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“Not much of a nature guy?”
“Who, me? I love the outdoors, just not slimy things that suck your blood.”
Natalie stared at him a long moment, and his skin prickled beneath her attention.
“What?” he asked, when she stayed silent.
“Nothing.”
“Seriously? You practically bore a hole through my head with your eyeballs, and you say it’s nothing? Not buying it, Duchess.”
“It’s just…” She shrugged. “You remind me of Nick sometimes.”
“Really? How?”
Before she could answer, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He fished the device out and handed it to her. “Check this, will you?”
“I gave the Agency your number, in case they found something while we were on the road,” Natalie said. She frowned down at the screen. “My team says they think they have a plan to get us into the center.”
“Cool. We can go over it when we stop to grab lunch.” He rested one elbow on the car door and steered with one hand. They weren’t even close to the state line yet, and already the temperature was rising. He reached over and cranked the AC higher. “So, tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“How I remind you of Nick.”
“Oh.” She put the phone down and rested her hands in her lap. “Well, apart from your looks…”
“I’m much better looking than he was.” He grinned.
She snorted. “You both carry your honor like a shield.”
He frowned, not sure how to interpret that. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you make your decisions based on whether it’s the honorable option.”
A compliment, then. But she was giving him a little too much credit. “Not always. I mean, I hope you’re right, but sometimes I just follow my gut. I lead my team that way too. Act on my instincts and let the guys do the same. We’re like one unit, me and the guys. One for all and all for one, yeah?”
“And that’s where you’re different.”
“Huh?”
“You and Nick.”
“You lost me.”
“Nick wasn’t the leader that you are.”
“No. Nick was better. He had mad organizational skills and ran a tighter ship than I could ever hope to. You should hear how the guys in his unit talked about him. They idolized him. Believe me, if they weren’t off on a deployment halfway around the world right now, they’d be here with us, fighting with everything they had to bring his killer to justice.”
It was sheer chance that Nick had been with their unit that day—filling in for a teammate on family leave. Normally, the Navy kept siblings in separate units. It was a safety measure, meant to keep families from losing multiple children at once if a mission went south. But Kyle and his brother had always been close, and when they weren’t on duty, Nick had spent nearly as much time with their unit as he did with his own. He’d been a part of both teams—and he was fiercely missed by everyone he left behind.
“Yes,” Natalie said, her voice quiet. “But he always bragged about your passion for the team. About how you’d get them all pumped up for the missions. He said you were the true heart of your team in a way he couldn’t match.”
A sudden lump formed in Kyle’s throat. Yeah, that sounded like something his big bro would say. He swallowed hard.
They slowed to a stop at a red light on the outskirts of what appeared to be an industrial park. The atmosphere in the car had morphed from playful to melancholy, and all Kyle wanted at that moment was to see the woman across from him smile again. Natalie had such a great smile—wide and genuine and dazzling. In fact, her smile had been the first thing he’d noticed about her the first time they’d met.
“Look!” Natalie sniffled, then pointed out the window. “There’s a sign for a diner up ahead. Can we stop?”
