The Thing About Love

by Julie James

  “This actually happens?” Jessica asked.

  “I’ve been told, in theory, this can happen.” With a smile, Tara reached over and squeezed Jessica’s hand. “So we’ll take this in baby steps. We’ll set you up on Tinder, you’ll start with a few coffee dates, maybe drinks, and you’ll go from there. It’ll be good to get back out there, right?”

  Actually . . . Jessica was starting to feel a little pumped. Maybe this could be fun. She’d never really played the field much, so this was her chance to live it up, enjoy her new single status, and get back into the proverbial saddle again. Besides, after the last six months spent feeling guilty, hurt, and wondering where her marriage had gone wrong, she could use a little fun in her life. “Yes. I like this plan,” she told Tara. “But there’s just one thing: I can’t be on Tinder while working undercover. Or Match or anything like that. It’d be too risky to have my photo up on one of those sites with my real name.”

  Tara blinked. “Right. Of course.” She sat back. “No online dating, then. Huh.”

  When she said nothing further, looking perplexed, Jessica laughed. “Oh, come on. Dating can’t have changed that much in the last four years. I mean, people do still meet each other without the help of dating websites and social discovery apps, right?”

  Tara nodded slowly. “Sure . . . I’ve been told that can happen. In theory.”

  So not an encouraging response.

  • • •

  After Tara left, Jessica changed into her pajamas and settled in for some fine dining in front of the television: a bowl of Rice Krispies and the last glass of her screw-it-I’m-officially-a-divorcée wine. Remembering that she’d muted her phone with all the text messages flying between her brother and sister—MY guy runs marathons; MY guy is a wine collector—she switched off the “do not disturb” and saw that she had a few new e-mails.

  Including one from Special Agent John Shepherd that was all of four words.

  We need a website.

  Interesting. Seemingly, a certain somebody was working late, reviewing the case file. Correct her if she was wrong, but hadn’t that certain somebody just made fun of her this morning for doing the same thing?

  She immediately wrote him back.

  I took the liberty of setting up a meeting with the Stagehand guys for tomorrow at 3:00. Hope that works with your schedule.

  Radio silence.

  Shrugging off his failure to respond, she set her phone down, picked up her bowl of Rice Krispies, and tried to relax as she watched TV. But she found herself thinking back to something Tara had asked her earlier.

  “Remind me: Why didn’t you and John get along at the Academy?” Tara had frowned, trying to remember.

  “Long story,” Jessica had grumbled. A story, one might say, about a valiant, underdog heroine fighting to prove herself in the dog-eat-dog world of the FBI Academy while being continually challenged by a smug, uber-athletic, ex-Ranger villain who thrived on getting on her nerves every step along the way.

  At least, that was mostly how she remembered it . . .

  6

  (she said)

  Six years ago, Jessica had arrived at the Academy in Quantico feeling proud and excited—but also incredibly nervous. The FBI campus was located on a Marine Corps base, and that first time she’d driven through the double security gates and heard the sounds of gunfire in the distance and spotted a military helicopter flying overhead, there’d been a split second when she’d thought, What have I gotten myself into?

  Shortly after arriving, she’d learned that she was one of only two women in a class of forty-one agent trainees. On top of that, because she’d applied immediately after graduating from Stanford Law via the FBI’s law entry program—and thus had bypassed the minimum requirement of three years’ work experience—at twenty-six, she was the youngest member of her class.

  “You’re a woman. You’re fresh out of some fancy Ivy League law school with only a year’s worth of job experience. And you’re short.” In their final meeting before she’d left for Quantico, her recruiter, Special Agent Stan Ross, had ticked off these characteristics on his fingers, looking particularly peevish about the last one. “Not to mention, you look like you just stepped out of a shampoo commercial with all this . . . flowy hair.”

  She’d smiled because, aw, in the eleven months she’d known Ross, that might’ve been the closest thing to a compliment he’d ever said to her.

  He’d given her one of his trademark I am a year from retirement and stopped suffering fools decades ago looks, and she’d quickly dropped the smile.

  Right. Thou shalt not preen in the FBI.

  “There are going to be people who won’t want to take you seriously. People who see a pretty, young blonde and make assumptions,” he’d continued. “So you make them take you seriously. Don’t give them any reason to doubt you in the Academy. You go in there, Harlow, and you’d goddamn better show them what you’re made of. You do that, and you’ll be fine. More than fine, actually.”

  Shockingly, then, his mouth had curved in a smile—she hadn’t been aware those muscles on his face even worked—as he’d held out his hand to shake hers in good-bye. “Welcome to the FBI, Jessica. Now go give ’em hell.”

  That first day at the Academy, the trainees gathered in an auditorium-style classroom, all dressed in dark business suits. The instructors told them to introduce themselves, talk about their backgrounds, and describe why they wanted to work for the FBI. It was a chance for the trainees to size one another up, and Jessica had been relieved to see that all of them seemed a little nervous and unsure of what to expect.

  All of them except one.

