Page 23 of Danger Close

I’d fucked up somewhere along the way. I was gob smacked by how quickly things had spun out of control. Who knew that herding Teresa Louise Guerro to our daughter’s wedding would be more of a headache than heading a multi-layered counter-intelligence operation against an international criminal organization!

After all the shit I’d done, and all the bodies I’d dropped, was she going to be the one that finally defeated me?

Despite my frustration, I couldn’t help but laugh. The memory of walking hand in hand in Paris, as I complained about the insane things I would do to spend time with her struck me hard like a blow to the gut. She’d turned to me, dead serious, and said, “Oui, mais c’est l’amour.”Yes, but that’s love.She burst out into the greatest fit of beautiful giggles, and I had to pull her into an alley on La Place du Concorde and kiss her silly.

“Have yourself a nice dinner, kids.” I nodded to the front door of the large Victorian farmhouse. “I’ll make sure she behaves when we come back…ifwe come back tonight.”

I crossed my arms, staring up at the large, silver moon in the sky.

Farm life looked sweet. The scarce light pollution made the stars almost as bright as they were in Central Asia, where sparse cities allowed the constellations to paint the sky the way they had when they were first named.

I’d call it romantic, if it wasn’t for the headache threatening to knock me on my ass. A headache named Teresa.

“What disaster are you dragging me into?” I pondered out loud as I spun my keys on a ring around my index finger and walked to my car.

Chapter 11

Shameless

Teri

Greg ordered me a second beer. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had more than one drink at dinner.

Emboldened by the fermented wheat, I confessed my situation because I was certain I’d never have anyone else to tell. I skipped the details of the fight between me and Cobra, of course. But I admitted to fainting after realizing that a man I hadn’t seen in almost thirty years was standing before me! Then I woke up here, in Mourningkill, to go to my daughter’s wedding. That I did not have a wallet or phone, and hadn’t asked for it back.

“I promise I will pay you back,” I promised.

He waved me off.

“In the words of the bard, ‘neither borrower nor lender be’.” He shrugged. “If it was good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for a pleb like me.”

He pushed the beer towards me, a tender smile on his face.

“A young man who knows Shakespeare?” I couldn’t hide my smile. “So far we have discussed Socrates, Siddhartha, and Carl Jung. You are certainly a unique young man, Greg.”

I imagined that his barn loft apartment would be filled with worn paperbacks by the great philosophers.

“Dont forget Hypatia,” he said with a nod. “She doesn’t get near enough credit in philosophical discussions.”

He had surprised me by naming many female philosophers: Mary Wollstonecraft, Hypatia of Alexandria, and my personal favorite, Simone de Beauvoir.

Greg looked around the tavern, as if searching for a familiar face.

“Are you looking for someone?” I nudged his foot with my own, drawing his attention back to me.

His polite smile returned when a young waitress came with a beer bottle. She was pretty enough, but he was prettier. But I did wonder if he would try to hit on her if I wasn’t occupying this seat.

“Not really,” he said, taking a drink of his beer. “She wouldn’t be here.”

“Ah!” I said, delighted. “A paramour?”

He chuckled, his green eyes sparkling as he looked at me with a boyish grin.

“Nah.” That word should sound horrendous, like a donkey breying. But when he said it, with his rural charm, it was charming. “She’s not interested.”

“Oh?” I said, skeptically, letting my eyes lazily run down the parts of him I could see above the table.

He was effortlessly roguish. Very unkempt, but quite rugged. His face was something to marvel at, even though he hid much of it behind a two-day old stubble. His jaw was sharp, his nose straight, and while it was large, it wasn’t unattractive. His brows were prominent, and his eyes—well, they were the perfect hunter’s eyes with a positive cantal tilt. Deep set and serious.