“Me, too. But I also like coming up with my own variations. I use the recipes for the basics, then I build on them.”
He shook his head. “There’s little room for variation when you are fighting a war.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. But I think I want to. Tell me about yourself, Jay.”
“There’s not much to tell,” he said.
She frowned. “I’m not going to let you push it aside. I need to know what you’re really like.”
“Fine. I wake up at five-thirty even when I’m on leave and run five miles. Then I shower and eat breakfast.”
“What do you have for breakfast?” she asked, suspecting he ate the same thing every day. After all, he’d admitted he liked routine. It was just the Jay in Vegas that had been spontaneous.
“Cereal. I like it and it tastes the same wherever I am in the world.”
She wanted to ask him more questions, but he seemed lost in thought. She could almost see the gears in his mind turning as he mentally went through his routine.
“I report for duty when I’m not on leave and check my weapons and get my assignment. Depending on what my mission is I follow the parameters of that. Then, at the end of the day or mission, depending on how long it lasts, I return home.”
“What kind of assignments do you have?”
“You don’t want to know,” he said.
“Yes, I do.”
“Tell me about your day,” he said.
She narrowed her gaze on him. “You’re stubborn. More so than I am.”
“Damned straight.”
She just sat there knowing that she’d play this out to the end by not budging an inch. But then if she did and kept up the stone wall around her emotions, was he going to leave her exactly the same person she was when she arrived here? Alone and not trusting
any man.
“Fine. I wake up at four and hit the snooze button twice before I finally have to jump out of bed and hurry through my shower. Once I get to the bakery I am almost awake. I have a cup of coffee and start making the pastries we need for the morning. Staci gets there about the same time as I do and the first fifteen minutes are eerily quiet until we both wake up and then we start talking.”
“What do you talk about?”
“Anything, everything and nothing. You know? We just talk and then the day speeds by and when it’s six we close up and head home.”
“That’s a long day,” he said.
“Yes, but I like it. We’re closed on Sunday and Monday and I always wake up at four and can’t go back to sleep. It’s so frustrating.”
He chuckled, and for a moment she forgot the past and the baggage they both had. She felt as though she was on a date, and she relaxed for the first time in more than five years.
“I hate that.”
“Does it happen to you?” she asked.
He shook his head and she had to laugh. It figured. He was the kind of man who was too regimented ever to have that kind of sleeping issue. He probably ordered his body to exercise and it did it.
But he wasn’t a machine, no matter how much he mightseem so on the surface. She knew that he was a man and he wanted—no, needed—something from her. Some sign that there was more to life than what he’d known, and she was so afraid to go down this path with him.
But she wasn’t about to let herself chicken out.
Chapter Four
