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Climbing off, Natalia stretched her legs as Wizard watched.
“Been a while since you rode?” he asked in a deceptively cool tone.
Removing the borrowed helmet, she placed it on the back of the motorcycle.
“At least a few months.” She shrugged. “Rocco doesn’t get as much time off as he used to, or at least that’s what he tells me. I’m sure he prefers riding with one of his women to taking his sister for a ride.”
The jealousy churning in his stomach miraculously disappeared.
“You ever think about learning to ride a bike yourself?”
“I want to, but Rocco won’t let me.”
His lips curled into a smile. “You don’t strike me as someone who listens to the word no.”
“We made a bargain. He gets the final say about me riding a motorcycle, and I get to say no if I don’t like who he chooses to marry.”
He laughed. “Sounds fair to me.”
She shook her head. “I think I got the short end of the deal. He says he’ll never get married.”
“Why not?”
She gave a bittersweet smile. “Our childhood wasn’t conducive to him believing in the sanctity of marriage.”
“Yet it hasn’t discouraged you?”
“Sometimes. The difference is that I want children. Rocco doesn’t.”
“You don’t have to have a husband to have children anymore.”
“I want to raise my children with a father who wants to be there for them in the way my father was never capable of being.”
“My old man was a shithead, too.”
“How about you? Have you been married?”
“Came close.”
“Do you still see her?”
“That’s hard to do.”
“Why? Don’t you get along? Was it a bad break-up?”
He forced himself to answer her question. He was enjoying her opening up to him and didn’t want her to clam up because he refused to be just as open. “She died several years ago.”
The overhead parking light caught the sympathy filling her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“Were you still together when she died?”
“No. We were on the outs when she died. Sienna kept volunteering for high-risk missions. I begged her not to take several of them. I believed she overestimated her abilities to handle difficult situations. She was an adrenaline junkie. I discussed it with our supervisor but was overruled. She was angry and we had a big fight. Even if she had lived, I don’t think she would have forgiven me for trying to get her off the team.”
“Were you afraid she would get hurt from a boyfriend’s standpoint or from a military point of view?”
