Even through his orgasm, Tobias noticed that something had shifted with Carolyn. He waited for her to explain, but she fell asleep as soon as they crawled into her bed. He knew he wouldn't be able to focus on conversation while she was naked next to him, so the next morning he took her to the Milky Way for breakfast.

The Milky Way Ice Cream Parlor was not only famous for the "galaxy's best ice cream sundae," but for their banana walnut pancakes. It was a sunny place with a wall-size mural of cheerful cows wandering through a cartoonish galaxy. With its daffodil-yellow curtains and bright cutouts of animated ice cream cones and talking pancakes, Tobias felt as if he was sitting in a children's book.

"Have you ever noticed that pancakes solve most problems?" he asked as they scanned the menu.

"It is a universally accepted truth. I'll have the strawberry short stack," she told the waitress.

He ordered a full plate of buttermilk pecan pancakes with a double order of bacon. "And two coffees, as soon as you can."

"Any word from Will about the piece you remembered, about your dad's last mission?" Carolyn asked after the waitress had left.

"Yeah, he's working on locating the other soldiers who were there that day. Especially the one who got killed. There's a possibility that an angry family member blamed him and wanted revenge."

"That's a workable theory." The coffee arrived, steaming hot. She clinked her mug against his. "To the morning after."

"And the night after that."

They both smiled, and sipped from their mugs. Everything seemed fine on the surface, but he knew something was off. He felt it, and he always relied on his gut instincts, at least in war. And as Aiden had said, love was even harder than war.

So much harder that he didn't even know what to say.

Instead, he asked about something else that he'd been wondering about. "That little crescent scar on your cheek. Where did that come from?"

"Oh." Her gaze slid away from his. "That was a long time ago."

"From the compound?"

She nodded with a rueful expression. She'd twisted her ash-blond hair into a low knot and stuck a pencil through it. In her scoop-necked pink t-shirt, face freshly washed, she looked much younger than her age. She didn't look like either a professor or an expert in martial arts. She looked vulnerable and fragile. He had to consciously tell himself that wasn't the case. Carolyn was so much tougher than she appeared. "You don't go through militia training, even the kid version, without a few scars."

"There's one on your hip, too."

"Yes. Sharp eyes."

"What else?"

"Oh, just a few psychic scars, nothing too serious," she said lightly. "Nothing that prevents me from screwing your brains out on a nightly basis."

"Yeah, I've…uh…noticed. And I appreciate that." Even though he maintained their light tone, his gut grew a knot. Something was definitely wrong here.

Their pancakes arrived. He watched her pour syrup over hers, trying to pin down his uneasiness into an actual question.

Before he could, she spoke. "It's such a relief to know that we're on the same page with this thing. The non-marriage page."

"What page now?" The shift in topic disoriented him. Why were they talking about marriage? Or non-marriage?

"My independence is very important to me." She passed him the syrup. He focused on saturating his pancakes until Carolyn's eyes widened.

"Sweet tooth, remember?"

"I'm impressed. And horrified."

He grinned, then took a syrupy bite, which gave him time to figure out how to respond to her comments about marriage. Keep it light, he decided. The way she was.

"Have to admit, I never pictured my name on a marriage license either."

She didn't look very surprised by that. "What a shocker. Why not?"

He wasn't sure what to make of that comment. "I always figured I'd be the cool uncle. Will's the oldest, and he did a kick-ass job raising Aiden. He already has the drill down, whenever he and Merry decide it's time. Ben was all ready to have a baby with Julie, way back in the day. As soon as he gets over this party phase, he'll make a great dad. Aiden's a lot like Ben. That's why we were so worried about ‘the golden goddess.’ Aiden is the kind who would turn his life upside down for a woman."

"And you're not, clearly?" Her blue eyes caught his briefly over the edge of her mug, then looked away.

He dug into his crispy bacon. He'd never considered himself to be the type who would be turned inside out by a woman. But maybe things were changing. "I've been told by several women that I'm not marriage material. I didn't disagree."

