Page 71 of Eight Years Gone

“Where should we head?”

“Anywhere. We’ll just find a spot.”

They still had a long way to go, but they were getting there. “That idea works for me.”

Sixteen

The stars winked high in the sky as Grace held Jagger’s hand while they walked through the park a couple of blocks from her house.

“Are you warm enough?” he asked.

She nodded, sending him a smile as the wind teased the leaves turning colors on the trees in the low fifty-degree temperatures. She’d grabbed her favorite black beanie and thicker jacket when Jagger had pulled up promptly at seven twenty.

“It’s not too bad when the breeze behaves.” She snuggled closer against his arm, consciously trying to stay in the present, reminding herself that the past had come and gone.

As Jagger had said yesterday, they had now. She was trying her best to keep her walls down—to trust his promise that he was here to stay. “Did you get enough to eat?”

He moved so that he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Definitely.”

“Good.” Sighing her contentment, she locked her arms around his waist. “It’s so pretty out here. I like that we stopped off to do this.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Everything’s been great—a killer dinner and even better company.”

She looked up, smiling into his eyes again, loving the simplicity of their official first date.

They’d talked about their days over bowls of soup, salads, and sandwiches at the Main Street Deli before Jagger pulled over on the way back to her house, suggesting a walk in the park.

They’d strolled this same path dozens of times before, but usually during the summer months. “It’s still so hard to believe this is real—that we’re here like this again.”

“Oh, it’s real.”

“So much between us is the same, but so much is different.”

“Not that different,” he reminded her as he had yesterday.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

“You’re the only person who’s ever known me, Grace.”

“But there’s more now. I want to know everything I missed these last eight years.”

He sighed as he shrugged. “Mostly, I worked. I was in the field more than I wasn’t.”

So much of who and what he’d been was a secret. “It’s kind of weird to think that you were a business and communications major when you left. Now you’re like this super soldier spy guy.”

He frowned as he looked at her.

She shrugged. “Or I assume you are.” Because she’d spent countless more hours researching Delta Force, greedy to understand who Jagger had been when he’d been gone.

“I could tell you, but I think you know how the rest of that saying goes.”

She laughed.

He sent her one of his sexy grins as he winked, pulling her tighter against him. “I just worked, Grace. Whatever I had to do to stay busy enough not to think about you.”

Her smile dimmed.

He gave her a little nudge. “Tell me something new that I don’t know about you.”

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