Chapter 13
June sat down at the table. There was a place setting at the head of the table and to the right. She took the seat on the right. Her stomach was growling, reminding her how long it had been since she’d last eaten.
Lunch, which was a ham sandwich, celery, and carrots—that had been hours ago. She normally ate an hour sooner, so her body thought it was starving. She had taken nibbles of food from the fridge and had tried one of the potatoes, but it had done nothing to curb her hunger.
As hungry as she was, she waited for Rob to join her. Manners had been ingrained into her from early childhood to wait until everyone was seated before eating.
Rob sat down at the head of the table. “Dig in.” He didn’t have to tell her twice. As hungry as she was, she was not going to stuff her face. She took her time taking each bite.
“What do you think?” she asked after he’d taken a hesitant bite of asparagus as if it would come alive and eat him instead.
Rob chewed a moment and started choking. June feared he was really choking or something until he started laughing. “No food poisoning.”
“You’re evil.” Now that she knew he hadn’t been in danger, she could laugh.
“It made you laugh though.” That it had. After that, they ate in silence.
Rob’s eating habits reminded her of her brother. It must be a military thing—head down and shovel food into your face as quickly as you can.
Liam had told her that was how it was in basic training. Hurry up and eat. A trait that he hadn’t quite broken. Sometimes he took his time but not often. No wonder Rob’s seasoning selection had been slim. He didn’t take the time to taste food.
“That was really good,” Rob said, cleaning off his face and pushing his plate away.
“Thanks. Even the non-boiled asparagus?”
“Especially the asparagus.”
“Good. The steaks are quite good.”
“Thanks.”
“Who taught you to cook?” She knew it wasn’t the military. June couldn’t picture him in that kind of role. With Special Forces, he would be on frequent deployments. Cooking wasn’t a top priority.
“My dad taught me to grill.”
“And cook?” She hadn’t had any of his cooking yet, but he had to feed himself.
“My mom, though I admit I was a terrible student. I felt I had more important things to learn than how to feed myself in the future.” He chuckled at his own joke, and June joined in.
Yes, she was sure training for combat missions took a lot more time and skill than cooking did. “I hear one can live off of MREs for a while and on base has a chow hall. So, you would have been set.”
“You do seem to know a lot about military life.”
June shrugged, not wanting to get into it.
She really should pretend to know less about military life to avoid certain questions she couldn’t answer.
Stealth and evade was her brother’s specialty, not so much hers.
“So how often do you think we should get together to train?” June loved spending time with Rob, but she didn’t want to overwhelm him if he had a pretty full schedule.
Rob’s features pinched. He knew she had purposely avoided answering his question.
She took it as an observation. “I think at least twice a week. An hour or so each session. I’m not expecting you to be Bruce Lee by any means, but comfortable should you face an opponent.
You are a quick study, so I don’t see lessons needing to take too long. ”
Well, that sucked, but at least some time was better than no time.
It would still give her a chance to get to know him better, and who knew; maybe he would want to hang out.
“Sounds good. Does the same time work for you? I don’t want to push it too much later during the week.
” As it was, it was close to eight o’clock.
She still had to drive home, shower, and manage to get sleep before getting up at six for her run.
“This time works. We’ll work out and do dinner afterward.”
“I can always bring stuff too, so it doesn’t put you out or we have to eat late.” She could do casserole dishes that just needed reheating.
“I’m not going to complain about a homecooked meal,” he remarked with a wolfish grin that made her stomach do somersaults.
“Even at the risk of food poisoning?” Not that she worried about her cooking. Rosa was an amazing cook and an even better teacher. She always said the quickest way to a man’s heart was his stomach. June hoped that was true. All of her friends loved her cooking and apparently, now Rob did too.
“If it tastes as good as this meal, I’ll take the risk.”
“Now days. I’m sure you have stuff going on the weekends. We can do Tuesday and Thursday,” she suggested. He’d said he wasn’t dating, but that didn’t mean he wanted to spend his weekend training her.
“Works for me.”
June finished eating and started to collect the plates. “I’ll take care of those,” Rob offered and took her plate from her.
“I can help.”
“You cooked; I’ll clean the dishes.” Rob collected the rest of the dishes and headed for the kitchen.
“I can help with that,” she insisted and stood up to follow him.