A funny smile spread across her delicate features. She ripped open a sugar packet and poured it into the puddle of maple syrup. Using the tines of her fork, she pushed the sugar crystals this way and that, as if they were tea leaves.

"Maybe that's a good thing," she said.

"How do you figure?"

"Oh, the marriages I've seen," she quipped. "I could tell you some horror stories from the Light Keepers. Getting married, for a woman, is basically signing away your right to make decisions for yourself. It's agreeing to always obey, always defer. Basically, it would never suit me.”

“That’s your example? The Light Keepers?”

Her smile dropped away. “Not only them, no. My biggest fear is being like my father and stepmother. My father changed so much after he married Lilith. He wanted to be what she needed, what she wanted. We moved to the Light Keepers because she wanted that kind of lifestyle. I watched it happen and I just wanted to scream, ‘where are you, Dad, who are you’? But nothing I said mattered, and…”

She went silent, while he waited patiently for more. But she shook off the seriousness of the moment with a shrug.

“I guess I'm not marriage material either. We’re more alike than it seems, the art history prof and the soldier."

She clicked her coffee mug against his again.

This time it didn't feel so amusing. If she wasn't marriage material, and he wasn't marriage material, that took marriage off the table. Which was…fine, right? Marriage had never been on his radar.

But still, it didn't sit right. A guy could change. With the right inspiration. But she didn't seem to want him to. And that…well, that kind of hurt. It was all coming clear now.

She wasn't interested in anything beyond sex.

A little rattled by that revelation, he gestured toward the maple syrup on her plate. "Guess we have a sweet tooth in common too. How many packets of sugar did you add to your maple syrup?"

She laughed and drew her finger through the syrup. "It's the stress. When I think about the Light Keepers, I go for the sweet stuff."

He tracked her tongue as she curled it around the tip of her finger. "Next time I'll dip my cock in maple syrup."

She nearly choked, her face turning pink, her pupils dilating. Aroused. "You really are crazy."

"The crazier, the better, right?" But he felt his heart contracting, withdrawing back behind his usual fierce facade. He'd pegged this right. She didn't want him. Not really. Just his hard cock—to be brutally frank about it.

The question now—was he okay with that?

* * *

The day after their breakfast at the Milky Way, Carolyn stopped by the News-Gazette, where she found Merry tearing her hair out over an upcoming story about the new director of the observatory. "It's like he speaks another language. No one is going to understand this interview. I need a star geek translator!"

"This town is full of star geeks, isn't it?"

"Yes, but my deadline is tonight. Never mind. You're right. You're brilliant. This town is full of star geeks who will understand exactly what he's talking about. All I have to do is get the spelling right." Pleased, she sat back in her chair and stuck a pencil in her dark halo of curls. "So what's up? You solved my problem, now let me solve yours."

"It's…well, it's Tobias."

"Ah. Boy trouble. Not just boy trouble, Knight boy trouble. My specialty." She rubbed her hands together in glee. "I know he's a handful, but don't despair. His brothers say they've never seen him behave like this with another woman. They think he's a smitten kitten."

She bit her lip. "Smitten? No, I don’t think it’s like that. We’re just two grown-ups enjoying ourselves.”

Merry lifted one eyebrow. “I see.”

Carolyn’s gaze strayed to the sparkling engagement ring on her finger. “Neither of us is the marrying kind.”

“I didn't think I was either,” said Merry. “I was just fine on my own. Then I fell for Will. I guess I should say that I finally admitted I’d fallen for him. Anyway, this isn’t about me. It’s about you and Tobias. What do you mean, you’re not the marrying kind?”

“Well, doesn’t it scare you to think of losing your independence?”

Merry tilted her head, a dreamy look in her amber-brown eyes.

But before she could answer, Carolyn added, “Not that we’re talking about marriage, anyway. Neither of us wants to get married."

Merry frowned. "Is that really what Tobias says?"

"Well, not exactly. He said women have told him he wasn't marriage material."

