Dom dropped his hands and glared at her.
She laughed, entirely full of herself.
Dom’s eyes narrowed. “
Bordel de …
I’m going to sock that
salaud
right on the nose. What are you, a damn pushover?”
Célie frowned at him. “You know, you didn’t have to put it quite that way.” She brought out the J-word. “And Jaime said no fighting. So you cannot hit Joss.” She was pretty sure that no matter what her own personal J-word claimed about peaceful resolutions, he didn’t have any qualms about violence, at least not where Dom was concerned. She didn’t want to get anyone killed.
Dom sighed heavily, looking at his fist wistfully.
Célie grinned again involuntarily. “Can I tell you something?”
Dom looked wary. “Probably not.”
“You’re such a good guy.”
Dom’s jaw dropped. He took a step back, horrified.
“You made all the difference to me, giving me this safe, happy space, where I could grow big and, and”—she waved her arms wide to try to encompass it—“flourish.”
Dom backed toward his tiny office, his expression one of confounded panic. “I’ve got to do some paperwork,” he mumbled, grasping for the doorknob behind him.
“So thank you!” Célie called. “I appreciate you trying to look after me now!”
He dove inside. “Get to work!” his deep voice bellowed from his hiding spot. “And wipe that damn counter off!”
Célie grinned and hopped down. It was going to be a great day.
***
God, it felt good to use his muscles. What a fantastic day. Joss had always enjoyed building things, fixing things. Motorcycles and cars, as a mechanic before he joined the Legion. Bridges in Central Africa with mosquitoes buzzing all around, on humanitarian missions. Even just setting to and building their base, when all the other military forces around them were sleeping in miserable conditions waiting for their better conditions to drop out of the sky.
But this … there was something about this. Building their
home
. Their place.
God, Célie was going to love this. It made him want to work even harder and faster, like a guy who just had to figure out a way to make Christmas come sooner, so he could see her face light up when he showed her his fantastic present.
We can’t get much more real and together than a shared apartment.
They’d be fighting over caps on the toothpaste and everything.
He grinned at the thought. Well, probably not. He’d probably just do whatever Célie wanted on that one. Save trouble. But he’d probably manage to do
something
that drove Célie crazy. And he’d get to haul her to him when she put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at him, and he’d kiss her and drive her even crazier …
He rolled his shoulders, after hauling the last of the crap down the six floors that were what gave it such a great view. It had been kind of … weird to do it entirely by himself. Not that he minded—he’d done a lot more work than that in a day—but he’d gotten so used to having other men around him, working, too. The solidarity of it, the tempers and the humor and just the company. Doing things together.
Working on such a big job by himself was … well, to be honest, fucking lonely.
But he’d get used to it. A man could handle anything he set his mind to. He checked his watch.
His first goal was to get the bathroom redone, because until he could insure uninterrupted access to facilities, he was going to be staying at a hotel or—hopefully—crashing at Célie’s place. There was definitely something to be said for a space so little you couldn’t help falling onto the bed.
Oh, yeah. Over and over and over. His body felt so damn good today, he was surprised his dick wasn’t producing an aura of golden light around him for all to see.
He grinned, looking around to make up his mind what to attack next. The shower wouldn’t be delivered until tomorrow, and he had some appointments this afternoon.
A couple more hours before he needed to clean up for those.
He started tearing out the old cabinets. He had a busy day ahead of him, getting started on his new life.
***
Joss sat still and big in Jaime’s office in the Sixth. It was part of a floor of offices labeled
Corey
on the elevator button. His body felt restless. The morning’s work in the apartment had barely made a dent in his energy. In the Legion, he’d be taking advantage of this rare opportunity to rest, but he didn’t have anything now to rest up
for
. When he’d passed a construction site on the walk over here, men hauling down great sacks of stone from some top-floor apartment, it had been all he could do not to strip off his shirt and ask to help.
It kind of looked like more fun, working with them, than working on the apartment by himself.
He missed the physicality of his life, and he missed the camaraderie, too. Strong men, working hard together, taking risks together. Missed knowing that three words
A moi, Legion!
would bring every Legionnaire in earshot running to join in his fight.
“So your background checks out,” Jaime said.
Joss raised his eyebrows a little. “The Legion gave you information on me?” What minister of France had they held hostage and tortured?
Jaime smiled faintly. “Hardly. But we were able to confirm that you were actually in it, as you said, and not in prison for the past five years.”
Fair enough. Joss waited.
“I’m reticent toward private military companies,” Jaime said.
Well, hell. Yeah. Who wouldn’t be?
“But given the scale of our operations, and the detriment to Corey when local wars affect the cacao supply, we’re under some pressure to employ at least some forces to protect our farmers. I resisted that in the past, but riding around on a moped trying to do good didn’t work out that well for me.”
Joss’s eyebrows went up a little. He studied the slender, freckled woman across from him. “You rode around on a moped trying to create world peace or something?”
Jaime opened a hand wryly.
“Hell. That was stu—” He caught himself. Maybe she already knew that was stupid.
“At any rate, at this point we accept that we probably need to work with at least some private security forces,” Jaime said.
“No,” Joss said.
She paused. From the look on her face, people must not say no to her job offers all that often.
“I’m not interested in being a mercenary. Sorry. I’d rather have stayed in the Legion.”
Jaime shook her head. “I wouldn’t do that to Célie. I told you I was a friend of hers.”
He was not entirely sure how female friendships worked. His past five years’ experience was exclusively male—male solidarity, male enmity. He hadn’t been the type to go to any of the brothels that always sprang up around military bases, particularly Legion ones now that the Legion no longer provided a brothel itself. Plus, he’d promised himself to Célie even if she didn’t know it, so the only females he’d even chatted with in a friendly way had been the ones who worked the bars and cafés the Legionnaires frequented. Those women had seemed pretty isolated in a world of men, to him. Before that, Célie’s teenage friends had never impressed him that much—catty, mostly, and often trying to hit on him when Célie’s back was turned. But he’d liked Célie’s friends the night before.
