The Captain's Baby Bargain
Merline Lovelace
Two words change her world… She’s pregnant.After one hot night, Captain Suzanne Hall remembers everything she craved about her sexy ex-husband, Gabe. But when duty calls, she remembers everything that separated them. Can this dynamic duo put their differences aside and start a new life together?
Two words change her world...
“You’re pregnant.”
After one hot night, Captain Suzanne Hall remembers everything she craved about her sexy ex-husband. But when duty calls, she remembers everything that separated them. Till she finds out she’s pregnant! A former soldier, Gabe is rooted in his hometown, while Suzanne flies around the world. But with his baby in the balance, there are only three words he can utter: “Marry me. Again.”
A career Air Force officer, MERLINE LOVELACE served at bases all over the world. When she hung up her uniform for the last time, she decided to try her hand at story-telling. Since then, more than twelve million copies of her books have been published in over thirty countries. Check her website at www.merlinelovelace.com (http://merlinelovelace.com) or friend Merline on Facebook for news and information about her latest releases.
Also by Merline Lovelace (#u8e7b309c-768b-5299-ac40-8d796f459d12)
Marry Me, Major
“I Do”…Take Two!
Third Time’s the Bride
Callie’s Christmas Wish
Course of Action
Crossfire
The Rescue
The Paternity Proposition
The Paternity Promise
Her Unforgettable Royal Lover
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
The Captain’s Baby Bargain
Merline Lovelace
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07789-7
THE CAPTAIN’S BABY BARGAIN
© 2018 Merline Lovelace
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To the one, the only, the handsomest,
the smartest, the kindest, the… Well, you get
the idea. There’s no one like you, my darling.
Thanks for all these years of love and laughter.
And special thanks to my sister-in-arms,
the inestimable Lindsay McKenna,
for her firefighting expertise and advice.
Contents
Cover (#u3a91d829-98b0-5e61-b50b-f0384cab682c)
Back Cover Text (#ueb88d09c-49d6-54ef-9942-ec0062b5bd8d)
About the Author (#uf2a167fa-257c-5533-b184-2c18aa17440d)
Booklist (#ua48ccfc9-6d53-5ec1-b945-9a7ce92d4b54)
Title Page (#udfad38ce-3a94-596f-8798-cb99e4d1bff3)
Copyright (#uca6a2628-a379-5b78-832e-f5e772a6d18d)
Dedication (#u99aef3ed-5960-5761-816a-40cb22df8ed3)
Chapter One (#u4ba74495-608e-58ec-b819-10d0bce6e1b2)
Chapter Two (#ua42e5988-fd9c-58b4-85b1-8a8171856081)
Chapter Three (#u3ef81ed1-be6c-5328-b76f-71dc44a86321)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#u8e7b309c-768b-5299-ac40-8d796f459d12)
“Helluva bash, Swish.”
Captain Suzanne Hall, call sign Swish, acknowledged the compliment from her former squadron mate by raising the dew-streaked bottle that had come as a “beer-in-a-bag.” She’d never tried this Dutch import before. Then again, that was the whole point of the mystery bag.
“Thanks, Dingo.”
The ex-military cop tipped his beer to hers while keeping an arm looped around the shoulders of the woman next to him. Personally, Swish thought the hold was more possessive than cozy. With good reason. The moment Dingo had walked in with the long-legged, extremely well-endowed showgirl, every male in the place had locked onto her like a heat-seeking missile.
To her credit, Chelsea Howard had ignored the goggle-eyed stares and only occasionally put up a hand to twirl a strand of her rainbow-hued hair. “I’ve never been to a place like this,” she commented as her gaze roamed the fun-and-games indoor-outdoor restaurant.
Neither had Swish. Lively, laughing groups sat elbow-to-elbow at picnic tables or clustered around fire pits or swapped after-work horror stories with coworkers at high tops arranged in conversational squares. Others conducted raucous battles at miniature golf or bean-bag bingo or darts or skeeball. A four-piece band thumped out country-western crossover, carrying over the clink of cutlery and buzz of conversation. In a separate section well away from the happy-hour crowd, families enjoyed the same fun atmosphere. There was a third section, a glass-enclosed, sit-down, linen-on-the-table restaurant for those more serious about eating than fun and games.
What made the whole complex so amazing, though, was the menu! Swish had almost drooled over the pictures online. Appetizers included pretzels and provolone fondue. Homemade chips with a deservedly world-famous onion dip. Cheddar and potato pierogis. BBQ pork belly nachos. Thai chili chicken wings. The dinner menu was equally exotic, but even without the rave reviews from previous guests, Swish had decided The Culinary Dropout was the perfect spot for this year’s Badger Bash.
The annual Bash took place whenever two or more troops who’d served under Colonel Mike Dolan, call sign Badger, happened to be in the same general vicinity at the same time. Since Swish and two additional Badger protégées were currently stationed at Luke Air Force Base, located some miles to the west of Phoenix, they’d opted to hold the reunion here. Eight more of their former squadron mates had flown or driven in from other locales.
And since the once stag-only Bash had expanded to include spouses and/or dates, Swish had insisted on adding some couth to the event. Or, at least, ramping it up from previous years’ venues. Like the New Orleans “gentlemen’s” club where the performers all turned out to be drag queens. And the wolf-and moose-head decorated bar in Minot, North Dakota, that they’d had to shovel their way out of after a late May blizzard. And the off-off-the-Strip Vegas lounge featuring really bad Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra wannabes. Then there was last year’s gathering at the Cactus Café, a smoke-filled dive on Albuquerque’s old Route 66.
Although...even reeking of spilled beer and stale sweat, the Cactus Café had produced at least one unexpectedly happy surprise in the person of the brown-eyed blonde currently sitting across the table from Swish. At last year’s Bash, Alexis Scott had walked smack up to Major Ben Kincaid, call sign Cowboy, and offered him a fat wad of cash to marry her. Ben had turned down the money but accepted the proposal. And damned if he didn’t now act even more stupid about his wife than Dingo did about his showgirl. Of course, the fact that Alex was pregnant might have something to do with Ben’s goofy grin.
“Where do you suppose they came up with the name Culinary Dropout?” Alex mused as she sipped her club soda and soaked up the ambiance.
“No idea.” Swish speared a chunk of lobster from another appetizer, this one served in an old-fashioned glass canning jar. “Maybe the genius who created these succulent delights decided he didn’t need culinary instructors to unleash his artistry.”
“If that’s the case, I agree with him!”
“Yo, Dingo!” The call came from a sandy-haired communications officer seated near the middle of their long table. “You think you can still hit a target?”
“Blindfolded and backwards,” the former military cop turned electronics engineer drawled.
“With a bean bag?”
“Blindfolded and...”
“Ha!” His challenger clambered off his stool. “You’re on!”
Chelsea went with Dingo to cheer him on. Hips rolling, her lithe body a symphony of long-legged grace, she once again popped half the eyes in the place out of their sockets.
Alex noted her best friend’s impact on the crowd with a wry smile. Cowboy with unfeigned admiration. Swish with a sigh.
“I wish I could believe it was the hair,” she murmured.
“Trust me,” Alex answered with a laugh. “It’s not the hair. Or the legs or the boobs or that wicked smile. I roomed with the woman for two years before I left Vegas for Albuquerque. Chelsea is...”
She circled a hand in the air a few times. Grinning, her husband supplied the answer.
“Chelsea.”
“Exactly. And now I have to pee,” she announced, easing off the high-backed stool. “Again. Good thing I didn’t go through all this the first time I became a mother. I might’ve thought twice about this pregnancy business.”
Although that might’ve sounded strange to an outsider, everyone at the table knew Alex had adopted her deceased sister’s stepdaughter. Correction. She and Ben had adopted the seven-year-old. The little girl had subsequently charmed everyone in their wide circle of friends.
“How is Maria?” Swish asked.
