She was able to laugh. “That I did.” And she’d never let herself be intimidated again. When at last she had looked reality in the eye, after her final case, and realized that while it might take them several years, they were going to force her out, she made up her mind to resign and find another job. She hadn’t even given them that satisfaction.
“Are you angry with the army?”
“I’m angry with some of the institutional bias and blindness, but not with the whole army. Most of them are good people. It’s like anywhere else.”
“You’ve taught me a lesson, you know. Not to judge my partners by one partner in the past.”
“Well, you’re lucky I came along...” Feeling surprisingly lighthearted all of a sudden, she wiggled around and straightened until she could look at him.
He smiled and gave her a quick kiss. “I’m glad I didn’t pursue that option.”
So was she. She assumed he’d had a number of relationships. At his age, he’d have had to be a monk to avoid them. Even she had had a few of her own, however brief.
“I dated before,” she told him. “But never military people. You’d be surprised how small that community really is. And I’m breaking every rule I ever wrote for myself with you.”
“I’m breaking them, too.” He lifted his hand and drew his fingertips along her jawline. “Swore I’d never do this, then this cute prickly pear comes along and...” He smiled almost ruefully. “I was engaged once.”
His admission caused her heart to skip. She was certain this wasn’t a happy story, and she wondered if it would give him another reason to want to terminate their relationship when they were done with this case. “Yes?” she finally managed to ask.
“About five years ago,” he said. “Her name was Dawn, and what started out as exciting ended up with both of us disagreeing about nearly everything. Sex isn’t enough. It may get the ball rolling, but there’s no guarantee it’ll keep rolling when you get to the day-to-day nitty-gritty.”
“I suppose not.” She wondered if that was the first in a long line of reasons she was going to hear once this case wound down. But first they had to solve the case.
In the meantime...well, in the meantime she decided she was going to savor every intimate moment between them. She’d never dated a man like him, had never known the kind of lovemaking he showed her. Or maybe it was just that something about him made her hotter than a firecracker.
Either way, he was right. Sex wasn’t enough. But he’d treated her with a respect that was important to her. With him she was a full partner, her skills honored, her thoughts fully considered. Odd that she should realize what had been missing only now that she’d met a man who had no trouble seeing her as an equal.
Not that she had suffered a whole lot of overt sexism. The military disapproved of that. But being free of the smaller judgments, the ones that even she hadn’t always been able to identify as sexist, now made it clear to her how much she had endured in subtle ways. Of course, to be realistic, it hadn’t always been subtle. There had been a few idiots during her career.
“You’re a special man,” she said finally. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Treating me like an equal.”
He shook his head a bit. “I’ve seen what you’re talking about, but I don’t get it. And I’ve told you why. People should be judged as individuals, not members of some group or other, and certainly not by stereotypes.”