“His girlfriend!” Laura screeched loud enough to have Ham jumping down from the couch and picking a quieter place to nap in the back bedroom.

“I know.” Tia let out a long, low breath that was the Tia equivalent of Laura’s total screaming freak out.

“So what did you say?”

“Oh.” Tia squinted her eyes and dug into her pad thai. “I guess I didn’t really say anything. I just kissed him.”

Laura put a hand over her heart and sighed heavily. “Ahhhhhh. Young love.” She dug into her own noodles. “Now tell me the part about Owen walking in on you and Eli banging each other’s brains out.”

Tia rolled her eyes. “We weren’t banging. We were just kissing.”

“Well. In my version you were banging.”

Tia rolled her eyes again and fell quiet, pushing her food around. “I think I’m gonna bring him to meet Mom and Dad.”

Laura’s eyes went wide. “Really? You think he can handle it?”

Tia thought of Eli’s wide, creased smile. Of his confidence, his kindness. “Yeah. I do. And at this point, it feels weird having a boyfriend who Mom and Dad haven’t even met. Even if, you know, they’re not all there.”

“Yeah. I can see that.” Laura frowned. “Does it make me a bad person that I don’t want Jace to meet them yet?”

“No. Not at all. I think in some ways being a doctor makes me less sensitive to it. You don’t have to push yourself to do something you’re not comfortable with.” Laura was still frowning so Tia decided to steer the conversation toward calmer waters. “So, how are you doing with Jace? With all the stuff you were worried about?”

“You mean the football star, girls, girls, girls thing?”

Tia’s stomach tightened. “Yeah. I mean, what’s it like to really be with him? Publicly?”

Jace had done an interview a few weeks ago where he’d named Laura as his girlfriend. And ever since then, Laura had had her face in a few tabloids, on a few gossip sites.

Laura shrugged. “It’s been alright. Every once in a while we’ll get some member of the paparazzi taking pictures of us. And sometimes girls will want selfies with him and they’ll pretty much shoot daggers at me while they do it. But besides that, it’s alright.”

“And you’re not worried about him with other girls?”

Laura took a deep breath. “I mean the worst, lowest part of me is. But I had a thought the other day. It’s the same part of me that worries that you’ll get hit by a bus. Or that Ham will get a deer tick and keel over and die. It’s the part of me that’s waiting for something bad to happen. And I can’t live like that. I’d rather really let this thing with Jace take off before I crash the plane. You know?”

Tia nodded, her mind whirring and her heart heavy.

“But I’m not gonna pretend it’s always easy,” Laura continued. “Girls hang all over him. And I know his teammates drag him to parties.”

“Yeah. I really wouldn’t like that either.”

“Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Just wait for what it feels like once you’ve slept together. Then your inner crazy really rears its ugly head.”

“Oh,” Tia said, unable to hide her peachy blush, or the truth, for that matter. “We slept together last weekend.”

“WHAT?” Laura screeched and somewhere in the apartment, Ham’s collar jingled as he moved even farther away from the kitchen. “And you didn’t tell me?!”

“I’m telling you right now!” Tia took her fingers out of her ears.

“Oh my good god. Start from the beginning. Spare no details. I want every. Single. Bead. Of. Sweat. Described. You hear me? Everything.”

Tia raised her eyebrows at her sister and pursed her lips. She took a long, exaggerated bite of noodles.

“Fine!” Laura threw her hands in the air. “Tell me however little you want about it. Just tell me something.”

Tia swallowed. “Well. We went out to this fancy dinner because he’d gotten the all clear to start PT. And, I don’t know, everything was so charged right from the beginning. Every word had innuendo, every touch was like off the charts. For a minute I thought we were just gonna haul off and do it in a parking lot.” Laura interrupted the story with a heady sigh that Tia staunchly ignored. “But we finally got home. At first I thought I ruined it. Because I jumped him out of nowhere and made everything go way too fast. And then I asked him to leave.”

“Tia.” Laura face palmed.

“I know. But he didn’t leave. And he did this kind of magic trick thing.”

“He pulled a bunny out of a hat?” Laura guessed wryly.

“No. I mean he was talking to me and sort of undressing me and suddenly I went from being tense, tight, ashamed, humiliated to just sort of … melting for him.”

“He seduced you.”

Tia cocked her head to the side, considered the turn of phrase. “I guess I hadn’t really thought about it that way.”

“Did he use sexy words and sexy actions to make you go from not wanting to have sex to wanting to climb him like a Christmas tree?”