“Smart. Stubborn. Independent. Developing an attention span that lasts about five seconds longer than your average flea.” Alex patted the mound of her tummy. “And sooo excited about having a baby sister or brother.”
“You don’t know which yet?”
“Don’t want to.”
The smile she shared with her husband started a slow ache under Swish’s ribs, one she’d been so damned sure she’d finally vanquished.
“That’s half the wonder,” Alex said softly. “Not knowing and being so totally in love with this little somebody anyway.”
The ache lingered as Swish watched Alexis thread her way through the crowd toward the ladies’ room. Ben tracked his wife’s progress with a look that twisted the knife even more.
Dropping her gaze, Swish poked a finger at the little pile of maple-roasted wannabe nuts on the napkin in front of her. The music and laughter and thunk of beanbags hitting targets faded. The strings of lights blurred as her thoughts narrowed, turned inward, and summoned the image of a face she knew as well as her own.
Her husband had looked at her like Ben did his wife. Back when she’d had a husband.
She played with the wannabe nuts as the memories crept in. Of she and Gabe growing up together in the same small Oklahoma town. Of how they’d progressed from fifth-grade puppy love to high school sweethearts to being an inseparable couple through all four years at the University of Oklahoma.
They’d married the day after graduation. The same day they’d been commissioned as Air Force second lieutenants. Then spent the next five years juggling short-notice deployments, assignments to separate bases and increasingly strained long-distance communications. Their divorce had become final three years ago, on their sixth wedding anniversary.
The hole in Swish’s heart was still there but shrinking a little more each day. That’s what she told herself, anyway, until Ben—who’d known them both, had been friends with them both—took advantage of the band’s break between numbers to share a quiet confidence.
“I talked to Gabe last week.”
“Yeah? He call you or did you call him?”
Dammit! She wished the words back as soon as they were out of her mouth. What difference did it make who initiated the conversation? Divorce was hard enough without expecting your friends to take sides and remain loyal to just one of the injured parties.
“He called me.” Ben circled his beer on The Culinary Dropout’s distinctive coaster. When he looked up at her again, his blue eyes were shaded. “To tell me he’s thinking about getting married again.”
Swish swallowed. Deep and hard. Then forced a shrug that felt as though it ripped the cartilage from her shoulder blades. “It’s been three years.”
She dug deeper and managed a smile. “I’m surprised he’s held out this long. Last time I talked to my mom, she said every unattached female under sixty in our hometown was after him. Did Gabe mention which one snagged the prize?”
“No.”
“Oh, well. No matter, I guess.”
Unless it’s Alicia Johnson.
The nasty thought plowed into her head like a runaway troop carrier. Gritting her teeth, Swish jammed on the mental brakes. She had no right to question Gabe’s choice for a second trip down the aisle. Absolutely none! Even if Alicia was a pert, bubbly pain in the ass.
“He called from California,” Ben was saying.
“California? What’s he’s doing out there?”
“Someone died. A great aunt, I think he said. He had to go out to settle her estate.”
“Aunt Pat? Oh, no!”
The regret was sharp, instant, and so, so painful. She’d lost more than Gabe in the divorce. She’d lost his family, as well. They’d sided with him, of course, after the ugly details surfaced. She didn’t blame them, but she’d missed his folks and his sisters and their families. And his feisty old aunt, who could spout the most incredibly imaginative oaths when the spirit moved her.
“He’s driving back to Oklahoma from San Diego,” Ben related. “If the timing’s right, he might stop in Albuquerque to meet Alex and Maria. I told him we’d be home late tomorrow afternoon.” He paused, his eyes holding hers. “Unless something unexpected came up.”
“Like me throwing a world class hissy fit about you consorting with the enemy?”
“Is he? The enemy?”
Her breath left on a sigh. “No, of course not. Gabe’s your friend, too. You don’t have to take sides or choose between us.” She hesitated several painful beats. “Did he, uh, ask about me?”
“No.”
Disgusted by the hurt that generated, Swish gave herself a swift, mental kick. For God’s sake! She was a captain in the United States Air Force. A combat engineer with two rotations to Iraq and one to Afghanistan under her belt. She’d built or blown up everything from runways to bridges. Yet here she was, moping like a schoolgirl who hadn’t been asked to the dance because her ex chose to get on with his life.
“Well,” she said briskly, “if you and Gabe do connect in Albuquerque tomorrow, tell him I wish him the best.”
“Will do.”
“Great. Now why don’t we see how Dingo’s doing blindfolded and backward?”
* * *
As one of the organizers of this year’s Bash, Swish was among the last to leave when The Culinary Dropout finally closed its doors at 2:00 a.m. Even then, she provided taxi service to one of her buddies who’d flown in for the occasion.
She hung with him at his hotel room for a while, sharing black coffee and memories of the legendary Special Ops colonel who’d spawned their annual Badger Bash. She’d worked for Colonel Dolan only once, when she was a brand-new second lieutenant. The colonel could blister the paint off you with a single glance and did not suffer fools gladly. But Swish had learned more about leadership and taking care of her troops from him than from any of her bosses since.
Dawn was starting to streak the sky above the Superstition Mountains when she strolled out of the hotel and clicked the locks of the Thunderbird soft-top convertible she’d treated herself to when she got promoted to captain. She stood beside the merlot-colored sports car for a moment, breathing in the scent of honeysuckle and piñon while debating whether to put down the top.
The fact that she was wearing the traditional Badger Bash “uniform of the day” decided her. The generally accepted attire included boots, jeans and T-shirts sporting whatever quirky message the attendees wanted to impart. Swish had opted for a black, body-sculpting tank with a whiskered, green-eyed tiger draped over one shoulder. It had been designed and handcrafted by Ben’s wife, who insisted the tiger’s eyes were the exact same jungle-green as Swish’s. The matching ball cap sported the same glittering black-and-gold-tiger stripes and caught her shoulder-length blond hair back into a ponytail. The perfect ensemble for tooling through a soft Arizona dawn, she decided.
Mere moments later she had the top down and the T-bird aimed for the on-ramp to I-10. Luke AFB was a good thirty miles west of Scottsdale. The prospect of a long drive didn’t faze her. Having learned her lesson from previous Bashes, she’d arranged to have the rest of the weekend off. She could cruise through the dim, still-cool dawn, hit her condo, shower off the residue of the night and crash.
But first, she realized after only about fifteen miles, she had to make a pit stop. She shouldn’t have downed that last cup of coffee, dammit. For another few miles she tried the bladder control exercises she’d resorted to while operating at remote sites with only the most primitive facilities.
But when she spotted a sign indicating a McDonald’s at the next exit, she gave up the struggle. Flipping on the directional signal, she took the ramp for Exit 134. The iconic golden arches gleamed a little more than a block from where she got off.
Unfortunately, a red light separated her from imminent relief. She braked to a stop and drummed her fingers on the wheel. She might’ve been tempted to run the light if not for the vehicle stopped across the deserted intersection. It was a pickup. One of those muscled-up jobbies favored by farmers and ranchers. Older than most, though. And vaguely familiar. Narrowing her eyes, she squinted and tried to see past the headlights spearing toward her in the slowly brightening dawn.
Suddenly, her heart lurched. Stopped dead. Kicked back to life with a painful jolt.
Locking her fists on the wheel, Swish gaped at the cartoon depicted on the pickup’s sloping hood. She recognized the needle-nosed insect dive-bombing an imaginary target. She should; she’d painted it herself.
Her gaze jerked from the hood to the cab. The headlights’ glare blurred the driver’s features. Not enough to completely obscure them, however.
Oh, God! That was Gabe. Her Gabe.
Fragments of the conversation with Cowboy rifled through her shock. California. A funeral. Gabe driving home. Visiting with Cowboy and his wife in Albuquerque.
Her precise, analytical engineer’s mind made the instant connection. Phoenix sat halfway between San Diego and Albuquerque. A logical place to stop for the night, grab some sleep, break up the long drive. The not-as-precise section of her brain remained so numb with surprise that she didn’t react when the light turned green. Her knuckles white, she gripped the wheel and kept her foot planted solidly on the brake.
