Until You

"And, naturally, you decided you wanted no part of college, or of law, or of making him proud."

Conor sighed. "Am I really that easy to read?"

"It takes a rebel to know a rebel," Miranda said lightly. "So, what did you do? Join the force anyway?"

"I wasn't that dumb. The old man would have sabotaged me."

"Sabotaged you?"

"Sure. I don't know how, exactly. Maybe he'd have seen to it I flunked the exam or that I didn't make it out of the Academy, or if he couldn't manage that, he'd have gotten me appointed to a shit detail."

"The South Bronx?"

Conor laughed. "The Internal Affairs Division." He took her hand, drew her towards a cluster of tables sheltered under a striped awning outside a neighborhood bar. "It isn't the Champs Elysées but how about we sit down and have lunch?"

"I'd like that."

"I think you have to go inside and place your order. What would you like?"

"A salad or a sandwich. Whatever you have. And some iced tea, please."

"Payment up front," Conor said, and he dipped his head and kissed her.

Miranda sat back, smiling to herself as he strolled inside the bar. He was right, this wasn't Paris, not by a long shot. It was a grey, slightly grungy street in New York—but she was happier than she'd ever been in Paris, happier than she'd ever been in her entire life, now that she'd fallen in love with...

God, what was that?

Her heart gave an unsteady leap. She sat forward, trying to see through a snarl of traffic to the other side of the street. For a minute, she'd thought she'd seen—

"Here we go, mademoiselle. Two iced teas, one ham on rye, one turkey on white. Mademoiselle gets her choice of..." Conor got a look at Miranda's bloodless face and set the tray down with a clatter. "What's the matter?"

She looked up at him. I just saw that man, she wanted to say, I saw Vincent Moratelli.

But she hadn't seen him. There was nobody on the opposite sidewalk, nobody in the street at all that bore more than a passing resemblance in height and weight to Moratelli. It had only been a horrible illusion and to talk about it would be to give life to an ugly memory.

"Nothing's the matter." Conor looked unconvinced so she shot a look at the turkey-on-white, gave an exaggerated shudder, and lapsed into an overdone French accent. "On second thought, monsieur, perhaps somesing iz zee mattaire. Do zee Americans truly call zat stuff 'bread'?"

Just as she'd hoped, the put-on eased the tension and made Conor laugh. He sat down, shoved the ham-on-rye towards her and bit into the turkey-on-white.

"You just don't know what's good. This is gourmet fare. Spongy bread, lots of mayo... Are you laughing at me, Beckman?"

"I am indeed, O'Neil." Miranda took a bite of her sandwich. "And I'm waiting to hear the end of your story. What happened after you decided you were going to spite your father by not studying law?"

Conor swallowed, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, and took a drink of iced tea.

"I enlisted."

"In the army?"

"I know you'd prefer the French Foreign Legion but yes, in the army."

"And?"

"And, I hated it. The orders. The jerks giving the orders. The whole bit."

Miranda grinned. "Just like home, huh?"

"Exactly like home—except, after a while, I saw that it wasn't. For a change, the rules made sense." Conor moved his glass of iced tea idly over the table top, leaving a pattern of rings within rings. "I ended up in Special Forces."