He typed it in and looked up at her. “Courage?”
“It’s from the Stewart clan motto. ‘Courage Grows Stronger at the Wound.’” She glanced away. She didn’t tell him how much courage it had taken to survive the loss of her dad and brother, the mental impairment of her mother, which still hurt every week when she went to visit her.
But when she looked back at him, Jax seemed to understand.
“I’m sorry about what happened to your family,” he said.
She swallowed. “Visiting my mom is tough. It’s worse because she doesn’t know who I am.” She managed to smile. “Mom seems happy, though, in whatever world she lives in now. And the facility does a great job of taking care of her.”
He nodded. “I guess that’s something. How old were you when it happened?”
“Seventeen. I was visiting my grandmother on the night of the accident. We were always close. Gran raised me after that. She passed a few years ago.”
“I never had much of a family. My dad took off when I was ten, and my mom suffered from depression. They’re both gone now. I’m still tight with a couple of my cousins, some of my SEAL buddies.”
She felt a pang. She knew what it was like to be without family. “You and Jason seem close.”
He smiled and took a sip of his coffee. “Maddox is a good guy. Which reminds me, we need to get going. I’m meeting him and Chase at the office this morning. Since I’m not leaving you alone, you’re coming with me.”
“All right. I planned to go in anyway.”
He checked his watch. “We’ve got a few minutes before we have to leave. Let me take a look at your laptop first.”
Mindy looked over his thick-muscled shoulder to her computer screen. “So what are you looking for?”
“Not sure. What kind of records do you store in here?”
“Nothing much. I do my personal banking online at Wells Fargo, but there isn’t much in my account.”
Jax perused the files on her desktop, apparently saw nothing out of the ordinary, then went to her email.
He glanced up. “Anything personal in these? You said you hadn’t been dating for a while.” His eyes found hers, looking at her as if the answer were important.
“I don’t have a significant other, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I’m asking if anyone’s been pushing you to go out, following you, sending you unwanted emails, anything like that.”
She shook her head. “No.” She smiled. “The pizza delivery boy flirts with me when he shows up at my door, but that’s about it.”
The corner of his mouth edged up. “We’ll let him slide for the moment.”
She grinned. “Since he’s still in high school, he probably isn’t much of a threat.”
Jax chuckled and went back to work. He got her Facebook password and took a look around. She didn’t go on very often, so there wasn’t much there. Twitter wasn’t really her thing. Too time-consuming. She used Instagram, but he didn’t find anything there.
Jax went back to her email, looked in her inbox, regular emails from some of her friends, ads from Amazon, Target, L.L. Bean, places where she purchased products online. He returned to the emails.
There were messages from people she kept in touch with. Shelley Bachman was an acquaintance from high school. Kayla Hildebrand was one of the other temps at DeMarco Staffing, the agency she had been working for when she got the job at The Max.
Jax went to the sent items folder and glanced through old emails from three or four months back she hadn’t bothered to delete.
“When I worked for DeMarco, I did some bookkeeping on the side, mostly friends, people I knew. Susan DeMarco referred me to a couple of her acquaintances. A college student named Ricky Malone needed help getting his taxes done, and a guy named Ryan Shipman, whose company was barely making it financially. It saved them money and helped me make a little extra.”
Jax moved through the rest of her trash mail, then went back to her inbox when a new message pinged. Her face warmed when she read the email from her best friend, Nicki Carson. Nicki wanted her to go out on a blind date with a guy named Thomas Koenig.
Thomas has a PhD in psychology. He’s gorgeous and believe it or not, he’s got a super-hot body. Guys like him are usually wimps, but Thomas is an exception. I really think you’d like him. Say you’ll come out with Ben and me.
Jax’s dark eyes swiveled in her direction. There was something in them, not disapproval, but something else she couldn’t read. “Not a good time for you to be out dating right now.”