The pickup didn’t move, either. With no other traffic transiting the isolated intersection, the two vehicles sat facing each other as the light turned yellow, then red again. The next time it once again showed green, the pickup crossed the short stretch of pavement and pulled up alongside her convertible.
The driver’s side window whirred down. A tanned elbow hooked on the sill. The deep baritone that used to belt out the hokiest ’50s-era honky-tonk tear-jerkers rumbled across the morning quiet.
“Hey, Suze.”
He’d never used her call sign in nonoperational situations. The military had consumed so much of their lives that Gabe wouldn’t let it take their names, too. That attitude, Swish reflected, was only one of the many reasons he’d left the Air Force and she hadn’t.
She craned her neck, squinting up from her low-slung sports car. “Hey yourself, Gabe.”
“I thought I was hallucinating there for a minute. What’re you doing in Phoenix?”
“I live here. I’m stationed at Luke.”
“Oh, yeah? Since when?”
The fact that he didn’t even know where she lived hurt. More than she would ever admit.
Swish, on the other hand, had subtly encouraged her mother to share bits of news about her former son-in-law’s life since he’d moved back to Oklahoma. Mary Jackson had passed on the news that the high school tennis team Gabe coached had won state honors. And she gushed over the fact that the voters of their small hometown elected him mayor by a landslide. Somehow, though, her mom had neglected to mention the fact that Cedar Creek’s mayor was getting married again.
“I’ve been at Luke a little over four months,” Swish answered with as much nonchalance as she could muster, then let her gaze roam the dusty, dented pickup. “I see you’re still driving Ole Blue.”
He unbent his elbow and patted the outside of his door. “I rebuilt the engine a last year. Spins like a top.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
The memories didn’t creep in this time. They hit like a sledgehammer.
Swish had surrendered her virginity in Ole Blue’s cab. Impatiently. Hungrily. Almost angrily. She’d teased and tormented Gabe until he finally toppled her backward on the cracked leather seat and yanked down her panties. Even then, as wild with hunger as they both were, he’d been gentle. For the first few thrusts. Once past the initial startled adjustment, Swish had picked up the rhythm and climaxed mere moments later, as though she’d only been waiting for his touch to ignite those white-hot sensations.
She’d still been floating back to earth when he pulled out of her and started swearing. At himself. At her. At the incredible stupidity of what they’d just done. What if her parents found out he’d violated their trust as well as their daughter? What if he’d let himself come and gotten her pregnant! What about her scholarship to OU? The bridges she wanted to build. The exotic lands they both wanted to travel to!
Still soaring on that sexual high, Swish had kissed and stroked and nipped the cords in his neck until he cursed again, shoved the key in the ignition and drove her home.
Other, less sensual memories involving Ole Blue swirled like a colorful kaleidoscope. The night they spread an air mattress in the truck bed and stretched out to watch a gazillion stars light up the sky. The times they’d pulled into a space at the only still-operating drive-in movie in the area to munch popcorn and watch the latest action flick. The load of manure they’d loaded and hauled to fertilize the garden belonging to a friend of his mother.
A flash of headlights in the rearview mirror yanked her from the past to the present. They were still blocking the intersection, with Ole Blue hunched like an oversize panther beside Swish’s red mouse of a car.
She glanced in the mirror, back at Gabe. “Well, I guess...”
“Why don’t we get a cup of coffee?” He hooked his thumb at the golden arches behind him. “I obviously need to catch up on your career moves.”
She opened her mouth to refuse. The memories she’d just flashed through were too raw, too painful. She’d be a fool to resurrect any more. Then again, she did have to make a pit stop. Like reeeeally bad now.
“Okay,” she heard herself say. “I’ll meet you inside...after I hit the head.”
She cornered into the parking lot, killed the engine and was out of the T-bird before Ole Blue had made a U-turn at the intersection. This early in the morning the ladies’ room was empty and clean as a whistle, with the pungent tang of disinfectant taking precedence over the scent of deep-fried hash browns and sausage coming from the kitchen.
When she emerged, she found Gabe lounging against a booth with a coffee cup in either hand. A smile crinkled the squint lines at the corners of his hazel eyes as he tipped his chin toward the restroom she’d just vacated.
“You must’ve been on the road for a while if your iron-bladder exercises failed you.”
“Hey! I made it, didn’t I?”
Anyone overhearing the exchange would’ve wondered at the subject matter. Or assumed she and Gabe shared a history that included an intimate knowledge of each other’s bodily functions. Which they did.
Feeling like a total idiot for mourning the loss of that particular history, Swish reached out a hand. “Which coffee is mine?”
“Take your pick.” He held out both cups. “They’re the same.”
She blinked, startled. Her husband had always been a two-sugars-one-cream kind of guy. “When did you start drinking undoctored coffee?”
“When I added too many extra inches to my waistline.”
Her gaze made a quick up and down. If Gabe had put on extra inches, she sure as hell couldn’t see them. The chest covered by his stretchy black T-shirt tapered to a still-trim waist. The snug jeans emphasized his flat belly. His lean hips. The hard, muscled thighs she’d traced so often with her hands and her mouth and her...
“You sure you don’t want more than coffee?” he asked, gesturing to the illuminated menu. “I’ll be happy to stand you to a Number 3.”
The fact that he remembered her preference for a Big Breakfast with Hotcakes made her throat ache. “This is good,” she murmured, sliding into the booth he’d staked out.
The silence that followed was short but awkward. And obviously painful, as they both rushed to break it.
“What are you...?”
“So sorry about...”
They both broke off, and he gestured for her to go on.
“So sorry to hear about Aunt Pat. What happened?”
“An aortic aneurism. She died in her sleep. One of her spin-class buddies found her the next morning.”
Swish wasn’t surprised that the feisty seventy-six-year-old had been into spinning along with all her other fitness pursuits. She and Pat had once run side by side in a 5k Race for the Cure with the older woman decked out in flashing sneakers, cotton-candy-pink leggings and a cropped tank that announced she was One Fast Oldie.
“How’s your mom taking her sister’s death?”
“Hard. She flew out for the funeral but couldn’t stay to help settle the estate. Her hip’s been giving her trouble.”
The reply plucked at Swish’s hurt again. She’d been so close to his family. His dad before he died, his mom, his sisters. To cover the ache, she switched subjects.
“My mom told me about the election. Ninety-four percent of the vote. Pretty impressive for a high school history teacher-slash-tennis coach.”
“Yeah, well...”
The grin that had haunted her dreams for too many months slipped out. As self-deprecating and sexy as she remembered. She felt its all-too-familiar impact wrap around her heart.
“Hard to bask in the glow of victory when my cousins constitute at least half the electorate.”
Swish had to laugh. “I know most of those cousins. They’re as stubborn and hardheaded as you are, Mr. Mayor. They wouldn’t have voted for you unless they believed in you.”
“Maybe. Or it might’ve been because I ran against Dave Forrester.”
Her jaw dropped. “You’re kidding! Freckle-faced Forrester overcame his shyness enough to run for public office?”
“Freckle-faced Forrester now owns the largest oil and gas franchise in the county,” Gabe returned drily. “Lucky for me—but not for my constituents—he’s been slapped with a half-dozen lawsuits for property damage due to fracking. He’s not the most popular guy around Cedar Creek these days.”
Wow! The skinny, gap-toothed kid who’d traded spitballs with her? An oil and gas executive? She was still trying to get her head around that when Gabe broke into her thoughts.
“What about you? What are you doing at Luke?”
She shook off the tendrils of her past and leaped gratefully into the present. “I’m assigned to the 56th Fighter Wing. Would you believe I head up the Base Emergency Engineer Response team?”
“Prime BEEF? Now I’m impressed.”
