The Thing About Love

by Julie James

  “As tempting as that might be,” John said smoothly, “we only have an hour and a half left in this flight and that barely gives me enough time to make it through week one of the training program. But if you need me to give you a specific example . . .” He looked her dead in the eyes. “Come on, Jessica. You know what you did.”

  It took her a moment. “Get out. You’re not still pissed about that.”

  “Of course I’m still pissed about that,” he said matter-of-factly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yep.”

  She looked at him in disbelief.

  He smiled charmingly. “Want to ask me a third time, just to be super-sure?”

  Jessica peered up at the airplane ceiling. On second thought, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to do a little method acting in preparation for their roles. Especially seeing how, in real life, she wanted to throttle her partner. “You know what? Let’s not do this, after all. I think dredging up the past will only make things worse, and you and I have got to be in sync these next couple of days.”

  “That’s fine with me,” he said. “I wasn’t the one who started chatting about the good old days in the first place.”

  “Trust me, I won’t make that mistake again.” She leaned back in her chair and gestured to the stack of newspaper articles on his tray. “Besides, you obviously have some reading you want to do and I don’t want to hold you up.”

  “I appreciate that,” he said faux-politely.

  “I’m glad you’re appreciative,” she said mock-nicely, before turning to her e-reader.

  So much for lessening the tension between them.

  Sheesh.

  “You do realize you still make the sassy head movements even when you only think the words, right?” John said.

  Jessica glared but remained silent.

  After a few moments, John cleared his throat and held up the article he was reading. “There’s some pretty interesting stuff in here about this Riverside neighborhood you and I are going to be driving through today. You’re welcome to look at it when I’m done,” he added begrudgingly.

  Jessica smiled. “Actually, I already read that over the weekend. And the second article on your tray has a nice quote from the Financial Times describing Riverside as ‘the closest thing to Greenwich Village you’ll find in Florida.’ I’ve been thinking of ways I can drop that into a conversation with you-know-who.”

  She winked.

  John scowled—ah, yes, once again she was one tiny step ahead of him—as she proudly turned back to her e-reader.

  Okay, fine. Perhaps she had a bit of a competitive streak, too.

  • • •

  John watched out of the corner of his eye as Jessica turned off her e-reader and leaned back in her seat, getting comfortable. When she closed her eyes, he shook his head and turned back to his reading.

  Unbelievable. The woman was exactly the same as she’d been six years ago. Still a pain in the ass, still determined to rub his face in it every time she got the drop on him, and always convinced that she was right.

  You’re saying I was the bad guy?

  The best part was, her surprise was no exaggeration—she genuinely believed that he was the cause of all the problems between them six years ago.

  Welcome to reality, sweetheart.

  She seemed to forget that he had been there, too. And the way he remembered those twenty-one weeks at the Academy, he sure as hell hadn’t been the villain of their story.

  Far from it.

  9

  (he said)

  Six years ago, after finishing up his tour with the Army, John found himself in the middle of the toughest summer of his life. He was in Chicago, single and living with his parents at age twenty-seven, and waiting for FBI training to start in August.

  And he was bored out of his ever-loving mind.

  Admittedly, some of this had been expected as he readjusted to civilian life. Being a “Batt boy”—a soldier assigned to one of the three battalions of the 75th Ranger Regiment—definitely had kept him on his toes. Like the rest of his squad, he’d rotated through several combat deployments, and in between deployments, he’d trained. Constantly. The physical rigors of being a Ranger were no joke, so he’d continually pushed himself, beyond the point where common sense would tell others to stop.

  In addition to the PT, there’d been parachute jumps, battle drills, and shoot house exercises, and days when his squad would load up their vehicles, head out to the range, and spend hours shooting their way through all the ammo they’d brought. Even the “down” moments at the garrison had been spent doing some form of physical activity: platoon football games, ultimate Frisbee, and planning assaults on other squads, just for the heck of it.

  Not that it was all fun and games. In fact, a good chunk of those four years had straight-out sucked. But he’d say this: He’d grown up fast living in that kind of high-pressure environment, and it had instilled in him a strong work ethic. He’d always known exactly when he had to report for duty, but he’d never had any clue what time he would finish. Simply put, Rangers worked until the job was done.

  After finishing his tour, he had a four-week break before heading off to Quantico. He’d decided to stay at his parents’ house because he thought it would be nice to be someplace familiar—and it sure as hell beat bunking on a friend’s or his brother’s couch for an entire month. He’d been excited when the plane touched down at O’Hare airport, picturing the break as being one long vacation of catching up on some much-needed sleep, refueling on his mother’s cooking, and hanging out with friends and family.

  And it was like that . . . for all of about three days. What he hadn’t anticipated, however, was just how much time he would have on his hands. Apparently programmed after four years of military life, he would find himself waking up at the crack of dawn despite all his attempts to sleep in. Used to doing PT first thing, he’d then go for a long run along the lakefront, get back home just in time to see his dad heading out the door for his shift, and have a leisurely breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and bacon with his mom.

