With all those brushes and all those little pans of goop, she could have contoured a map of the world.
And then there was the what-shall-I-wear bit. Yank a thousand things out of the closet. Toss them on the bed. Hold them up in front of the mirror. Try them on. Discard them.
“It’s just the way babes are,” Nick Romano had said one night when they were BS-ing, killing time, waiting for darkness to fall before they headed into an Iraqi village to deal with a problem.
“And a good thing too,” Aidan had added. “Because if you ever saw them without all the war paint, you’d just keep walkin’.”
Everybody had laughed, Dec included.
Except, it wasn’t true.
Annie had spent lots of nights at his place. In the morning, she’d never bothered with any of that stuff and she’d still been the most beautiful woman he’d ever known.
Even now, dirty, exhausted, wearing things that were torn and tattered and mud-stained—even now, she was lovely.
More than lovely.
Everything about her said she was strong and capable, that she could survive whatever life threw at her, and, God, he wanted to take her in his arms, tell her—tell her—
He came to an abrupt stop and thrust the reins at her.
“Water the horse,” he said brusquely. “You can do that, right?”
She gave him a look that questioned his IQ level.
“Of course. I can also unsaddle him.”
“Fine. Do that.”
“I can also tether him, assuming you have some sort of line in that pack of yours.”
He tried not to show his surprise. “In fact,” he said, digging into the pack and coming up with a long length of paracord, “I do. Tether him near the cave.”
“Glad you told me that or I might have set him up on the far side of the meadow.”
Dec’s gaze narrowed. “Dammit, woman—”
Shit. He was talking to her back. Okay. Just as well. He had a lot to do before nightfall, which he figured was maybe a couple of hours away.
Like trying to contact Recovery Base.
Like collecting wood and laying a fire.
Like figuring out what to do about their sleeping arrangements.
It was going to get cold. And he had one thermal blanket.
Only one.
He could be a gentleman, let her have the blanket while he froze his ass off—except freezing his ass off wasn’t the real issue.
The real issue was going to be lying next to her, either on top of that blanket or under it, and not touching her all through the long, dark night.
* * *
The sun was setting.
Brushstrokes of color shading from deepest vermillion to the palest pink hung in the sky.