The designation didn’t begin to describe the scope of her team’s duties. The mission of Luke AFB was to train the men and women who flew and maintained the F-16 Fighting Falcon and the F-35 Lightning, the world’s newest and most sophisticated fighter. The base population included more than ten thousand active duty, reserve and civilian personnel, plus their families. Another seventy thousand retirees lived in the local area. Swish’s job was to make sure the facilities were in place to support all these people in both peacetime and wartime.
“That’s quite a responsibility,” Gabe commented. “It’s what you trained for. What you’ve worked so hard for. And why you were awarded that Bronze Star after your last deployment.”
“You know about the Bronze Star?”
She couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. He couldn’t keep the bite out of his.
“Know that my wife...?” He stopped. Took a breath. Started again. “Know that my former wife and her team risked their lives to repair an abandoned runway outside Mosul? That they opened the airstrip despite heavy enemy fire so US aircraft could use it as a base to repel an ISIS attack? Yeah, I know about it.”
Okay, that gave her a warm buzz. Almost warm enough to mitigate the fact that he hadn’t known she was now assigned to Luke. Not quite warm enough to erase the news Ben had imparted last night, though. She looked down at her now sludgy coffee. Looked up. Took her courage in both hands.
“Cowboy told me you’re getting married again.”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Anyone I know?”
He hesitated, shrugged. “Alicia Johnson.”
Dammit all to hell!
Somehow, someway, she managed to keep from crushing her cup and slopping coffee over the table. A bitter realization stayed her hand. As much as she disliked the nauseatingly effervescent pixie, she had no right to castigate Gabe for his choice of partners. God knows, he hadn’t castigated her when she turned to someone else out of desperate loneliness.
“Whatever you decide,” she got out, despite lungs squeezed so tight she could hardly breath, “I hope you find the ‘forever’ we were so sure we had.”
He stretched out a hand, covered hers. “Same goes, Susie Q.”
It was the silly nickname that did it. His pet name for her from the fifth grade on. Forever associated in both of their minds with the package of cream-filled chocolate cupcakes she’d brought to his bedroom when he fell out of a tree and broke his collarbone.
She tried, she really tried, to keep her smile from wobbling. Twisting her hand, she gave his what she intended as a companionable squeeze. His fingers threaded through hers. So strong. So warm. So achingly familiar.
He raised their joined hands. Brought the back of hers to his lips. Brushed a kiss across her knuckles. Once. Twice. Swish didn’t even try to pull away.
Until he gently, slowly, lowered his hand and eased it out of hers.
Chapter Two (#u8e7b309c-768b-5299-ac40-8d796f459d12)
“I...uh...”
Gabe smothered a curse as his wife—his former wife!—stammered and tried to shrug off the impact of their brief contact.
One touch. One friggin’ touch, and she looked ready to bolt. He should let her. God knew it wouldn’t be the first time. Instead, he soothed her obvious nervousness with a safe, neutral topic.
“I didn’t get to talk to Cowboy much over the phone. It sounded like he’s enjoying his foray into fatherhood, though.”
“He is.”
She relaxed, bit by almost imperceptible bit, and Gabe refused to analyze the relief that ripped through him. He’d think about it later. Along with the ache in his gut just sharing a booth with her generated.
“Did you know his wife, Alex, designs glitzy tops and accessories for high-end boutiques?”
“No.” He gestured toward the tiger draped over her shoulder. “Did she design that?”
“She did.”
“Nice.”
Very nice. Although...
Now that he’d recovered from the shock of their unexpected meeting, Gabe wasn’t sure he liked the changes he saw in the woman sitting opposite him. She was older. That went without saying. But she’d lost weight in the three years since they’d said their final goodbye. Too much weight. She’d always been slim. With a waist he could span with his hands and small, high breasts that never required a bra when she wasn’t in uniform. Now her cheekbones slashed like blades across her face and that sparkly, stretchy black tank showed hollows where her neck joined her shoulders.
And those lines at the corners of her eyes. Gabe knew most of them came from the sun. And from squinting through everything from high-tech surveying equipment to night-vision goggles. But the lines had deepened, adding both maturity and a vulnerability that tugged at protective instincts he’d thought long buried.
The eyes themselves hadn’t changed, though. Still a deep, mossy green. And still framed by lashes so thick and dark she’d never bothered with mascara. The hair was the same, too. God, how he loved that silvery, ash-blond mane. She’d worn it in a dozen different styles during all their years together. The feathery cut that made her look like a sexy Tinker Bell. The chin-sweeping bob she’d favored in high school. The yard-long spill she’d sported in college. How many times had he tunneled his fingers through that satin-smooth waterfall? A hundred? Two?
He liked the way she wore it now, though. Long enough to pull through the opening at the back of her ball cap, just long enough for the ends to cascade over her right shoulder. Gabe had to curl his hands into fists to keep from reaching across the table and fingering those silky strands.
He sipped his coffee, instead, and tried his damnedest to maintain an expression of friendly interest as she brought him up to date on other mutual friends. Pink, getting ready to ship across the pond again. Dingo and the showgirl he’d been seeing off and on for over a year now. A real wowzer, if even half of the adjectives Suze used to describe the buxom brunette were true. Cowboy’s wife, Alex, expanding her clothing design business even faster than they were expanding their family.
Strange, Gabe thought. He always associated their friends with their call signs. Yet he never thought of Suze as Swish. There were several different explanations of how she’d acquired that tag. One version held it resulted from the detailed analysis she’d sketched on a scrap of paper during a fierce, intrasquadron basketball game. In swift, decisive strokes she’d demonstrated the correct amount of thrust and proper parabolic arc to swish in a basket.
Another version was that she’d gained the tag after one of her troops mired a Swiss-made bulldozer in mud. Suze reportedly climbed aboard, rocked the thirty-ton behemoth back and forth, and swished it out.
There was another version. One involving beer, a bet and a camel, although Suze always claimed the details were too hazy for her to remember.
Gabe knew his reluctance to use her call sign was only one small indicator of the rift that had gradually, inexorably widened to a chasm. He hadn’t resented sharing her with the Air Force or with the troops she worked with. Not at first. Not until they became her surrogate family. But she always was, always would be, Suze to him.
Or Susie Q. The pet name came wrapped in so many layers of memories. Some innocent, like the time he broke his collarbone and she’d perched on the side of his bed to feed him bits of her cream-filled chocolate treats. And some not so innocent. Like the time...
Without warning, Gabe went tight. And hard. And hungry. Smothering another curse, he shoved the image of his wife’s nipples smeared with whipped cream out of his head. But he had to drag in long, slow breaths before his blood started circulating above his waist again.
“I can’t tell if Dingo’s serious about Chelsea or not,” Suze was saying. “He hooks up with her whenever he’s in Vegas. And they spent a week together in Cabo a few months back. But neither of them seem to be talking about long term.” She cocked her head. “Gabe?”
“Sorry. I was thinking of something else.”
“Right.”
She fiddled with the tab on the lid of her cup. They’d covered every banal topic they could while dancing away from the only one that mattered. Silence stretched between them. Gabe was reluctant to break it, and even more reluctant to end this strange interlude. Suze finally took the lead.
“Well, if you’re going to make Albuquerque this evening, you probably should hit the road.”
“Probably should.”
“Unless...”
She flicked the tab. Up. Down. Didn’t quite meet his eyes.
“Unless?” he prompted.
“Unless you’d like to swing by my place for breakfast first. It’s out of your way but...” The barest hint of a smile flitted across her face. “I still can’t cook worth a damn but I have learned to concoct a relatively passable Mexican frittata.”
It was an olive branch. A tentative step toward putting the past behind them and becoming friends again. That’s all it was, Gabe told himself fiercely. All it could be. Yet he snatched it with both hands.
“You’re on.”
* * *
Even before he snapped his seat belt and keyed Ole Blue’s ignition, his thoughts had done a one-eighty. This was a mistake. Possibly one of epic proportions. There was no way in hell either of them could back to being just friends. But as Gabe trailed her maroon sports car through the now-bright Arizona morning, he came up with a dozen different explanations for his temporary insanity.
