“Is he a bull?” Red asked.
“She’s a heifer,” Jillian inserted. “A little black baldy.”
Red and Melody were giving her odd looks.
“As an acquaintance of mine in Jacobsville, Texas, would say,” Red told them, “if Johnny Cash could sing about a girl named Sue, a person can have a girl animal with a boy’s name.” He leaned closer. “He has a female border collie named Bob.”
They burst out laughing.
“Well, don’t stand over here with us old folks,” Red told them. “Get out there with the younger generation and show them how to tango.”
“You aren’t old, Bud,” Theodore told his friend with twinkling eyes. “You’re just a hair slower than you used to be, but with the same skills.”
“Which I hope I’m never called to use again,” Red replied solemnly. “I’m still on reserve status.”
“I know.”
“Red was a bird colonel in spec ops,” Theodore explained to Jillian later when they were sitting at a table sampling the club’s exquisitely cooked seasoned steak and fancy baked sweet potatoes, which it was as famous as for its dance band.
“And he still is?” she asked.
He nodded. “He can do more with recruits than any man I ever knew, and without browbeating them. He just encourages. Of course, there are times when he has to get a little more creative, with the wilder sort.”
“Creative?”
He grinned. “There was this giant of a kid from Milwaukee who was assigned to his unit in the field. Kid played video games and thought he knew more about strategy and tactics than Red did. So Red turns him loose on the enemy, but with covert backup.”
“What happened?” she asked, all eyes.
“The kid walked right into an enemy squad and froze in his tracks. It’s one thing to do that on a computer screen. Quite another to confront armed men in real life. They were aiming their weapons at him when Red led a squad in to recover him. Took about two minutes for them to eliminate the threat and get Commando Carl back to his own lines.” He shook his head. “In the excitement, the kid had, shall we say, needed access to a restroom and didn’t have one. So they hung a nickname on him that stuck.”
“Tell me!”
He chuckled. “Let’s just say that it suited him. He took it in his stride, sucked up his pride, learned to follow orders and became a real credit to the unit. He later became mayor of a small town somewhere up north, where he’s still known, to a favored few, as ‘Stinky.’”
She laughed out loud.
“Actually, he was in good company. I read in a book on World War II that one of our better known generals did the same thing when his convoy ran into a German attack. Poor guy. I’ll bet Stinky cringed every time he saw that other general’s book on a rack.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
She sipped her iced tea and smiled. “This is really good food,” she said. “I’ve never had a steak that was so tender, not even from beef my uncle raised.”
“This is Kobe beef,” he pointed out. “Red gets it from Japan. God knows how,” he added.
“I read about those. Don’t they actually massage the beef cattle?”
“Pamper them,” he agreed. “You should try that sweet potato,” he advised. “It’s really a unique combination of spices they use.”
She frowned, picking at it with her fork. “I’ve only ever had a couple of sweet potatoes, and they were mostly tasteless.”
“Just try it.”
She put the fork into it, lifted it dubiously to her lips and suddenly caught her breath when the taste hit her tongue like dynamite. “Wow!” she exclaimed. “What do they call this?”
“Red calls it ‘the ultimate jalapeño-brown-sugar-sweet-potato delight.’”
“It’s heavenly!”
He chuckled. “It is, isn’t it? The jalapeño gives it a kick like a mule, but it’s not so hot that even tenderfeet wouldn’t eat it.”
“I would never have thought of such a combination. And I thought I was a good cook.”
“You are a good cook, Jake,” he said. “The best I ever knew.”
She blushed. “Thanks, Theodore.”
He cocked his head. “I guess it would kill you to shorten that.”
“Shorten what?”
“My name. Most people call me Ted.”
She hesitated with the fork in midair. She searched his black eyes for a long time. “Ted,” she said softly.
His jaw tautened. He hadn’t expected it to have that effect on him. She had a soft, sweet, sexy voice when she let herself relax with him. She made his name sound different; special. New.
“I like the way you say it,” he said, when she gave him a worried look. “It’s—” he searched for a word that wouldn’t intimidate her “—it’s stimulating.”
“Stimulating.” She didn’t understand.
He put down his fork with a long sigh. “Something happened to you,” he said quietly. “You don’t know me well enough to talk to me about it. Or maybe you’re afraid that I might go after the man who did it.”
She was astounded. She couldn’t even manage words. She just stared at him, shocked.
“I’m in law enforcement,” he reminded her. “After a few years, you read body language in a different way than most people do. Abused children have a look, a way of dressing and acting, one that’s obvious to a cop.”
She went white. She bit her lower lip and her fingers toyed with her fork as she stared at it, fighting tears.
His big hand curled around hers, gently. “I wish you could tell me. I think it would help you.”
She looked up into quiet, patient eyes. “You wouldn’t … think badly of me?”
“For God’s sake,” he groaned. “Are you nuts?”
She blinked.
He grimaced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to put it that way. Nothing I found out about you would change the way I feel. If that’s why you’re reluctant.”
“You’re sure?”
He glared at her.
She lowered her eyes and curled her small hand into his big one, a trusting gesture that touched him in a new and different way.
“When I was fifteen, Uncle John had this young man he got to do odd jobs around here. He was a drifter, very intelligent. He seemed like a nice, trustworthy person to have around the house. Then one day Uncle John felt bad and went to bed, left me with the hired man in the kitchen.”
Her jaw clenched. “At first, he was real helpful. Wanted to put out the trash for me and sweep the floor. I thought it was so nice of him. Then all of a sudden, he asked what was my bra size and if I wore nylon panties.”
Theodore’s eyes began to flash.
She swallowed. “I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do or say. I thought it was some sick joke. Until he tried to take my clothes off, mumbling all the time that I needed somebody to teach me about men and he was the perfect person, because he’d had so many virgins.”
“Good God!”
“Uncle John was asleep. There was nobody to help