Page 8 of I Dream of Danger
“No one told me, Nick,” she said gently. It wasn’t the first time she had to answer how she knew something she shouldn’t. And it wouldn’t be the last. When he lived with them, Nick had never known. Her father hadn’t known. She hadn’t known. “You have the bearing of a soldier, and your hair is cut military-short. There is a pale patch on your jacket. Where there would have been an insignia. You look like you’re doing well, but you’re not in a suit. You’ve got combat boots on. They’re sold in stores, too, but taking all these things together—” She shrugged.
Nick relaxed, smiled. Oh, how she’d missed that smile! It had taken him almost two years to smile when he first came to live with them. She’d been only a child, but she understood instinctively that he’d come from pain and cruelty, and she’d made it her personal challenge to make him smile.
Once he started, he smiled often. He was breathtaking when he smiled.
Like now.
He shook his head. “I forgot how smart you are. How perceptive. So you put all that together and came up with military, hm?”
It hurt that he forgot anything about her. She hadn’t forgotten anything about him.
“Yes, but I wouldn’t want to guess which branch of the service and how far you’ve climbed.” She tilted her head, studying him. “So…was I right?”
“Bingo.”
Elle relaxed. She’d reasoned her way out of the trap. “Which branch are you in?”
A cloud moved across his face, but he answered calmly enough. “Army.”
A word flashed across her mind. She didn’t even know she’d had it in her head, but the information she gleaned in her Dreams had its own agenda. The word came out of her mouth before she could censor it. “Rangers?”
Nick straightened, frowning. “Now how the hell would you know that?” His look was keen, penetrating, impersonal.
There was no sense now that she had a special place in his heart, none. For all her late childhood and early teens, ever since Nick had arrived in their lives, she knew he had a soft spot for her. That she could take risks with him. Like a puppy that could pull a wolf’s tail with impunity.
Not now. She had no feeling at all that she was allowed liberties with Nick. His frown was deep and serious and a little scary.
She swallowed, and started on the lies. When she’d never had to lie to him. “Sorry. That was stupid of me. I have no idea what’s going on with you. There was a movie on TV the other night and the main protagonist was an Army Ranger. That’s what they called him, in fact. Ranger. That’s all. I don’t even really understand what it means.”
Even if she hadn’t Dreamed that he was a Ranger, she’d have wagered money that if there was a special place in the Army, Nick would have achieved it.
He relaxed slightly. “A movie hero? That’s not me.”
Oh, but it was. Nick was much more handsome than most of the actors she saw on TV. Most actors had a softness about them that was reflected in their faces. They might spend eight hours a day at the gym, but their faces were puppyish.
Not Nick. Nick had known real tragedy. Wherever he’d spent the first eleven years of his life before he came to them—and he never spoke a word about it--they had been hard, tough years. He’d had the bearing of a man even when young. As a teenager, he’d been wise and tough beyond his years. The other kids in high school either worshipped him or steered clear of him. No one ever tried to bully him. They wouldn’t dare.
There was no actor on earth who could look as tough as Nick at twenty-three.
He’d had a rough life which had made him hard. The military had taken him and made him harder.
He frowned at her. “How come no one was at the graveside? The Judge was well known and respected, I’d have thought there would be thousands of people.”
Elle didn’t want to talk about that, about the past. She wanted to talk about the here and now. But he wanted to know and she was hard wired to give Nick what he wanted.
“There were people at the funeral. Some. Not many. They couldn’t stay for the interment.” She swallowed. “Daddy…was sick for a long time.”
Nick narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, you said that. So?”
“He also hasn’t been a judge for a long time. I think…I think people sort of forgot about him.”
Nick was really frowning now and Elle understood completely. When he’d left—wait, use the right term. When Nick abandoned them, her father, the Judge, had been one of the most important men in the county. Nick had felt her father’s natural authority first hand. When she and her father had found him behind a dumpster, starving and with a broken wrist, the Judge had taken care of everything. Within a month, he’d become a ward of the Judge and was regularly enrolled in school.
Nick had often said his real life began the day the Judge found him. He seemed to forget that Elle had been there too. A tiny girl, only seven, but it seemed her real life began that day too.
Nick had lived under the Judge’s protective aura. So Elle could understand that he found it hard to understand his last years.
“Daddy…declined. Mentally. He was forcibly removed from the bench via an injunction.” She swallowed. Her father had been beyond understanding exactly what had happened, but he had understood very well that something important had been taken away from him. He’d been agitated for an entire year.
