Scotland for Christmas. Cathryn Parry

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      “Could we please stop and eat dinner together first?” she asked. “I’m getting rather hungry.”

      He sighed. A reasonable request. “Yeah, sure, there’s a good place just ahead.”

      A few minutes later, an hour away from their destination, he pulled the SUV into the dirt parking lot of a roadside restaurant.

      Once inside, he ordered from the counter and brought back hamburgers, French fries, a root beer for him and bottled water for her—all to their booth in the back.

      He was starving; the tantalizing smell of prime Angus beef and salty, deep-fried potatoes made his mouth water. He settled himself into the seat across from her and then bent his head and concentrated on the meal.

      “Thanks for taking care of me today,” she said softly, that gentle hint of Scotland back in her voice.

      “Yeah, no problem,” he said between bites.

      “I’ve been thinking.” She ran a finger around the edge of her French-fry carton, not meeting his gaze.

       Please don’t think.

      “Are you being nice to me just because you’re being paid to?” she asked.

      Oh, hell. He put down his burger and wiped his mouth. “I’m not actually being paid, so...no, I don’t think so.”

      She tilted her head at him. “Why aren’t you being paid?”

      He couldn’t spook her. Had to maintain his cover. “Ah, because I’m doing a favor for my friend. Lee. He, ah, owns the security company.”

      “And how do you know this Lee?”

      Great. He’d just opened Pandora’s box.

      Jacob crossed his arms and stared behind Isabel at the paneled wall and the old Orange Crush soda clock. “Lee was the team lead for my first few jobs in the Secret Service.”

      “And...?” she prodded. She could really be a sharp cookie when she wanted to be. “What do you owe him?”

      “Nothing. We’re friends—isn’t that enough?” Jacob concentrated on pounding the bottom of the glass ketchup bottle. “If I like somebody, I’ll do them a favor. No big deal.”

      “Do you find that you ever get hurt that way?”

      “You know, I’m trying not to take this whole line of questioning personally because I know you just got burned pretty badly,” he pointed out.

      “Don’t show me any favors. Do something because you want to, or don’t do it at all. That’s my new philosophy.”

      Where was this going? He raised an eyebrow at her. Maybe the breakup had affected her more than he realized. “Sure,” Jacob said. “Will do.”

      “And I’ll do the same. With you, I mean. Nothing phony or pretend between us.”

      He darted a gaze at her, but she was already staring at him. They both looked away. Then back again.

      “Was Lee at your wedding?” she asked finally.

      Whoa. He went very still.

      But she didn’t move, either. She just waited patiently. Jacob carefully ran a French fry through the pool of ketchup he’d managed to coax onto his plate. Her question surprised him, but he didn’t feel so bad about answering. “I’m pretty sure Lee is the one who stayed and told everybody in the church to go home afterward.”

      “That’s a good friend,” she said admiringly.

      “Yeah. He is.” The details were kind of hazy at this point, though. “He did come back to my apartment later. I, ah, needed help with the bandages.”

      “The bandages?”

      “I’d punched a few walls. One of them turned out to be brick.”

      She put her hand over her mouth. Her chest was moving up and down.

      “Are you laughing at me?” he asked.

      “Sorry.” She giggled once, and it made her seem young. She giggled again and it was...well, it was the most interesting sound he’d heard in a while. He even felt his face splitting into a grin.

      “This is so inappropriate, I know,” she said between chortles. “But suddenly, I don’t feel as bad about losing my breakfast in a coffee shop in midtown Manhattan.”

      “Are you going to eat that hamburger?” he asked, pointing at her plate. “Because if you don’t, I will.”

      She broke into another fit of giggles, and then suddenly he was laughing, too.

      Just...damn.

      Back in the SUV, facing the road again, Jacob sobered. He couldn’t forget that he was walking a fine line, so many fine lines.

      Maybe that part about Lee had slipped out because of where they were headed. He and Isabel each had damn good reasons not to be keen on wedding celebrations.

      He just felt gentle with her. In a sense, she was a kindred spirit, phase two of his operation or not.

      “Thank you for telling me that story,” she said softly as she buckled her seat belt. “And thank you for being kind today.”

      “You think I’m kind?”

      “You are kind,” she said. And then she went back to fiddling with the radio.

      Jacob was more often accused of being insensitive. Or aloof. Intense was Eddie’s word. Jacob was pretty sure he got that from Rachel, who, now that he thought of it, had coined the term first. Eddie’s wife, Donna, was the one who’d really latched on to it of late, though.

      She hadn’t been at Jacob’s wedding—almost wedding—but Jacob was pretty sure that Eddie had told her the lurid details. Hence her obsession with fixing Jacob up.

      Isabel had seemed to respond to his intensity. Maybe she had some natural intensity of her own deep inside her, dying to come out. Maybe it had taken the shock of Alex dumping her for it to escape through that protective surface of hers.

      And Rachel... Until today, he hadn’t thought of her in years. At this point, she was nothing to him. The thought of her stirred no feelings, one way or another. She’d been a drama queen—open and direct, the opposite of his mom. He’d mistaken that for intensity, and at the time, he’d craved it because it had been such a novelty to him—someone who wanted to pick everything apart and react expressively to it. After being brought up in a mostly silent home, where people tended to withdraw above all, it had been intensely appealing to find someone who thrived on emotion.

      Jacob squinted to find the turnoff he needed. They were almost there.

      Isabel stirred next to him. Stretched like a cat, totally not conscious of him. Comfortable in his presence.

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