Chapter 8

It took three days to actually organize the pseudo-date and by the time Isaiah got everyone on the right page, he was exhausted. Putting together a simple movie excursion had required battlefield precision.

Cassidy had oddly held out, refusing to accompany Aria to the barn where they were supposed to be helping Tristan and Isaiah do the renovations. Finally, Aria somehow figured out how to drag her there and after some awkward exchanges that ensured Isaiah had no future as a double agent, a spy or anyone who had to lie for a living, he’d gotten her to agree to go to the movies.

Only to get grief from Le Torch about it—the guy who had turned dating into an art form. After a lot of pleading, Isaiah wore down Marchande enough to wheedle a yes out of him with the stipulation that Isaiah had to pay.

He wished he’d saved his breath. The silence in the SUV as he drove toward Bastrop had icicles hanging from it.

Isaiah glanced at Marchande, who had taken the front passenger seat. His friend watched the passing terrain as if fascinated by the scrub oak and miles of rocky dirt. Usually Tristan was the chatty one, charming everyone with his natural affinity for people. Not so much today. Something was stuck in his craw, but Isaiah hadn’t been able to get whatever it was out of him.

Not a new problem. Marchande had become somewhat of a clam lately.

“It’s nice to take a break from the barn and get away, isn’t it?” Isaiah remarked and winced at what passed for cheer in his voice. It was a little false. Maybe no one would notice.

Tristan’s facial muscles barely twitched as he said, “Bien sûr, Elmer. Whatever you say.”

More silence from the backseat where he could see Cassidy in the rearview mirror, also staring out the opposite window, similarly mute. Aria perked up, bless her, and snatched Isaiah’s cue, probably because she’d gotten tired of the weird tension too.

“I was just telling Cassidy that we’ve been slacking on our duties toward the schoolhouse,” she said brightly in a voice that matched his in the fabricated spirit department. “Monday, we’ll be there bright and early to get some work done.”

“Maybe I’ll find another assignment then,” Tristan muttered under his breath.

“Why, because it’s actual work?” Cassidy piped up from nowhere. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Tristan stiffened, his fingers digging into the center console near Isaiah’s arm. “Because the barn’s only big enough for me or your attitude. Not both.”

What was Marchande’s problem with Cassidy? A year ago, Isaiah would have known every nuance of what was going through his friend’s mind. Of course, that had been a necessary part of being a cohesive strike unit. Without synchronization, they’d fail. And Isaiah had taken his role as the mediator, sounding board, and general gluer back together of the men he considered his family very seriously.

Right now, he had no clue how to dig into Tristan’s psyche and the lack of communication between them stretched out until Isaiah could almost taste the abject failure that laced everything he’d tried to do lately.

But he had a different job to do here. One that shouldn’t be as much of a challenge. And part of the reason he’d agreed to help Aria had to do with this feeling like the team had been divided, with Isaiah on one side of the yawning expanse and everyone else on the other. This was his chance to connect with Marchande outside of the team, one on one. Get things back on an even keel.

He’d sucked at it so far.

Granted, he’d only briefly tried once as they’d been working side by side at the barn. The backbreaking work hadn’t left a lot of room for chatter, not to mention that reaching out took energy that Isaiah didn’t have to spare. That, if anything, probably had more to do with his cluelessness when it came to the dynamics of the personalities in the car. Which meant he’d stepped into a minefield by organizing this outing and now he had to figure out how to dance.

“Did Tristan suddenly develop an allergy to hard work?” he asked lightly in the direction of the back seat. “I need to know if he’s going to start sneezing and reaching for the tissues in the middle of helping me secure the classroom dividers.”

“Ha, ha.” Tristan’s eye roll came through loud and clear without visual confirmation. “The only allergy I have is to women who make snap judgments without bothering to get facts. I’m good with everything else.”

“Snap judgments?” Cassidy’s voice bristled with sarcasm so thick that you could practically wrap it around you like a coat. “That implies that I might be wrong, and I really don’t think—”

Cassidy bit off the rest of her words so suddenly that Isaiah glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure she hadn’t leaped from the Yukon via the window or something. He watched in the mirror as Aria glared at her friend and jerked her head toward the front seat, mouthing something that was too hard to catch and drive at the same time, so Isaiah let her handle that half of the battle.