  She’d noticed John right away—hell, they’d all noticed him right away. Taller and more built than anyone in their class, he was in a league of his own with his broad-shouldered physique and military-short haircut. Unlike the rest of them, who were simply praying they didn’t get messed with too much on the first day, he looked confident and calm and ready for anything.

  And for some reason, he kept looking at her.

  Jessica first noticed it when it was her turn to introduce herself. As she stood before the rest of their class and talked about leaving her job as a lawyer to pursue a career with the FBI, out of the corner of her eye she could see John watching her closely.

  Afterward, as they were being led on a tour of the campus, he approached her.

  “Chicago, huh?” John winked and leaned in closer. “We should team up, Harlow. I say we take down the three trainees from New York first.”

  It was a joke; she knew that. And, actually, one of the trainees from New York was some blowhard linguistics PhD who’d bragged about how he spoke fifteen obscure languages or something, and, frankly, she wouldn’t mind taking him down a notch or two in the spirit of healthy competition.

  But she also remembered what Ross had said. There are going to be people who won’t want to take you seriously. And she was hyperaware of the fact that, at that very moment, she and John were surrounded by their instructors and classmates, several of whom seemed to be watching them curiously.

  She didn’t want to be rude to John—at least, at that point she hadn’t—but between the looks and the wink and this teasing whisper in her ear, she felt she needed to get something straight. As one of only two women in the class, she had zero interest in starting off her first day by giving people a reason to gossip about the fact that she and the incredibly hot former-Ranger trainee appeared to be getting chummy. So she gave John a neutral but polite response, and then she walked away and began chatting up the other female trainee.

  Safety in numbers, she figured.

  After that first introductory day, she and the other trainees were tossed into the proverbial fire. The program consisted of over eight hundred hours of training divided across four areas of concentration: academics, firearms, case exercises, and operational skills. Tr
ainees, who were evaluated throughout the twenty-one weeks, were required to successfully complete all four parts of the program in order to graduate. Awards were given to the trainees who scored the highest in academics, physical fitness, and firearms.

  No doubt, Jessica’s strength was the classroom academics portion. As an attorney, she came into the Academy well versed in the fundamentals of law and ethics, and the advanced trial advocacy workshop she’d taken at Stanford, plus the year she’d spent at her firm, gave her a further leg up in interviewing techniques.

  As it turned out, she was also pretty darn good at the practical exercises. She felt a rush of adrenaline every time she was handed a new case scenario, mock investigations that she and the other trainees worked from the initial tip all the way through the arrests. Most of the investigations took place at Hogan’s Alley, the FBI Academy’s mock town that had a hotel, deli, pool hall, post office, several shops, a bank that was “robbed” twice a week, and a whole cast of professional actors playing criminals, witnesses, and bystanders.

  Yes, the case scenarios were often stressful, and, yes, occasionally trainees got injured—like the time Jessica learned the hard way, after taking a sharp elbow to the ribs, that some of the actors were told to be difficult and resist arrest in order to make the situation even more realistic. But despite all that, there was just something about being in the field and working an investigation that felt natural to her.

  Not quite as natural to her, on the other hand, was the more physical half of the program—specifically, firearms techniques and operational skills. In those two areas, she had to work her butt off just to stay in the game.

  If she had to put her finger on it, she’d say that was where the issues between John and her started: during their physical fitness training. Their PT instructors—aka sadists dressed in khaki pants and black FBI polos—were charged with the task of getting them into fit enough condition to (a) pass the physical fitness test required of all trainees and (b) withstand the physical rigors of being a special agent.

  It was about as much fun as it sounded.

  While being lectured and yelled at, Jessica and her classmates did sprints, long-distance runs, push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups. They also boxed, learned ground-fighting techniques, and ran the Yellow Brick Road, a six-mile Marine Corps obstacle course over hilly, wooded terrain where trainees climbed walls, scaled rock faces, crawled under barbed wire through the mud, and maneuvered across a cargo net.

  Prior to showing up at the Academy, Jessica had run and practiced yoga regularly, and she’d considered herself to be in good physical condition. But the fitness training at Quantico was on a whole different level from any kind of exercising she’d done before. On top of that, everyone in her class was in good physical shape—or better. Which meant, at five feet, three inches, she was at a comparative disadvantage as the shortest and smallest among them.

  She wouldn’t lie; a lot of the days in those first few weeks were hard. Really hard. She would go to bed sore, bruised, and frustrated with herself that she’d finished last once again in some race or sprint, or had been taken down easily in yet another ground fight against one of her fellow trainees.

  Because of that, it got a little . . . irksome, sometimes, to see how easy it all was for John. Here she was, constantly pushing herself and considering it a victory if she finished only second to last in a physical challenge, while he aced every race, drill, and competition without even breaking a sweat. Which would be all well and good—hey, more power to him—if the guy hadn’t been so irritatingly up in her business about the whole thing.

