Page 76 of Nothing to Fear

His mouth turned as dry as burned toast. Her questions rolled out with such casual ease, as if there were no boundaries. Answering her so far hadn’t felt like he was pulling his own teeth out with pliers as it had with Kelli, but this was the first time she’d asked about his dead wife. He was wired to disengage, but for some reason, with Willow, all he wanted was to connect.

She already knew the ugliest things in his personnel file. Seemed silly to hide the rest.

“I believe in carrying my weight. I helped with laundry, cooking, cleaning.”

“I saw her picture. She was gorgeous. She looked like a supermodel.” Her voice took on an edge that made his chest tighten. “You two made the perfect couple.”

That was what everyone had thought, and in pictures, they had. Not in any way that had mattered. “We made the worst couple,” he said, and she looked at him over her shoulder with a hint of surprise. “I was gone a lot. We led separate lives, where I paid the bills. Win-win for her unless I was in town. It only lasted as long as it did because I hate to lose.”

If only he had let her go…

“You sound like your marriage was a game, and not a fun one.”

Yeah, the Thunderdome where they’d dueled gladiator-style.

She faced him, wiping her hands on a towel. “Why did you get married?”

He heaved a breath, ashamed of his reasons. “I met her when I was playing football, right before a bad injury.” He’d taken a nasty hit junior year. The doctor didn’t know if he’d play again. “She took care of me. Cooked. Cleaned. Drove me to physical therapy.”

He shrugged, but his gut burned. Kelli had slipped close by taking care of things he could’ve paid someone to do. He’d assigned great value to it because he didn’t know what that type of attention was worth.

“Anyway, I healed, came back stronger senior year. When she suggested we go to the courthouse and get married, I said yes.” Mistook lust for love. “My buddies said she wanted to nab a guy who’d play pro.” What a fool he’d been. “She swore it didn’t matter if I went pro or not. I’d never had someone of my own. Stupid and crazy, but I wanted to try it.”

He looked out at the calm waves.

“Before I graduated, the Agency recruited me. It felt right.” Like it was what he was meant to do. “I turned down a multimillion-dollar football deal and joined the CIA instead.”

Furrowing her brow, she tilted her head. “The CIA doesn’t recruit out of the blue.”

She was right. They didn’t.

“How did they lure you away from the fame and money of professional football? Why would they approach you in the first place? When they look for undergraduates, they covet linguists and those who score off the charts on particular aptitude tests.”

Nothing slipped past Willow.

Gideon spoke Farsi, Arabic, and German, but he hadn’t learned those in college. Sometimes the CIA disguised decryption challenges and potential field agent profiling as extra-credit questionnaires and psychological experiments. They loved former military with highly specialized skills, but they didn’t recruit all-star athletes.

“Ask me another time.” Discussing his failed marriage was one thing. Explaining how he had become the man he was today, well, that was a different story. “Mind grabbing me a beer?”

He pushed the throttle, increasing the boat’s speed.

She handed him a cold longneck and pressed her palm to his chest. “Did your marriage not work because you both missed being with other people? Or was it a personality thing?”

“I didn’t give Kelli the life she lied about wanting. She wasn’t happy. With my choices or with me. She cheated, more than once.” The first time, he’d found out by reading her diary. She’d claimed it had been a mistake bred out of loneliness and swore it wouldn’t happen again.

“Did you ever cheat?”

He’d been miserable with a capital M, but he wasn’t a shitbag who’d break a sacred vow. For better or worse, and he’d meant it. Gideon was a lot of things, many of which weren’t good, but a cheat with a wandering eye wasn’t one of them.

“No.”

“Why didn’t she just leave you, if she wasn’t happy?”

“I think she was looking for my replacement. Someone else who’d pay the bills and take care of her. When she found him, she’d planned to divorce me. The paperwork is still sitting in her glove compartment.”

Unloading all of that hadn’t stung the way he’d expected. Instead, a great weight lifted, but he braced for the inevitable look of pity from Willow and the obligatory I’m sorry.

“You’re smart, honest, strong enough to do scary things that’d make most people lose sleep or their lunch. You can cook and you’re a fantastic kisser. An even better lover. I can’t imagine why any woman would cheat on you.” She gave him that look again that made him feel like he was a superhero who could leap tall buildings in a single bound. His ego could get used to the adoration in her eyes, if it wasn’t such a problem.