His half would have to wait until a more opportune time, like when the subject of Tristan’s animosity wasn’t four feet away. The second the coast was clear, he’d pull Marchande aside and get some answers about out what had crawled up his friend’s backside.

Because sorting out where to step in this minefield that he’d unwittingly thrown together sounded exactly like what he’d hoped to do on this group date. Wearily, he focused on driving. That was the extent of what he could handle right now.

Once he’d found the movie place with Aria’s excellent directions, he parked and they spilled from Hardy’s SUV. Marchande ate up the concrete with his long-legged stride as he outpaced Isaiah and the women easily. About halfway across the parking lot, he seemed to realize this wasn’t a one-hundred-meter dash and slowed down to wait for them. Then he carefully kept to Isaiah’s left side, presumably since Aria and Cassidy were on the right.

Isaiah sighed. There were women present and Marchande wasn’t even flirting with either of them, which was about as unlikely an event as the sun not rising in the morning. What was he supposed to do with that?

What he’d promised he would, of course. A bit desperate, he scrolled through his mental Aria file in search of something he could use to break the forty-foot wall of ice that had formed. “Hey Marchande, tell Aria about that last trip to Hawaii. That’s the place she most wants to visit.”

Tristan shot him the side-eye. “We spent fourteen hours in the water wearing seventy pounds of gear.”

Aria lifted a brow, clearly trying to figure out the punchline, which Marchande did not deliver.

Cretin. He wasn’t even trying to be charming and before today, Isaiah has assumed that was one part of Marchande’s DNA that would never fade. There was a running joke that he’d be chasing the nurses at the assisted living facility even after he hit ninety.

“But we went to the beach that one time,” Isaiah reminded him. “That was nice.”

“You were there. You tell her,” Marchande muttered with an eye roll.

“You’ve been to Hawaii?” Aria elbowed Isaiah good-naturedly. “You didn’t bother to mention that during the original conversation. What was it like?”

“It was a lot of work.” Now he sounded like as much of an idiot as Marchande, but she’d thrown him for a second with the light accusation, as if she’d really gotten twisted up over the fact that he’d held out on her. “We went for a training exercise at the base in Pearl Harbor a while back. It wasn’t a vacation.”

“Oh.”

She seemed disappointed, but that last thing he’d wanted to do was make it sound like he’d led some kind of glamorous life while trying to play up the sour puss on his left. “Tristan’s been a lot of places on vacation though. He likes to travel.”

“That sounds interesting,” Aria commented brightly, clearly recognizing her cue again, which gave Isaiah a brief spurt of warmth inside despite all the ice. “Where have you been?”

Tristan shrugged with a tiny glance in Aria’s direction. “Je ne sais pas. Lots of places. South of France. Brief stopover in Prague. It’s easy to get around Europe when Stuttgart is one of the main pass-throughs for SEALs.”

“That’s in Germany?” Aria asked.

“Ouais.”

And just as Isaiah started breathing a little easier, the conversation ground to a halt, as it generally did when Tristan switched to French—which he had done on purpose. Of course. Because leading four adults through the rigors of a normal conversation had suddenly turned into a feat of epic proportions. He gave up and slunk to the counter to get tickets for everyone. Thank goodness he’d picked the movies for this excursion, where they could sit in silence on purpose. Imagine if he’d planned something monstrously difficult for this ill-fated outing, like eating a meal.

After he’d handed off tickets to the women, he let them go ahead so they could pick out whatever seats made the most sense to them given the climate. The last thing he wanted to do was get in the middle of a knock-down-drag-out over who refused to sit next to who.

Since Tristan had likewise hung back, it smelled like Isaiah’s one chance to dig. He grabbed Tristan’s arm and pulled him to the side, out of the flow of traffic.

“What gives, man?” he demanded.

Marchande scowled and crossed his arms. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play it like that. Why are you being such a jerk? Normally I can’t get a word in edgewise when there are females around.” And this was the one time he’d hoped for that.

“Laisse tomber,” he shot back and rushed on, scarcely giving Isaiah enough time to rifle through his French vocabulary to recall the phrase meant drop it. “It’s not like I’m dating either of them.”

Point taken. This was where it got tricky. Isaiah couldn’t come right out and say that he’d organized this thing as a way to put Aria in Marchande’s path, but neither could he let the opportunity pass to test the waters. “It’s not like either of them are off limits though. They’re both nice women.”

