then listened when he began to hum along with Bob Marley, who was still crooning loudly from the boom box on the porch.
The chorus came up and Wolf belted “Cereal! Little darlin’! Cereal!” in a deep, smooth tenor.
She stared at him.
“What?” He blinked. “My elisi tells me I have a nice voice.” His expression grew pained. “God, is she lying?”
Chrissy endeavored to maintain a straight face. She was pretty sure she failed. “First of all, what or who is an elisi?”
“My grandmother.”
“Right.” She nodded. “So then second of all, do you really think the late, great Bob Marley wrote a song about breakfast food?”
His brow furrowed. Then a self-deprecating grin tugged at his lips. “Don’t tell me I got the lyrics wrong.”
She could feel the laughter bubbling inside her. “Bob is telling his little darling to ‘stir it up.’”
“Really?” He looked genuinely perplexed. “That Jamaican accent sure makes it sound like he’s sayin’ ‘cereal.’”
She couldn’t hold it in any longer. Doubling over, she howled with hilarity. By the time she straightened, she had to wipe tears from her eyes.
Wolf crossed his arms. “If you must know,” he confessed self-deprecatingly, “those aren’t the only lyrics I’ve mangled. I’m sort of known for mishearin’ songs.”
She thrilled at the thought of the mighty Ray “Wolf” Roanhorse having such a simple, human foible. “So what else have you gotten wrong?”
“You just want to make fun of me.” The look he gave her was put-upon, but he cleared his throat and asked, “You know that song titled ‘Escape’? It goes ‘If you like piña coladas’…”
“Yeah.” She knew her eyes were sparkling with anticipation.
“So I…uh…” He scratched his chin, and her gaze was momentarily drawn to the tattoo on his forearm. The tattoo she knew was a monument and a testament to his dead teammate. “I thought they were singing about bean enchiladas until one day LT heard me and cleared things up.”
She choked. “Oh god, that’s good.”
“You’re probably too young to remember the band Starship. Hell, even I’m too young, but I have a whole passel of aunts and uncles who aren’t, and they like to pull out their ancient mix tapes anytime the family gets together.”
Chrissy imagined Wolf surrounded by aunts, uncles, cousins, and a wrinkly old grandma who loved to hear him sing. She found the image bittersweet. She’d always wanted a large family. But all she’d ever had was her mother. And now…she had no one.
Unaware of the reflective turn of her thoughts, he continued, “Anyway, so Starship had this song titled ‘We Built This City.’”
“I know the one.” Chrissy put a hand to her mouth, trying and failing to guess how he could’ve gotten any of those lyrics wrong.
“We built this city on ‘sausage rolls’…” he sang.
Again, she doubled over with laughter. The kind that made her stomach hurt in the best possible way.
This time when she straightened, she had to hold a hand to the stitch in her side. “What is it with you and food?” she wheezed. “‘Cereal’ instead of ‘stir it up.’ ‘Bean enchiladas’ instead of ‘piña coladas.’ And, my all-time favorite, ‘sausage rolls’ instead of ‘rock ’n’ roll.’”
Saying it aloud sent her into another round of uncontrollable giggling.
He waited until she was finished before screwing up his mouth and conceding, “I never realized it, but you’re right. I do hear food references in songs.”
“A city built on sausage rolls,” Chrissy gasped. “Sounds delicious.”
“Don’t it just?”
She was fascinated by the humor dancing in his eyes. Then a voice in her head whispered Be careful, and she immediately sobered.
Turning back to her fishing line, she frowned because she still didn’t have the answers to why it’d been him she sought out the night before, and what that meant for how she wanted to handle things with him in the future.
“So,” he said at length, having clued in to the change in her mood. “How’re you feelin’ today?”
“Better,” she told him, filling her lungs with the salty air. “Much better.” She slid him a long look. “You?”
He hitched one shoulder as he stared out at the waves. “Killin’s never easy. But I’ve never taken a life without cause. There’s peace in that.”
She nodded solemnly. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a soldier.”
“Sailor, in my case. But semantics aside, most military men and women can’t imagine life as a civilian. It gets in their blood. In their brains.”
“Is it in yours?”
For a long while he didn’t answer. Eventually he said, “I’d be lyin’ if I said it wasn’t. But