“Is there a man in your life?” He’d been wondering this since the night of Elena’s party. “You’re too smart and beautiful to besingle.”
Mia gave a little shake of her head, dismissing his compliment. “If we were in Iraq right now, I’d say you were looking through deploymentgoggles.”
“Deploymentgoggles?”
The server appeared with their drinks, interrupting the conversation. “Here you go. Have you decided what you’d like toorder?”
Joaquin went for the tamales with tomatillosalsa.
Mia ordered a smothered burrito. “Lots of chile verde, please. I heard a rumor that it is delicioushere.”
“The rumor is true. You’re going to love it.” The server took their menus and hurriedaway.
Joaquin picked up where he and Mia had left off. “Deploymentgoggles?”
“They’re like beer goggles, except they’re deployment goggles,” Mia explained. “You’ve been deployed for a while. There aren’t many women around. Suddenly the women you’d never find attractive otherwise start lookinggood.”
Joaquin understood—and he didn’t like it. He wouldn’t have ignored Mia anywhere. Did she think he was just saying this, that he didn’t mean it? Did she not know how beautiful shewas?
He looked into her eyes. “I hate to disappoint you,amiga,but there’s nothing clouding myvision.”
She broke eye contact, a tide of pink rising in her cheeksagain.
“Are you going to answer my question—or do I have toguess?”
“I just haven’t found the right man yet. Then again, I haven’t really been looking. My CO said I intimidate men. He told me that I come across as cold and unfeminine. Not that I asked him for his opinion, mind you.” She took a sip of her drink, her eyes going wide at her first taste. “Oh, this isgood.”
Joaquin could understand people misjudging Mia as cold, but to say she was unfeminine… That wasloco. What kind of CO talked to his female soldiers like that anyway? “These men you intimidate—how insecure they must be. I’m surprised they have the courage to get out of bed and put on a uniform. As for your CO, he sounds like apendejo—a realasshole.”
“Oh, you have noidea.”
* * *
Mia dabbedher lips with her napkin and set it next to her almost empty plate. “I can’t eat another bite. This wasincredible.”
Joaquin had finished his meal. “Like I said—the best chile verde inDenver.”
She took the last sip of her drink, the bite of tequila and salt mixing with the tart taste of lime and grapefruit. “Thanks for this. It was nice to forget about this mess with Andy for awhile.”
Not that she’d truly forgotten. Worry had niggled at her throughout the meal, but good food, alcohol, and very good-looking company had blunted it. Now it was back in full force, the uncertainty of so many unknowns gnawing ather.
Joaquin leaned forward, looked into her eyes, took her hand. “They’ll get to the bottom of this. Wu is a good cop. Darcangelo and Hunter trust him, and that’s good enough for me. You’ll get through this,Mia.”
“Thanks.” Mia wasn’t sure how she’d managed to say even that much, Joaquin’s touch and the empathy in his eyes making it hard tothink.
She knew she should pull her hand away. She didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. Instead, she let her fingers mingle with his, the contact intoxicating, her skin seeming to tingle. She could see in his eyes that he felt it, too, their irises almost black, his pupils dilated. Then his thumb traced a circle on her palm andanother.
She tried to act like nothing earthshaking was happening. “How do you know so manycops?”
“I met Darcangelo through Tessa—a former I-Team reporter. They met when she was investigating sex trafficking in Denver. Hunter married Sophie, who’s still on the I-Team. They were sweethearts in high school. She got him released from prison. Those two guys—they saved a lot of lives when terrorists took over the Palace Hotel. Without them, we would probably all have beenkilled.”
Joaquin’s words flowed over her—except for that last part. It stuck, jolting her back. Mia stared at him. “The Palace Hotel? You werethere?”
Everyone in the country knew about that. Narco-terrorists had turned the historic hotel into a combat zone, killing a handful of security guards and taking everyone at the hotel hostage in an effort to free one of their own from Supermax. They’d packed the basement with enough explosives to bring down the building and had threatened to kill every man, woman, and child unless their demands were met. The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team had managed to defuse the bomb, kill the terrorists, and free thehostages.
“Yeah, I was there.” Joaquin’s jaw went tight, his expression turning hard, shadows in hiseyes.
Mia knew that look. She’d seen those same shadows in the eyes of young soldiers after shelling and IED attacks. She held his hand a little tighter. “I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re okay. I hope all of your friends made it outsafely.”