Neither of them had tried to deny that their frequent separations while they were both in uniform had created the first cracks in their marriage. The cracks had gotten wider every time Gabe suggested they choose different career paths, ones that wouldn’t put them on opposite sides of the globe so often. The fissures had become a yawning crevasse when he’d issued a flat ultimatum.
Looking back, he knew he shouldn’t have forced her to choose between him and the Air Force. Or hung up his uniform and headed for Oklahoma while they were still struggling to balance the deep, visceral satisfaction she got from her job with his gnawing need to get back to his roots.
And he sure as hell shouldn’t have let her admission that she’d turned to someone else for comfort eat like acid on his pride. They’d been separated for six months by then. Already talking around the edges of divorce, when they talked at all.
That was when he’d heard the rumor. Third hand, passed via a friend of a friend of a friend. It hadn’t meant anything, the well-meaning pal had assured him. Suzanne had already given the guy his marching orders.
Gabe knew then he should’ve swallowed his rage at the thought of Suzanne, his Suzanne, in another man’s arms, jumped on a plane and tried one last time to heal the breach.
Which is exactly what he would’ve done if she hadn’t called back while he was in the process of throwing a few things in an overnight bag. Every word icy and clipped, she’d told him she’d applied for two weeks’ leave. She needed to get away. Think things through. And, like a fool, he’d let her go. Didn’t ask where. Didn’t try to track her down. Just stubbornly, stupidly believed deep in his heart they’d find a way back to each other. He’d continued to believe it right up until she FedExed him the divorce papers.
As the memories flashed by with the same speed as the miles, his mind went to a place he knew it shouldn’t. Maybe Suze had offered more than an olive branch back there at McDonald’s. Maybe these past three years had been as lonely for her as they had for him. Maybe, just maybe, she was giving him the chance to correct the most colossal blunder of his life.
If she was, and if he did, all ten levels of hell would freeze over before he let her go again.
* * *
The fierce vow probably explained why she’d barely closed the door of her condo behind them before he made his move. That, and the fact that a swift glance around her airy living room revealed no reminders of their broken marriage. Even with the wood shutters tilted against the morning sun, enough light slanted in for Gabe to see the furniture was new. So was the triple panel of bold, slashing color mounted above the sofa. Even the oversize area rug that looked like it had been woven from fabric scraps in dozens of different colors and patterns.
She must have caught his frown as he studied the rug. Tossing her keys and small clutch purse on the tiled counter that separated the living room from the kitchen, she addressed the issue head on. “I’m only renting this place until I decide where to buy.”
He answered with a shrug that added an edge in her voice.
“It came furnished, so I put our Turkish...” She stopped, restarted. “So I put the Turkish carpets in storage with the rest of my things.”
For some reason that deliberate midcourse correction pissed Gabe off. She couldn’t admit they’d ever shared a home? Couldn’t cherish the small treasures they’d collected from all over the world?
Conveniently forgetting that he’d boxed up pretty much every item he’d carted back to Oklahoma and stashed them in the attic of his home, Gabe forced a grin. “Seems like I remember us rolling around naked on those Turkish carpets a few times.”
The surprise that flashed across her face gave him a dart of fierce satisfaction. It also provided a chance to dig the spur in a little deeper.
“More than a few times, now that I think about it. Often enough for one of us to get a little carpet burn on her ass, anyway.”
When he waggled his brows, she laughed and shook her head.
“That was you, big guy. After which, you threatened to tell folks you’d been wounded in the line of duty.”
“At which point you threatened to pin a purple heart on said wound.”
“Would’ve served you right if I had!”
They were both grinning now, and Gabe moved in for the kill. Lifting a hand, he brushed his knuckles down her cheek. “We had some good times, didn’t we?”
Her laughter faded. The twin emerald pools he’d seen himself in so many times stared up at him. Gabe waited, his heart slamming against his ribs, until her breath left on a whisper of a sigh.
“Yes, we did.”
He opened his palm and cupped her chin, then feathered his thumb across her lower lip. His pulse was drumming in his ears now. And in that instant, he knew he wouldn’t—couldn’t—take Alicia up on her increasingly unsubtle hints that she was ready to move in with him. Permanently.
This was the only woman he’d ever loved. The one he’d ached for with the fumbling, frantic passion of youth. The one he’d promised to share his life with. There wasn’t room in his heart for anyone but her.
“I’ve missed you, Suze.”
“I’ve missed you, too.” Tears dimmed the luminescent green of her eyes. “So much I hurt with it.”
His palm slid to her nape. His other hand came up to ease off her ball cap. With it out of the way, he tugged at the squishy elastic band that held her hair. The wind-tangled strands came free and framed her face.
“There,” he said, his voice gruff. “I’ve been aching to do that since the moment we walked into that McDonald’s.”
“Gabe...”
It was half sigh, half plea. Heat roiling in his belly, he tightened his hold on her nape.
“I’ve been aching to do this, too.”
He fully intended to keep the kiss gentle. To stoke her hunger carefully, slowly, until it matched the fire now smoldering in his blood. But she fitted herself against him with a familiar intimacy that sparked searing pleasure at every contact point. Her mouth, her breasts, her hips. All straining against him. All filling him with a raging need that made him whip an arm around her waist and haul her even closer.
* * *
Swish reacted instinctively. The feel of him against her, of the hard press of his mouth on hers, shattered the dam. Hunger, hot and urgent, poured through her. Panting, gasping, her lungs burning, her lips frantic under his, she hooked her arms around his neck. The last shreds of sanity screamed at her to pull back. Now! While she still could! But the rest of her, every atom of the rest of her, wanted Gabe with a ferocity so intense it seared her soul.
She wasn’t sure who attacked whose clothing first. She might’ve yanked up his black T-shirt to get at the hard, tanned muscles of his chest. Or maybe he whipped her tank top up and off. She didn’t know. Didn’t care. She was too busy heeling out of her half-boots to think about it.
She kicked the boots away at the same instant his hands went to the zipper of her jeans. He shoved them down over her hips. She shimmied the rest of the way out. She hadn’t bothered with a bra. She never did when not in uniform. So all she had on when he scooped her up was the thin layer of her black lace hipsters.
“That way,” she gasped, pointing to the arch that led to the two bedrooms. Unnecessarily, as it turned out, as Gabe was already halfway there.
The master bedroom suite echoed the same eclectic style and bright colors as the living room. Red, yellow and turquoise pillows in varying shapes accented the sage-colored comforter. The collage of desert sunrises and sunsets arranged above the headboard picked up the same colors.
Gabe didn’t so much as glance at the gorgeous display. He almost dumped her on the bed and dragged off her panties before stripping off the rest his own clothes. Boots. Jeans. Jockeys.
Jaw taut, nostrils flaring, he turned back to her. His eyes, those green-brown eyes flecked with bits of gold, raked from her neck to her knees. Suze could see herself reflected in the dark irises. Her arms flung up beside her head in wild abandon. Her breasts bare, the nipples already hard and aching for his touch. Her stomach hollowing as the muscles low in her belly clenched in greedy anticipation.
Then, just as she opened her legs to welcome him, he turned away. She lay frozen, unable to move or think or understand why he reached for the jeans he’d just discarded. She whipped her arms down and pushed up on one elbow. She was all set to torch him like one of the commercial high-pressure propane flamethrowers her fire protection troops used when he faced her again, a crumpled foil packet in his hand.
“I have no idea how long I’ve carried this in my wallet,” he said with a wry grimace. “A year maybe.”
Which implied, she thought on a surge of primal satisfaction, he hadn’t delved into his secret stash for prissy missy Alicia Johnson.
She dismissed as totally irrelevant the possibility that Alicia might have supplied the necessary protective measures herself. The only thing that mattered to her now was that Gabe, her Gabe, apparently hadn’t initiated a sexual encounter.
Until now.
“Let me.”
