Very few people could catch me off-guard, but Taylor did. It was the last thing I’d expected her to ask. Most people would want to know about other rescues, or how many countries we operated in, or how many guys were in the organization.
All the questions I’d rather not answer.
But not…her.
Jesus! Taylor Delaney was…unexpected. She had been from the start. I’d had a feeling she was going to play hell with my psyche, and she did. I just hadn’t realized how much.
She’d held onto life a lot longer than she should have been capable of without food or water, and sheer stubbornness and the unwillingness to give up had been her only survival tools.
How the hell she could wake up and still have a sense of humor, the ability to appreciate the smell of coffee, and lightning quick rationale was a damn mystery to me.
She had to be hurting.
She had to be emotionally messed up, and scared.
She had to be angry for fuck’s sake.
Most people we rescued were only concerned about things that involved their own wellbeing, and rightfully so.
But her one burning question was about…me? Personally?
Holy fuck! She was completely unlike any rescued hostage I’d ever dealt with before, and I had no goddamn idea how to deal with her.
I was the kind of guy who was always wary of the unknowns. And she was like uncharted territory.
The woman threw me off my game, dammit, and that didn’t happen to me. Ever. I was the guy who was always one step ahead, and ready for anything.
“I was,” I started to explain, not particularly comfortable with talking about myself. “And I wasn’t. I honestly don’t think my father thought he was ever going to die. My brothers and I were all educated in business, and we all had our college degree by the time we were twenty, but I’m not really sure how to explain my family except to say it was highly dysfunctional. My father wasn’t a pleasant man to be around, so my brothers and I decided to do our own thing. Maybe we thought he’d never die, too, so we pursued our own goals. Every one of us had always wanted to do something that made a difference, and the military was it for us. I was recruited from a Marine company into Delta Force, and I never looked back. My younger brother, Jax, ended up in the SEALS, and my youngest brother, Cooper, was in the Rangers.”
“Blackhawk Down,” she said, her tone awed.
“That was a little before my time in the unit,” I told her. “And I think they used a lot of creative license in that movie.”
She shrugged. “Can I help it if I like some of the pulse-pounding action films, even the old ones?”
I tried to stop myself from smiling because Taylor sounded so defensive. Hell, I’d seen the movie a couple of times myself. I was just surprised that she had. The film had probably come out around the time she was in grade school. “Hey, I’m not judging. I’ve seen it. In real life, being in any Special Forces unit pretty much consumes your life, but I was okay with that since I felt like I was part of something bigger than myself.”
“Then why did you leave?” she queried curiously.
I was relieved that she didn’t ask me anything else about Delta Force, because there wasn’t much I could tell her about my years there. However, trying to talk about myself wasn’t exactly a picnic for me, either. “After my father died, Montgomery Mining faltered. My brothers and I were gone, out of the country most of the time, so it took years for us to realize that the man in charge was a crook, and that he’d brought in an entire upper management team who were systematically killing the company that had been in our family for several generations. We had to make a tough decision. My brothers and I all chose to save our legacy. We came back to San Diego permanently to make Montgomery thrive again.”
“You did well,” she acknowledged. “I never knew it was even in trouble.”
I shrugged. “Obviously, we didn’t want anyone to know. It wouldn’t have been a good company image if people had known we were on the verge of bankruptcy. Luckily, we were able to turn it around, and Montgomery is better than it was during my father’s time.”
She sighed, and the longing in that sound made my damn chest ache as she said,