“I love Jess,” he said. “But I’m not in love with her.”

“Then—”

“Let me finish, because this is not an easy story to tell.” He took a breath and went on. “Jess talked to me when no one else would. She gave me a job when no one else would. She has my loyalty.”

“Fresh out of the Marines, advanced college education, and you were having trouble getting work?” She did try to keep the disbelief out of her voice but she failed.

“I wasn’t simply fresh out of the Marines, Gwen. I was fresh out of the Unit.”

In anger she’d forgotten, but she did know there was a difference. A large one. “Right.”

“I was specifically recruited to be in the Unit. All my training, every year I was in…always with the Unit.

After eight years I was honorably discharged with a substantial bonus and a year of mandatory, five-times-a-week therapy.”

Five times a week?

“I met Jess in a coffee shop near her office. I was using my mother’s laptop to try and hack into my service records to see if I could find out why they cut me loose. At the time I wasn’t ready to face why they sent me home two years before I should have been, but I knew why. Everyone knew why. Anyway, I hadn’t shaved in about ten weeks. Hadn’t had a haircut since I’d been discharged. Was still wearing my uniform…I definitely looked like the guy who was about to go up to the roof of some building and start picking people off with a bolt-action rifle. So I’m sitting there, doing something I know I shouldn’t be doing, and when I looked up—” he shrugged “—she was standing there. Holding two big cups of coffee. Staring at me. I expected her to run. If not from a general fear of the grizzly, then at least from my stench—since it had been a few days since I’d showered. But she didn’t run.”

“What did she do?”

His smile was warm, and Gwen felt that pang of jealousy again. She hated feeling it, hated knowing she even had it. “She handed me one of those cups of coffee, along with six honey buns, sat down next to me and…and she talked to me. I don’t even remember for how long or what was said. And, in the beginning, she did most of the talking. For a week, though, I came back to the same coffee shop around the same time and every day she was there or she’d show up a few minutes later, and we’d talk some more. Before I knew it, she’d hired me to write code for some of her company’s software and when that went well, they hired me to do more.

I started shaving again, showering every day, and I put all my military stuff in my trunk and put it in the back of my closet. Soon I had goals and plans for my future that were months or years ahead rather than days or hours.

She helped me move on…well, her and the therapy. And that’s notsomething I can ever forget. So, yeah, if Jess told me to jump off a bridge, and there was a good reason to do it, I probably would.”

Gwen swallowed, torn between feeling grateful to Jess for helping Lock when he needed it most and resenting her for being closer to Lock then Gwen might ever be. “So you do love her,” she said softly, determined to face the truth.

“Yeah, I love her. But I’m not in love with her. I’m not in love with anybody.”

Gwen felt her heart drop at Lock’s words, but she wouldn’t come down on him for being honest. She’d rather that now than later.

Nodding, Gwen reached for her ice cream and said, “I understand.”

“I mean,” he went on, unwittingly turning the knife, “not in love with anybody but you.” He thought a moment and added, “God, I’m crazy in love with you. But yeah, I love Jess. Wait…what’s wrong?”

He was probably asking that because her hand was frozen in the action of reaching for her ice cream, but she’d been so stunned, she left it dangling there. Staring at her nails, she asked, “You’re in love with me?”

“Crazy in love with you. You know, that whole ‘can’t imagine my life without you’ crazy in love with you.”

She dropped her hand back in her lap and gazed up at him in astonishment. “How do you just toss that into a conversation?”

“Not tossing, clarifying.”

“You see, this is what I’ve been talking about with you. It’s like the whittling—”

“I never said I whittled. I said it was a hobby. You thought it was whittling and there would be birdhouses.”

“But the way you described it to me—in your quiet, understated way—made it sound like whittling.

Instead you’re like the Ansel Adams of wood!”

“And that’s a problem?”

“No. That’s not the problem, your way of telling me things is. You do this constantly.”

“I do what constantly?”

Using her most calm, relaxed, “surfer dude” voice, Gwen replied, “Hey, just want you to know…sky’s falling. Hey, nothing to worry about but…uh…tsunami.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Hey,” she went on casually even as her heart slammed hard against her ribs as she realized the grizzly loved her, “I invited this old buddy of mine over for dinner. He’s president of the United States of America, and he’s bringing about three hundred people with him, but no problem, I’m sure we have something in the freezer.”

Lock pouted. “I’m not that bad.”

“Yeah, ya are. You’re lucky I can overlook it.”