and booked No. 9 for himself and his daughter, Layla, in July."
"Oh, the poor girl," Jane murmured.
"This guy's bringing her instead." Griffin moved to stand before another picture, this one of a golden-haired man whose vivid blue eyes stood out in a sweat- and dirt-stained face. "Vance Smith, our combat medic. We bonded over the crazy shit we did as kids."
Jane took a step closer, because this sounded like someone who had been close to Griffin. Vance Smith looked older than some of the other soldiers, near thirty, and she could see a hint of recklessness in his grin. But his gaze was steady, and she could imagine he was reassuring in a crisis. "He knows the colonel's daughter?"
"The colonel was dying in Vance's arms when he made him promise to bring Layla to Crescent Cove. They were both shot in an ambush, and Vance has injuries of his own that need to heal."
Injuries on the outside, Jane thought, while Griffin's wounds were hidden away. Her chest aching, she watched him move on, then pause again. His back to her, his breathing turned heavy. He stared at the photo of another young man hefting a futuristic-looking gun that would have been right at home in a video game. He stared at it a long time. "Then there's Whitman."
Jane swallowed again. Since it had been her great idea to tape these images around the room, she supposed she couldn't duck the consequences, however much she cursed herself for the stupid notion now. "Whitman?"
"Cocky asshole stole the supply of Twinkies I'd brought from home."
Whitman looked like a prankster, Jane decided, his expression unabashedly mischievous. Her heart turned to lead in her chest. "What happened to him?"
"Oh, I got revenge." Griffin didn't look toward her, but there was a new note in his voice. "He had a much beloved stash of raunchy porn magazines that I 'accidentally' dropped into the latrine."
She stared at Griffin's back, trying to interpret the new facet to his current frame of mind. "He...he didn't die?"
Griffin shook his head. "No. He did, however, instigate a series of petty burglaries between us that lasted the rest of the deployment." Then he started to laugh - really laugh, from the belly. "You should have seen his face when he realized the fate of his Raunchy Babes Collector's Edition. Never knew a man could cry over bleached blondes in bustiers and dog collars."
As he continued chuckling, Jane thought she might cry. But she fluttered her lashes to blink back the moisture, standing where she was while Griffin approached the desk and the waiting laptop. He placed the photos of the dead and wounded in a drawer. Only then did she step close enough to slide the manuscript pages onto the surface.
His hand caught her shoulder as she started to move away. "Jane." There was still a faint smile on his face. He reached up with his other hand to cup her cheek. "Thank you for bringing back other memories."
When he kissed the tip of her nose, blinking couldn't hold back the new sting of tears. So she turned away to the workstation she'd set up for herself by the office's love seat. "You're welcome," she managed to choke out, as if he were just any client, one who was writing a treatise on racehorses, say, or a fictional account of lovers doomed by an incoming tornado. "Now let's get to work."
They came up with a plan. As he read through each page he'd written before, he handed it off to Jane, his thoughts and corrections jotted in the margins. She made her own on sticky notes. Though they stopped for lunch, Jane figured he had to be about as cross-eyed and muscle-cramped as she was by four in the afternoon.
That was when he reached over his head to stretch his arms, groaning. "I'm out of gas for the day." He stood, then stretched again.
She let her lashes fall to half-mast as she checked out the slice of taut abs revealed by the rising hem of his shirt.
"None of that," he said, crossing the floor to grab her hand.
"None of what?" she replied, aware of her guilty flush as he tugged her to her feet.
"You were starting to fall asleep on me. Let's go for a walk on the beach."
She didn't tell him any different. While it was part of her job to keep up the client's spirits, she didn't believe she needed to feed his ego. And anyway, Griffin hadn't made a