Page 12 of Lawson & Jill

“Give me complicated. I told you mine at the diner.”

Law bit into a cookie. Then finished the other half. He sipped some milk and watched as Jill sat back against the arm of the couch.

“My mother grew up in Brussels. My dad went over to Belgium to work at NATO. When he met her, he said it was game over.”

“What did your dad do?”

“He was in Army Intelligence and liaised with members of NATO security. It was supposed to be a temporary job, but he managed to extend it into two years until he got Maman to agree to marry him and move to the States.”

“Maman, I like that. You speak French?”

Law nodded.

“More than French?”

“It comes with the territory.”

She raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “You know, you seem to have an aversion to answering questions. I thought we got past that the other night.”

She was right.

“Farsi, Arabic, French, and German. Oh yeah, Spanish of course. I live here in SoCal. What about you?”

“I lived in Houston working as an EMT—how could I not learn Spanish? It’s not great, but it’s pretty good,” she grinned.

“You have a beautiful smile and you bake great cookies. I’d love to take you to dinner tonight.” Law said in Spanish.

“Thank you for the compliments, and I would love to go to dinner,” she responded in kind.

Law laughed and nodded his head in appreciation. “I’d say your language skills are up to snuff,” he switched back to English. “Did you work in the suburbs or the city while you were in Houston?” Law watched her swing her crossed leg and his eye was drawn to her toe ring…again. Was there anything about this woman that didn’t turn him on?

Her leg stopped swinging and she stared at him. “I worked downtown, but remember, you were going to tell me the complicated story?”

“You’re right. Talking about myself goes against the grain.” He gave her a rueful grin. “I’d promise to do better, but I’m probably going to need to be reminded.”

“I might be up for it. Depends on how good the restaurant is.”

She sure as hell isn’t a pushover.

Oh yeah, I hate it when I run roughshod over women.

“Okay, so Dad talked Maman into coming to the States. She was from a tightknit family and it hurt for her to leave them, but boy, were they something together. You could just feel how much they cared about each other. After the first year here Xave was born, two years after that came Ash, then two years after that came me.”

“So, all of you boys followed in your father’s footsteps by joining the military. He must have been proud.”

“He didn’t live to see it. He was on a helicopter that went down. He and five others were killed instantly. That happened when I was ten, so he never saw any of us join the service.”

An image of his father appeared before him. God, he missed him. That was two men he missed with all his heart.

Lawson felt the soft touch of Jill’s hand resting on his leg. “That must have been so hard for you and the rest of your family.”

“It was. We tried to be there for our mother, especially Xavier, since he was the oldest. But she refused to let any of us try to switch roles. She remained the parent, and we were her boys. Looking back on it, I realize that she went to bed a lot earlier than she had when dad was alive, but that was the only change in her routine. I think that was her alone-time to mourn.”

“She sounds incredible.”

“Maybe,” he said slowly.

Jill lifted an eyebrow in question.