“One of them is,” he countered darkly. “The other one is a pain in my rear. She should watch her mouth.”

Cassidy, Isaiah assumed. At least the subject was now opened for questions. “Did you have some kind of argument?”

Marchande’s expression got blacker. “That would imply there was a back and forth of some type. So, I’m going with no. She slings blanket statements around like what she says is carved on stone tablets given to us mere mortals from the Almighty.”

This was the angriest he’d seen Marchande in some time. It was a little impressive to watch how his friend bristled as he made chopping motions with his hands.

“So forget her,” Isaiah suggested mildly. “Spend some time talking to Aria. She’s a great woman. You’ll like her.”

“Yeah.” Marchande mused that over for a minute, sliding a hand along his ridiculous man bun as if even one strand of hair had dared escape from the sleek knot at his crown. “That’s a great idea. The more obvious I can make it that I’m freezing out that woman, the better.”

That woman? This outing was swiftly turning into a disaster.

“Uh…that’s not exactly what I had in mind,” Isaiah called out after his friend who had already started moving toward the theatre, rubbing his hands together as if he had just devised a very diabolical plan that involved using one woman to teach the other a lesson.

Aria did not deserve to be put in the middle of this grudge match that had sprung up between their friends. Beleaguered, he loped after Marchande, nearly knocking the popcorn bucket from the hand of a middle-aged woman who had unwittingly stepped in his path.

“Sorry,” he threw over his shoulder as he skirted her to draw up even with Marchande, who had paused in the doorway of the theatre. “Why don’t you hold up a sec and listen to me?”

“You’re done,” Tristan said, his attention already on the seated movie-goers, presumably scanning them in search of their companions. He must have spotted them since he took off up the carpeted steps.

Shades of Syria, or rather the aftermath. What Marchande had really meant was that he didn’t want to listen to Isaiah, not anymore, and this was his way of softening the blow. Isaiah had tried to reach out, multiple times, and had gotten shot down. Tristan had a lot of guilt over what had happened in al-Sadidiq. They all did. But Isaiah wanted to help everyone get better and that’s where they parted ways—no one else cared about that. They all acted like it had never happened, burying the destruction of the wrong village under a mound of government paperwork, like that would change facts.

Seventy-five people would never draw breath into their lungs again and it wasn’t fair that he still could. He didn’t deserve to have functional respiration, and it didn’t take a fancy psychology degree to figure out that might have something to do with his panic attacks.

Or why he couldn’t fix any of his teammates. If he couldn’t glue himself back together, why should anyone else trust him with their healing process?

Somehow he managed to sit through the movie, but once the lights in the theatre came up, he couldn’t have named one plot point, an actor in the movie or even the title. The icing on the cake came as the four of them spread out for the long walk back to the car and he found himself walking next to Aria, who would have been on Tristan’s radar by now if Isaiah had done his job right.

“That was fun,” she said, her voice laced with so much sarcasm that he almost laughed.

At least he didn’t have to pretend with her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that Tristan and Cassidy hated each other so much or I wouldn’t have suggested this.”

“It’s okay. News to me too.” She shrugged. “And I’m sorry it ended up not working out for you to spend time with Cassidy.”

He lifted a brow. “That wasn’t a goal for today.”

It wasn’t a goal for any day. Had he not already nipped that idea in the bud with her? He could hardly focus on his prediction when everything else was such a mess. Healing and nurturing his soul wasn’t on the agenda, especially not since he’d failed at doing that for everyone else.

“Well, it should have been.” Aria flipped a hand in the direction of her friend, who was standing near the SUV, arms crossed as she stared at the sky in an obvious attempt to avoid a conversation with Tristan, who had already climbed into the passenger seat, then slammed the door with more force than a hurricane. “Tristan tried to talk to me a couple of times during the movie and Cassidy shushed him with uncomplimentary comments about his manners. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was jealous that he sat next to me.”

Yeah, that seemed unlikely. “We’ll try again another time. With another plan. And no Cassidy.”

“Well that defeats the whole purpose of our deal. You get nothing out of this if she’s going to keep acting like a third grader. I’ll talk to her,” Aria promised with a secret smile as they approached the SUV. “Pinky swear.”

Isaiah got in the car. There was nothing else to say at this point.