Chapter 5 #2
“We met and married in Vegas and spent a fabulous week in the honeymoon suite of the Golden Dream Hotel. When I woke up on the day we were supposed to go home, he was gone. No note, nothing. Just disappeared.”
“Oh, my God. That’s... How did you cope with it?” Staci asked. “I would have hunted his ass down and reamed him a new one.”
“He’s a Marine...a warrior. He’d be hard to take in a fight.
” To be honest, that had been part of what had drawn her to Jay.
Being athletic she was hard-pressed to find a guy much better than her at most sports and one who didn’t treat her like one of the guys.
From the beginning Jay had treated her as though she was special—a lady.
“I don’t care. What did you do?” Staci asked again. She had all of her ingredients assembled.
“I channeled that anger into baking and beating you at regional competitions,” Alysse said. She flipped on her mixer to combine the wet and dry ingredients. Staci did the same, but came over to her.
“Because you are in pain I’m going to let you get away with saying you always beat me,” she said, giving Alysse a quick hug before going back to her station.
Alysse realized then that she hadn’t shut out everyone when Jay had hurt her. Just men. She’d formed this bond with Staci and she was close to her brother’s girlfriend, too.
She and Staci removed their dough from the mixers and started rolling it out. One of the things that Alysse loved most about baking was how she could take a bunch of separate things and make them into something whole. Something good. She liked seeing the dough form.
“So what happened then?” Staci asked.
“I divorced him while he was on tour in Iraq. He signed the papers and my attorney said he reenlisted but went to Afghanistan this time. I have tried to put him out of my mind but I don’t know that I was too successful.”
“Given the string of lackluster dates you’ve been on, I’d say you haven’t been. So why’s he back?” Staci asked.
Alysse paid close attention to the individual Danishes she was starting to create on her baking sheets. She went to the refrigerator to get the different fruits that she had prepared last night while she’d been waiting for Jay’s cake to bake.
“I don’t know,” she said.
She didn’t want to tell Staci he wanted her back and was determined to win her over. She didn’t want Staci to know how weak she was where Jay was concerned and that she was contemplating letting him into her life, considering how badly he’d hurt her.
“Yeah, right.”
Staci was preparing croissants and had set the dough aside to rise, now she moved on to the doughnuts.
“Did you sleep with him?” Staci asked in a low voice.
“Staci!”
“Well?”
Alysse bit her lower lip. “I’m not going to answer that.”
“That means you did. You still want him. Do you still love him?” Staci persisted.
“I don’t know. I think he’s the reason all my dates have sucked so much and I want to be able to move on. I’m still not sure I can trust him or myself. He’s come back to figure out if he can have a life outside the Corps and apparently he wants me to be a part of it.”
Alysse wasn’t too sure that was really what Jay was after, but that was what he’d said. She trusted him to a certain extent but it was hard to see him as the settled-down type. He hadn’t been four years ago; had what happened in the Middle East really changed him?
“That’s great for him, but what do you want?” Staci asked. “I don’t know that guy, but you do. I’m not going to judge you.”
“I thought I was over him,” Alysse said.
It had been really disheartening last night to admit she wasn’t. She’d thought she had better self-preservation skills than that. “He broke my heart and I should have moved on, but he’s still there in the back of my mind and I judge every guy I meet by the man he was in Vegas.”
“Not the man he is today?”
She shrugged. “I’m not really sure who he is. I don’t know that he knows either. I’m telling myself that I’m going to see him and sort out how to...”
“Hurt him?” Staci supplied.
She shook her head. “I thought so, but I couldn’t do it. I just want to be able to move on with my life. I want to enjoy being single and I can’t until I know what it is about Jay that makes me like him.”
“I hope it’s that easy,” Staci said.
She did, too, but if the sleepless night she’d spent was any indication, nothing was going to be easy about this thing with Jay.
JAY RAN ALONG the beach and tried to clear his mind.
Frankly though, there wasn’t a safe place for it to go.
He’d already scanned the area in front and behind him.
It didn’t matter that he was in San Diego on Coronado Island, a part of him just couldn’t relax.
The other part of his mind kept replaying last night—every damned second of it.
Physical exhaustion had seemed like the only means out of the endless cycle of images of Alysse, but it wasn’t.
His room felt like a prison when he got back there and he wondered what normal people did on vacations.
He couldn’t imagine spending too much time in this place. He felt boxed-in and edgy.
He showered and changed and got on his bike and drove without a destination in mind, but he wasn’t too shocked when he found himself parked down the street from Sweet Dreams. It was the one place he wanted to be.
But he knew that he couldn’t just show up at her bakery.
She was working and he had commitments of his own.
He was meeting Lucien at ten this morning and he decided that had to be his priority right now.
But Alysse was winning the battle in his mind.
He had let things go too far last night and, as hard as it was for him to admit, making love to her might have actually hurt his chances of getting back together with her.
He cast aside the disturbing thought, put his sunglasses on and roared away from the curb.
He drove to the offices of Company B. The name gave Jay a chuckle since Lucien and the other men who’d formed it were all from Bravo or B Company.
He parked the bike and entered the impressive office building, feeling the cool air conditioning brush over his skin.
The receptionist was a pretty California blonde.
She smiled up at him and Jay wondered why everything couldn’t be as uncomplicated as this girl. Why hadn’t he just taken those divorce papers from Alysse and moved on?
