Her joining him.
He hitched the sweats over his hips. "How did you find out about the mission?"
Monica glided into the room, her walk an intriguing mix of military precision cut by a hint of a sway. She stopped beside him, arms behind her back, palms flattened against the wall as she leaned.
"Joker came in to update his flight physical for immunizations." She hooked a stray hair behind her ear. "He thought I knew, so he wasn't guarded in what he said. Once I looked at what he was being given and did some digging around for a few days, I figured it out. Or at least enough where..."
"You had to be briefed in on the rest." Damn. He jerked a T-shirt over his head, tried not to wince at the pull to his arm.
"Are you okay?"
"Fine."
"Anthrax immunizations hurt, don't they?"
"A little." A lot. He worked his arm in a circle and stayed silent. Snagging his box of Froot Loops, he frowned at the neatly folded bag before tearing it open to toss back a handful.
"You can take one dose of Motrin, you know, without going off flying status."
"Uh-huh," he grunted, munching.
"Damn flyboys, always afraid of medicines and then they're big babies about the pain."
A self-deprecating smile snuck free. Yeah, she knew her job and patients well. "You'll be sorry to hear, but I think I'll live."
He reached for another scoop of cereal.
She grabbed his wrist to stop him, held his gaze as firmly. "That's not funny, Jack. Regardless of what we've been through, you know it would hurt me if something happened to you."
So Monica still had feelings for him. Damned silly to launch into one of his grandma's Kleistos dances over a simple comment. Not that he was asking for anything from Monica anymore, right?
Only fifteen minutes alone with her and already he'd peeled away all his clothes and half his resolve. He didn't know what he felt around this woman, and she didn't seem inclined to give them time to figure it out. He jerked his hand free and ate his Froot Loops before she could seal his bag closed again. And he didn't doubt for a minute she'd done it the first time. If a man wanted to eat his cereal stale, big damn deal. He crunched.
"So, Jack? Do you want to replace one of the other doctors with me, or can you justify adding another flight surgeon to the roster?"
"Not going to happen. Against regs for you to fly with me since we're married." He jammed his cereal box back on the refrigerator, top open. If she didn't want to be his wife, she could keep her cereal-sealing hands to herself.
"You really underestimate me, don't you?"
Ambush ahead. He scrambled for a recovery but she beat him to the end of the runway.
"I'll be in a different plane." She unzipped the top of her military bag and dug inside. "And if we're chitchatting about the fuzzy edges of conflict of interest, you haven't said a word about Blake Gardner's SEAL platoon running one leg of the mission."
He blinked. She couldn't be planning to unpack and stay in his room. What was she talking about anyhow? Blake Gardner?
"The boy's club in action, huh?" She yanked out a clothespin. "You can rescue my sister. Blake can help his old girlfriend. But I'm supposed to sit back and wait when she's my own flesh and blood."
"It's dangerous." And Gardner was in his own personal hell over not being able to stop Sydney from going. A hell Jack had no interest in visiting because of Monica.
Stalking back to the refrigerator, she snapped the clip on his cereal bag and closed the box lid so damned predictably he wanted to laugh. It sure as shit beat shouting.
"Get real, Jack. Are you going to follow me around for the rest of my Air Force career—and make no mistake, this is a career for me. Are you going to work your Korba magic and charm all my superiors into slotting me on only the safe missions? Step out of the Dark Ages and join the modern world."
Her eyes narrowed, jade depths just as intense and potentially hazardous as those NVG views. "What's really going on here? You've never had a problem with my job before. Quit pulling this smoke-and-mirrors garbage and talk to me."
"We're married," he repeated.
"So? Husbands and wives can't work together? Sure I'm not supposed to fly over on your plane since we're married. Not that anyone knows to call you on it. But I'll ride on one of the other jets, anyway."
He stepped closer until his dominant Greek nose almost touched the pert tip of hers. "I don't want you there."
Pain flashed for a whole second—a damned tidal wave of emotion from Monica—before she doused the spark. Well, fine. He hurt, too. Not that it stopped him from wanting to wipe away her worry.
"I can understand that, Jack, but you know how damned scared I've been for my sister these past months."