Her heart stuck in her throat, she rolled onto her knees and held out her hand. She squeezed every ounce of pleasure she could out of tearing open the packet and sheathing his now rigid erection. The veined shaft rising hard and pulsing from its nest of wiry chestnut hair triggered atavistic instincts as old as time. This was her mate. The man she’d given her heart to years before she gave him her virginity.
She’d never looked at another man during their years together. Never wanted another man’s hands on her. At least, not until the hurt and the loneliness had got too much to bear. Even then, she’d taken only one other man to her bed.
The experience had left her so empty, so heartbroken that she’d never repeated it. But word had gotten back to Gabe. How, she never knew, not that it mattered. His raw fury had leaped from the email he’d sent asking if it was true.
The anger still simmered, she discovered. Not as raw. Not as livid. But she could see it in his eyes when he tunneled his hands through her hair and tipped her head back.
“Do you have any idea how many times I’ve thought about you doing this with someone else?” he asked, his voice low and rough.
“I can guess.”
“That damned near killed me, Suze.”
“I know,” she said, her throat tight. “I was sorry then. I’m sorry now.”
The reply did little to take the edge off his hostility. He toppled her back, splaying her on the sage-green spread, then followed her down. His body was rock hard, his muscles taut and his tendons corded as he kneed her legs apart.
She welcomed him, craving a cleansing as much as he did. Yet for all his seeming anger, he took time to make sure she was primed. His fingers found all the triggers. Started the pinwheels spinning and the juices flowing.
She didn’t have to tell him that she was wet and ready. He knew her body’s responses as well as she did. Better. She was panting when he positioned himself between her thighs. Groaning when she lifted her hips and rose up to meet his thrusts. She ground her mouth against his, more than matching his savage hunger.
Her climax slammed into her with almost zero warning. One moment she was straining against his hips. The next, she arched her spine, groaned deep in her throat and exploded.
She had no idea how long she drifted on those dark, undulating waves of pleasure before she realized he was still rock hard and buried inside her. When she pried her eyes open, the worry in his green-brown eyes melted her heart.
“You okay?”
The question was as tight and strained as his body. Swish slicked her palms over his taut shoulders. “More okay than I’ve been in three years.”
The reply didn’t seem to reassure him. Still frowning, he propped himself up on his elbows and framed her face with his palms. “I didn’t mean to be so rough.”
“Do you hear me complaining?”
“No, but...”
“We need to get that old hurt out of our systems, Gabe. We’re halfway there.”
“Halfway?”
“Yep.”
She gave the muscles low in her belly a tight, hard squeeze. A flush rushed into Gabe’s cheeks, and she squeezed again. Reveling in his response, she rolled onto her hip, then up to her knees.
“All right, fella. My turn to get rough.”
* * *
By the time they finished, Gabe felt drained of all bodily fluids and Suze lay across his chest like a bag of bones. When he eased her to the side to cradle her in the crook of his arm, she nuzzled her nose into his neck.
“Gimme a few minutes,” she grunted. “Then I’ll get up ‘n’ make you that omelet.”
“No hurry. I’m good.”
Christ! As if that bland adjective came anywhere close to describing how he felt at that moment.
“Okay,” she muttered against his throat. “I was up all night last night. I’ll just snuggle here for a little bit.”
Snuggle forever.
Gabe caught the suggestion before it slipped out. But the words hung there in his mind as she dropped into a light doze. Not five minutes later, she was out like a brick.
That was fine with him. He wasn’t on a tight schedule. School was over for the year, he wouldn’t start coaching summer tennis clinics for another week and his deputy mayor could handle any minor crises that might erupt. He could lie here as long as he wanted, his wife sleeping beside him, her breath warm on his neck and the overhead fan gently stirring the ends of her hair.
He teased the loose strands with an absent, hazy concentration. They slid through his fingers, still wind-whipped but not dry or dusty. As he twisted a skein around his thumb, his thoughts segued from the familiar feel of her hair to what their unexpected encounter might mean in terms of their future.
Grimacing, he reinforced his silent decision to end things with Alicia. She’d still been stinging from her own divorce when she’d turned to Gabe for companionship. Somehow their casual encounters had morphed into dates, then to an “understanding” that Alicia had begun to take more seriously than Gabe did. She’d been pushing for them to move in together. Her place or his, she didn’t care, and he’d been edging close to saying what the hell.
Now...
He scrunched a few inches to the left so he could look down at his wife’s face without going cross-eyed. He always got a kick out of watching her sleep. Those ridiculously thick lashes fanned her cheeks. Her breath soughed in and out through half-open lips. And every once in a while her nose would twitch and she’d make little snuffling noises.
God, he loved this woman! She’d been in his blood, in his heart, for almost as long as he could remember. Maybe now they could put all the hurt and separation and loneliness behind them. Maybe their chance meeting at that deserted intersection wasn’t chance at all, but a...
The sudden, shrill notes of a xylophone clanged through the quiet. Gabe jerked and Suze’s head popped up.
“Wha...?”
She blinked owlishly, then muttered a curse when the xylophone clanged again. Rolling onto her opposite side, she slapped her palm against the nightstand until she located her iPhone. She flopped onto her back and squinted at the screen. Evidently she recognized the number because she scowled and stabbed the talk button.
“Captain Hall,” she croaked, her voice still hoarse with sleep. As she listened for a few moments, her scowl slashed into a frown. She jerked upright and gripped the phone with a white-knuckled fist.
“Casualties?”
Gabe went taut beside her. The single word brought back stark memories of his own time in the Air Force. He’d begun his career as a weapons director flying aboard the Air Force’s sophisticated E3-A, the Airborne Warning and Control System. AWACS aircraft averaged hundreds of sorties a year. Flying at thirty thousand feet, they provided the “eyes in the sky” for other aircraft operating in a combat environment.
After four years in AWACS Gabe had volunteered to transition to drone operations in an effort to remain on the same continent as Suze for at least a few months out of the year. He’d been transferred to Creech Air Force Base, just outside Las Vegas, and trained to remotely pilot the MQ-9 Reaper. With its long loiter time, wide-range sensors and precision weapons, the Reaper provided a unique capability to perform conduct strikes against high-value, time-sensitive targets.
Turned out Gabe was good at jockeying that joystick. Good at locking onto even the fastest-moving targets. Good at launching his laser-guided missiles from precisely the right angle and altitude to destroy those top priority targets.
It was the secondary casualties that churned his insides. He could see them through the unblinking eyes of high-powered spy satellites. The bystanders hurled fifty or a hundred yards from the impact site. The wounded leaving trails of blood in the dirt as they crawled and begged for help. The parents keening soundlessly as they cradled children who’d run to or been hidden near the target.
Collateral damage. That was the catchall phrase for noncombatants caught in the cross fire. Gabe had never taken a shred of pride in his body count, never wanted to know the numbers. Even now he couldn’t relax until he heard Suze expel a relieved breath.
“No casualties? Thank God for that. I’m on my way.” She tossed aside the rumpled sheet and almost tripped over his discarded jeans on her way to her closet. “ETA twenty minutes.”
She tossed the phone on the dresser and yanked open a drawer. With one leg in a pair of no-nonsense briefs, she offered a quick explanation. “Sorry, Gabe. There’s been an accident. I have to get to the base.”
“Aircraft?”
“Pipeline break.” She dragged on a sports bra followed by the regulation brown T-shirt. “Evidently we’ve got the mother of all fuel spills.”
Gabe knew that meant getting a hazmat team on-scene ASAP. Spilled aviation fuel was not just a fire and explosion danger, but also a potential environmental disaster. The FEMA Emergency Management course he’d attended after being elected mayor had offered some excellent tips on exactly this kind of crisis.
Tucking the sheet around his waist, he waited while Suze yanked on her desert-colored BDU pants and shirt, then plopped down on the side of the bed to pull on her socks and boots.
“I went to the FEMA Disaster Response course in Baton Rouge last month. They’re recommending a new sorbent for fuel spills that...”
