Page 54 of Duty Compromised
“There has to be something. Family? Hobbies? Secret passion for reality TV?”
“Definitely not reality TV.” I folded the napkin into precise squares. “I was an only child. My mother died when I was three. Car accident. I don’t really remember her.”
His expression softened. “I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.” I unfolded the napkin, started over. “My father raised me. We were…similar. Both better with equations than emotions. He died my junior year at Stanford.”
“That must have been hard.”
“We were on good terms, but not close. Not the way I think fathers and daughters are supposed to be. He was proud of me, I think. In his way. He just never quite knew what to do with me.” I forced myself to stop destroying the napkin. “We understood each other’s minds but not much else.”
The server brought our food, and the smell made my stomach growl audibly. Ty grinned. “See? Real food. Your body knows what it needs.”
I cut into the steak, perfectly medium rare, and nearly moaned at the first bite. “This is amazing.”
“When’s the last time you went on an actual date?” He asked it casually, but I saw him watching my reaction.
I concentrated on cutting another piece of steak, buying time while I decided how pathetic to make myself sound. “About four years ago. A postdoc from the physics department asked me to dinner. We spent the entire time discussing quantum entanglement theory, and I’m pretty sure he was more interested in picking my brain about my research than anything else.”
Which had been fine, really. Safer to talk about work than navigate the mysterious waters of actual romantic conversation.
“That doesn’t sound like much of a date.”
“It’s better than the one before that. Conference dinner with a colleague who kept refilling my wineglass while explaining why string theory was superior to loop quantum gravity. I think he was trying to get me drunk enough to agree with him.”
Or maybe he’d been trying for something else entirely. I’d never been good at reading those signals and had escaped to my hotel room the moment I’d realized his hand on my knee wasn’t accidental.
“Wait. How many dates have you been on total?”
“Two. Well, three, if that conference dinner counts, which it probably doesn’t.” I risked a glance up, wondering if he’d laugh at the pathetic number. “This is actually nicer than either of those.”
“This?”
The word hung between us, loaded with possibility. Shoot. Maybe he didn’t think of this as a date at all. Just part of the security detail. Maybe he’d already forgotten what had happened between us in the bed.
“Tell me about your family,” I said, desperate to deflect. “You mentioned siblings.”
He let me change the subject, and I loved him a little for that. No, not loved.
Appreciated.
Appreciated was so much safer.
“Six kids total. I’m number three. Frank’s the oldest—historian, museum curator, has a PhD and never lets us forget it. Then Donovan, former Army K9 handler.” Something shifted in his expression when he mentioned Donovan. “Then me. Then Leonard—high school math teacher and proud of it. Annabel’s a midwife, delivers babies and makes us all look at pictures. Bridget’s the youngest, just finished law school.”
“All smart.”
“All brilliant, if you don’t include me,” he corrected. “Every one of them has at least a bachelor’s degree. Most have more. Sunday dinners are like academic conferences with better food.”
“But not you?”
He shrugged, but I caught something underneath it. “Didn’t even finish high school with decent grades. Barely scraped through, joined the Army instead of college. I’m the black sheep who shoots things for a living while they’re changing the world with their brains.”
“That’s not true.”
“Which part?”
“The part where you imply you’re not smart.” I set down my fork, needing him to understand this. “Intelligence isn’t just about degrees. You read situations instantly. You know how to keep people safe. You see patterns others miss.”