Ah, shit. If she went soft on him, he was toast. His easygoing pop may not have taught him much, but his father had been rock-firm on one point. A man never hurt a woman. "I'm doing my best to end that fear for you."
"I know. But I don't understand why you kept this nugget of hope from me. You've never been a petty man."
She shamed him, but damn it, he had reasons— good ones. Like security. And not raising her hopes for them to fall.
He wouldn't fail. "If it had been as simple as just telling you, then hell, yeah, I'd have let you know. Except you would have insisted on a slot from the start—just like you're doing now." The truth pushed through, good thing since nothing else gained him ground. "Shit, Mon, after what went down between us in Vegas... I can't spend the next week dancing around land mines." He stepped closer. "You know how it is whenever we're in the same room."
She stilled. The air conditioner hummed in the silence between them, need riding the breeze and dulling the edges of pain until the pull between them increased. Swelled. Demanded attention. He could have her. He knew it. The defensiveness in her eyes broadcast she knew it, too.
He couldn't allow himself to take that step forward, a move that would hurt her, both of them, even more. "Don't push this. Plans are in place. Don't. Push."
"I have to. You'll figure out how to work with me around the same way I'll manage to work with you every day after the divorce is final." Her hand fell to his arm, hotter than the flaming immunization site. "Jack, for three and a half months I've tried not to think about what could be happening to Sydney. But still, possibilities smoke through my brain in this toxic black cloud." Her fingers tightened. "You know what these people are capable of. We all know what Ammar al-Khayr is capable of."
Vulnerability from the strongest woman he knew leveled his defenses faster than a SCUD missile. That her younger sister had to be there at all blasted everything else inside him to dust. He studied the floor, his bare feet, anything but Monica's eyes.
"I know you'll get her out of that hellhole, Jack."
Her faith rang clear. She might doubt him in other arenas, but not here at least. Of course he couldn't fault her for questioning him in the relationship department. Pop's advice didn't stop him from screwing up more than once. Which put him right back between that rock and hard place, wanting more time, while not wanting to hurt her again.
"Monica, you've said you trust me to get her. So we should put this on hold—"
"Please let me be there when you pull her out. Not some stranger. At the very least, she'll need a basic physical. She'll have to give an accounting of what..." Her voice cracked.
He swallowed, or tried to anyway, a tough-as-hell proposition with all Monica's pain clogging the air.
"Please, Jack, don't make her talk to a stranger."
Finally he sucked in air, only to find Monica's pain rode the gulp and seared his insides.
"Damn it, Jack, I'll do anything to be there when they bring my sister in." She gripped his arm. "Anything."
Anything.
His eyes snapped up to hers. The word sizzled between them with a promise of a mind-bending, all-day release from a long three and a half months apart.
Anything. Anywhere. Anytime. His squadron motto mocked from the patch on his flight suit sleeve.
How many times had she whispered those words in his ear?
He could tell she damned well remembered, too. Her emerald-green eyes glinted, pupils widening. With heat. Passion. Just like they did when he filled her. Deeper.
No way could he move forward, fling her on the bed and take her up on the offer. He might get fuzzy on relationship nuances, but this one was pretty damned clear. It would be wrong to take her.
However, if she made a genuine move in his direction? Exhaustion fell away faster than paratroopers from a cargo deck.
Monica blinked, protective shields shuttering her eyes again. "You can put that thought right out of your head, Jack Korba. I don't care what the patch on your flight suit says." She threw down her gauntlet, giving no quarter, her determination leveling him and firing him up all at once. "Nothing, nowhere, no time are you getting me back in your bed."
Chapter 3
Whoops.
Monica stifled a wince. She'd just challenged Jack Korba. Damn. Damn. Damn. God bless it, the man thrived on challenges and had patience in spades.
She watched his dark eyes narrow, flick with quicksilver determination. He may not have moved an inch closer to her, but anticipation sparked from him.
The way she saw it, she had three choices. Cry, because Jack puddled when a woman wept. Hell, he'd even married her because of a crying jag gone way wrong last time they'd been in Nevada.
Okay, no tears.
