Chapter Six

“So, what are you going to do?” Dean Jessop handed Chris another beer. “You think you can help Jenny this way?”

Chris shook his head. “I have no fucking idea, man. Not a clue.”

“But what are you even up against?” Jim Alden asked. “I mean, you still don’t know what happened to her, right?”

“No. She said she’ll tell me, but right now… I don’t know.”

Dallas Foreman was silent. He knew exactly what had happened to Jenny. When his security firm had taken over protecting Olivia Jameson from her stalker, Dallas had looked into all her friends, to see if there was any connection between them and Liv’s stalker. He was a hard man, a trained professional ex-sniper, and he’d still been horrified by what Jenny had gone through.

Chris saw the look on Dallas’ face, a kind of watchful stillness. “What?”

“Nothing.” Dallas took a sip of beer.

Chris, Dean and Jim studied him. The four of them had been through hell on earth together in Afghanistan, and after almost five years together in combat and life-and-death situations, they knew each other like the backs of their hands. They knew Dallas was holding out on them.

“No, man, really,” Dean said. “What?”

“Well… when I was protecting Olivia, I did some digging into Emma and Jenny and Kat. Just to make sure her stalker wasn’t getting information about Olivia through her friends without their knowing.”

“Yeah?” Chris said. “And?”

Dallas sighed. “And I found out what happened to Jenny. I got the police and medical reports.”

“Medical?” Chris said softly.

“Yeah. Photos too.”

The other men looked at him, waiting.

“It’s – it’s bad, Chris. Really fucking bad.” Dallas looked away from Chris’ gray stare. “She was hurt in ways that I can’t believe she got through. You’d be trying to undo a hell of a lot of damage.”

Chris clenched his hands. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe you should say no,” Jim said tentatively. “This sounds like it’s way beyond you, man, all your good intentions aside. Jenny may be better off with this professional sex surrogate, in the end.”

“I don’t think so,” Dallas said, taking them all by surprise. “I think she’d be better off with Chris.”

“How come?” Dean asked.

“Because despite it all, she trusts Chris not to hurt her,” Dallas said. “She asked him for help, she asked him to be the one to change her mind and feelings about men. She’s not going to do that with everyone. If she believes that she’s safe with you, then that’s really something. That says a hell of a lot about how she sees you – about what kind of man you are to her.” He shrugged. “Yeah, a surrogate may have the experience and education, but she’ll never, ever be able to look at him the way she looks at Chris. That kind of faith in men is rare, even if we’re talking about women who haven’t been hurt the way Jenny has.”

The men thought about that.

“But…” Chris paused. “But what if I scare her? Make it worse?”

“First, there’s no way you can do anything to her that’s worse than what she’s been through, believe me,” Dallas said. “Second, she already told you about that: she knows it wouldn’t be you scaring her. She’s made that distinction, and I think you need to as well. Third, you two would have do a hell of a lot of talking about what was going on in her head. If she got scared, you’d have to stop and talk about it. It sounds like she knows that – she seems totally open to communicating with you. If you’re open too, then I think it would all be OK, in the end.”

“And the fact is that you’ve dealt with damaged and frightened women before,” Jim said. “More so than the rest of us.”