were sent to another hot spot, then to another, and seven weeks after we left, we made it home, everyone alive and in relatively good shape.”
She was operating from a position of ignorance, so there was nothing she could offer him in the way of possibilities that he hadn’t already thought of—he, and Axel, and probably a whole bunch of other people. She was also not entirely accepting of everything he told her, and she saw no reason to be coy about it.
“You could tell me anything,” she pointed out conversationally. “I have no way of telling whether or not you’re lying. For someone in your occupation—if that really is your occupation—you’re being very open about it, not just with me but with Jesse too.”
He sipped his coffee, then shrugged. That was twice he could have been using the coffee as a blind to hide his expression, or as a subtle diversion. She’d never before thought of drinking coffee as an evasive action, but with him she was beginning to think she needed to view everything through that filter. “You’re not very trusting,” he finally said. Evidently she wasn’t as good at those diversions and hiding her thoughts as he was.
“That’s a good thing,” he continued. “You’d have to be a fool if you took everything at face value. What you said is true enough. But as a team leader, I have both the authority and the training to make field decisions. If I hadn’t brought Jesse into the loop, he might have triggered some alarms by poking where he shouldn’t have—am I right? He didn’t seem like the type to give up if he wanted to know something unless he had a compelling reason not to.”
She wrinkled her nose. “No, you pegged him right.”
“As for you—Mac and I discussed how much you could be told, and he said he’d leave it up to me.” He reached for the jelly to slather some on a second piece of toast, the first time he’d eaten extra. His forearm brushed her arm and automatically Bo drew back, a frisson of alertness shooting along her nerve endings. She couldn’t have said why; she’d touched him before, helped him into the house, but—that was her touching him. This was the first time he’d touched her.
On one level, her alarm felt silly. She wasn’t afraid of him, didn’t think he was a rapist or anything like that; if she had, no way would he be staying in her house. But on a very basic level her instincts told her something else, that he was like a tiger in a zoo: under control at the moment, but still a wild animal.
She glanced up and saw shrewd awareness in his blue-lightning gaze, as if he’d correctly tagged her reaction. This could get awkward, considering he’d be living in her house for an unspecified time—if she let it. She was more inclined to be up front.
“Don’t take it personally. I’m cautious that way.” In her experience, romantic entanglements were unreliable and more trouble than they were worth. Her parents’ examples were proof enough, but she’d tried marriage herself only to have it fall apart within a year. She’d learned her lesson; she was better off on her own, relying only on herself.
“So you aren’t afraid I’ll try to jump you?”
Humor was in his eyes now, and she snorted. “The shape you’re in? I could take you.”
“As humiliating as it is to admit, yeah, you could.” His gaze darkened. “I hate being this weak. I’m working on it, though; I estimate it’ll be another two or three weeks before I can start any real workouts.”
Was that a warning, or casual conversation? If she’d ever had any real skills at deciphering personal dynamics, they were rusty now from disuse. She’d be on firmer ground if he were a dog. She opted for casual conversation. “There’s a gym in town. Not the best, but at least it’s a gym. And I have a treadmill tucked in the storage under the stairs; I can get it out when you think you’re ready.”
“Thanks. For now, my next goal is climbing those stairs. No offense, but your sofa is killing me.”
While Bo was doing her morning work, Morgan walked outside, both to give her room to concentrate and for the joy of getting out in the fresh air and sunshine and pushing his body a little. Getting back into shape wasn’t going to just happen; he’d have to work for it, maybe harder than he’d ever worked before, because he couldn’t remember ever being this weak before. He was already getting stronger, probably because he was eating more. Bo wasn’t a fancy cook, but he wasn’t a fancy eater; give him a good hamburger or spaghetti dinner any day, rather than some frou-frou arrangement of two green beans, a mushroom, and an ounce of sautéed chicken.
Because it would only be fair, when he was able, he intended to take over some of the household chores. He could vacuum with the best of ’em, and do laundry. From what he could see, she had almost no down time, unless you counted when she took the dog for walks.
Carefully he walked to the edge of the woods, then turned and looked back at the barn—house. It was an unusual place for an unusual woman. He was a man who liked women, so he pondered his hostess. She had walls—serious walls. Some women had walls because they were afraid, but he didn’t sense any timidity or uncertainty in her. She was self-contained, confident in who she was and the choices she made, alone and happy to be that way.