  Take, for example, the first time they ran the Yellow Brick Road together. It was only their second week of training, and they’d been assigned to the same four-person team in a timed competition. So here she was, running up and down rocky terrain, slogging through mud, jumping over fences, and sloshing through cold, dirty creek water—all the while hoping that her stupid tampon wasn’t leaking since, for extra fun, she’d gotten her period that day—and the entire time, all she could hear was John’s deep, rich voice shouting at her.

  Let’s go, Harlow!

  Step it up, Harlow!

  Grab the rope, Harlow!

  Pick yourself up, Harlow! Now move, move, MOVE!

  For Pete’s sake, she was perfectly aware that she was bringing up the rear on their team. Did the man really have to keep announcing it to the whole forest?

  Needless to say, by the time they got to the cargo net, she’d been feeling a little testy.

  “Maybe you’d rather just tie a rope around my waist and drag me the rest of the way?” Unfortunately, the sting of her sarcasm was lessened by the fact that she was panting so hard she barely got the words out.

  Not even winded, John shrugged matter-of-factly. “I was going to suggest throwing you over my shoulder, but if bondage is your thing, Harlow, I’m fine with plan B.”

  Ha ha, wasn’t he such a riot? She’d glared at him while climbing onto the cargo net.

  Try doing this with cramps, buddy, and then we’ll see who’s so tough.

  And then she’d dug even deeper to finish the course as strong as possible.

  Or, take another example: that time, in their fourth week, when John had decided to single her out in front of their entire class during a physical fitness training session. Their instructor had been pulled out of the session to take an emergency phone call, so he’d asked John to supervise the sit-ups drill in his place.

  And, man, had John ever eaten that up with a spoon.

  “Get your back perpendicular to the ground, Harlow; otherwise the repetition doesn’t count. And stop moving those hips,” he’d barked, walking by her.

  She’d shot him a dirty look, because, really? Was that necessary? She already had a whole slew of instructors telling her everything she was doing wrong; she could do without his voice chiming into the chorus.

  Ultimately, though, it was the firing range where the low-simmering tension between them heated up into a full-fledged boil.

  She didn’t start out completely inexperienced with guns. In preparation for the Academy, she’d taken a class at a shooting range outside Chicago, as well as some individual lessons. But she certainly wasn’t the best shooter at the beginning of the program—heck, she probably wasn’t even in the top ten—and their instructors made it clear that the firearms portion was where the vast majority of trainees flunked out.

  No pressure there.

  Her class was at an outdoor shooting range that day, all of them positioned side-by-side in a line as they fired at targets fifteen yards away. By happenstance, she stood next to John, and, for whatever reason, she was having a particularly tough time hitting the target that afternoon. Probably, she was exhausted, and on top of that her increasing frustration wasn’t helping her accuracy.

  As she was reloading her Glock, she heard John’s voice from her left.

  “You’re anticipating the blast and flinching when the shot fires. Plus, your stance is wrong,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Gee, thanks for the tip. She slapped the magazine into place, thinking she’d just ignore him and talk to an instructor after the session, when John suddenly moved in close.

  Real close.

  He rested his hand on her shoulder. “Spread your legs and lean into it,” he said, standing behind her.

  When the trainee on her right—the blowhard PhD from New York—snickered at John’s words, Jessica blushed. Great. Now this was all she’d needed today. Feeling oddly unsettled by the weight of John’s palm on her skin, she jerked away from him. “Hey. Easy there, big guy.”

  John pulled back, as if surprised by her tone, and then his expression hardened. “Don’t flatter yourself, Harlow,” he said. “I was just trying to help. But if you want to keep on sucking at this, hey, that’s your prerogative.”

  Jessica blinked.

  Rig
ht.

  Not wanting to make a further scene, she forced herself to maintain a cool expression as John returned his spot. Without batting an eye, he fired off six rounds that hit the dead center of his target.

  “Oh, I bet he’d like for you to keep on sucking,” the blowhard PhD said, with a smirk.

  Not at all in the mood, Jessica simply stared until the other trainee cleared his throat and went back to his own business.

  She looked down at her gun, needing just one moment to shake off John’s comment. Then she picked her head up, raised her Glock, and aimed for the target.

  When she fired, she felt a surge of adrenaline mix with her anger.

  And in that moment, something changed.

  Over the last few weeks, she’d felt continually frustrated with herself for her performance in the physical challenges. But now, for the first time since she’d arrived at Quantico, she felt something beyond frustration.

  She was pissed off.

  John Shepherd thought she sucked, did he? Well, she might not have been built like a Viking god with those stupid big biceps and dumb washboard abs, and his pec muscles that looked sculpted out of rock, but she did not suck. She was smart, decisive, and coolheaded in a crisis, and she knew how to work information out of witnesses and suspects so that they never even realized they were being worked.

  So the hell with John Shepherd. She knew she was good, and she also knew how much she wanted this.

  And she planned to prove just that.

  From that point forward, she kicked it into high gear and stopped wallowing in her frustrations. Yes, she wasn’t where she needed to be with her firearms skills. Fortunately, there was something she could do about that; the FBI Academy had nine shooting ranges and a whole team of firearms instructors who were more than happy to work with any trainee who wanted to get in extra time on the range.