All for You (Paris Nights #1)(62)
Jaime shook her head. “I wouldn’t do that to Célie. I told you I was a friend of hers.”
He was not entirely sure how female friendships worked. His past five years’ experience was exclusively male—male solidarity, male enmity. He hadn’t been the type to go to any of the brothels that always sprang up around military bases, particularly Legion ones now that the Legion no longer provided a brothel itself. Plus, he’d promised himself to Célie even if she didn’t know it, so the only females he’d even chatted with in a friendly way had been the ones who worked the bars and cafés the Legionnaires frequented. Those women had seemed pretty isolated in a world of men, to him. Before that, Célie’s teenage friends had never impressed him that much—catty, mostly, and often trying to hit on him when Célie’s back was turned. But he’d liked Célie’s friends the night before.
And Jaime Corey seemed … kind of a good person for Célie to have at her back, actually.
“What I would like to have is an advisor,” Jaime said. “Someone who can accurately assess a military situation and what it means when a country sends in this regiment or that one, but also someone who can assess the PMCs and help me work with them. Have you ever heard women complain about how mechanics and car salesmen treat women much worse than they treat other men? Well, that’s nothing compared to how private military and security forces treat women. But they won’t lie to you, a Legionnaire. They’d respect you.”
“They should. Most of the ones I met couldn’t survive a day in the Legion.”
“Well, we can’t hire the Legion,” Jaime said wryly.
Joss gave her a dark, ironic glance. He’d had a cynical streak about politics even before he spent the past five years surrounded by profoundly cynical men—cynicism being that protective armor for, or perhaps the disillusioned flip side of, the crazy romanticism that would lead a man to join the Legion in the first place—and he had some pretty strong thoughts about how the billionaires in the world affected where he was deployed and what mud he was crawling through while they drank champagne or whatever the hell billionaires did while other men died for them.
“Well, it involves a lot of politics,” Jaime corrected herself dryly. “It’s hard to control. And it takes a really long time to get anything to happen. My dad always says getting what you want through the political system is like trying to thread a needle wearing boxing gloves. He says about the only good it does is that at least you’re got something useful on your hands when you get ready to smack someone in the head. In other words, it’s not really efficient or effective.”
“That must be terrible for you,” Joss said expressionlessly. “To have so much trouble perverting a democratic system to your ends.” Goddamn billionaires.
Jaime paused a second. Then smiled. “I can’t wait to introduce you to my father. Don’t worry, he loves taking the gloves off with someone who can actually fight him.”
Joss avoided rolling his eyes. That was one of the many things Legionnaire training came in handy for—control of expression.
“That.” Jaime pointed at him. “That’s what I need. Someone who can handle tough, strong men and not take any crap off them and make sure that we, Corey, and particularly me, my foundation, only use security forces that are doing the right thing.”
“What kind of work are you doing? Besides exploiting cocoa farmers?”
A little pause. Jaime smiled again. “You know how I don’t know nearly enough about the military to be hiring a company? You may not know nearly as much as you think about what we do, either.”
“I know,” Joss said. “I’ve never even tried caviar.”
Jaime laughed. “We’re working really hard to support and further the development of good, equitable, nonexploitative conditions on all cacao farms. Myself, I’m kind of an idealist, I guess, but my father, who claims to be a hardheaded pragmatist, will tell you it’s in our own best interests, the same way it’s in our interests to be moving heaven and earth to find a way to stop frosty pod rot. If you want a discussion with someone who can defend the capitalist system, you’re probably better off with a different Corey. But let’s just say we’d like not only our intentions but our actual actions to be good. A positive force in cocoa regions.”
Fine, he probably should shut up now with the sarcastic comments. At least they were trying. That whole thing about manipulating the political system to get the military to serve the billionaires of the world had really gotten his back up.
“So would you be interested?” Jaime said. “You’d be based in Paris, but the position would involve a fair amount of travel, particularly to West Africa right now, but also somewhat to South America. We also work in the Pacific, but shouldn’t need any military advising there. Your role might eventually develop to go beyond advising to making hiring decisions and solving any issue you see, but you won’t be acting as a security force yourself. Although this is a new position we’re creating, so you’d need to have the initiative and strength of character to form it into whatever would be the most effective.”
That last sentence might have clinched the deal. He liked the idea of having control over his role, after five years in the Legion, when a man had to shut his mouth and obey orders, however insane. He’d achieved the rank of sergeant in his quest to have more power over his choices. But the military meant there was always someone higher in command. Here, he would make calls. Guide what happened.