Not long before, I’d been vowing to avoid this very thing—confident that Emilia would keep me on the straight and narrow. Now she was gone and I was getting pulled into the same old sinkhole, threatening to be sucked in more than ever before. And with no idea how I’d ever be able to get myself back out again.

Chapter Eleven

The next Saturday brought more paintball practice and strategy training. This time Heath and I carpooled with Jordan, who drove his Range Rover. We spent a long day on the actual course that would be the site of our war, mapping it out and designing strategy with the other department heads who would act as captains of their own platoons. We’d planned the war to be a series of different scenarios involving the Blizzard crew. Capture the Flag, King of the Hill and a sort of treasure hunt. We worked on movement, strategy, tactics and communication.

The war was just two short weeks away and soon after that, Draco’s first annual DracoCon convention in Vegas. These would have been exciting and fun times had it not been for other things on my mind—the daily worries of the fallout from the lawsuit and, of course, my preoccupation with Emilia.

After we dropped Heath off, Jordan drove me to my house. I cleaned up and we went for dinner at a little café we both liked in Corona del Mar.

We had vowed not to discuss work that evening, so instead he told me about his planned trip to Paris early in the New Year, once all the lawsuit and Con business had blown over. He wasn’t sure which of his latest ladyloves he wanted to bring with him. Yes, my good friend had deep and complex issues that sprang from his playboy millionaire lifestyle.

“I’m going all-out—we’ll charter a private jet and I have reservations at one of the most amazing hotels with a penthouse view of the Eiffel Tower.”

I scoffed—charter a jet? Even I didn’t do that. Jordan was wealthy, but not so much that chartering a jet wasn’t an extravagance. I, on the other hand, refrained from things like that not because of cost, but out of concern for my impact on the environment. One person just should not have that kind of an environmental footprint, in my opinion. Yes, some would say I’d gone to the ISS and left an even bigger footprint doing it. But that rocket would have gone up with or without me. The trip had been necessary to carry a fresh set of cosmonauts to the station and bring the ones who’d been up there for six months back home. In that case, I’d just been along for the ride.

I shook my head at him. “Why take a previous liaison with you? Why not just pick up someone when you’re there—a French model or something?”

He grinned at me, scratching at his goatee. “Because then I don’t get to enjoy the perks of the private jet and put another notch in my mile-high-club card.”

I rolled my eyes. “I should have known it was for an important reason that you’d want to take someone with you.”

“Hey, never turn down an opportunity for in-flight entertainment on a twelve-hour flight.” Then he paused. “You and I could always go together.”

I made a face at him. “I love you man, but not like that.”

He laughed for a moment and then sobered. “So, uh, how are you holding up? I, um, heard she quit her job at Draco. Mac was whining about it.”

I picked at my fish and chips, not feeling the appetite tonight that I usually did after a day of paintball. “She’s on a short leave before she decides what she wants to do. She’ll be back.”

Jordan’s mouth thinned. “And you’re, uh, okay with that?”

I shrugged, but didn’t say anything. This wasn’t a topic I wanted to discuss with him.

“So are you to going to…move on?”

I stopped chewing my French fry. “What do you mean?”

“Well…I mean that her flying out to spend a week on the East Coast means she clearly wants to get on with her life…without you.” I clenched my teeth, irritated at how his thoughts echoed my own. How could I do anything, when I had vowed to back off?

He forked in some rice pilaf and watched me with his pale blue eyes, as if I were a bomb about to explode, or something. “Maybe you should start looking around,” he said with a casual shrug and a cautious glance.

I stared at him over my plate. “I don’t date. That hasn’t changed.”

Jordan shook his head. “I don’t understand how you ever got any tail before.”

I laughed. “When you got it, you got it.”

“So this Friday night I’m going out with that swimsuit model, Marta? Remember her?”

“The blonde?”