“Sorry, Gabe, I don’t have time.”
She stood up, grabbed her phone and a leather trifold he knew contained her ID, her driver’s license, a credit card and some cash.
“I’ll call you when I can.”
He was still sitting in bed with the sheet bunched around his waist when the front door slammed behind her.
Chapter Three (#u8e7b309c-768b-5299-ac40-8d796f459d12)
The spill was even worse than Suzanne had feared.
As the designated training base for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Luke AFB had awarded a multi-million-dollar contract to a civilian construction firm to modify the aviation fuel bulk storage tanks, feed lines and manifold system. The intent was to improve the new fighter’s refueling turnaround and thus increase the number of sorties that could be flown during a training cycle. Suzanne had participated in the multi-organization review and final approval of the contractor’s construction plan. She’d also assigned one of her troops to monitor the construction on a daily basis.
The project had gone smoothly to date. Or so they’d thought. When she arrived at the coordination point, the quick briefing she got from Hank Butler, the Base Fire Chief, in his role as acting on-scene commander, told another story. An experienced civilian with more than thirty years of firefighting and disaster response under his belt, Butler had shared valuable tips with Swish and her team during their training exercises. He’d also worked with her on several smaller spills.
“You’re gonna have your hands full with this one, Captain.”
According to the chief, the contractor had breached an underground fuel line. That was bad enough. What made it worse was that the breach hadn’t been detected until a ground-water monitoring well more than half a mile from the storage facility recorded significant levels of contamination. Her mind clicking a hundred miles an hour, Swish took both mental and physical notes as the chief ran through the actions taken so far.
All personnel evacuated from the fuel tank farm. Check. All feeder lines shut down. Check. All refueling and flying activity within a designated radius halted. Check. Fire and explosive potential from leaked fumes being monitored. Check.
Relieved that the most immediate danger to both people and facilities had been addressed, Swish geared up for the long, tough job ahead. Although Logistics procured and stored the fuel, the loggies shared responsibility for containing and cleaning up spills with the civil engineers. In close coordination with the EPA, of course. And the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. And the Staff Judge Advocate. And a half-dozen other agencies and concerned parties.
Right now her most pressing priorities were to first locate the breach in the underground line, then block further flow into the groundwater. Thankfully, every member of her Spill Response Team had trained for just such emergencies. Several had experience with similar incidents. One, thank God, had been part of the Luke AFB team that identified hazardous waste sites resulting from disposal methods that were approved back in the ’50s and ’60s but didn’t meet modern EPA standards.
Mike Gentry was a bioenvironmental engineer and key member of her Spill Response Team. Almost as senior as the fire chief, Mike had been talking retirement. Swish could only murmur a fervent prayer of thanks that he’d held off—although this mess might well convince him to put in his papers sooner rather than later.
“Okay, Mike, with the feeder line shut down, we can use reports from monitoring wells along the line to help pinpoint the leak, right?”
“Right. I’ve already requested immediate status reports from wells eleven and twelve, Captain.”
* * *
Using hard data from the monitoring wells and on-site samples, they pinpointed the probable point of the leak. Swish’s heart twisted when she drove out to the site and surveyed the greasy oil slick on the long, narrow lake. The scorching May heat didn’t help the situation. With the afternoon temperature nudging close to a hundred degrees, toxic fumes danced with heat waves to form shimmering, iridescent clouds above the water’s surface. Breathing heavily through her respirator, Swish knew a single spark could set the whole damned lake on fire.
Sweat poured down her temples and stung her eyes, making each breath she sucked in through the respirator a Herculean chore, but she didn’t remove the mask until the booms were in place, the skimmer operating.
* * *
It was midafternoon when Swish grabbed a few minutes to scarf down the sandwiches and chips that Food Service personnel delivered to her and the rest of the team. Close to seven in the evening, she finally took a long enough break to call Gabe. Stepping away from the dig area, she thumbed her contacts listing. His cell phone number was still there. Even after all this time apart, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to delete it. She had no idea if it was still good but tried it anyway.
“Hey, Suze,” he answered after a few rings. “Got everything under control?”
“More or less.” Puzzled, she cocked her head. “I’m hearing a funny buzz. Where are you?”
“Cruising along in Ole Blue.”
A figure waved to her. Holding up her index finger, she pantomimed “Be right with you” to the EPA rep who’d been sweating alongside her and her team all afternoon.
“Cruising where?” she asked, her gaze on the excavation in progress.
“Home.”
The succinct reply jerked Swish back to the conversation. “Home, like in Oklahoma?”
“Roger that.”
She tried not to feel hurt. But she did, dammit. She did. “Nice of you to take off without bothering to say goodbye.”
“I left a note.”
Now she wasn’t just hurt. She was pissed. “Oh. Well. That’s okay, then. A note makes you rolling out of my bed and hitting the road without a word just fine and dandy.”
“Christ, Suze!” A matching anger rolled back at her. “What the hell did you expect me to do? Sit around for two or three days, twiddling my thumbs until you remembered you left a husband in that bed?”
“Ex-husband.”
“Yeah,” he snapped, “and that’s pretty much the reason why.”
She couldn’t believe he was ripping at her for doing her job! Okay, she should’ve called sooner. But she was damned if she’d apologize or, worse, grovel. She’d done both often enough in the past.
“Drive safe,” she snapped back.
He didn’t bother to reply. She was left with a dead phone in her hand and another ache in her chest.
* * *
The note was right there, propped against a coffee mug, when she finally got back to her condo a little past two in the morning.
Maybe we’ll pull up at the same intersection again sometime.
That was it. No It was great seeing you again. No Call me. Not so much as a hint that they’d reconnected in the most elemental, mutually satisfying way. And it was mutual, Swish thought as she crushed the note in an angry fist. He’d wanted her. As much as she’d wanted him.
Still wanted him.
The realization was as unwelcome as it was irritating. They’d tried the happily-ever-after once. It hadn’t worked then. It wouldn’t work now. Nothing had changed.
* * *
The next few weeks kept Swish up to her eyeballs with work. As busy as she was, though, she couldn’t seem to regain her usual energy and equilibrium.
The spill containment and recovery efforts proceeded on track. Reps from the EPA and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality fully endorsed her team’s efforts. The booms contained the oil slick on the lake and the skimmers removed the surface contaminants, while the soil vapor extraction system scooped up and vacuumed the contaminated subsoil.
Yet she’d flash on the memory of those few hours in Gabe’s arms at the craziest moments. In the middle of a boring staff meeting. Or in her office, while staring sightlessly at some report. More than once she got all mopey, even teary-eyed.
She had to remind herself that she’d lived through separations and a final bust-up before. She’d live through this one, too.
* * *
An unexpected visit from Dingo in early June raised her spirits. He was passing through Phoenix on his way to Tuscon. Some kind of business meeting, she gathered, although Dingo tended to be as vague about his life after the military as he’d been while wearing a uniform. They agreed to meet at one of her favorite Mexican restaurants just a few miles from Luke’s main gate.
A call from the Staff Judge Advocate working the spill claims delayed Swish, so she got to the restaurant fifteen minutes late. She waved off the hostess with the explanation that she was meeting someone, took a half-dozen steps into the popular eatery and stopped dead.
Good grief! Was that Dingo in a charcoal-gray worsted suit and red power tie? The military cop whose lethal security forces had protected Swish and her team five or six years back, when they’d been ferried into a highly classified location to lay down a runway for the air assault to follow? He’d been Captain Andrews, then. Captain Blake Andrews. His face smeared with camo paint, his weapon at the ready, he’d looked as tough and scary as they came.
He still looked tough. And, yes, a little scary, but so damned handsome. Swish could certainly understand why Chelsea Howard had latched onto him. She was no slouch herself in the looks department. The two of them, Swish mused, made a striking couple.