“June, it’s fine. I’m more than capable of cleaning a few dishes.”
“I know you are, but I feel bad just leaving them to you.”
He set the dishes down before turning to look back at her, a strange look coming over his face she couldn’t interpret. “Sure, you wash, and I’ll dry.”
At least he wasn’t dismissing her yet. “Great.”
“Thanks for staying and helping. Cleaning dishes was always my least favorite.”
“I don’t think anyone enjoys doing it.” She didn’t, which was why she put as much as she could in the dishwasher and only hand-washed pots, pans, and spatulas.
“With you and your brother, I’m sure your parents made you do them.”
June piled up the pans and dishes and got the water hot. “Yeah, but what parent doesn’t have their kid do them?”
“Did your brother help or make you do them?”
“When he was younger, yes. Liam couldn’t be bothered by the time he was a teenager. He had more important things to do by then, so he would pay me with his allowance to do them.”
“What did he do, just sit on the couch?”
June shrugged as she finished scrubbing the first pan and rinsed it off before handing it to him.
“I don’t know. Guy stuff, I guess. I never asked.
He took off and snuck back in late at night.
” June wouldn’t say Liam had been rebellious, but he liked to do his own thing.
“What?” she asked when he just stared at her with a blank look.
“You can’t honestly say you didn’t make your sister do all the dishes. ”
“She was older; she didn’t give me a choice but to do them.”
June got a visual and started laughing.
“What?”
“I can just see this older girl grabbing you by the ear and making you do them.”
“It wasn’t quite so dramatic. But Catherine was not going to allow me to shirk my duties. Unlike some siblings,” he commented, giving her a pointed look.
“It didn’t bother me. Like I said, Mom wasn’t a great cook, so the most I had to do was scrape food into the trash and let pans soak overnight to get the burnt bits off.
“No one ever took over for her or got food poisoning?”
“Not food poisoning. We’d have to eat enough of it to get sick. Mom refused to give up. So, we all put on a happy face and grunted through it. Liam was so excited when he moved out and was able to enjoy eating real food.”
“How much older is he?”
“Four years. What about your sister?”
“She’s four years older as well. She loves to act as the mother hen when she visits. My house isn’t clean enough. This and that. I love her dearly, but she can be a bit much.”
“Liam is the same way. I think he feels he has to since he took on the role of both parents, but he’s better as the overprotective brother than nurturing.
Thankfully his fiancée is more of the nurturer.
She’s the one who really encouraged me to get out of the house more and look into prosthetic legs. ”
“She sounds like a real role model.”
“She is. I don’t know where I’d be if it weren’t for her,” June said, looking away as she thought about Cora. Cora was not only an amazing person, but a great sister-in-law. June couldn’t imagine someone better for Liam.
“How long have she and your brother been together?”
“Four years.”
“Four? How much of that has been engaged?”
“Three.”
“What is he waiting for?”
June chuckled. It wasn’t the first time someone had asked her that, but it wasn’t easy. “His schedule is hard to predict, and neither are really in a rush. Well, let me rephrase. To him, there is no rush.”
“He should just pony up and take some time off and do it. Or better yet, come here and do it Vegas style.”
June chuckled at his suggestion. “Believe me, I’ve suggested it, but she wants the whole church wedding and family and friends there. They’ll get around to it eventually.”
It was hard to plan for a wedding when you didn’t know if you could get called away at a moment’s notice. No one wanted to drop a fortune for a wedding a year out, then the groom gets called on a mission the day before or worse, the day of.
Liam usually got a heads-up notice before his missions, but there were times when he had no notice and so always had a bag at the ready.
As much as she and Cora would love to see Liam retire and settle down, they knew it wasn’t in the cards. At least not for several more years unless something major happened to Liam. The man lived and breathed Delta. He wasn’t leaving it until he was kicked out or died. Hopefully, it was the former.
Cora wanted the wedding to be legally bound together.
It was the only way the military would keep her in the loop if, god forbid, anything happened to him.
But since she only planned to marry once, she wanted to do it right.
Cora refused to cheapen what was supposed to be the happiest day of her life.
“You never said where you grew up,” she stated instead of dwelling on Cora’s wedding that may or may not ever happen. That was for Cora and Liam to figure out.