“Pretty much.”

“Then, yeah. He seduced you.”

Tia frowned down at her food, took a quick swig of her cheap beer. “Do you think that cheapens it? What happened next?”

“What?” Laura’s eyes widened. “Not at all! Being seduced by someone you’re into is the best. And he was doing it to make you comfortable. To change your energy from frantic sex spaz to languid sex goddess. Right?”

Tia considered. “Whatever it was, it felt incredible. It was like he used a key to unlock this place that had never been opened before. He was so sexy and then I was doing sexy stuff and everything just got so damn…sexy.”

Tia rolled her eyes at herself. A week later and she still couldn’t talk about it without stumbling over her words. The man had good and truly scrambled her brains.

“And…” Laura prompted.

“And then we had the most incredible sex of my life. It was sex that could have been in the sex Olympics. And everything else I’d ever done had barely gotten out of the sandbox.”

“Wow. What’s he like in bed? Aggressive?”

Tia blushed deeper. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. Laura was literally the only person on earth she’d ever talk to about this stuff. “Um, yes and no. He certainly took charge. But mostly he’s just so, I don’t know, fluid, smooth, powerful. He’s like a jungle cat. It’s hard to explain, but you just get the impression that he’s exactly where he wants to be. He’ll try anything. He’s got zero fear of failure or rejection. It’s exhilarating.”

“Wow. Double wow.” Laura twirled a noodle around her fork. “Sleeping with Jace is like sleeping with a great white shark.”

“What?!”

“Yeah, he’s got this cold, ruthless hunter thing going on. There’s no fighting it.” Laura gave an exaggerated shiver as she reached for her beer.

Tia couldn’t help but laugh at the two of them. “You think guys have conversations like this too?”             

***

“You asked her to be your girlfriend?” Jay’s eyebrows shut up into his hairline as he exchanged incredulous looks with Marcus. “I’m sorry. I must have misheard you. Gone deaf in one ear. I thought I just heard you say you asked her to be your girlfriend.”

The three of them sat around Eli’s kitchen table, eating burgers. “You can be a real dick, you know that?” But there was no heat in Eli’s words. He was too happy to be angry.

“Eli,” Marcus cut in. “It’s a big deal, man. You’ve never had a girlfriend before.”

Eli shrugged. He didn’t particularly like thinking about that. At 34, he didn’t really think never having had a girlfriend was something to be super proud of. “Well, I’m good at pretty much everything I try. So I figure I’ll be good at this too.” He slapped a smug smile on his face to hide his anxiety that he might turn out to not be good at it.

He didn’t fool Jay or Marcus.              

“It’s not rocket science,” Jay said, biting into his veggie burger. He hadn’t dated much since the hurricane, but he’d been known to commit to a girl here and there in the past.

“Sure. How’s Kat?” Eli was eager to change the topic off of his love life.

“Good.” Jay dropped his eyes right away and fiddled with his salad. Now it was Eli and Marcus who were exchanging looks.

“Dude.” Eli furrowed his brows at Jay. “What’s up?”

Jay carded a hand through his dirty blonde hair and sat back in his chair. “Nothing. It’s really nothing. I just—I think she’s dating somebody.”

Eli and Marcus burst out laughing.

“What?” Jay demanded, looking back and forth between them.

“Your face looked like you were about to tell us she’d contracted leprosy or something. Dating? That’s good news, dude.” Marcus clapped a hand on Jay’s back.

“Yeah. Well. Even if it is. It still feels kind of weird. I want her to date and be happy. But I don’t think she and my dad are even fully divorced.”

“I think not seeing your spouse once in the 20 years since he abandoned you and your son qualifies you for a free pass on the legalities,” Eli said darkly. Jay may have moved on from the sting of his father’s abandonment. But that didn’t mean that Eli and Marcus couldn’t hold a grudge over it.

“God.” Jay leaned back in his chair and gazed out the window. “Has it really been 20 years?”

“He left when we were fourteen,” Marcus said.

“Same year my mom died.”

Jay clapped a hand on Eli’s shoulder. “That was a bad fuckin’ year.”

“We got through it,” Eli said. “And so should your mom. You don’t think she’s been holding out for him all these years?”

“No,” Jay shook his head. “No, I know that she wasn’t keeping a light on for him or anything. And god knows I would have had to shake some sense into her if she had. But she just, I don’t know, never dated.”