Returning his wave, she wove her way through the tables. Her sand-colored BDUs caught more than a few glances. They also generated a good number of smiling nods. Americans in general—and the folks in the various communities surrounding Luke AFB, in particular—took pride in their military, which only added to the pride Swish herself took in the uniform she wore. And that led to the question she posed to Dingo when he commented on the ripple her appearance had stirred.
“Do you miss it?” she asked curiously.
“The uniform? Or knowing you’re a small part of something big and really important?”
“Either. Both.”
“Sometimes. But there are other ways to serve the public.”
He didn’t mention Gabe. Or the fact that his buddy was now mayor of Small Town, America. He didn’t have to. But she was half relieved, half disappointed when he aimed the conversation toward another mutual acquaintance.
“I stopped by to see Cowboy and Alex last week.”
Swish accepted the menu the waiter handed her and waved off anything but water. As much as she would’ve loved an icy margarita, she didn’t drink while on duty. “I haven’t talked to either of them since the Bash. How’re they doing?”
“Good. Alex’s stomach is in the overripe watermelon range now.” He paused, gave her an assessing stare. “Cowboy said he’d talked to Gabe.”
And there it was.
“Supposedly,” Dingo said, “Gabe’s deep-sixed his half-formed plan to get married again.”
Her reaction was instant and visceral. A brief flicker of sadness for her ex. A surge of guilty relief. And stupid, irrational, completely selfish joy. She wallowed its incandescent glow for several moments before guilt pushed front and center again.
“Did Cowboy say why he called it off?”
“No.”
Dingo knew, though. Or guessed. She saw the speculation in the look he leveled at her. To deflect it, she waited until the server took their order, then turned the tables.
“What about you and your oh-so-delectable Vegas showgirl? Last I heard, you and Ms. Chelsea were heading right for hot and heavy.”
“We’re there. Or we were.”
The slow tide of red that darkened his cheeks surprised Swish. In all the years she’d known Blake Andrews, she’d never seen him flustered or fidgety. Until now. He shifted in his seat. Crossed his knee. Uncrossed it again. Returned her gaze with a scowl.
“That woman has me wrapped six ways to Sunday. Every time I think I’ve got a handle on her, she goes off in a totally different direction. Like the last time I flew into Vegas to see her.”
His tone vectored toward petulant. Fascinated, Swish watched his facial expressions follow the same downward trajectory.
“I bought a ticket for the show at the Wynn. Paid top dollar for a VIP seat, right up front. I was going to surprise her with dinner and...well...whatever afterward.”
“From the sound of it, I’m guessing ‘whatever’ didn’t happen.”
“The show didn’t happen! Or Chelsea’s part in it, anyway. Took me three calls and a face-to-face with the production supervisor before I found out she damned near drowned in her last appearance. He fired her. So what does she do?” he demanded fiercely.
“I can’t even begin to imagine.”
Swish couldn’t. She really couldn’t. She’d met the flamboyant, long-legged dancer for the first time at this year’s Badger Bash, a mere three weeks ago.
Three weeks since she’d driven home in the early dawn. Three weeks since she’d spotted Ole Blue across a deserted intersection. Three weeks since she’d come to the bitter realization that she still loved her husband. Ex-husband, dammit. Ex!
“She goes to work at Treasure Island, that’s what happened!”
“I hear they have a great magic show,” she commented, scrambling to catch up.
“They do, except Chelsea’s not in it. She’s one of the outdoor pirates who swarm the English warship. She swings across the lagoon on a damned rope. Every hour on the hour.”
“Not a great gig for a dancer,” Swish agreed weakly.
“Ya think?” He leaned forward, his gray eyes shooting ice chips. “The fool woman can’t swim.”
“So why do they keep hiring her for these aquatic gigs?”
“She’s got friends. Lots of friends.”
“Well...”
“Well nothing. She’s an idiot, as I tried to point out last time we were together.”
“Uh-oh.”
Last, Swish bet, being the operative word. Dingo confirmed that with a frustrated slap of his menu on the colorful tile table.
“Uh-oh is right. She axed me, just like Gabe axed his almost-fiancée.”
And me, Swish wanted to add. He axed me, too. She couldn’t put all the blame for their last split on him. Still...
“Enough about Chelsea and me,” Dingo said, recovering his customary cool. “What’s going on with you?”
“Not much, aside from a massive fuel spill, an around-the-clock recovery effort and feeling totally wiped most of the time.”
“Wiped? Captain Superwoman? What happened to the inexhaustible energy that made the rest of us groan and beg for relief while you were just getting wound up?”
“Guess I just don’t wind as tight as I used to.”
He sat back, studying her with the beginning of a frown. “You look a little wiped, too. Still gorgeous, of course, but tired. Maybe you should see a doc.”
“Nah.” She forced a smile. “It’s just the spill. It had me going day and night there for a while. I’ll be fine now that we’ve got a handle on it.”
* * *
Except she couldn’t seem to reclaim her usual levels of energy and enthusiasm. Even Mike Gentry commented on it when he and Swish drove out to check on the removal of the last of the booms the following week. May had melted into a June that was as hot as only Arizona could bake it. The lake surface was diamond-bright, the fumes that had formerly hovered above it gone, thank God.
“Breathing through a respirator would’ve been torture in this heat,” she remarked, leaning a hip against Mike’s vehicle.
“It’s pretty well torture anytime.” The bio-environmental engineer slanted her a quick look. “You okay, Captain? You look tired.”
“You’re the second person who’s told me that.” She made a face and tucked a loose strand of hair back into the bun at the nape of her neck. “I’d better start taking vitamins or gulping down some Power Red.”
“You might want to have the doc run a few tests,” Mike commented. “You may have sucked in some fumes.”
She hadn’t exhibited any of the classic symptoms, like irritation of the eyes or nose, coughing or blood in her sputum. But she couldn’t deny feeling a little out of breath at times. Especially in this heat. And she was too smart to brush off the possibility that she had sucked in some toxic fumes. Back at the office, she made an appointment with her primary care manager at the base hospital.
* * *
When she walked up to the entrance of 56th Medical Group’s sand-colored two-story facility the following morning, the sun burned in another blistering blue sky. The fat, prickly pear cactus that stood sentinel beside the hospital’s front door was taking the heat better than Swish was.
“I don’t understand it,” she told Dr. Bhutti. “I pulled two deployments to Iraq, one to Afghanistan. The heat didn’t bother me half as much at either place.”
The dark-eyed physician looped her stethoscope around her neck. She and Swish had formed a tight bond at their first meeting, having both served in combat zones.
“Are you hydrating adequately?”
“Forty-eight to sixty-four ounces every day, although lately I seem to be more thirsty than usual.”
“Alcohol intake?”
“Minimal. I haven’t even felt like a beer after work.”
“How much time do you spend in the sun?”
“Three or four hours a day when we have construction or environmental projects underway. Other times, not so much.”
“Any chance you could be pregnant? A woman’s basal temperature elevates during pregnancy, which makes her more prone to dehydration, heat exhaustion and heat cramps.”
“No, I...”
Swish stopped, her breath blocking her throat. An image of Gabe digging a crumpled foil package out of his wallet leaped into her head. How long did he say he’d been carrying the damned thing around? A year? And she’d been so tickled by the fact he hadn’t used it with Miss Priss.
“I guess I could be.”
The doc rolled back her stool. “Well, we’ll know soon enough. I’ll write an order for a lab test. You may want to cut back on your exposure to the heat until we get the results. And keep drinking plenty of water.”
Shock eddied into the first wavelets of panic. “Can’t I pee on a stick or something? Find out now?”
“Hang loose. I’ll get a kit.”
Swish edged off the exam table, her boots thudding on the floor. Too agitated to sit, she paced the tiny room. She couldn’t be pregnant. The odds couldn’t be that stacked against her and Gabe!
A chance meeting at a traffic light. One hot and heavy session between the sheets. Okay, two. Three? No, just two. She’d climaxed first. She was sure she had. Then she’d straddled Gabe’s hips and pumped him for all she was worth.
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