“Your guns get their own bedroom. That’s cute.”
“Most of my firearms are locked up at the Cobra facility. This is for tactical gear, body armor, and personal firearms—concealed carry pieces, mostly.”
“Concealed carry?” She looked him up and down. “Are you armed now?”
“Yes.” He raised his shirt to show her the holster tucked into his trousers.
“Good to know.”
The third bedroom was his home office and locked.
“This is where the state secrets are kept?”
There was something in there he wanted her to see. “I’ll show you.”
He entered the combination code, flicked on the light, and led her inside. He took the small album of photos off the shelf and handed it to her.
She looked up at him, curiosity on her face, then opened it. “Oh, God.”
Derek and Jimmy smiled out from the photo, both wearing ACUs, a soccer ball in Jimmy’s hand, a group of young Afghan boys around them. “He took a lot of photos. Sometimes he’d hand the camera to me. I wasn’t very good.”
Jenna sat, turned through the pages, smiling through her tears at the photos. Derek and Jimmy playing soccer with village boys. Jimmy sitting on the hood of a Humvee, M4 in hand. Derek sitting shirtless in the shade at some forward operating base, cleaning sand out of his weapon, a long beard on his face.
“I miss him so much. I remember the moment the reporter told me he’d been killed in action. It was like losing my entire world. I felt so alone.”
The despair in her voice opened up the pain inside Derek, his grief still sharp if he let himself think about it.
“It crushed me. It almost broke me.” Derek had never admitted this to anyone, but then Jenna wasn’t just anyone. He’d never felt more connected with another person, more intimate, more comfortable, than he did with Jenna. “I’ve spent a lot of days since then wishing thatIhad taken those rounds, not your brother.”
Jenna set the photo album aside, stood, wrapped her arms around him. “My brother wouldn’t want you to feel that way. You were his best friend. He loved you, Derek. I have to believe that he saved you so you could save me.”
Some part of Derek wanted to reject that idea. He didn’t believe in God. He didn’t believe in fate. Even so, something about her words felt right. They slid inside him, took hold, warming the cold, desolate emptiness that was his soul.
He made love to Jenna after that, peeling off her clothes, spreading her out on his bed, and going down on her before driving himself home inside her. Then he held her, his head and heart full of her—her taste, her scent, the feel of her in his arms.
He didn’t know if Jimmy could hear him, but he sent a thought winging skyward anyway.
I’ve got her, buddy. I’ll watch over her.
* * *
Jenna wokethe next morning to find Derek getting ready for work. She watched him button his white dress shirt and put on a gray silk tie.
When he saw she was awake, he walked over to her and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes.” No nightmares. “You’ve got physical therapy today, right?”
He scowled. “Don’t remind me. Cobra is hosting its official holiday party tomorrow night. I completely forgot about it. I want to take you as my date and introduce you around.”
“Ooh. A date.” She sat up, holding the sheet to her bare breasts.
“It’s a black-tie thing.”
“I don’t have anything to wear.” Her belongings wouldn’t be arriving until tomorrow, but she didn’t own any fancy dresses anyway. “Is there a mall around here?”
“I don’t want you going out unescorted, not with all the press surrounding your father. That’s my official advice as your former bodyguard.”
Jenna knew that a small cadre of reporters had been hanging out on the sidewalk out front, waiting to interview Derek. “I could call a cab.”