“As a heart attack. The very first chance I get to find tap dancing shoes, you’re on.” He stacked the hot plates on a tray and walked over.
“Do warriors dance?”
Fuck, no. “Two left feet, sorry.”
“I’ll bet I could get you to do a mean salsa.”
Jon stared. “You mean those complicated Latin American steps? No way.” He shuddered at the thought.
“You spent time in South America. You told me you spent two years.”
He shook his head, breathing in the luscious smells coming from the food. He dug in. It tasted as good as it smelled.
“Colombia, which is like a country from another galaxy. And I was undercover, trying to stay alive. Not much dancing going on.” Shooting and torturing and whoring and coke-sniffing, yeah. Dancing? Not so much.
“Come out dancing with me and you’ll be Fred Astaire in no time.” She’d found a blue tracksuit in Anna Robb’s closet that looked great on her. She was more slender than Anna Robb so it hung loosely but the color brought out the deep blue of her eyes and accentuated her pale, perfect skin.
He laughed. “I find that hard to believe, but you’re on.”
They smiled at each other, then suddenly their smiles faded. For just a moment, they’d lived in a little bubble of alternate reality, the world as it once was. But outside this beautiful home was the world as it was now. Millions dead, entire cities burned to the ground, monsters ravaging the streets.
It would be a long long time before anyone danced again.
Sophie hung her head, a stricken look on her face. A single tear welled over, tracked down her pale cheek.
Tears. Fuck no. Jon would do anything to make her feel better. Anything.
He wiped away the tear with his thumb. “What would have happened if we hadn’t met right now?”
Sophie’s face lifted. “What?”
“If we hadn’t met now but, say, a year ago. What would have happened? Because, you know, we’ve got something going here.” He waved a finger between them, then heaped her plate with slow-cooked peppers, roast lamb and warm corn bread. “So given that there’s…chemistry—" which was a mild word for what he was feeling. “Given that, how do you think it would have played out? You’d take me dancing, okay. Maybe I’d take you target shooting. And then?”
She sniffed, gave a soggy half laugh. “You’d take metarget shooting? Is that your idea of showing a girl a good time?”
He had no idea. He’d never had a real relationship, never courted a woman, never even thought of it. He had fuck buddies and even they were occasional. He tended to disappear in and out of women’s lives. Nobody missed him when he was gone and it was mutual. Easier that way. Safer.
“Well, since it’s a mind exercise, let’s suppose I wasn’t in black ops, I was in something else. Something like?—”
His mind pulled a blank.
Sophie cocked her head, looked at him carefully. “What were you good at in college?”
This wasexactlythe point where Jon started lying. He’d invent some bullshit about what a great time he’d had in college, how he’d played football and scraped by with gentleman’s Cs. He’d spin funny stories about what he’d done and he’d be perfectly plausible and he’d remember every single word he told her, just as he remembered every single word of every single bullshit story he’d told every woman.
But Sophie was different. Those beautiful eyes were sharp, intelligent and kind. It was the fucking end of the fucking world. He didn’t have to keep anyone’s secrets anymore. Not Uncle Sam’s, not Ghost Ops’s, not even his own.
He could—and he felt a sharp thump of shock in his heart—he could tell her the truth. Be himself.
“I didn’t go to college,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes. “I went straight into the military where it was discovered that I have an aptitude for combat and for undercover work. By that I mean I have an aptitude for lying. I don’t like saying this but it’s true. But I swear to you, right here, Sophie, that I will never lie to you. And you are the first person since I was 9 years old I have been able to say that to.”
She reached over, held his hand tightly.
“Going into the military made a lot of sense for you. It became your surrogate family.”
Jon nodded, throat tight.
“But…besides shooting and fighting and lying, what else were you good at?”
