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“Have I learned anything? Yeah, I learned
not to die face up so early in the battle.”

Her chuckle was worth the slight sunburn
he’d gotten. His cheeks still sported a definite glow from his time as a dead
man. “I also learned that a Springfield rifle weighs nine pounds and that nine
pounds is heavy when carried for an hour while wearing a wool uniform in the
sun.”

He threw the SUV into park and turned off
the ignition. “Is Italian all right with you?”

The small dimples in her cheeks when she
smiled gave her an impish look that wasn’t reflected in her eyes and the fading
sunlight colored her hair a beautiful auburn. She’d worn it down tonight and
the ends brushed over her bare shoulders where her wrap had slipped down. Keeping
his touch nonchalant, he brushed her hair back with his fingertips, feeling the
smooth warmth of her shoulder. Lauren’s eyes dropped and he thought,
If she
were a cat, she might purr
.

Instead she smiled up at him, her look
steady and measuring. “Italian is fine,” was all she said, the words implying
so much more.

If only he had a clue what.

Lauren smoothed her dress with one hand,
adjusted the wrap with the other, and then took the arm he proffered to cross
the parking lot to the restaurant. He’d handed her out of the car and every
time they touched, she got the same little flutter in her stomach. What was
that all about? She was far too old to go all school-girly. A high school
history teacher, hmm? She bet there wasn’t a girl in his classes who didn’t sit
there all googly-eyed over their hunk of a teacher. Although he hadn’t gotten
those broad shoulders from lifting history books, she’d bet her last dollar on
that.

Beth’s advice to bed him tonight came back
to her and Lauren took a deep breath of the warm summer air. The next thought,
however, did not warm her, but gave her tingles.
Tie down a woman and make
love to her all night long.
Sex with Big John wouldn’t be cuddles and
romance.

She kept her thoughts private as the maître
d’ led them to a booth too secluded for her taste, one that afforded a great
deal of privacy for the exchange of all sorts of intimate secrets.

Except she wasn’t sharing her secrets with
anyone. Not even Beth knew the full extent of what she’d seen, not only during
her time at Walter Reed but when stationed in Iraq. Those were her little
secrets and no amount of romance would pry them out of her. No matter how much
his blue eyes smiled at her, the corners crinkling up as he laughed at one of
her bon mots. No matter how much she liked the dimple in his cheek or the way
his strong hands moved in the candlelight. The grace in those movements
fascinated her. She’d seen him save a man’s life the day before with those same
hands that now held a menu board.

The lamp overhead burned low and a large
jar candle on the table cast a warm light over the creamy white of the booth’s
tablecloth. The placemats and napkins of rich burgundy added to the elegant
feel. Candlelight sparkled off the water and wineglasses, bestowing a
fairy-like touch to the whole scene, and Lauren revised her opinion. Perhaps
there could be romance in being tied down and made love to, if done in
candlelight.

“What’s your favorite Italian food?” Lauren
asked to veer her mind away from the bedroom. She still hadn’t made up her mind
about that yet. Too many unanswered questions about the man across the table
from her and food was as good a place to start as any.

“Pastas are my favorite, but I favor red
sauce over cream based. You?”

She shook her head. “My grandparents on
both sides were from England. I grew up with Yorkshire pudding and roast beef.
I don’t know nearly as much as I should about Italian food.”

John set his menu down. “Then let me order
for you. You’ve never had roast beef until you’ve had it prepared the Italian way.”

Lauren chuckled and closed her menu.
“Deal.”

John placed their order with the waiter,
ordering an appetizer of bruschetta to be followed with two orders of braciole.
To go with it, he ordered a full-bodied pinot noir from a local winery. As the
waiter left, Lauren took charge of the conversation once more. If she directed
it, she could stay on safe ground.

“So how did you end up a history teacher?”

Damn, but she liked his smile. Framed as it
was by that goatee, she had to wonder yet again what it would be like to be
kissed by a man with a beard and mustache. She’d had plenty of “release” flings
both overseas and at home, but until now, she’d always gravitated toward the
clean-shaven look. John’s well-trimmed facial hair, however, gave him a
dashing, almost pirate-y look that made her grin.

“The president put out a call for teachers
and I answered. Thought about becoming a shop teacher, but found out there’s
not much call for that anymore. Emphasis is now on getting kids ready for a
different world. But history? ‘Those who don’t know history are destined to
repeat it.’ Edmund Burke.”

“I never thought about subjects going out
of style, but I suppose they have to. What’s your favorite era?”

Keep him talking about himself and he
wouldn’t ask the same questions about her. In the two months since her return,
she’d become a master at deflection.

“The Edmund Burke quote didn’t give me
away? Pre-colonial and the colonial period. How an entire society invented an
entirely new way of governing themselves is an endlessly intriguing question
for me. Be careful, or I’ll get into lecture mode and bore you to death.”

Lauren chuckled. “Actually, it’s a question
that has always interested me as well. Equally interesting is the companion
question.” She paused as the waiter approached with their wine. She watched him
uncork the bottle, pour some for John to taste and then waited as he filled
their glasses upon John’s approval.

“What’s the companion question?” John
resumed their conversation as the waiter departed.

“Why is it so hard for other countries to
become democracies? I mean, think of it.” Lauren warmed to her subject. “We
were a colony under a monarchy. They were under a dictator—” She stopped,
realizing she’d tipped her hand.

John picked up as if he didn’t notice. “It’s
all in the personalities. We had George Washington, who refused to become king.
There was an entire movement, you know, that wanted to establish a
constitutional monarchy just like the mother country.”

Lauren nodded and sipped her wine. “I did
know that. But cooler heads prevailed.”

