“Listen. This—” He waved his hand to encompass the whole mess that was Aaron’s life at the moment. “—is not unreasonable. It’s not even unpredictable if you take a moment tothink. This is just life. It’s marriage.”
“You’ve never been married.” Aaron’s reply was halfhearted at best. He’d crossed over to the point of inebriation where it wasless intoxication and more incipient headache. He would have liked it if his return to sanity meant that Jacob’s words made less sense, but tragically, this was not the case.
“I don’t need to have been married to know what’s going on here. I know you, and I know that you are trying to manage this as a soldier. You’ve been trying to do it to me for years.”
“You were a soldier.”
Jacob rolled his eyes expansively. “I meant after that, you recalcitrant arsehole. And you know that. Stop being difficult. It isn’t going to help you resolve things with your wife.”
“There isn’t anything to resolve,” Aaron said glumly. “She is like a hurricane. All whirlwinds and chaos.”
Jacob bit his lip, but his smile was strong enough to break through.
“What?” Aaron demanded.
Jacob took a slow, leisurely sip of his drink. Aaron’s stomach clenched slightly at the mere sight. Ah. So he’d crossed over tothatstage.
“Well, it’s two things, really,” Jacob observed lightly. “First,” he said, holding up a finger in point of illustration, “is that you are showing yourself to be awfully passionate about this whole ‘marriage of convenience’ thing.”
“Don’t say it like that,” Aaron grumbled. “Don’t say ‘marriage of convenience’ like you think it’s a lie. Just because I made a mistake and got an extremely inconvenient woman doesn’t mean I didn’ttry.”
“As much as I would love to linger over you admitting that you made a mistake, I now turn to point two,” Jacob said. He leaned forward, resting his elbow on his knee, holding Aaron’s eyes with his own.
“You are the only man who I’ve ever seen navigate us through a hurricane without losing a single soul. You were incredible, Aaron.”
Aaron didn’t think Jacob had ever used his given name before. Aaron should have protested the familiarity, but as people kept reminding him, he wasn’t in the Navy any longer. Besides, it was startlingly effective. Theatrical bastard, indeed.
“So,” Jacob went on, his voice calmer now, “maybe this is another hurricane you can navigate. Hell, maybe it will even manage to put you directly on the path that you’re meant to be upon.”
Aaron didn’t respond—not to agree nor to argue. He didn’t know which was the right course of action. And, no matter what comparisons Jacob might draw, Aaron had never felt that way when he was commanding a ship.
“I find myself… uncertain how to proceed,” he admitted, because he had to tell someone, and his wife had stolen his sister and made an alliance with her.
Jacob’s smile was less gleeful this time; it was softer and more understanding.
“Well, first off, you can’t hide in here forever. No, don’t tell me you aren’t hiding,” he said as Aaron prepared to do just that. “You are, and it’s ridiculous, and we are going to stop it right now. You’re Admiral Aaron fucking Warson?—”
“My formal title,” Aaron noted dryly.
“—and you are going to go wash, put on a fresh coat, and we are going out for a drink.”
“I have had enough to drink,” Aaron said. “And you said you almost died getting here.”
“I exaggerated to make you feel bad,” Jacob admitted. “It worked. You told me everything I needed to know. That’s an intelligence tactic I learned in the navy.”
“You did not.”
Aaron was beginning to fear that Jacob and Phoebe would hit it off phenomenally if they ever met. Given what had happened when Phoebe met Clio, this was a harrowing thought indeed.
It was that worry more than anything else that ultimately made him agree.
“Fine,” he said. “If we get a meal instead of a drink, I will go with you.”
Aaron closed his eyes briefly against the onslaught of cheer that everyone in his life seemed determined to subject him to—then opened them again because he had had far too many drinks to close his eyes without promptly falling asleep. He’d spent too many years in a cramped ship’s berth to spend a single night longer in anything less comfortable than his massive four-poster bed.
“Agreed,” Jacob said happily. “I do love winning.”
Aaron grumbled but let himself be cajoled into freshening up and then leaving the house. He did not plan to admit it—his friend would beintolerablewith ego if he did—but he felt better for having discussed the confusing miasma of feelings that Phoebe seemed determined to inspire him. He felt better—even if he still didn’t know precisely what to do.
