Chapter 13
“You were great in there today,” Amy said as she locked up the shop. Two back-to-back clicks sounded as she turned the key. A quick glance at the space between the glass doors confirmed that the place was secure.
“You mean I make a good store clerk?” Jace asked.
She grinned. “Hey, it takes a lot to be a goodstore clerk.You’re good with people. Patient.” Amy hiked her purse onto her shoulder and dropped the keys inside. The storefront’s entry was covered by a decorative awning, the wordsNelson’s Auto Partsprinted across it. The shade it provided almost made Amy forget how bright it was outside. She squinted as they stepped onto the hot blacktop and toward Jace’s SUV.
He rested a hand at her lower back and hunched down to speak close to her ear. “I’m going to pretend that you don’t sound surprised. But as you might imagine, my job requiresunnaturalamounts of patience.”
A warm zing moved up her back at the feel of his breath close to her skin. She welcomed it. Jace was a barrier against the erosion that had eaten her up from the inside. Before Jace picked her up, fear had attacked Amy like gunfire. But Jace was like a bulletproof vest—something fear couldn’t penetrate.
He opened the passenger door for her and offered his hand as she stepped onto the high running board and into the seat.
“Thank you,” Amy mumbled with a nod. Something occurred to her then as he closed her door. The spot at his lower back. Was it a gun? And if so, how had she missed that earlier?
Amy waited until Jace was settled behind the wheel to ask him about it. “So, um…” It was more awkward than she imagined it’d be. “So, do you carry a weapon while you’re on duty?”
Jace nodded. “Yes. I’ve got two guns on me now. Does that bother you?”
Amy shook her head, but realized, with a sense of unease, that she could probably not fathom the kind of danger they faced.
Jace started up the engine with a nod. “Good. Difficult customers.”
She lifted a brow. “Huh?”
“That’s what we were talking about,” Jace said.
“Oh yeah.” Amy forced her mind to get back on track. “We have a few difficult customers, I guess you could say. Even my dad has a hard time talking to ornery Mr. Crawthorn, and he has more interest in keeping customers than anyone.” She thought back on the way Mr. Crawthorn had stormed into the shop just an hour ago, griping that he’d bought the wrong part yet again. The grouchy man was adamant that it was all Jonathon’s fault for letting him buy the incorrect parts, insisting the man should know better. And there went Jace, cracking a few jokes about mistakes he’d made overseas, and suddenly the man’s mood was flipped upside down.
“My father had a saying,” Jace said. “Used to pound it into our heads, testosterone-driven boys as we were. He’d say, ‘The best way to defuse a tense situation is with humor.’ He advised us to—when someone offended us— crack a joke about it. Even if it was making fun of ourselves. And it always worked, even with each other. Pretty sure it’s what kept us from turning into a bunch of hotheaded brawlers through high school.”
“Huh,” Amy said. “That’s neat. Itdiddefuse him. Quickly, too.” She’d always appreciated that about Jace. As strong as he’d been even in his teens, he wasn’t one to push people around like some of the other jocks.
Jace pulled onto the street toward the restaurant plaza, which was a mere four minutes away. This time they were headed to Maddie’s Subs. She’d been tempting him with the menu options since four o’clock, which had made the last two hours of their shift drag on. Amy only hoped he’d like the sandwiches as much as she did.
“So, you mentioned that you signed up for two dating sites, you only went on a couple of dates, and that your profile is inactive on both sites, right?” Jace had scratched the details onto a notepad while asking her questions at the shop. Details he seemed to have memorized by now.
“Yes,” she said. “Denver Dating and Find-a-Match.”
“And you can get me the exact date for your last match up once you look at your planner,” he mumbled. “You said you dated one guy for a while. That you liked him, but then you broke things off. How come?”
Amy’s face got hot. “We’re talking about exes now?” Jace kept his eyes fixed on the road, but his lips quirked the slightest bit.
“Strictly business,” he assured.
“Yeah, right.” She sighed, wondering if she really wanted to get into it. “His name’s Clay Ashton. I broke up with him because I felt like he was using me. He kept asking me to mention his car dealership on the show. Shoot a live segment there somehow. ‘C’mon, Average Amy tries to sell cars for a day.’” She shrugged. “We’d been dating about six months by the time I called it off.”
“What a complete idiot,” Jace grumbled. “And that was what—a year or two ago, did you say?”
Amy nodded. “A year and a half ago.”
“And since then, a few blind dates, a couple through the two sites, and then nothing for the last six months or so.”
“You have a good memory,” she said. “So let’s hear about your situation. You got pretty serious with a woman before your deployment.”
“Right,” he said. “And just before we were getting sent on... well, a mission we weren’t sure we were going to survive, I got a letter from Mindy saying that she couldn’t stay in a relationship with me. I guess, more than losingher, I felt… frustrated by thereasonI lost her. If anyone was able to stick through something like that, you’d think it’d be a woman who only ever knew me as a man who was headed overseas.”
“That makes sense,” she said.
