Page 22 of The Woman Left Behind

A date.She needed a date. She was a woman, she knew the wives would be more friendly to her if she had a man of her own on the scene, so they’d know she wasn’t poaching on husbands. And that wasn’t all; she needed some protection so Levi—

She shut that thought down before it could form. Some paths weren’t meant to be traveled, and some ideas were better left alone. Discretion wasn’t her strongest point, but her survival instinct was nice and healthy.

Date, date... who to ask? She hadn’t had a date since—damn, she didn’t remember, but definitely not since she’d started training to join Levi’s team. She and Donnelly had never managed—Donnelly. Of course. How obvious could it be?

Her own guys had so effectively separated her from the herd that she seldom saw any of her fellow trainees these days, outside the computer-training sessions with the drones. For all she knew, Donnelly had landed in a relationship since the last time they’d tried to get together for a movie. As soon as she was headed home, she pulled up his cell number in her contacts list.

“Hey, Babe, what’s up?”

Jina curled her lip at her heartily disliked nickname, but got straight to business. “Hey. Listen, are you seeing anyone now?”

“Not really. Who has the time?”

Amen to that. “Good. If I throw together a taco bar this weekend”—oh shit, the time had slipped away and the weekend was on top of her now—“tomorrow,actually, for my guys and their wives and girlfriends so we can get to know each other, would you be available as my date?”

“Sure. That’s assuming neither of us breaks something between now and then.”

“Always. Okay, that’s set.” She told him the time, gave him the address.

“Got it. By the way, congrats.”

“Yeah? For what?” She couldn’t think of anything she’d done that warranted congratulations.

“Word is you’re starting jump training.”

Just like that, the bottom dropped out of her stomach again. Why would he congratulate her on her impending death? “Oh. That. Yeah, kind of.” Kind of, in that she’d completed two-thirds of it and the only thing left was actually jumping.

“I heard the teams don’t jump very often.”

Lord, please, let that be true.“I hope not.”

“It’s the last phase of training, right? After that, you’ll be mission active.”

Jina’s eyes widened. “Really?”Mission active.No one had told her that. Maybe they thought she knew, maybe it was common knowledge among the other trainees. Same deal as before, her contact with them was limited, and when they were together, they were all so intensely focused on what they were doing then that there hadn’t been much conversation. Or maybe Levi hadn’t told her because he hoped if she didn’t know she wouldn’t have the motivation to try harder. She couldn’t stop herself from circling back to the truth that no matter how hard she tried or what she accomplished, he still didn’t now, and never would, want her on his team. The knowledge was acid in her veins.

She couldn’t let herself dwell on it, she had to get in the right mind-set, focus on the right outcome. The jump training was do or die. This was it, the last hurdle. No pressure, right?

“I’m not looking forward to it,” Donnelly continued, “but at least I have a couple more weeks before I reach that stage. You’re ahead of the rest of us.”

“I am?”

“Yeah, smart-ass,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “You’re damn good with computer games and you know it.”

“But so are you, and all of the others, otherwise we wouldn’t have been targeted. Uh—picked.”

He laughed. “I hear you. I signed on for a nice inside, sitting-down job, and instead I got this. But I’m never bored.”

Who had time to be bored? “That’s for sure. Listen, thanks for bailing me out.” She started to say bye and end the call, but a detail popped into her head. “Wait. What’s your first name?” She’d have to know in order to make introductions; how would it look if she was barely acquainted with her own date?

He snorted. “Now I know for certain why we never managed a date.”

She supposed that was true enough. If she’d been truly interested in him, she’d have made time somehow—and she’d have found out his first name.

“It’s Brian,” he said.

“Bye, Brian.”

Throwing together even an informal group thing took a lot of planning. Even with the jump hanging over her head like a sword, she’d made lists: a grocery list, a list of who she was inviting, a list of cleaning chores that needed to be done. She needed extra seating, some music, maybe a movie to stream, and something to keep the kids occupied. She put all her lists on a clipboard and carried it around with her, putting check marks beside each item as she took care of it, or each name as she asked each team member.

---