Emma: Part Three by Lolita Lopez Page B

unclasped and lowered her hands. She stepped away from him, and he watched as she investigated his work space. Her perplexed expression amused him. “What is it?”
    She trailed her fingertips along the edge of his desk. “I just have a hard time imagining you being happy in here.” She glanced at him as if to gauge whether she had overstepped the mark. “This,” she gestured to his battle rattle, “is how I’m used to seeing you. This,” she pointed to his chair, “looks impossibly wrong.”
    “It’s taken some time to get used to,” he gruffly admitted. Moving to his locker, he removed and stowed his gear. “This is actually the type of assignment men fight for,” he said, “but I’d be lying if I said I don’t miss being in the field.”
    “Will Jack ever take an assignment like this?”
    Max had to catch himself before he said something that would upset her. Jack wasn’t the type of soldier suited for an office. He was a sniper, and he belonged outside the wire. It was in his DNA. They’d had many talks in their years together, and Jack had always made it clear that he wanted to die doing his job, not pushing paper in an office.
    “No,” he said finally. “Jack is happy doing what he does best. He might move into training full-time in a few decades, but for now, he’s where he needs to be.”
    “Decades?”
    Max nodded. “We age differently than your kind. We used to have serums that helped slow aging and aided cell regeneration. We lost the capability to produce them at a high rate so they’re on limited rationing now.”
    “What does that mean for you?”
    Catching the worry in her voice, he assured her, “Not what you’re probably thinking. I’m not going to wake up wrinkled and gray tomorrow. The three of us will likely age at a similar rate.”
    Emma hopped up onto his desk as he dropped into his chair. “So how old are you?”
    “Older than you,” he said, deliberately obfuscating.
    She narrowed her eyes and playfully poked his shoulder. “Cradle robber!”
    He snatched her hand and kissed each fingertip. “Guilty as charged.”
    “I’d lean in to kiss you properly,” she said, “but you stink like diesel and worse.”
    He smiled at her dainty, wrinkled nose. “I won’t tell you about the worse.”
    Her expression turned sad. “Was it bad, Max?”
    “Yes.” He wouldn’t lie to her. “Your friend Leila lost a brother last night.”
    Her face fell. “Which one?”
    “Lance.”
    “Oh no.” Emma looked as if she might cry.
    Something sparked off inside him. Jealousy? He bitterly hated that he felt something so incredibly inappropriate, but his possessiveness toward Emma was a feeling he had never encountered. He was still trying to figure out how to navigate these new and complicated relationship waters. “Were you close to him?”
    “Not really,” she said, seemingly unaware of his conflicted emotions. “Leila and Lane were closer to my age so we spent more time together when they camped out on our farm during their salvage runs.” She hesitated before admitting, “I think Dad and Laird Keaton wanted Luke or Leland to marry me.”
    Not sure if he wanted to hear her answer, he asked, “Did you want to marry them?”
    “Eventually, if I hadn’t met you or Jack, I probably would have married one of them,” she admitted. “Out of necessity,” she explained. “I couldn’t have kept the farm going by myself, and I wasn’t safe.” She reached out to toy with the cuff of his uniform shirt. “For what it’s worth, I think…maybe…you and Jack were always meant for me.”
    Max hadn’t ever been one to believe in things like fate, but sitting here with Emma, he couldn’t help but wonder. It was a pretty thought, at least.
    “Max?”
    “Mmmhmm?”
    “Was Lane—was he bitten?”
    “No,” he answered quietly. “He was hit by the second explosion.”
    “Did he suffer?”
    He didn’t want to tell her that Lance had taken a chunk of shrapnel to the back of