But her second option of retreating from his VOQ room and away from that bed equated to wholesale surrender. He would follow her every step, anyway. Which left only one choice. Hold her ground and face him down.
For Sydney.
Sydney, in many ways her child as well as her sister. She'd brought her up more than any of the string of live-in lovers her father had paraded through their lives in hopes of giving his girls a replacement mama.
Those women may have bought frilly dresses and styled pretty pigtails. But Monica had read Sydney Charlotte's Web and explained about periods. Nothing would keep her from being there for Sydney now. Not even the risk of having her heart broken by this man. Again.
Monica stepped closer. Her boots tucked between Jack's bare feet with a hint of intimacy. "I would do it, you know."
"What?" His fists clenched against his thighs, but he didn't touch her.
He didn't have to.
"I would have sex with you again if that's the price to be there for my sister. But it wouldn't be in a bed. And it wouldn't be making love." As much as her body screamed for release, her eyes stung at the loss of the tenderness he brought, as well. "Besides, we both know you won't go that route and use me." A truth that made her want him all the more. "We may be an atomic mix in the relationship department, but you're a good man, Jack."
"Shit."
"You don't scare me."
"Then you're not as smart as you think." He crowded her with his bulk and fresh-washed scent. "Do you realize how close I am to snapping? Just being in this room together has me thinking about finding you waiting for me six months ago when I landed in Germany. And five months ago when we got stranded in the Azores with a busted plane and two full days in a VOQ with nothing to do but order delivery food and make use of the bed, the floor, the shower."
She swayed, three and a half months of being without him chipping away at her with the reminder that they would never make more memories in the shower. On the floor. The bed.
He cupped her shoulders, steadied her while rocking her control. "You remember, too."
"Of course I do." That and more. Not that she planned to throw those images out there in a tangle of arms and legs and so much want.
How could she not remember with his scent and hands all over her? Knew she would continue to remember, ache even after his hands and scent slid away. His breath fanned over her, his mouth right there for the taking. Recalling his kisses, anticipating more, was almost as arousing as having them.
She allowed herself the bittersweet pleasure—the risk—of touching him, cupping his face. "My going along to Rubistan is the right thing. Make it work, Jack."
His bristly jaw flexed under her palm. Stubborn, stubborn man.
Her hands fell away. She forced herself to think of how much she'd hurt him by not being the kind of woman he needed although she wanted more than anything to languish in the memory of smiles they'd shared. "Okay, you want to play the tough guy role? Fine. I've been hanging with the big boys long enough to play just as rough." She backed up but not down. "I'm going to Rubistan. No matter what. If I have to take leave and fly on a civilian airline, I'll make my way over there to my sister."
She hadn't hauled herself out of Red Branch, Texas, by giving up every time someone told her she set her objectives too high. Maybe she was a little like her mama after all, just with different, more practical goals.
Reaching past Jack and doing her damnedest to keep her br**sts from brushing the implacable hulk of man in front of her, she hefted her duffel off the end of the bed.
Jack tore her bag from her hands and pitched it on the floor. "Damn it, Monica, you're going to get yourself killed flying off half-cocked."
Something in his tone tugged at her more than his words. Right or wrong in his assumptions on her ability to protect herself, he really was concerned about her. "I understand you're worried about my being there. I worry about you, too."
He mumbled, "You have a damned odd way of showing it."
She deserved that. Even at her angriest, she realized he'd been hurt, too. If only she'd held firm to her refusal when he'd first asked her out, followed her gut that told her fireworks could blow up in a girl's hand sometimes. But he'd been persistent and charming and so full of determination she'd thought maybe...just maybe she could have practicality and dreams. "You drive me insane, Jack, no question. But you still get to me, too."
His eyes rose, slowly, brown heating to black. "Are you trying to talk me into your bed?"
Probably. She shook her head. "Sorry, and I really do mean that, but no. I'm trying to make a point. We might be history, but we also have history. And because of that, yes, there's still a lingering... attraction. Even some feelings. But that history also means you know I'm dead serious about going to Rubistan. Won't you worry less knowing I'm under the military's protective umbrella?"