"Whoever that was didn't know what they were talking about. Tobias just needs the right person." Her phone rang. "Sorry, I have to take this. It’s my brother Chase. He came to visit and Ben totally claimed him as his laborer repainting lines on the tarmac. I have to make sure he isn’t traumatized. But Caro, don't write Tobias off like that. Promise me."

She was already into her phone call when Carolyn left, more confused than ever.

The topic of marriage didn’t come up again after that conversation in the Milky Way. And Tobias seemed…different. Some of his fire was gone, as if his heart wasn’t quite in it anymore. It shouldn’t matter, if they were going to just stick to sex. But somehow, it did. She wished they’d never even talked about marriage. Had that conversation ruined things between them?

She threw herself into making love to him. Again and again, until they both dropped to sleep, exhausted but not quite…satisfied.

After too few hours of sleep, her door bell buzzed.

It seemed so out of place that for a moment she didn't realize what it was. Then she sat up, holding her sheet against her chest. "That's the doorbell," she said blankly. "Someone's at the door. What time is it?"

Tobias reached for his phone and squinted to check the time. "Six-thirty?"

"At night?"

"No, morning. It's the morning, sweetheart. Did I fuck your sense of time right out of you?"

She rubbed her eyes, truly shocked that she'd lost track of time through an entire night. "Did we sleep?"

"Yup. Here and there." He ran his hand along her spine. "Want me to get it?"

"What? No, no, that's okay. That might confuse people. Hang on."

She scrambled out of bed and pulled on her pajamas and a bathrobe. She smoothed her hair with her fingers as best she could, then hurried to the door. The buzzer was ringing again as she peered through the fisheye peephole.

Agent Maia Turner. From the FBI. The FBI was on her doorstep at six-thirty in the morning.

A shaft of fear shot through her. Her family? The compound? Something terrible? Why else would they be here at such a crazy time?

"Tobias," she called weakly. "Can you come here?"

In no time, he was at her side, in the midst of pulling his t-shirt over his head. In sweat pants and bare feet, he looked mouthwatering, despite the hard alertness in his expression. He looked battle-ready, as if he could pull out a gun at any moment.

"It's the FBI," she whispered. "The same agents I talked to at Evergreen."

He nodded and put a steady hand on her shoulder. "I'm right here, babe. Whatever you need. Go ahead and open it."

Her heart pounding with fear, she undid the deadbolt and opened the door.

"Happy New Year. Sorry to bother you so early," Agent Turner said. Despite the early hour, she looked as polished and competent as ever.

"We tried calling but you didn't answer your phone." Agent Jackson's gaze slid to Tobias, who stared back with an impassive expression.

"Can we come in?" Turner asked.

"Did something…is anyone…"

"No one's hurt," she said quickly. "But there's a situation we'd like to discuss with you."

"Of course." Numbly, Carolyn opened the door for them. She realized that she was wearing her fuzzy bathrobe with the adorable lambs that looked like something out of Zootopia. Just exactly what she wanted to wear while talking with the FBI.

They trooped into her living room. Luckily, she'd finally unpacked her boxes, but she did notice her bra dangling off the back of the armchair. She shot Tobias a glance. He discreetly stuck it in his back pocket.

"This is Tobias Knight," she told them. "Tobias, this is Agent Turner and Agent Jackson with the FBI. I spoke to them at Evergreen." She turned back to the agents. "Tobias actually witnessed one of the incidents, so he's aware of what was happening back there."

Turner sat on the edge of the couch and rested her elbows on her knees. "This is connected, most likely. And I gotta thank you for the head's up. It's a good thing we sent someone out there. As it is, we're playing catch up, but it could have been even worse."

Carolyn's stomach tightened. Obviously "out there" referred to the Light Keepers compound. "So what's going on?"

Turner handed over her phone. It showed a photo of a scrap of paper. In a child's handwriting, it read, "Pleez tell Carolin More to come get me. She iz my sister. I want to leev here. But I cant. Nun of us kids can. Im afraid. Sarah."