“You’re right.” She slurped another sip, the slightly undignified sound kinda endearing because it was…personal? “I should have thought of that. How about milk shake?”
“Milk shake?” Another personal fact. She must have a weakness for them. What flavor? Knowing it was wrong, stupid and definitely unwise, he made a vow to find out her favorite flavor someday.
“Sure. Milk shake. I can work it into a sentence without it sounding weird, but the chances of me accidentally using it are next to nil.”
“All right then. Milk shake it is.” He held the phone and wondered why he didn’t just hang up now. “You’ll reset your security system after bringing the sheets? And make sure I have the code?”
“Of course.”
“Tomorrow, I’ll check the place over more thoroughly.”
“It’ll be good to have fresh eyes and ideas. The guys at work have been driving me crazy hovering over me. Maybe now they’ll back off with the kid gloves and start treating me like an equal again instead of acting like I might break.”
The guys at work.
She’d already had watchdogs? So why had she asked a busted up dude like him? For some reason her pride had needed to keep them at a distance. Interesting. He wasn’t sure whether to be complimented or insulted. This woman was tough as hell to understand. “Good night, Nola.”
“’Night, Rick.”
He thumbed the Off button.
Potpourri and pride.
Hell. The more he knew about her, the deeper she trenched into his mind.
He levered himself off the sofa, held on to the kitchen island, braced his other hand against the wall. Yeah, it was the principle of the thing, he would get to that crystal dish without his crutches.
And he did. It hurt, muscles tightening and straining, overworked and yeah, he would pay with a sleepless night, but he made it.
Every day a little more.
Leaning against the counter, he opened a cabinet, picked up her decorative bowl and hid the sweet-smelling junk behind a mixing bowl he was mighty damn certain a dial-a-meal guy like him would never use.
He was here to keep Nola safe, heal his legs and move on once her stalker had been nabbed. Nothing more.
Mind set, he closed the cabinet door on the mixing bowl, potpourri and sweet-smelling temptations.
He was tempted to kill her tonight. Drive his chilly rental car from where it was parked two neighborhoods over. Go to her house, break in and just end it all.
Following her from Texas all the way to South Carolina, he had suppressed the urge to run her off the road so many times. The crippled man would have died with her, but there were often unforeseen casualties in war. Given the man’s injuries, he would probably welcome death anyway.
Heaven above, he personally would not want to live with half a body. Half a man. Half a fighter.
The temptation was growing so strong to finish it that finally he needed to put distance between himself and her. Once he had been certain she planned to return home, he had sped ahead, skipping meals in order to reach her house first and leave her a welcome-home gift.
She should be finding it soon. Too bad he would not see her face when she discovered his “gift,” but he could not risk staying so close to her house. Oh, he didn’t doubt that he could remain unseen, but he did question his ability to keep his hands from around her beautiful, vulnerable neck.
He would simply have to relive the expression on her face when her car had exploded into flames. And about her car… She would need to shop for another soon, which gave him another idea. Oh the ideas of ways to torment her. He definitely wanted to play this out a while longer.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The rapping on the rental car window startled him from his plans, reminding him of the need to stay sharp. She was a fighter, too, after all. A fighter who’d beaten him once before.
He turned to look and found a local police officer with a flashlight.
Relax. Not Nola.
He rolled down the window. “Is there a problem?”
“Well, sir, vagrancy is against the law around here.” The county cop kept the flashlight pointed in his eyes. “If you need somewhere to sleep, you’re going to have to move your car someplace else.”
“I am not sleeping.” Indignation sparked. He was not some vagrant, even if he did plan to sleep here eventually, and yes, he hoped to hang around long enough to catch a distant glimpse of her leaving on some errand. Just a look to carry him through.
“Sir, I have received calls from two concerned neighbors about your vehicle sitting here for the past five hours.” The policeman swept his flashlight through the car, inspecting. “Thing is, you have stayed in the car. That’s making people uncomfortable.”
“Since when is sitting in a car against the law?”
“I need to know your business.” The flashlight swung directly back into his eyes, blinding him.
