Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(69)

Hadn’t his LERC teachers insisted you weren’t supposed to ask about jobs right off the bat in French culture? Maybe parents got a special dispensation. Jake considered his response a moment. “Keeping your daughter safe.”

Lina eyed him. And he stilled, as that answer just kind of unfolded itself inside him and sat there. Like an essential truth.

That was his job, wasn’t it? Single men went off to fight for their whole society. But once a man had a family, really, deep down, that was his most fundamental job. To keep his family safe.

“Are you any good at doing that?” her mother asked.

“I’m…pretty good,” Jake had to admit. One of the best. But a man should never brag about being the best. Just put it into practice.

“How long are you planning on doing it?” her grandmother asked. She had her hair mostly hidden by a hijab the wind kept tugging at, and the flowers on it made her look sweet, but as Jake knew, flowers could be a lot tougher than they looked.

“Djadeti,” Lina hissed at her.

“Aren’t you curious?” her grandmother asked her inexorably.

Lina clapped her hand to her forehead. “And you wondered why I didn’t introduce you to my family.”

“Oh, is that why?” Jake said to her. “Because they pressure you into long term when you’re not ready?”

Lina lowered her hand and met his eyes. Beautiful brown, a little questioning, searching. “Or…or you,” she said. “They could be pressuring you. Before you’re ready.”

You know what was an absolutely terrible place to pursue this discussion? In front of her fascinated, openly testing parents and grandmother. “I’m hard to pressure,” Jake said.

“Me, too,” Lina said.

“I get really calm under pressure.”

Her eyes held his. “Me, too.”

And when under pressure, in that space of calm, he could think, very clearly.

About what it would mean to give up his entire career—his entire life. To leave his team buddies out there in the field, while he withdrew to civilian life. To leave his team buddies, period, not have them around him anymore. Would Chase choose not to re-up soon, too? Or would Jake end up entirely alone?

No. Not alone. Forging a new path. With her.

And he thought about what it would mean not to make that choice. To either lose the relationship entirely or maintain it with months and months of separation at a time, while anything could happen to him. And anything could happen to her.

“Now, pucette,” her mother said soothingly. “It’s not really pressure to ask a man about his job plans. Is it?” She checked with her husband.

“It’s a little bit of pressure,” Lina’s father admitted. But he didn’t let up on it, continuing to regard Jake with an assessing eye. “So how long do you plan on…keeping my daughter safe, Jake?”

Jake smiled, knowing suddenly exactly how to answer. “You’ll have to ask your daughter about that.”





Chapter 18


You don’t believe in a future either, but you want to, and you try to.

Near them, the ice dragon was starting to melt. The refrigerated tent had been dismantled around the sculptures post-contest, leaving them glistening under the stars on the place in front of the little rose stone city hall, overlooking the sea. Once in a while, a handful of people wandered past, studying the sculptures.

“I guess they could be oysters,” Lina said, disgruntled.

“It’s actually pretty delicate work.” Jake examined it.

Lina lanced him with a look.

“Pathetic pandering,” Jake said immediately.

“Who picks oysters over a dragon?”

“The mayor of a town dependent on its oyster production?”

“Exactly,” Lina said. “This kind of thing would never have happened in Paris. We know quality, in Paris.” She looked at her dragon with immense satisfaction.

It shone, the surface slick. It wasn’t a warm night, here by the cold northern sea, but it was above freezing.

“I like the teeth,” Jake said. “They look as if they could bite someone’s head off.”

Lina touched one of the sharp points, pleased with herself.

I like the wings, Jake thought. I like the way it soars.

“Can’t we put it in a freezer? It’s melting.”

Lina shook her head, smiling as she leaned against its base and looked at the night-darkened sea. “It’s ephemera, Jake. It’s more beautiful if it doesn’t last.”

Jake frowned sharply. But Lina was watching the sea, her face calm.

“It’s all a metaphor,” she said. “Nothing lasts. You seize it with both hands.”

Right. Right. He got that. No one better. But…

“So is that one dragon with two heads, or two dragons with one heart?” he said.

She studied him sidelong. “Once the work of art leaves the artist’s hands, it’s entirely up to the person who partakes of it to make his own interpretation.” Bright-eyed and curious, she waited.

Well, if he was going to make his own interpretation…he studied the two glorious roaring heads and the single body. “How do they have sex?”

Lina exploded with a laugh.

“If it’s two dragons, I mean.”