Courageous

He sighed. “Me, too.”

She peered up at him. “You still want to take me to the ball, don’t you?” she worried aloud.

His eyes narrowed. “More than anything,” he replied, and his voice was like deep velvet.

She flushed. She smiled. “Okay!”

He kissed her nose. “Get out of here. I’ve got to check on my heifer.”

“Cow,” she corrected. “She’s a cow, now that she’s a mother.”

His eyebrows arched.

“Sorry.”

He chuckled. “I have to check on my cow,” he corrected.

She grinned and started to leave.

“Peg.”

She turned. Her name on his lips had a magical sound.

“My father was a minister,” he said quietly, and watched her flush as she recalled the things she’d spouted off to him.

“Oh, gosh,” she groaned.

“He wasn’t a fanatic,” he added. “But he had a very solid take on what life should be, as opposed to what other people thought was permissible. He said that the only thing that separated human beings from animals was the nobility of spirit that went with respect for all life. Religion, he said, along with the arts, was the foundation of any civilization. When those two things fell, so did society.”

She searched his face. “One of my archaeological journals talks about the Egyptian civilization,” she said, moving back to him. “The arts went first, followed by the religion that had been practiced for centuries. Or like Rome, when it absorbed so many other cultures and nationalities and they couldn’t mix, so they ended up dividing the nation and it fell to internal conflict.”

He smiled. “You should go to college and study anthropology.”

“Chance would be a fine thing.”

“Jason Pendleton endows scholarships at several universities. If you really wanted to go, he’d send you.”

She flushed. “Wow! You think so?”

“I do.”

She grimaced. “Well, there’s that living in coed dorms thing,” she said reluctantly.

That was when he remembered their talk on that subject earlier, before she’d claimed experience she didn’t have. He should have remembered that while she was making her outspoken claims. A woman who didn’t want to live in a coed dorm obviously wouldn’t approve of sleeping around. He’d forgotten.

He touched her hair. “You could live off campus.”

She looked up at him, searching his dark eyes. “Who’d take care of you and Dad?”

He felt a jolt in his heart. It hadn’t occurred to him until then how well she took care of him. Freshly washed linen on his bed, dusted surfaces, little treats tucked into his saddlebags when he went riding the fence line, his coat always prominent in the front of the closet so that he had easy access to it.

“You spoil me,” he said after a minute, and he wasn’t smiling. “It isn’t wise. I’ve lived hard most of my life in the military. I don’t want to get soft.”

“That won’t ever happen,” she assured him. “You have that same refined roughness that Hannibal was supposed to have when he fought Scipio Africanus, the famous Roman general, in the Punic Wars.”

He blinked. “You know that, and you don’t recognize the names of Patton and Rommel?” he exclaimed.

She shrugged. “You like modern military history. I like ancient history.” She grinned. “One of Hannibal’s strategies was to throw clay pots of poisonous snakes onto the decks of enemy ships. I’ll bet the crew jumped like grasshoppers to get into the water,” she countered.

“Bad girl,” he said, shaking a finger at her. He pursed his sensual lips, still a little swollen from the hard contact with hers. “On the other hand, that’s not a bad strategy even for modern warfare.”

“Oh, it would never do,” she replied. “Groups of herpetology advocates would march in the streets to protest the inhumane treatment of the snakes.”

He burst out laughing. “You know, I can believe that. We live in interesting times, as the Chinese would put it.”

She raised both eyebrows.

“An old Chinese curse. ‘May you live in interesting times.’ It means, in dangerous ones.”

“I see.”

He sighed, smiling as he studied her face. She wasn’t pretty, but she had regular features and beautiful green eyes and a very kissable mouth. He stared at it without wanting to. “No more teasing,” he said unexpectedly. “I have a low boiling point and you’re not ready for what might happen.”

She started to protest, but decided against it. She grimaced. “Rub it in.”

He moved forward, and took her by the shoulders. “It wasn’t a complaint,” he said, choosing his words. “Look, I don’t indulge. I was never a rounder. I don’t like men who treat women like disposable objects, and there are a lot of them in the modern world.”

“In other words, you think people should get married first,” she translated, and then flushed, because that sounded like she wanted him to propose. She did, but she didn’t want to be blunt about it.

He shifted a little. “Marriage is something I’ll eventually warm to, but not now. I’m about to be involved in a dangerous operation. I can’t afford to have my mind someplace else once lead starts flying, okay?”

Her stomach clenched. She didn’t want to think about the possibility that he might get hurt and she wouldn’t be there to nurse him. She wouldn’t think about worst-case scenarios. She wouldn’t!

“Don’t go getting nervous,” he chided. “I’m an old hand at tactics and, not to blow my own horn too much, I’m good at it. That’s why General Machado has me leading the assault.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “Dad thinks you have great skills at leadership. He said it was a shame you got forced out of the military.”

He shrugged. “I believe, like my father did, that things happen for a reason, and that people come into your life at the right time, for a purpose.”

She smiled gently. “Me, too.”

He touched her soft mouth with his forefinger. “I’m glad that you came into mine,” he said, his voice deep and soft. He drew back.” But we’re just friends, for now. Got that?”

She sighed. “Should I get a refund on my prophylactics, then?” she asked outrageously.

He burst out laughing, shook his head and walked away.

“Is that a ‘no’?” she called after him.