All right. He was wise enough to know when to stop questioning the authority figure. He did not need to be hauled in, especially since Nola had reported his letters to the authorities. He
was
two neighborhoods over, but he did not want them making the connection. In fact, he should line up another rental immediately. “I am going to pull out my wallet now, all right?”
“Okay, now. Take it slow and easy, mister.”
“I hear you.” He reached with one hand into his back pocket, carefully dodging his concealed Taurus .40 caliber pistol. “Here is my private investigator’s license. I am simply watching that house over there to see how long he stays with the lady. Let us just say the man is not her husband.”
The police officer lowered the beam to the documents, wide-brimmed hat shadowing his eyes until eventually his shoulders lowered as well. If body language could be believed, apparently he had bought the cover story. “I really don’t like people causing trouble, loitering around. Don’t make me pull your license.”
“I know my rights, and the police can only file a complaint against me. They cannot actually pull it.”
“Fair enough. But if I receive any more calls about you…”
“My business should be through tonight.” A lie, but he lied well and with a straight face. He would simply have to be more careful about staying hidden.
Perhaps he could even look into renting one of the small places nearby. Except the time seemed to be drawing closer. The hotel would serve his purposes as long as it had wireless access for him to work on his next plan to keep the heat turned up on Nola Seabrook’s life.
After dropping off Rick’s sheets without lingering, Nola finished her diet drink and tossed the can in the recycling bin back in the main house. She should probably find something to eat, but her stomach still hadn’t settled from her car explo—
Oh, hell. Who was she kidding? Her belly was turning loop-de-loops over the fact that she had a man living under her roof again. Didn’t matter they weren’t sharing a bed. They were sharing shingles.
She’d trusted a near stranger with her safety over a squadron full of friends. How messed up was that? Or maybe it made total sense because this way she maintained some control. Some distance. Not that she’d kept her distance very well when she’d landed in Rick DeMassi’s lap earlier. What a freaking mess.
Okay, she would reclaim her life. Be normal.
Nola snagged an apple from a basket on the counter and crunched. She hit the remote to turn on her favorite jazz music and started shedding clothes on her way to her bedroom.
She thrived on disarray in her home. She had more than enough of regimen at work these days. Her T-shirt went sailing to land on the back of her sofa. Nola kicked one shoe under the dining room table, the other under her telephone table.
And speaking of her phone, she’d better keep her cell phone with her for emergencies. She looped the string holder around her wrist.
“Milk shake. Milk shake. Milk shake.” She repeated the duress words a few more times with a dance step to her walk as she committed it to memory.
She unbuttoned her jeans and kicked them into a pool in the hall until she wore only her sport bra, high-cut cotton panties and Christmas-green socks. Back before her cancer, she’d lived in a totally orderly world of beige and white, only to discover she controlled nothing. Now, she lived her life differently, vibrantly, with a certain respect for the psychedelic chaos factor.
Her problem lay in trying to blend the two parts of herself, past and present.
She padded down the narrow hall full of pictures of planes and friends snapped around the world. During her recovery, she’d taken a framing class and matted photos from her past in bright colors. She’d populated her home with the memories to give herself hope of adding more images someday. And she had.
Would she add one of herself with Rick to look at after he left?
Now wasn’t that a dangerous thought to carry into her bedroom? She creaked open the door, swinging the cell phone on her wrist, a reminder that Rick was only a simple call and wall away.
Had she been totally reckless to invite him here with their sexual history? Or maybe he was exactly the man to invite under her roof, perhaps under her bedspread, as well. He had scars, too. Could he be the one she could trust to show her own?
All-too-deep thoughts for her exhausted body tonight. She stepped into her room and clicked on the switch for her Tiffany lamp to cast multicolor lights over her Laura Ashley patterned pink-and-white room full of pillows and trinket boxes and her newfound joy in clutter. She soaked in the familiarity of it all, readying to flop into the plump comfort of her bed…
Only to stop short.
Lying on her floral pillow sham rested a surprise box of Godiva chocolates. Which would have been creepy enough by itself, except the box was open with half the candies missing and only the light chocolates remaining, as if someone had removed all the dark.
