“Rylee Rose, that’s pretty. I’ve never seen your whole name written out. Rose, I heard that name recently.”
“From me. The nurse who gave me the blue sticky note that got me to the new neurologist's office is Rose.”
“Serendipity,” Neesa leaned forward. “Also, not the only alignment of fates that’s happened in the last few days.”
“This is the tea?” Rylee took a sip from her mug. “Spill.”
“Benny Burnett is with the Secret Service.”
“Our cemented-for-all-time Benny? Get out. Are you sure?”
“He’s Jasper’s colleague. And when I picked up the phone in the Metro and put it on speaker?”
Rylee stopped breathing. “Yeah?”
“That was Jasper on the line.”
“Oh my god, Neesa. Argh, that just hurts my nerves. That’s racing through my entire body like a sizzle. That’s insane.”
“I know, right?”
As the sensation faded, Rylee thought about the shifter romance she’d just finished and the wonderful sense of certainty that came when characters were fated. Oh, to know you were with the right person at the right time and that all the world aligned to allow it. “So when do you and Jasper get married?” Rylee grinned. “I mean, that’s the next step in this story, right?”
Neesa rolled her lips in as if trying to contain her joy. “Jasper called to make sure I got home okay last night. He said he was sorry that things turned out the way they did. He’s taking me out for lunch today, and he stressed just the two of us.”
“There you go. Lunch. See? That’s serious.”
And maybe this was alltooromantic andtooclose to the fantasy fed to women from birth. From childhood books and adult romances, women learned that love was a quest filled with dragons and magic. Only once they found their prince could a woman start her happily ever after.
And yet, that was not the lived experience of any woman that Rylee knew.
“Listen, Neesa, you’re lonely for male companionship that’s meaningful and not ... not what either of us has been dealing with lately. We talk about how low the bar has been set on the dating circuit. I think a little bit of caution is important here. I can see you’re walking on a cloud over Jasper. And that’s a great feeling, but the Secret Service has a reputation for not following the rules of monogamy. And that is your deal breaker, right? I mean, they look squeaky clean but—”
“But what?” Worry darkened Neesa’s eyes.
“They’re in the news every few years for doing scandalous things on foreign soil. Back when I was with the Navy, I remember they had a whole prostitution scandal. About a dozen Secret Service men, many of them married, paid prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, when Obama was down there for somesummit. And most of those men lost their jobs because their behavior was so egregious and brought so much scrutiny and shame to the Secret Service.”
“Obama was a while ago. Institutions can retrain and make things better,” Neesa whispered.
“Off the top of my head, I remember reading about them drunk in hotels in Amsterdam, drunk driving and hitting the barricade at the White House, Pence’s security was suspended for meeting up with a prostitute at a Maryland hotel.”
“Maybe he wasn’t in a relationship,” Neesa countered. “I don’t think sex work is criminal.”
“But he was security for the Vice President. Breaking the law like that could easily compromise the guy. He could be fired. He could be outed to his wife. Can you imagine what a foreign government could do? ‘So we just need you to tell us X or do Y.’ Neesa, I’m just suggesting you exercise caution. They have a culture of recurring misconduct that includes alcohol and inappropriate relationships with women. You can’t think that their shiny badge makes them shiny people. I’m asking you to tread carefully and not ignore red flags.”
“But those are special agents that are on close protection duty, right?” Neesa’s brows pulled lines across her forehead. “Does that extend to counterfeiting?”
“I don’t know. I’ve just read about their douchey behavior, and if that’s what the bro club is about, it’s not for me. They do hard things, but their behavior isn’t what I want in my life.”
“You seem to be keeping a list.”
“I guess they stick with me because it’s so antithetical to what I expect, you know? It’s like the SEALs acting shitty. It’s so unexpected. And sad. I’d never date a SEAL.”
“Just SEALs?” Neesa asked. “Or are others in the group?”
“Other special operations forces? I don’t know. SEALs are the only ones I’ve heard about in the news. You said that like a leading question. Why?” Rylee asked.
“Oh, Jasper and the guy who handles the dog, Dakota, were with the Navy doing a thing I’ve never heard of before, saltwater combat crew?”