“Can I help you, sir?”
“I’m Jay Michener, I have an appointment this morning with Lucien DuPoin.”
“I’ll let Lucien know. Please have a seat over there. Can I get you anything to drink?”
“I’m good,” Jay said. He moved toward the guest chairs but they were lined up against the glass windows and there was no way he was sitting with his back to the street. Didn’t matter where he was, he couldn’t switch off his instincts.
Instead he walked to an interior wall that had the Company B logo on it and their mission statement—Securing What’s Important to You.
Vague, Jay thought. No clue as to what the company actually did, which was exactly as it should be.
“Jay, buddy,” Lucien DuPoin greeted him.
Lucien was six feet tall, with more muscles than seemed humanly possible. His head was shaved and he wore a mustache that Jay knew hid a scar on his upper lip.
Lucien held out his hand to Jay. Jay took the hand and leaned in to bump chests with Lucien. They’d served together on Jay’s third tour. “What’s up?”
“Not much. Glad to see your ugly mug,” Lucien replied. “How’d your plans go last night?”
“Not as I’d expected.”
“What do you think of the place?” Lucien asked.
“Cushy setup you have here. Not bad for a guy from the First,” Jay said. They’d served together in the First Recon Battalion in 2006.
“You have no idea,” Lucien said. “Come on back and I’ll show you what we’re all about.”
Jay followed his friend down the corridor to a high-tech, windowless conference room. Jay heard the solid thump of a bulletproof door closing behind him. There was a video wall along the right side of the room, and on the left, a huge Company B logo was displayed.
“Have a seat,” Lucien said, gesturing to the leather armchairs around the table.
Jay sat down. He took his sunglasses off and set them on the table in front of him.
“Let me tell you a little about what we do and what we can offer you,” Lucien said.
“Who are ‘we’?”
“Myself and four other guys—two of them were Army Rangers—you met them yesterday at the bar, one was a SEAL and the other is ex-CIA. We are a unique private security force and we operate as a team or unit the way we would in the Corps. That much would be the same. We want you to be a sniper but you won’t be working with a scout—we don’t have the staff for that. ”
“What kind of missions are you taking?”
“High-risk, high-pay missions from the private sector.”
“Really?”
“Yes, usually we protect or rescue ordinary citizens when our government can’t go in and do so. The families or companies have the money to afford us,” Lucien said.
“Like who?”
“Usually executives kidnapped in South America or kids who go missing or land in trouble. We’ve had a few jobs that involved the DEA and Border Patrol, but to be honest I think we’ve all agreed those aren’t our favorites.”
Jay chuckled. “I can understand that.”
“Your role, if you choose to join us, would be to use the skills you have now, mainly as a marksman,” Lucien explained.
Jay was one of the top-rated marksmen in the world.
“Okay. I’d be the sniper. How often do you need one?” Jay asked. Rescue missions didn’t always require a man with his skills.
“More often than you’d guess,” Lucien said. “T-bone, the SEAL, is good with long-range shots, but he’s not you. And we need him in other roles. You’d provide expert cover. If you decide to come on board you’d be paid a monthly salary plus a bonus based on the danger factor of the mission.”
The amount that Lucien mentioned was eye-opening; Jay had had no idea his skills with a weapon were worth that much. But he was looking for a change in lifestyle, not just his income bracket. “How often would I be gone? And what would I do when we aren’t on a mission?”
Lucien leaned back in his chair. “We monitor security and provide bodyguards for the affluent in Southern California. Also, when dignitaries are visiting we’re usually the detail assigned to guard them.
So that keeps us busy. You’d have two days off a week, unless we are on a mission, and you would work regular hours. ”
“Sounds tempting,” Jay said. Really tempting.
It would mean closing one chapter of his life and starting another.
Here. This job would give him a way to romance Alysse and do it right this time.
But he hadn’t stayed in one place since he’d left North Texas.
And he had a really hard time picturing himself in a home.
“Good, I want you on my team, Jay,” Lucien said.
“When do you need to know if I’m in?” Jay asked.
“When are you due to re-up?” Lucien asked.
“Two weeks. I’m on leave until then.”
“Why don’t you think it over tonight and let me know tomorrow?” Lucien said. “Then you can come and work with us for a few days, see if it’s really what you want. I’d hate to have you regret leaving the Corps.”
“Do you regret it? I thought you were going to be a lifer,” Jay said.
“At first I hated it. I just wasn’t cut out for civilian life, but then, once I got involved with these guys at Company B, I found my place.
It’s helped me a lot to be able to still use my skills but to sleep in my own bed each night,” Lucien said.
“Plus I have a steady woman in my life. She’s more important than the Corps.
For a while I didn’t think she would be. Oh, I’m making a mess of saying this.”
“Nah, I get it. Women are complicated,” Jay said.
“You spoke a mouthful,” Lucien said with his smooth Cajun accent, and Jay smiled. They’d had a lot of fun in the old days even when they were on missions, and there was something about working with his friend again that appealed to him.
“I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know what I think,” Jay said.
He left the offices a few minutes later and drove toward the Hotel Del Coronado but that wasn’t really where he wanted to go. He wanted to see Alysse again, and if nothing else, at least talk to her.
Lucien’s offer sat squarely in the front of Jay’s mind. He wasn’t convinced he’d be happy on a security detail, but if he knew he’d be coming home to Alysse each night, maybe he could be.