He sifted his hand through her hair. Her eyes drifted closed and she made a little hum of pleasure. The sound vibrated through his torso and his cock jumped at the feel of it. Down, boy. Not now. Later. “Why journalism?”
She snuggled a little more into him, draped one arm over his chest, and sighed. “We’ve talked about that. My parents were both journalists.”
“How old were you when they died?”
“The plane crash was when I was eighteen.”
He waited for her to go on, but she was surprisingly quiet. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.” She drew a pattern over his chest, twirling his chest hairs in little spirals here and here. “My mom was brilliant. Dad used to joke his main goal in life was to keep up with her. He was more into photojournalism, but my mom was the real hard-hitting stuff.” She smiled a little, and he could see she was rifling through memories. “She was the one who would find the most war-torn country, rife with murder and rape and political unrest, and fly straight into the eye of the storm. Dad would follow and catch what he could with photos. Keeping up with her was like trying to keep up with smoke, he said. As many dangerous places as they ended up, it was like they were in some sort of protective bubble. Trouble seemed to bounce off them. They always made it back in one piece.”
“Where were you while this was happening?” He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of a tiny Aileen being left behind.
“Oh, this was all before I was born.” She waved that off. “They still worked once I came along, but it was more local. And by local, I mean inside the continental U.S.” She grinned. “Mom was forever plotting another trip to DC or New York or wherever corruption lived and needed to be blasted out in the open. She took me a few times on the less intense trips. I missed some school, but mom insisted it was more educational than sitting at a desk memorizing the order of presidents. What was the point in knowing the past if you weren’t experiencing your present to the fullest, she’d always say.”
“Nice.” He stroked the backs of his fingers over her shoulder and upper arm, watching goosebumps raise on her porcelain skin. “What happened?”
She knew without him elaborating what he was asking. “Small plane crash. Them and four other people. No survivors. The weather turned ugly mid-flight and there was no good place to put down. Just one of those freak things.” She gave a shaky laugh. “They spent nearly a decade of their lives bouncing around from one developing country to the next, risking themselves in war zones, and they make it back okay only to die in a freak plane accident. I remember thinking how unfair that was. That Mom was sitting up in Heaven rolling her eyes at the totally anti-climatic way she’d been taken out. Probably sounds stupid,” she muttered, pressing her nose to his skin. “They’re dead, no matter how it happened. But that’s what I remember most. Not the sadness, but the rage at how they’d been taken from me. As if dying in the line of journalistic duty would have made it easier.”
“It might have,” he said, his heart breaking for the angry young woman she must have been. On the cusp of adulthood, when she’d needed guidance like never before, it had been ripped from her.
“I always knew I’d be a journalist like her, but print just wasn’t where my heart was.” She grinned up at him, eyes still a little shiny. “And I just found myself inexplicably drawn to hot athletes.” Climbing over him, she straddled his lap. “Can’t imagine why.”
He could. She’d taken the heart of her parents’ profession and twisted it to make it something she wouldn’t be competing with them on. So their memory would live on, untouched by her successes or failures. He rubbed up and down her back. “I want some trail mix.”
She blinked, clearly thrown by the change of subject. “Ooookay. Do you need to make a vending machine run?”
“Nope. I have some.” He rolled her off, then headed to grab the bag from his duffle. He tossed it to her and she read the label.
“There are M&Ms in here.” She looked up, excited. “This isn’t healthy.”
There was no point in mentioning his usual choice of trail mix didn’t contain chocolate. He’d bought it, subconsciously, hoping to share with her. “I’ll just pick those out.”
“And give them to me,” she said, handing the bag back. He opened it and snuck under the covers with her. Dumping a handful in his palm, he held it out and let her pick out the chocolates. “Thank you,” she said, and the words carried more meaning than just for the food.