Rescue Me

usually a croissant kind of guy.”
    “Thanks. Sandwiches are easy. Seven-course meals are tough.”
    He reached for his water and paused with it before his mouth. “You can cook seven-course meals?”
    “It’s been a while, but yeah. Along with manners and charm, and all the many, many classes I’ve taken in my life, I’ve taken a few cooking classes.” She took a bite of her light, flaky sandwich. The turkey, avocado, and pepperoncini a perfect complement of tastes. “My mother was a fabulous cook and a stickler for manners. Not that I really remember. My daddy tried to raise me like he thought she would. Of course he often forgot.”
    He took a drink and set the glass on the table. “Are you like her?”
    “She was Miss Texas and came really close to winning Miss America.” Sadie popped a salty chip into her mouth and crunched. That’s what she loved about Lay’s: the salty crunch. Of course, Chee-tos were the best snack ever. “Mama was really beautiful and could sing.”
    “Can you sing?”
    “Only if I want to piss people off.”
    He chuckled. “Then you must look like her.” He took two more bites.
    Was that a compliment? Was she really going to blush? “I don’t know. People say I do, but I have my daddy’s eyes.” She took her own bite and chewed.
    “Were you a beauty queen, too?”
    She shook her head and reached for her tea. “I have a few sashes and trophies, but no. I have a hard time walking and waving at the same time.” She took a drink. “Queening is hard work.”
    He laughed.
    “It is.” She smiled. “You try singing, dancing, and sparkling and shining all at the same time. You think being a SEAL is tough? You think terrorists are hard-core? Piece of cake compared to the pageant circuit. Some of those pageant moms are brutal.” Somewhere in her manners book there was a rule about talking about yourself too much. Besides, she wanted to know more about him. “Why did you join the Navy SEALs?”
    “Blowing up stuff and shooting guns for Uncle Sam sounded fun.”
    “Was it?”
    “Yeah.” He shoved some chips into his mouth and reached for his water. He obviously wasn’t much of a talker. At least not about himself. That was all right. One of the reasons she was such a successful real estate agent was that she got people to trust her enough to talk about anything. Sometimes about stuff she didn’t care to know. Like bodily functions and strange behaviors. “Don’t SEALs have to swim a lot?”
    “Yeah.” He took a drink, then offered, “We train in the surf, but in the current conflict the teams spend most of the time on land.”
    “I’m not a great swimmer. I prefer to watch the tides from the beach.”
    “I love the water. When I was a kid, I spent most of my summers in a lake somewhere.” He picked up the last bite of croissant. “I hate the sand, though.”
    “There’s a lot of sand near lakes and oceans, Vince.”
    He smiled with one corner of his mouth. “In the Middle East, too. Sand and dust storms.” He popped the last of the sandwich in his mouth.
    “Did you have to learn Arabic?”
    He shook his head and swallowed. “I picked up a few words here and there.”
    “Didn’t that make it hard to communicate?”
    “I wasn’t there to talk.”
    He wasn’t here to talk, either, and he didn’t give a lot away about himself. That was okay. He was nice to look at with his big muscles and startling green eyes staring back at her from his handsome face. She’d been with fine-looking men. None as fine as Vince, but with all that fineness came a real reserve. A refusal to give anything to a woman but his body. Which was okay with Sadie because that’s what they’d agreed she’d get. And that’s all she truly wanted.
    “Why do you live in Phoenix when you could live here?” he asked.
    Obviously they were done talking about him. “I know that ranching sounds romantic, in a sort of taming the Wild West sort of way, but it’s a lot of hard work and isolation. I don’t mind hard work, but growing up with your closest neighbor twenty miles away can be lonely. Especially if you’re an only child. I couldn’t exactly jump on my bike and head out to a friend’s house.” She took a bite and chewed. She’d never really had a best friend. Never ran around with other kids in a neighborhood. She’d hung out with adults or the calf or sheep she was raising for 4–H. “If you enjoy moving cattle and stepping in cow shit, then I guess the loneliness