Now it was John’s turn to laugh. “I never
thought of it that way, but perhaps that’s it exactly. The English are known
for their cool dispositions, and our founding fathers came from that tradition.
Maybe other countries who try for democracy don’t have that calm, rationalizing
influence. They’re ruled more by passion, so their road to democracy will be
more passionate and violent.”

She was saved from an answer by the arrival
of their bruschetta. She steered the talk toward a more innocuous subject—their
tastes in food. Throughout the appetizer she discovered Italian was his
favorite, followed by Mexican, Chinese and Indian.

“All robust foods,” she laughed as she
spooned tomatoes and basil onto a slice of toasted bread.

“As you can tell, nouveau cuisine is not my
style.” He patted his belly.

“Oh come on. You can’t tell me there’s an
ounce of fat on that stomach,” she scolded.

“Of course not!” He looked affronted then
turned sheepish. “I’m afraid I have a streak of undisclosed vanity. I do spend
probably more time than I should in the gym.”

So her body-builder comparison yesterday
hadn’t been so far off. “I don’t mind,” she told him. “I like a man with
muscles in all the right places.” Her coy smile, accompanied by a waggle of the
eyebrows, kept the comment light but she couldn’t deny the underlying
attraction he provoked. Beth wanted her to allow John to get lucky. The more
she thought about it, the more inclined she was to follow her friend’s advice.
She hadn’t had a sexual partner in nearly a year. Maybe Beth was right and all
she needed was a good hard fucking to get her mind back on track.

The braciole came, the rolled meat sitting
on a bed of ziti and topped with a delicious-smelling tomato-based sauce. They
both accepted the offer of freshly grated parmesan and when the waiter once
more departed, Lauren remarked, “Can you believe the hundreds of millions of
people who got cheated out of tomato sauce because they thought the plant was
poisonous?”

“Actually, the plant is poisonous, it’s the
fruit that isn’t.”

Lauren chuckled. “Ahh…a member of the
‘tomato is fruit’ society, I see.”

John’s eyes danced as they parried and
thrust, learning about each other and getting through the small talk necessary
to set the stage for deeper conversations later.

This woman before him presented so many
different faces to the world, all of them seemingly competent. The playful
kitten, the little-sister tease, the intent scholar, each side true in and of
itself yet masking an inner turmoil she hid quite well. No trace of the haunted
look he’d seen before appeared during dinner. She kept the conversation light
and focused on him. John let her get away with it, knowing trust takes time to
build.

He didn’t let on even once that he knew
about her friend’s comment to her, about getting lucky on the first date. Women
weren’t the only ones who liked to gossip and Will had been standing discreetly
nearby, ready to report Lauren’s reactions verbatim. Will’s tastes in sex ran
the same way John’s did, although Will’s activities with his wife tended to be
a little more extreme than John preferred. Still, he’d attended a few
gatherings of like-minded folk and enjoyed learning the proper way to tie the
female figure to provide maximum enjoyment for them both.

Question was, would Lauren allow that kind
of play? He fully intended to fulfill Beth’s suggestion tonight and give Lauren
the release she needed. As to future nights, however? That all depended on just
how deep the demons were in that pretty little lady across the table from him.

Problem was, she deflected every attempt he
made to figure her out.

“So what do you do when you’re not
escorting your nephew around the museums and zoos of the city?”

She turned that one aside with a neat, “I’m
between positions at the moment.”

He let that one slide, although several
double entendres leapt to mind. He asked about Beth instead, listening to the
unsaid words in her description of the woman she called her best friend. The
most telling was the comment that Beth had been there “during my dark time”.
They were getting closer.

“So you didn’t like the braciole?” he asked
her as she scooped the last piece of meat around her plate to get all the
sauce.

“No, it was wonderful—” She smiled as she
realized he teased her. “Seriously, I never thought about rolling beef with
stuffing and dropping it into tomato sauce. Truly a unique idea.”

He grabbed his heart in mock distress.
“Tomato sauce! Augh! A magnificent red sauce like this and you call it ‘tomato
sauce’. I’m wounded to the very core.”

Lauren laughed outright then slapped her
hand over her mouth as she realized how loud the sound had been. The older
couple sitting at the table a little ways away looked over and smiled
indulgently.

John liked the sound of her laugh. Another
thing she didn’t do often enough.

“So where did you learn so much about
Italian food?”

“In the service. Friend of mine was named
DelVeccio. He taught me all there was to know…”

Lauren had gone quiet. Her eyes darted to
the door as if she suddenly were plotting her best escape route. Obviously he’d
said something wrong.

Chapter Three

Her heart thumping, Lauren fought to remain
calm. Why hadn’t she seen this sooner? How could she have missed it? The quiet
command of the men yesterday, his ease in steering her through and around the
crowds, even his haircut should’ve given him away. Close-cropped, but longer
than what would’ve been allowed if he were still active. He’d been a soldier.
Probably recently, knowing her luck. She should’ve picked up on it sooner.
Flustered, she put her fork down, leaving the rest of the pasta in her dish
unfinished.

“I’m sorry. I have to go. This isn’t a
good…I mean…I didn’t think…” her voice trailed off and she shook her head. “I
have to go.”

Her wrap had slipped off her shoulders and
as she stood, one end fell to the floor. John was suddenly beside her, his hand
on her bare arm, his touch gentling and calm.

“If dinner’s made you ill, I can take you
home. If it’s something else, please…sit down. No one’s going to hurt you
here.”

Damn him. His soothing tone sank into her
panic, yet she didn’t want to look into his eyes, knowing the pity she’d see
there, the condescension of the superior male to the weaker female that she’d
seen so many times overseas. Well, she wasn’t weak. And she wasn’t about to put
up with his arrogant, self-important, better-than-you attitude. Yanking her arm
away, she squared off, steeling herself to look him straight in the eye, her
mouth open to give him a good tongue-lashing, right there in the restaurant.