The kind she didn’t like.
Her fingers shook as she reached for her cell phone, already whispering, “Milk shake.”
Chapter 5
“Y
ou can’t sleep on a sofa.”
Can’t?
No word stirred Rick to be contrary more than that.
Standing in Nola’s living room after the cops had left from taking their statements, he had plenty of frustration built against her candy-leaving stalker as it was. Rick refused to let her boot him out of her place in some misguided sense of independence that was flat-out unsafe.
Nola had to know this ramped things up to a new level of dangerous. She might look unfazed standing there in her sweatpants and T-shirt with her fists perched on her hips. But he still remembered those same fists shaking when he’d seen her in the sport bra and high-cut panties she’d been wearing when he made his way into her place after her “milk shake” call.
This stalker guy had slipped past her security system while she was out of town—and blown up her car in another city. The fella was freaking everywhere at once. Not a chance Rick was letting her out of his sight, even if it meant sleeping on her flowery sofa that oozed estrogen.
He met her nose-to-nose. Okay, more like nose to curly hair. “Like hell I can’t sleep there.”
“Let’s be realistic.” Her fists slid from her hips and she backed away to sit on the edge of the matching poofy chair. “You’re still recovering from major injuries. There is no way I’m putting you on a sofa, or even a pullout couch.”
“And there is no way I’m letting you sleep in this house alone.” He wasn’t going to be maneuvered through her obvious attempt at low-key body language. “The cops may not have been overly concerned about the private investigator vagrant they mentioned being the only disturbance recently, but I’m not dismissing it so easily.”
“It was actually a couple of neighborhoods over,” she said, her voice rock solid. “And my neighbor—”
“That Malcolm Cuvier fella, the ex-cop?”
“Yes.” He’d been Johnny-on-the-spot when the cops showed up. Forced into retirement at forty when he took a bullet in the lung, he still listened to his police scanner religiously. “He’s going to call in some favors and look into it a little deeper for us.”
Rick dropped to sit beside her on the arm of the chair. Besides, his legs were aching a little. He wasn’t getting all softhearted over this lady. He just needed to take care of his body since she was counting on him.
Still his hand gravitated to rub along her back between her shoulder blades absently while she stared off into space. He thought through what the cops had relayed about the stranger dude nearby. “All right, so the vagrant had an accent and was around fifty and claimed to be a private investigator. Could be our guy or hired by our guy. It’s a start, more than we knew before.”
“We?” She tipped her face up to his.
“Duh. You asked me to help out, remember?”
“Right.” She half smiled. “
Duh
.”
He started to pat her back again only to realize he was still touching her, in fact had been rubbing soothing circles along her back the whole time.
She looked up at him, his head beginning the dip down that would take him to her lips. Already the memory of the feel and fit of her came back to mind a second before he rediscovered… Yeah. He skimmed her mouth with his, his hand palming her back more firmly, drawing her closer. The scent of her filled him, spurring him to take this further, deeper, but what did she want?
He took her little gasp, the tiny moan in the back of the throat as an affirmation and delved into her mouth. No protest. Definitely no protest. Her hands slid up to his shoulders, around his neck.
Holy crap.
At least she had her clothes on now. He couldn’t erase the image of her in those high-cut panties and sport bra, but at least the clothes offered a boundary of sorts or they would both be in serious trouble. Because as much as he was enjoying this kiss, he knew things wouldn’t go any further.
He didn’t question how he knew their limits when they’d both hopped into bed so quickly before, but somehow, he just knew…call it taking a radar read off the woman. She had a wariness to her now that hadn’t been there before, a steeliness too, no question. Nola also had more boundaries, and he had to admit he felt pretty damn much the same.
He couldn’t help but notice other differences, too. She was thinner, more whipcord. His mind played tricks on him because he could have sworn he remembered fuller breasts, but still he found her no less attractive. Just different. Like with her new curls.