  Then he’d check his watch and wonder what the heck he was going to do with himself for the next twelve hours.

  He was used to going nonstop from dawn to dusk and having virtually every moment of his life scheduled. Also, he was used to being around people—lots of them. But in Chicago, his brother and his friends all had jobs, so none of them were around during the day. And his parents’ house seemed much quieter than he’d remembered.

  On the fifth night of his break, he got an e-mail from one of the guys in his platoon, who’d also just finished up his tour.

  Who knew the suck could be so much fun?

  Yeah. He could relate.

  Never one to wallow, John decided to take charge of the situation. After quickly blowing through the list of household tasks his mom asked him to do, he began inventing projects on his own. He cleaned out his parents’ garage. Then he cleaned out their attic. And then he even organized his and Nate’s old rooms.

  “Dude, it is way too early for a visit,” his brother groaned when he answered the door to his apartment, blinking at the daylight and with his hair sticking up in every direction.

  “It’s noon,” John said, stepping past his brother to unload the two boxes he was carrying.

  “When you work until four A.M., noon is too early.” Nate was bartending in the evenings while taking business courses during the day, with the goal of getting into restaurant management. “What is that, anyway?” He pointed to the boxes John set down on the kitchen counter.

  “I cleaned out your old room. Mom was telling me how she’s been taking a few art classes, so I thought she could use the space for painting or whatever,” John said.

  “What’s wrong with using your room?”

  “Aside from the fact that I’m c
urrently sleeping in it, I’m turning it into an office for Dad.” Granted, in twenty-seven years, John had never seen his father do anything particularly officelike, but, hey, at least now he would have the space should inspiration strike.

  Nate seemed to be fighting back a grin. “Don’t take this the wrong way, John, because these are all very nice projects you’re working on. But I’m thinking we need to get you a hobby. Quickly.”

  No kidding. “It’s only three weeks. I’ll be fine.” Actually, there were two weeks, six days, and twenty-one hours left until he had to report to Quantico for his first day of FBI Academy. But who was counting?

  Despite his edginess, John was careful to keep his feelings to himself. His college friends had all settled into big-city life, working hard at their careers and then playing hard in the evenings, going to a different swanky bar every night where someone knew somebody who could get them in. They would toast John’s homecoming over glasses of ridiculously overpriced bourbon and ask about the things he’d seen and done as a Ranger. And he would tell them the exciting parts—because, really, that was what they wanted to hear—but they would never truly understand what he’d been through or was still going through, how everything at home simultaneously felt so familiar and also completely foreign, or how wound up he felt a lot of the time, like he needed to be doing more.

  And so, consequently, he did more. He volunteered to power-wash and stain his aunt’s back deck, added a second run to his daily exercise routine, dropped groceries off for his grandmother at her retirement home, and mowed his parents’ lawn. Every other day.

  And six of the neighbors’ lawns, too.

  “Mrs. Murray down the block called. She asked if you do gardening, too,” his mother said as they finished up with the dishes one evening after dinner.

  As she handed John a casserole dish to dry, he caught her eyes twinkling with amusement. So, perhaps, he’d overdone it today. “Depends on what she’s paying,” he kidded.

  “Knowing Mrs. Murray, probably a glass of heavily sugared lemonade and a plate of stale wafer cookies.”

  “Tempting.”

  His mom smiled as she went back to her washing. A few moments later, she looked over. “I imagine it’s a big adjustment, being home. Any regrets that you didn’t sign up for another tour?” She kept her tone casual, but there were worry lines around her eyes.

  Apparently, he hadn’t been doing as good a job disguising his edginess around his parents as he’d thought.

  Not wanting her to worry about him, seeing how she’d already had enough of that while he’d been in the Army, he gave his mom a reassuring smile. “No regrets. I never saw myself as a lifer.” And that was true—he’d given a hundred percent every day he’d been a soldier, but he’d always planned to return to civilian life after those four years were over.

  Now he just needed to get to the FBI Academy, so he could actually start that life.

  Needless to say, that day in August when he finally arrived at Quantico Marine Corps base to the sounds of gunfire in the distance and saw a military helicopter flying overhead, he grinned and felt a rush of adrenaline kick in.

  Yes. Now these were his people.

  After too many days of so little to do, so much time, he was pumped and ready to be sweaty and tired and challenged, to have people barking orders at him and telling him to get his ass moving, and to be back on the shooting range. Hell, he was so stoked, he was even looking forward to being in a classroom again.

  That first day, when his class had to introduce themselves and talk about their backgrounds, John discovered two interesting pieces of information. First, that the group was more highly educated than he’d assumed going in—a full thirty-one out of forty-one of the trainees in his class had a postgraduate degree. Several of those were lawyers, but they also had, among others, a biomedical engineer with a doctoral degree in pathogenesis, a guy with a PhD in linguistics, a college professor with a doctorate in forestry, and a guy with degrees in both chemistry and chemical engineering who’d left behind a lucrative job in Silicon Valley to come to the Academy.

