Depends on Who's Asking - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,11

saying that, because I knew the next question out of her mouth before she’d even put voice to it.

“Now I sense a story,” she said as she studied me carefully. “Why’s that?”

I grinned at her. “I’m not ready to talk about it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Maybe over the next three weeks you’ll enlighten me,” she murmured as she walked to the Adirondack chair that was farthest away from the open door and took a seat. “Now, tell me about what branch of the military you were in.”

Her order in the form of a question made me inwardly amused.

Outwardly, I appeared as if I was blasé on the matter.

“Marines,” I said. “For eight years before I moved to Kilgore.”

She eyed me. “Where did you live before Kilgore and the Marines? Or is that off-limits, too?”

Her teasing amused me.

I chose to answer her because I liked that she cared enough to ask.

Being a Marine was a big part of my life. It was what shaped me into the man I was today.

That, and a really fucked-up childhood.

“I was born in Arkansas,” I answered. “We moved to California a little after I turned one, then Arizona. After that, we moved back to Arkansas, then Washington, DC.”

“Wow,” she said. “You’ve lived a little bit everywhere.”

“Everywhere but the east coast,” I agreed. “And I went into the Marines at the age of eighteen. I was in there for eight years before I got out. Got my peace officer’s license and bounced around a few areas as I tried to find where I wanted to be.”

“And Kilgore?” she questioned. “What’s so good about it?”

“Kilgore was actually a temporary thing,” I said. “A stop but not an ending. But I found once I moved here that I really liked the location. The pace, I guess you would say. It’s slow, not too exciting, and everyone here is honestly kind of laid-back. Not too intense. Something that I really enjoy.”

“So you’ve made it your home,” she said. “You’re going to stay here a while?”

I crossed my left leg over my right knee and leaned farther back in the chair as I crossed my arms over my chest and thought about her question.

“If you’d have asked me that a year ago before I got on the SWAT team, I would’ve had a different answer for you,” I admitted. “But then I got onto the SWAT team, found a place for myself, and I think I just might stay a while.”

I was kind of an outsider, though. A lot of the men had known each other growing up, if even from a distance. And others had found a way to wiggle into the tight-knit group.

Me, on the other hand? I was just plain introverted.

I went to mandatory meetings and parties.

I talked to the boys when they addressed me.

But mostly, I was a loner and enjoyed my own company. When I was bothered, I found myself more annoyed than accepting, and even if the guys on the SWAT team were nice, I still had to force myself to join in on their fun at times.

That had a lot to do with how I grew up, though.

When I was growing up, every single person that spoke to me, be it man, woman or child, always, and I do mean always, had an ulterior motive. Make friends with him, joke around with the kid. His father’s the president. It would be good to have an in with me, to get closer to the president.

I couldn’t tell you how many women came on to me when I was eighteen, too. Just because they knew that if they ended up ‘catching’ me, things would go great for them because of who my dad was.

Honestly, I hadn’t trusted a single woman ever.

Except for when it came to the particular girl that was now sitting in her seat facing me.

She flipped her hair back over her shoulder and stared at me with her light blue eyes. Light blue eyes that had the power to make me want to gaze into them and sing sonnets.

Not that I knew sonnets.

But for Carolina? I might just be willing to learn how.

CHAPTER 4

Not slim. Kinda shady.

-T-shirt

CAROLINA

Quarantine- Hour Eight

We sat outside and talked for what felt like hours, but only ended up being about forty-five minutes.

But it was the best forty-five minutes that I’d had in a very long time.

I’d done a lot of studying of Saint Nicholson for the last year.

At every single party that I’d attended, I’d watched him, studying