everything he said and made her own comments and jokes, but he could see the tension in her body and her face. Under any other circumstances, he’d order them both a drink and wait for the lubricating effect of alcohol to chill them both out. Since that wasn’t going to happen, he needed another strategy.
The waitress left and Charlie reached for her water glass.
“Look at it this way—it has to get easier from here on in, right?” he said.
Her eyes widened over the glass rim and she swallowed with an audible gulp.
“Beg pardon?”
“The weirdness. It can only be this bad at the start, right?”
She stared at him for a moment as though she couldn’t quite believe he’d said what he had. Then a slow smile dawned across her face. She sat back in her chair, her shoulders visibly dropping a notch.
“It’s not just me, then?”
“Oh, it’s definitely you,” he said, deadpan.
Her smile broadened. “Thanks for the confirmation.”
He leaned forward, driven by an urge to cut through all the bull. “This is like speed dating, only with higher stakes. We need to take a crash course in each other.”
“A crash course. Right. There isn’t something a little less violent we could do?” Despite her words there was an appreciative light in her eyes.
“Five questions. No holds barred. No formulating responses, just whatever comes into our heads. Okay?”
Her gaze grew sharper. “Who goes first?”
“We alternate.”
“But someone still has to go first.”
“We can toss for it. Unless you’re volunteering?”
She raised her eyebrows. “One thing you learn fast in the army—never be the first to volunteer for anything.”
“I’m sensing a story there.”
She tilted her head enigmatically, neither confirming nor denying. He reached into his pocket for a coin. “Heads or tails?”
“Heads.”
He flipped the coin.
“Tails. You first,” she said.
“Be kind.”
She propped an elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand. She studied him for a moment, a small frown between her eyebrows. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, but she had naturally long lashes and her brown eyes were warm with interest and intelligence.
“Why aren’t you married or living with someone?”
It wasn’t what he was expecting and he blinked as his brain struggled to catch up.
“No formulating responses, remember?” she said.
“I haven’t met anyone I like enough to spend the rest of my life with yet.”
Her chin lifted as though he’d surprised her.
“What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you?” he fired back.
“Being posted to Iraq.”
That surprised him and he made a mental note to follow up on it later.
“What are you most afraid of?” Charlie asked.
“Failure. What about you?”
Her gaze dropped to the table.
“No thinking,” he said.
“I have to think.”
“Not too much. Go with your gut.”
She lifted her gaze to his face. “Not being able to cut it as a civilian.”
There was something in the way she held herself that made him think she wasn’t giving him her first answer. Her real answer. He thought about pushing, then decided against it.
“What’s your biggest regret?” she asked.
Getting a virtual stranger pregnant. But he knew better than to say that out loud. “Not starting Falcon sooner.”
Something shifted behind Charlie’s eyes and he knew she’d guessed that he’d offered up his second answer, too.
“What about you? What’s your biggest regret?” he asked.
“Never knowing my mother.”
There was no doubting the sincerity behind her answer this time.
“What’s your worst personal fault?” she asked.
“Selfishness. No—laziness.”
She laughed. “How about indecision?”
He smiled. “That, too. What’s your favorite food?”
“Chocolate. In any form. If you could have any superpower, what would it be?”
“Flying. Hands down. But I wouldn’t mind X-ray vision, either.”
He was down to his last question and he thought for a moment before he spoke again.
“What makes you happy?”
She stared at him for a long beat before glancing down at the table. “I don’t think it’s possible to give one answer to a question like that.”
Her hand found the fork positioned beside her place mat, nudging it a fraction of an inch toward the middle of the table.
“You don’t have to limit it to one answer.”
She nudged the fork again. “Then I guess I’d have to say that my friends make me happy. And doing a good job for someone, making a site that’s attractive and functional. Knowing I’m good at something, I guess. That I’m earning my place in the world. Apart from that, all the usual clichéd things. A sunny day, puppies, blah, blah.”
“Those are all pretty good things,” he said, although he wasn’t sure that he’d ever hung his happiness on the knowledge that he’d earned