“You didn’t have my phone number?”
“No. Are you old enough to remember the good old days? Real telephones? Telephone directories? You could look up somebody’s phone number back then. Not anymore.” His expression changed, went from teasing to serious. “In between all of that, I’d had people working on putting me in contact with the families of those guys I’d been with in Afghanistan.”
“And?”
“And,” he said, his eyes darkening, “I’ve met with them. Such nice people, Melissa. Good people, the parents proud of their boys, the older guy’s wife so proud of her husband’s service and valor…” He stopped, cleared his throat. “You’ll like them.”
“I will? You mean I’m going to meet them?”
“Yes. We’re going to stay in touch. I want to, you know, do something to honor the two kids. And Bill. The older guy. The one they called Pop. His two little girls are going to need some help. Summer camp. College—”
Lissa rose on her toes and kissed Nick.
“I love you,” she said.
He drew her against him. “And I love you with all my heart.” She felt his mouth curve against her temple. “Brutus says to tell you that he misses you. So do the kittens.”
She smiled. “I miss them, too.”
“Don’t you want to hear how I found that not-so-small-country you Wildes call home?”
“Tell me.”
“Well, after good old Marcia flat out refused to tell me anything about you—”
“Some of the chefs signed with her
call her Marcia the Mean,” Lissa said, laughing.
“I said I’d get an injunction that would force her to give me what I needed.” Nick grinned. “She told me to go ahead and try it. She said the reputation of her agency was at stake. She finally offered to contact you on my behalf, but just about then I remembered something.”
“What?” Lissa said, leaning back in his arms.
“I remembered you said you’d grown up in Texas. On a ranch. And then I remembered that you’d said your old man was a four-star general.” He bent his head, brushed his lips lightly over hers. “Turned out to be a cinch, finding a four-star general named Wilde who owns a ranch in Texas.”
Nick winced as Lissa touched her hand lightly to his jaw.
“That was courtesy of your brother Jake.”
“Yes. Well, my brothers are, you know, kind of protective.”
“I’m glad they are.”
“And then Marcia gave you my address here?”
Nick smiled. “I called El Sueño from my plane, just before we took off from the Dallas airport. I told Jake that he had it all wrong, that I loved you and you loved me. He’d refused to let me get three words out when I saw him, but for some reason he listened to me when I called, gave me your phone number and address—and added that he and a bunch of other guys—it sounded like the roster of a rugby team—would happily take me apart limb by limb if it turned out that I was lying.”
Lissa brought Nick’s hand to her lips. He winced.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing.”
He started to tug his hand free. She hung onto it, looked at it…
“Your knuckles are swollen.”
He shrugged. “It’s nothing.”