  Then there was the second bit of interesting information he gleaned upon walking into that classroom.

  One of his fellow trainees was hot.

  Admittedly, this was a new experience for him. There’d been no women in his Ranger regiment, so he wasn’t used to looking around a group of people with whom he’d be eating, sleeping, sweating, shooting, and fighting over the course of several months and seeing one with long blond hair and light blue eyes that could stop a man dead in his tracks.

  Her name was Jessica Harlow, he learned when it was her turn to stand and introduce herself, and in a funny coincidence, she was from Chicago, too. When she mentioned she was a trial lawyer, John wasn’t surprised. Unlike some of the other trainees, who’d seemed anxious about this first day, even fumbling their words as they introduced themselves, Jessica appeared perfectly at ease as she described how she’d become interested in the law as a kid, listening to her father, a successful civil litigation attorney, talk about his cases at the dinner table.

  “He had all these great courtroom stories,” she said, speaking dynamically, “with words that sounded very impressive and dramatic to an eight-year-old . . . like motion to quash and cause of action and res judicata. But when my father had finished the story—obviously quite proud of himself—I’d sit there, waiting on pins and needles, until I’d finally ask, ‘Yeah, but where’s the good part, when somebody gets thrown in jail?’”

  She smiled as that got a laugh out of everyone, easing some of the tension in the room as she then shifted gears and spoke in earnestness of her desire to work in a profession where she could serve her country and community and make a positive difference in people’s lives. It was an eloquent speech, and one that well articulated sentiments shared by everyone in that room.

  The class clapped when she was finished, more enthusiastically than they had after anyone else’s speech, and John watched as she took her seat.

  If these introductions were the trainees’ first test—and he suspected they were, given the fact that several of their instructors had taken seats in the back of the room to listen in—then Jessica Harlow had just thrown down the gauntlet.

  Interesting.

  Given their shared hometown, he decided to walk over when the speeches were finished and personally introduce himself.

  “Chicago, huh? We should team up, Harlow. I say we take down the three trainees from New York first.” He winked to let her know he was kidding. She’d been funny in her speech, so he figured he’d open with a joke, too.

  In return, she merely gave him a polite smile. “They’re probably plotting the same thing against us.” Then she moved along to talk to the other female trainee, leaving him standing there.

  Huh. That hadn’t gone the way he’d imagined.

  He shrugged off the interaction at the time. Maybe she was a little on edge, like a lot of the trainees seemed to be, after the assistant director’s announcement that the class would have a PT test the next day. It would be the first of three PT tests they’d be given over the course of the Academy, and all trainees had to pass at least once in order to graduate.

  For several of the trainees, that first test served as a wake-up call.

  “Thirteen of you failed,” the assistant director said in a sober tone when they gathered the following day in the classroom. “That’s not acceptable. We expect more of you—your country expects more of you. Push yourself. Be demanding of yourself. Because, believe me, we are going to demand a lot from you over these next twenty-one weeks.”

  John wouldn’t lie; when it came to the PT part of the program, the things they asked him to do were, well . . . pretty easy. He wasn’t trying to show off, but given his background, doing sit-ups and pull-ups and running a six-mile obstacle course was not going to be a problem for him. Heck, as Rangers,
they would do that kind of thing wearing full combat gear and carrying loaded packs.

  That said, he was aware the PT wasn’t a breeze for everyone. In fact, some people were flat-out struggling. Including Jessica.

  He could see how frustrated she was, always finishing near the bottom of the pack or bringing up the rear. But he’d say this: The woman had determination. She’d be covered in mud and sweat while running the Yellow Brick Road, looking like she might drop from exhaustion any moment, and yet she’d find a way to dig deep and keep going.

  He could relate to that feeling. Granted, the physical demands had been on a different level, but there’d been a couple of times in the Army when he’d been pushed so hard he’d been on the brink of crashing and burning. And what had always gotten him through was a little tough love from his drill sergeants, or from the other guys on his squad.

  So that, in turn, was what he gave Jessica, any time they were partnered up or grouped together and she appeared to be struggling.

  Let’s go, Harlow!

  Step it up, Harlow!

  Grab the rope, Harlow!

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

  Of course, since this wasn’t the Army and he was not, in fact, her drill sergeant, she had quite a few saucy things to say in response.

  Actually, he kind of liked that part.

  “Since you’re obviously in need of something to do, instead of shouting at me through this whole drill, isn’t there some tree you could fell with your bare hands, or a boulder somewhere that needs tossing?” she’d asked in a sweet tone during their Point Run, a seven-mile run around Quantico base during which they’d stopped every half mile to do calisthenics.

  “A tree I could fell? How un-green of you, Harlow,” he’d shot back, before they both took off at a run again.

  They fell into a routine those first few weeks, lots of back-and-forth quips that he assumed, at the time, were all in good fun. And in the meantime, he had his own issues to worry about. Sure, he was rocking the PT and firearms half of the program, but on the academics side, he was very much in the middle of the pack.