Of course a lot of years had passed. His memory could well be faulty. His hand fisted in her T-shirt at her waist as he thought of how he’d palmed her breast…
No. Stop. He wouldn’t go there in his head and if he didn’t pull back from this kiss soon, he would be going much further than either of them was ready for.
He couldn’t afford the distraction when he needed to think about her safety—especially when he had a long night ahead of him sharing a room with her. Easing away, he ended the kiss with a final brush over her lips, then the tip of her nose, her closed eyes, her forehead, before resting his chin on top of her head.
Best to keep things light. They couldn’t pretend the kiss didn’t happen, but he didn’t want to talk it to death. He’d better grab hold of the conversation first.
“About watching over you tonight and the whole couch dilemma, if I sleep in your bed, I think I may suffocate from all the ruffles and powder puff.”
She chuckled. “That bad, huh?”
“Nah, just a surprise since I expected something more…sleek. But I like surprises.” His smile faded and his hand slid away from her back. He draped his arm along the back of the chair. “Even if I conceded and let you sleep on the sofa, you would be out in the living room while I’m in the next room, down the hall, too far away.”
Her spare room only contained office furniture, not even a sofa.
“How about this then,” she offered. “We’ll both sleep in the garage apartment tonight. You sleep on the bed and I will sleep on the sectional sofa, which does have a pullout sofa bed.”
He could live with the compromise. The place had fewer entrances to guard and the guy would actually be less likely to look for her there. Yeah. It fit. She was a reasonable woman. A reasonable woman who’d had one helluva day. He couldn’t resist teasing another smile from her.
“On one condition.”
She cocked her head to the side. “What would that be?”
“Tomorrow, you let me bench-press you as my weights so I can restore my lost testosterone percentage points.”
Her shoulders shook with another laugh, weary, but still a solid chuckle. She extended her hand. “Deal.”
“Deal.” He closed his fingers around hers—soft, long fingers he could remember stroking over him with tender thoroughness, leaving him damn near begging at times.
He gritted his teeth.
Definitely a long night ahead of him.
God, this was a long flight.
Nola gripped the stick in her hand. She’d been called in to sub for Bronco, who’d thrown out his back in an intramural game of basketball. She’d barely made the requisite twelve-hour crew rest for the afternoon flight, but the squadron commander really needed this mission—with the demo of new upgrades to the aircraft. And, quite frankly, she hadn’t minded the space from Rick after spending the night in the same room, after sharing a hair-curling kiss neither of them discussed. Instead, she’d hugged a pillow and listened to him breathe.
Roll over.
Rustle the sheets.
Too many memories stirred of sharing sheets with him.
She’d suspected his legs were bothering him and she’d wished she could offer a massage, but… They couldn’t go there, not without things leading further. She needed more time with him before she made a decision about that.
He’d ridden with her today to the base, checked in with the clinic about his rehab and then detailed his own plans to check out her security.
Nola worked her boots against the rudders, slicing the planes wings through clouds. Another ten minutes and they would be on autopilot, so she soaked up these remaining seconds of control, power. Freedom. She loved to fly, had known it was her destiny since the instant she’d sat behind the controls for the first time. Sure she’d started out piloting because she wanted to prove as a woman she could equal any man… Now she flew because she couldn’t imagine not flying.
She and her ex-husband had met in flight school, had fallen hard and fast. Their relationship had been based on attraction and shared dreams…. Until Peter had washed out of flight school in the last month.
He’d been one of the lucky ones who could stay in the Air Force. Some who washed out of training didn’t even get to stay in the service. Peter hadn’t considered himself lucky at all. Losing his dream had changed him. He’d served four more years in the service at a desk job before putting in his papers.
Why was Peter so heavily on her mind today? Had to be because of having a man under her roof again, even if it was purely platonic.
Purely? That kiss had been anything but platonic. If the two of them were already traveling this far and fast down memory lane, they wouldn’t last too much longer without making their way to the end of the map. Had this been her reason for tracking him down? She’d chosen him to be her last lover before the operation, did she want him to be her first after surgery, as well?
