will be somewhere different.” His smile was crooked. “It always is.”
She could see that he was telling her the truth. But he was outside his comfort zone at the moment. She wondered why.
They went into the little café and took a booth, sitting across from each other. Coffee, he’d said, and she wasn’t hungry, but she picked up the menu and began to peruse it, just to give herself something to do besides stare at him.
“You said you’d been living in a tent lately,” she reminded him, peeking around the menu. “What was that all about?”
“I’ve been in the military,” he said shortly, looking away as though it was something he didn’t want to talk about.
“As if that wasn’t obvious,” she muttered, glancing back at the menu.
“Why?” he said.
She shrugged. “There’s a military look about you,” she said.
He frowned and she looked away again. So he didn’t like the fact that she could see his military influence. Too bad. It was only obvious and she could have said more.
She could have mentioned that he had a noticeable restlessness in him, a sort of masculine urge to gaze at the horizon and wonder what might be out there. It was the sort of thing that made most women sigh with regret. He wasn’t the sort to be tied down by anyone. It was written all over him. You fell for a man like this and you were playing with fire.
“Iced tea, please,” she asked as the waitress stood poised, pad of paper in hand.
“Coffee for me,” he said. “Black. And two pieces of cherry pie. Á la mode.”
She looked at him and held back her smile. “You must be really hungry,” she said.
“No. But I can see that you are,” he shot back. Then he grinned and that took all the sting out of it. “You’ll love the pie here,” he said. “Trust me.”
Trust him. That was just what she was having a bit of problem doing. And where did he get off telling her what the pie was like in her own little café? That did it. She’d known she should have rejected his offer from the first. The man was obviously insufferable.
But he was also right. The pie was great. She looked around the restaurant, surprised she didn’t see anyone she knew. Only the girl behind the counter seemed familiar at all. But she usually stopped by for a large cup of coffee in the morning, and the crew in the afternoon were mostly different. It was odd to be in a place that was so familiar, and yet feel like a stranger.
Odd, but not unusual for her. She hadn’t made many friends since she’d moved to the island, and the ones she did know didn’t really know much about her. She kept things to herself.
And there was a secret about her that not even most of the people closest to her knew. She’d never been in love.
She’d been in pretty heavy-duty “like” a time or two. She’d known some very nice men and she’d had relationships. She’d even been engaged once. But somehow she’d always felt a little bit apart, as though she were an observer of her own talent at romance—and marking herself down critically every time.
Her engagement had been a high point. She’d really liked Freddy. He was fun and good-natured and liked to do many of the things she liked. His family was so nice. She could just see the trajectory of the life they would have together and it followed exactly what she would have expected for herself. It all fit. Why not? Why not go ahead and marry him and hope that it would all work out?
She became obsessed with pretending that she was in love. She tried so hard. But when he hugged her, she found herself craning to see what time it was. When he told her of his life plans, she found herself daydreaming instead of throwing herself into his ambitions the way she should have. And when he kissed her, there was no sparkle.
She told herself not to be so childish. Who the heck needed sparkle? And then she realized—she did. Just a little. Was that asking too much?
When they split up, she felt nothing but relief, and since then, she’d hardly given their relationship another thought. Looking back, she knew now that there had been very little love involved on either of their parts. There had been a longing for a regular, ordinary life, but it had very little to do with any strong emotional tie between them.
She just didn’t seem to have what it took to create a loving relationship, and she’d resigned herself to concentrating on her career. Now there was something she was good at.
She had finished half her piece of pie and was trying to decide if she was going to eat the rest. It was awfully good, but the calories! She’d always been on the slender side, but that fit figure wasn’t easy to keep that way. Pushing the plate away, she looked up at Jake instead.
“So you were telling me about living in a tent,” she reminded him.
“Was I?”
“Yes. And then you got annoyed when I said I could tell you were military.” She smiled. She was nothing if not helpful.
He gave her a disbelieving glance, but he willingly picked up the thread and went on. “I’ve been deployed mostly to Southeast Asia for the last couple of years,” he filled in. “We did a lot of living off the land. Subsisting on roadkill and taro root.”
She made a face. She didn’t know whether to take him seriously or not, but the humorous glint in his eyes was a pretty big hint. “Don’t they give you guys C rations anymore?” she asked tartly.
He leaned back and looked at her through heavy lidded eyes. “Now that would be giving away the military connection from the get-go, don’t you think?” he drawled.
She narrowed her eyes, refusing to let him intimidate her. “So you were working undercover, were you?” she said, pleased with herself for making the connection.
But his eyes turned a stormy-gray. “Not lately,” he said shortly. “I was doing some time in a terrorist prison camp—as a detainee. And believe me, we were happy to get taro root. It was the fat, squishy insects that made you gag.”
She gazed at him, not sure if he was still pulling the wool over her eyes or not. He seemed awfully serious. She decided to play along, regardless. “So that was why you said you had forgotten how to live like a civilized person?”
He nodded. “I felt I needed to get back in the groove. So I decided to try out all the modern conveniences I hadn’t ever used before, all at once.” His quick grin was self-deprecating and it left as suddenly as it had appeared. “Like I thought I could get the learning curve over with faster that way. As you can see, it didn’t work very well.”
“Okay,” she told him sensibly. “So start over, only this time do one thing a day until you’ve mastered it.”
He was shaking his head. “No time,” he said. “I’ve got to learn fast. I’m going to need it all very soon.”
She smiled. “Because you rented a nice little house with appliances?”
He didn’t smile back. “No. Something more important than that.”
She waited for a moment, but he didn’t