And Jaime Corey seemed … kind of a good person for Célie to have at her back, actually.
“What I would like to have is an advisor,” Jaime said. “Someone who can accurately assess a military situation and what it means when a country sends in this regiment or that one, but also someone who can assess the PMCs and help me work with them. Have you ever heard women complain about how mechanics and car salesmen treat women much worse than they treat other men? Well, that’s nothing compared to how private military and security forces treat women. But they won’t lie to
you
, a Legionnaire. They’d respect
you
.”
“They should. Most of the ones I met couldn’t survive a day in the Legion.”
“Well, we can’t hire the Legion,” Jaime said wryly.
Joss gave her a dark, ironic glance. He’d had a cynical streak about politics even before he spent the past five years surrounded by profoundly cynical men—cynicism being that protective armor for, or perhaps the disillusioned flip side of, the crazy romanticism that would lead a man to join the Legion in the first place—and he had some pretty strong thoughts about how the billionaires in the world affected where he was deployed and what mud he was crawling through while they drank champagne or whatever the hell billionaires did while other men died for them.
“Well, it involves a lot of politics,” Jaime corrected herself dryly. “It’s hard to control. And it takes a really long time to get anything to happen. My dad always says getting what you want through the political system is like trying to thread a needle wearing boxing gloves. He says about the only good it does is that at least you’re got something useful on your hands when you get ready to smack someone in the head. In other words, it’s not really efficient or effective.”
“That must be terrible for you,” Joss said expressionlessly. “To have so much trouble perverting a democratic system to your ends.” Goddamn billionaires.
Jaime paused a second. Then smiled. “I can’t wait to introduce you to my father. Don’t worry, he loves taking the gloves off with someone who can actually fight him.”
Joss avoided rolling his eyes. That was one of the many things Legionnaire training came in handy for—control of expression.
“That.” Jaime pointed at him. “That’s what I need. Someone who can handle tough, strong men and not take any crap off them and make sure that
we
, Corey, and particularly
me
, my foundation, only use security forces that are doing the right thing.”
“What kind of work are you doing? Besides exploiting cocoa farmers?”
A little pause. Jaime smiled again. “You know how I don’t know nearly enough about the military to be hiring a company? You may not know nearly as much as you think about what we do, either.”
“I know,” Joss said. “I’ve never even tried caviar.”
Jaime laughed. “We’re working really hard to support and further the development of good, equitable, nonexploitative conditions on all cacao farms. Myself, I’m kind of an idealist, I guess, but my father, who claims to be a hardheaded pragmatist, will tell you it’s in our own best interests, the same way it’s in our interests to be moving heaven and earth to find a way to stop frosty pod rot. If you want a discussion with someone who can defend the capitalist system, you’re probably better off with a different Corey. But let’s just say we’d like not only our intentions but our actual actions to be good. A positive force in cocoa regions.”
Fine, he probably should shut up now with the sarcastic comments. At least they were trying. That whole thing about manipulating the political system to get the military to serve the billionaires of the world had really gotten his back up.
“So would you be interested?” Jaime said. “You’d be based in Paris, but the position would involve a fair amount of travel, particularly to West Africa right now, but also somewhat to South America. We also work in the Pacific, but shouldn’t need any military advising there. Your role might eventually develop to go beyond advising to making hiring decisions and solving any issue you see, but you won’t be acting as a security force yourself. Although this is a new position we’re creating, so you’d need to have the initiative and strength of character to form it into whatever would be the most effective.”
That last sentence might have clinched the deal. He liked the idea of having control over his role, after five years in the Legion, when a man had to shut his mouth and obey orders, however insane. He’d achieved the rank of sergeant in his quest to have more power over his choices. But the military meant there was always someone higher in command. Here, he would make calls. Guide what happened.
“For a starting salary, we were looking at …” Jaime said, and Joss went blank at the figure she named.
So that was why billionaires always got what they wanted. He’d be earning more in a month than he ever had in a whole year as a Legionnaire or a beginning mechanic in a poor suburb of Paris.
“Plus, bonuses and benefits, of course. Besides the benefits the French government requires we give here, there’s a great educational benefit—all tuition paid for your kids at any accredited university in the U.S.”
That was a weird benefit. He could pay for a complete education in France with only two weeks of the salary she had just named.
“And you’re vested after only a year in your stock options, and then we’ll contribute the equivalent of 13.6 percent of your salary into your private retirement funds as long as you put in three percent, and you get to keep that, no matter when you leave.”
Joss stared at her. “I don’t, ah, have kids.” Good lord,
retirement
? He wanted to protest that he was only twenty-six, that he couldn’t think that far ahead yet—that part of his brain hadn’t turned on. And yet suddenly his own solidity struck him—that he’d become a
man
, someone who could raise kids, who could see them through to a successful adulthood and provide them an education, and … he’d been hit by some pretty hard blows in the past five years, but this one took a minute to absorb. Struck by
himself
, the sheer mass of who he was now.
He’d gone into the Legion to create a much greater worth out of himself.
Apparently that had been successful.
What in the world did a man do with that much money? Ten times what he’d ever earned before. Take Célie on a nice trip somewhere she’d been dreaming of going? What else?
A motorcycle. A really nice motorcycle. Something he could soup up and customize and … his palms itched with the desire to feel the hand grips.
“Remember, this is just a starting salary,” Jaime said. “But I could go ten percent higher.”
Joss didn’t blink. Damn, but that Legionnaire training in a neutral expression was coming in handy. Apparently she’d misread his blank face as being unimpressed by the salary offer.