That scared her witless because the intent would have been subconscious and she liked to think she was making her own choices these days. And what did all of this have to do with her ex and him washing out of pilot training?
More of her flipping subconscious at work.
“What would you do if you couldn’t fly anymore?” The words fell out of her mouth of their own volition. Luckily, only her boss flying beside her would hear and not the crew in back.
“Who gave you the grumpies instead of bananas with your Cheerios?” Lieutenant Colonel Carson “Scorch” Hunt glanced up from checking the fuel display.
“Ha-ha. Very funny. Not.” Her hand clenched around the stick. She wished she could mask her feelings as well as the clouds hid the ground below. “I’m being serious.”
“Is there something wrong?” All humor vanished from his poster-boy-perfect face—she preferred craggy these days. “Oh damn. Is your cancer back?”
“No! Ohmigod, no.” Thank heavens. “And I certainly wouldn’t tell you in the middle of flying and risk unsettling our concentration.”
“Of course. All right.” His exhale filled the headset long and slow before he continued, “This is about the man living with you. There are going to be a lot of broken hearts around the squadron once this becomes common knowledge.”
How did he already know about Rick liv—? “Are there no secrets in this squadron?”
“Afraid not,” he said as he opened his flight bag to pull out his lunch with Beachcombers Bar and Grill stamped across the sack containing a hamburger that smelled too good. “I heard from Bronco that you called his wife since she’s a flight surgeon to get her advice on the best options for rehab in the area.”
Bronco always had been a big ole gossip. He must have spilled all when he called in sick because of his back. Well, this squadron thrived on practical jokes and Bronco was about to be the recipient of a whopper practical joke except she wasn’t feeling particularly funny right now.
“Yes, I have a friend recovering at my place for a while.”
“A PJ.” A parajumper, also known as a pararescueman.
“Yes.”
“Must be hell.”
“Excuse me?”
“Those guys are hard core. He must be going through hell adjusting. You’re a good friend to take in somebody carrying that much baggage.”
“And you sure are one chatty boss.”
A boss she had dated back when their ranks and positions were closer, before he was the head honcho. They’d gone out a couple of times, had fun, but soon realized there simply wasn’t any chemistry. The friendship stuck, though.
Scorch turned to face her full on, the plane skimming through a sky as blue as his serious eyes. “Yeah, I get that you want me to back off, but hell, Bronco’s a gossip and I’m freaking Ann Landers. So here goes. How did you feel when you thought you wouldn’t fly anymore?”
She started to tell him to take a hike,
sir,
and then…she stopped and thought. If she meant to move forward, she had to stop pushing people away. Scorch truly was a good boss who cared about his people. Beyond that, he knew her well as a friend, in fact knew more about her than most folks.
Yet, she’d never told him about Rick.
Still, she could carry on this conversation without relaying that tidbit.
Deep breath. Leap. “I was so wrapped up thinking I might not even live, the notion of losing my wings wasn’t up front in my mind.”
“Whereas your friend’s mortality isn’t in question since his isn’t a life-threatening illness.”
She nodded.
“There’s no question that this job of ours is more than a job, a calling, service to country, to others above self. Those PJs really push themselves—That Others May Live.”
“Their motto.”
“Think about your cancer, how you fought so damn bravely, but all the while preparing yourself to die.”
Ah. The clue bird landed on her head. “He has prepared himself to die, but never prepared himself to live.”
“And since I’m the boss and know everything, you might want to take those words to heart yourself.”
An image flashed to mind of Rick’s face as they’d driven around base earlier—the hunger in his eyes as he’d stared out at the flight line at the airplanes. Planes he’d once jumped out of to save lives.
Just as her boss had said. She’d faced the possibility of death. But she’d never thought about living—and losing her dream.
Rick faced that nightmare every day, something far less clear-cut in its healing. How could she have been so dense? Hell, she lived with a man who couldn’t face losing his dream. She’d seen how it tore apart her ex-husband watching her put on her flight suit each day.
Rick would help her, but this had to be painful for him in ways he never would have anticipated. And—ouch—that stung her in a way she hadn’t foreseen, either.