“Marlys!” A laugh was startled from him.
She gave him a cheeky grin. “What? It will look twice as good on her. Really.”
He laughed again, and slung an arm over her shoulders. Her little shiver of reaction was easy to cover by drawing her sweater closer around her. “I can’t decide if you’re wicked or fun,” he said.
“Wicked fun,” she answered. See? Playtime. Nothing to worry about.
It was cool enough to choose the table under a patio heater at a nearby café. She asked for a half order of Chinese salad and black coffee, while Dean wanted eggs, bacon, homefries, a blueberry muffin, and a side of granola-topped yogurt.
“You and Noah need to go grocery shopping,” Marlys said, marveling at the number of plates that the waitress had placed around him and the speed at which he was chowing down the food. “Last night it was beefsticks. This morning he didn’t have anything to offer for breakfast?”
“Noah wasn’t there this morning.”
She hooted in surprise. “So Private got lucky last night! Who’s the woman on gun-cleaning detail?”
His fork halfway to his mouth, he froze. His cool silver gaze seemed to slice right through her like an ice pick. “I don’t know. What do you have against him anyway?”
Her plate of shredded cabbage, sliced almonds, and wonton strips required her full attention. “What makes you think I have something against him?”
“ ‘Private’?”
Marlys squirmed. “It’s not meant to be a put-down. I don’t criticize soldiers—of any rank.”
“Mmm.”
Miffed, she glared at Dean. “I don’t!”
“Yeah, and that guy you tongue-kissed in your shop a little while back is your true soul mate.” He put down his fork and patted her fingers resting on the tabletop. “Don’t get worked up, angel. Not everyone appreciates the military life.”
Marlys jerked her hand from his touch and shoved it into the patch pocket of her cardigan where she fingered the silver amulet and played with the attached silver chain. “I lived on Army bases. I loved military life.”
“Yeah?” Dean pushed the last of his plates away. His eyebrows rose as he took in her expression. “I think you mean it.”
While she resented his apparent belief that he could read the truth on her face, she didn’t see any harm in reminiscing about the childhood she remembered as blissfully happy and incredibly secure.
“It was the best. I was an only child, but there were always other kids to play with. Our parents shopped at the same places, we went to the same schools, the focus of every family on my block was exactly the same. I loved the way that everything stopped on base when the flag was lowered at five P.M.” She had her hand out of her pocket and halfway to her heart before she realized what she was doing and, embarrassed, redirected it to her coffee cup.
Dean gave a little nod. “The way my sisters and brother and I were raised, our entire family was in the service, not just our father.”
“Exactly.” Marlys smiled. “I couldn’t wait until I turned ten and was eligible for my very own military I.D.”
Dean laughed. “I’d forgotten about that.”
“And instead of Barbies, I had a whole army of G.I. Joes.”
His brows rose again. “Which might explain your career in boutique-wear. You missed out on your girly years.”
“I didn’t miss out on anything.” Every day she’d walked within those comforting gates, she’d known she’d belonged and she’d been secure.
Dean was shaking his head. “God, I felt like I did. When I turned fourteen, I wanted to be a civilian kid in the worst way, which only made my dad clamp down harder. My mom, too, telling me that every trouble report on me reached the base commander and reflected on my father, and my father’s career. At seventeen, I bailed out of the whole thing and it took me a few years before I woke up, went back, and enlisted. I don’t suppose growing up with that kind of pressure was any easier for you.”
“My father was a general.”
He shrugged. “Yeah? Only worse. My father didn’t have near that kind of clout, and when I was a kid, he still pissed me off.”
The amulet’s silver chain strangled her forefinger. “I adored my father.”
“I’m sure the feeling was mutual, though imagining Marlys Weston, teen angel, makes even a battle-scarred dude like me shiver a little. How’d the general deal?”
“The general didn’t deal at all,” Marlys heard herself confess. She whipped her hand from the silver tear in her pocket and flattened her fingers against the table as if it could flatten her own emotions. “My mom asked for a divorce when I was twelve.”