“Yeah. That never made sense to me,” Marcus spoke up. “I mean, look at all the facts. One, Kat is hot as hell. Two, she’s still young and charismatic. Three, you’ve been out of the house for more than a decade. Four, she’s hot as hell. So why hasn’t she been dating?”

Jay’s mouth pulled into a thin line as he sucked his teeth. “Say my mother is hot one more time. See what happens.”

“What?” Marcus raised his hands in mock confusion. “I believe I’ve made myself clear on my feelings on numerous occasions. Including all those times I proposed. Not my fault she wouldn’t let me make an honest woman out of her.”

It was true. From age six to eight, Marcus only had eyes for Kat Brady.

“What makes you think she’s dating someone now?” Eli asked.

“Well, lots of things. She’s always texting these days. And there was a man’s sweater tossed over her couch when I visited the other day. And, honestly, she seems happier.” He picked up a fry off Eli’s plate and then dropped it. “You know, the dating thing doesn’t bother me at all. It’s the fact that she hasn’t told me yet.”

“I get that,” Eli said. “If my dad started dating out of the blue and didn’t tell me, I’d feel weird.” Eli considered. “But I wish he’d meet someone. I hate thinking of him even lonelier than he has to be.”

Marcus’s phone buzzed and he pulled it from his pocket, squinting down. “Hold on. Sorry. I gotta take this.” He rose from the table. “Marinos. Oh. You’re kidding. Holy shit.” He sunk down into his chair, his eyes racing with something like a thrill. “When? Uh huh. Makes sense. I can be there in twenty minutes. Alright.”

Marcus shoved his phone in his pocket and a few more fries in his mouth. “Gotta go. Duty calls.”

“Any chance you’re gonna tell us what that was all about?” Jay called after him.

“Not unless you want me to go to jail for disseminating classified information.”

Eli leaned back in his chair. He’d never gotten totally comfortable with Marcus’s job as an FBI agent. Not because Marcus wasn’t competent. Just because sometimes it seemed as bad as being in the military. The number of scrapes Marcus had just barely made it through should have given him PTSD by now. But for as sensitive as he was in so many ways, the man was also a machine in so many other ways. “You’ll be safe?”

Marcus paused next to Eli before leaning down and giving him a gusty kiss on the cheek, making Jay and Eli laugh. “Always,” Marcus said. “Thanks, Mom.”

“You gotta admit,” Jay said, polishing off the rest of his veggie burger. “He does have the coolest job of the three of us.”

“I’m a professional quarterback and you’re saving the world,” Eli said, referencing Jay’s job at a small nonprofit that focused on climate change. “I think all three of us are doing alright.”

***

Three hours later, Marcus was a hundred miles away from Eli and Jay, and he was crouching in between a dumpster and a brick wall. He was, after four years of investigating, finally close enough to Sandino to see the stubble on the guy’s chin. Not that Sandino knew that.

Marcus was invisible in the shadow where he hid, even conscious of the glint of moonlight off the barrel of his gun. He eyed Enzo Sandino, looking for all the world like a hawk circling prey. Marcus had been waiting for a year and a half for the mobster to have the balls to come back to the United States. When his informant had called him over dinner to say that there was word on the street that Sandino had touched down that morning, Marcus was off like a shot.

He was off too fast, actually. And he knew he was going to get his ass chewed out by his boss. Not to mention what Erica, his partner, would do to him. She was going to be absolutely livid that he’d come here to get eyes on Sandino without her. And without his bulletproof vest.

But Marcus couldn’t find it in him to care at this point. Not as Sandino’s cigarette burned orange and close, illuminating his face with each drag. He watched the man toss down the ashed butt and stub it out. Part of Marcus wanted so badly just to stand up, taze the shit out of this asshole and bring him in. But he knew better. He knew how many guys Sandino had behind the steel door he’d just slid through. Marcus knew that stupid shit like that would turn him into a dead man.

So he settled for slipping out of the alleyway as quietly as he’d slipped in. He pulled his wide brim snapback low over his face and his hoodie over that. He jammed his hands in the pockets of his ratty jeans as he stalked through the streets toward his car, ten blocks over. He looked for all the world like any guy in this part of town. He’d never be remembered. And that’s the way he liked it. That’s what he’d trained for.

The night was one of those freezing, early spring rains. But as Marcus slid into his front seat and tossed the hat onto the passenger seat, he couldn’t bring himself to care about the icy water down his back.

He had eyes on Enzo Sandino. Stateside. Let the games begin.