Lucy Monroe - Satisfaction Guaranteed

Ethan’s look was knowing. He definitely believed he’d won that little difference of opinion. He’d learn better…later. But she’d always believed that actions spoke louder than words and she planned for hers to be in magnified stereo.

“Your uncle…” she prompted.

“Uncle Lester was a soldier in WWII. He came home and went into the business because he’d learned more about killing than a man should know if he wants to be something besides a killer. He went by the name of Arwan. He did freelance, but a lot of his work was for the government. He was in his eighties when he died. He had a girlfriend though. Queenie. I keep in touch. She’s a firecracker.”

“Why did he stay away from your family for so long?”

“For their safety.”

“That must have been hard…for all of them.”

“It was. My great-aunts and uncles missed him. We all did. In a family like ours, you can’t have a member just walk away that everyone doesn’t feel it, even the generations that come after.”

“Is that why you looked him up when you grew up?”

“Yes. I’m glad I did. He was an interesting man.”

“He killed people for a living…that’s…”

“Hard. He paid for his career choice, but he had integrity. I wish I’d gotten to know him better, to tell you the truth.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re right about him paying a price for his choice. I’m glad you didn’t decide to follow in his footsteps.”

“Different experiences made up our lives. Besides, my job is more challenging.” And that was the most important thing to Ethan. She thought it probably always would be.

“Yes, it is.” She’d known trained assassins.

It was a whole different world, but finding a way to kill someone was often easier than finding a way to put them behind bars for a very long time.

“And I like saving the world from the bad guys.”

“So does my dad. It’s one of the things I admire most about him.”

“Even though it took him away from you?”

“Yes. I may not want the same for my own children-if I have any-but I can really appreciate what a true hero he and men like him are. Like you.”

“You think I’m a hero?”

“Yes.”

“But lousy husband material.” Like that really mattered to him.

“Don’t sweat it. So was Superman.”

“Spiderman got married.”

“And look at what happened to Mary Jane. She was constantly getting kidnapped by evil villains. She was also smart enough not to have kids.”

Ethan was shaking his head at her. “You would have gotten along well with my uncle. He never married. He refused to put any family at risk. Ever. He didn’t even marry Queenie, though by the time they met, he was living as a senior citizen in retirement.”

“His past came back to haunt him, though didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So, he made the right choice.”

“You really don’t think I should ever marry?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But it’s what you think.”

It wasn’t. Well, not exactly. And what she thought wasn’t important anyway. “It’s not my place to judge you, or anyone else, for your choices. What I think doesn’t matter anyway, does it? We’re faking a relationship for the sake of a case, not getting involved on a deeply emotional level.”

“I told you…I don’t just want you for the sake of the case.”

“But you never would have pursued the desire you feel for me if not for the case.”

“That’s not true. The timing is affected by the case, but not the eventual outcome. It was getting harder and harder to ignore the need to strip your clothes off.”

She laughed. “You have such a way with words.”

“I’ve told you…at heart, I’m just a Texas boy raised on a cattle ranch.”

“One of the richest ranches in the state.”

“You do some background research on me, Sunshine?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t read my personnel file and grilled Whit.”

“Guilty on both counts. I wasn’t complaining about your initiative, if anything, I’m impressed. What else did you learn that I haven’t told you?”

“You dated a lot in both high school and college, but you didn’t have a steady girlfriend for longer than a couple of months. Ever. You go home for Christmas and Easter, even when you’re on a case. You call your parents and your sister on their birthdays, no matter where you are in the world. You don’t have pets, but you had a dog growing up and you both got into enough mischief for ten boys and their crazy hounds. You learned to shoot before you started school and you can handle any gun made today, but your weapon of choice is a Beretta PX4 Storm. Which, along with your favorite designers and Extreme Sports destinations, goes to show that you have a definite preference for things Italian. You love your home state so much, you’ve bought land there to build on. Though you’ll probably be an old man before you get around to doing it.”

“You have learned a lot, but you’re wrong. I plan to build in the next few years.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re a skeptical woman.”

“And a dreamer…but I don’t think I’m the only one.”

“We all need our dreams. I just believe you should spend more time living them than thinking about them.”

“No one would ever accuse you of not living by that maxim.”

“I am also not shy.”

“I’ve known that since the first day I met you.”

“Are you going to gift me with your body tonight, baby? Or are you going to keep me waiting?”

“I still haven’t looked through your apartment.”

“Putting off the decision won’t make it go away.”

“I know.”

“Where do you want to start?”

“In here. You did a fantastic job with dinner. I want to see if you’re a once-in-a-while cook, or a regular.”

“I could just tell you.”

“I could have told you about my lingerie, but you insisted on seeing it.”

“You wouldn’t have told me about it…or the hot-pink handcuffs.”

“I might have.”

“Riiiiight…” He drawled the word out until it was practically a paragraph.

“Believe what you like, but I’m starting in your kitchen.”

His cupboards were neat and orderly, which she would have expected from him. But fully stocked as well. His spices were obviously used frequently and his freezer had everything necessary to pull together a complete meal. He might not be home often, but when he was, he cooked.

“Did your mother teach you to cook?”

He leaned against the counter by the sink, his long legs crossed at the ankle. “Her and our housekeeper. Consuela was a hard taskmaster. She expected me to know how to fend for myself and I learned.”

“I took cooking classes. After I left home. I started with the typical Cordon Bleu stuff, but then decided I wanted to learn basic cooking, too, and took a home economics course at the nearby community college.”

“While you were going to college?”

“Yes.”

“Let me guess. Your university was too high brow to offer that sort of thing.”

“Apparently.”

“Do you like to cook?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I make myself do it because I like the normalcy of eating in my own home from my own preparations. It makes me feel like I’m part of a family, even though technically…I’m not.”

Soon, she moved into the formal dining room. There wasn’t much in there to reveal who he was, so she moved onto the spare room. It had a bed for guests, but the closet and shelves were dominated by his extreme sports gear. She spent as much time as possible in every room, digging even more minutely than Ethan had in her apartment.

“Avoiding something, Sunshine?” Ethan asked as he leaned over her to whisper the question in her ear.