For him, anywhere sounded better than where he’d been that day—
“Jose!” Stella’s scream just barely carried over the roar of the helicopter.
He jerked his head around fast and saw her. She’d stopped dead in her tracks, a gun in her hand and horror plastered across her face. His 9 mm that he’d given her, not really expecting that she would need to use it. He followed the line of her aimed weapon.
A teenage boy ran out of the tree line with a rifle slung over his shoulder. A couple of goats scattered as he plowed forward, his words carried away by the wind.
“Halt!” Stella shouted.
The boy froze, his eyes wide, but his hold on his rifle looked practiced, comfortable. Stella leveled the gun, pointing with the fluid ease of training. Jose’s stomach rose up to his throat. The thunder of the lowering CV-22 echoed the roar in his head. The boy didn’t seem much older than Jose had been when sitting in front of the television all those years ago, dreaming of joining the military but too young to make that dream come true yet.>Sutton whistled. “Hairy stuff.”
As much as he preferred not to talk about his work, Jose reminded himself this kept the focus off Stella’s job.
He clapped the kid on the shoulder. “If you call jumping into a minefield hairy, then sure, it’s hairy stuff. Another of my buddies, Franco, was dropped onto a mountain in Afghanistan to rescue a Green Beret with his legs blown off in a minefield. We couldn’t risk the rotor wash of a landing helicopter setting off another mine that would take out the whole aircraft and everyone in it. So Franco parachuted in alone. He used his medic training to secure the patient, then the helicopter hoisted them both up.”
“Hey,” Stella said, “that’s the same buddy of yours who rescued the lawyer and her nephew from earthquake rubble last year. Right, Jose? You do civilian rescue work too.”
“They were buried underneath layers of concrete slabs.” Jose kept on talking, since sure enough, the kid wasn’t focusing on Stella anymore and that was good for a lot of reasons. “Franco not only crawled through with stabilizing medical help, but also stayed with them through aftershocks until rescue teams could free them.”
Sutton leaned back against the tree trunk. “That’s one helluva bedtime story.”
Although, the sun was rising, which meant they would either be leaving or evading. “You only have about a half hour left to catch some shut-eye.”
“Then I’d better make the most of it.” Sutton’s eyes slid closed.
And as the student began snoring lightly, Jose realized he had no buffer between him and Stella. Nothing left but the two of them and a boatload of messy history.
***
In spite of all her intention to button up her heart tight, Stella couldn’t bring herself to sleep away these last minutes with Jose, not with the dream of their first date still curling through her mind and into her heart. The sun was rising and the chopper would certainly be arriving soon. They would go their separate ways again.
So even as exhaustion tugged on her every cell, she forced her eyes to stay open. She tugged the ponytail holder free and began braiding her hair loosely.
Jose’s eyes glowed coal hot in the night. “Are you seeing him?”
Surprise jolted her. “Sutton? Really? God, no. He’s just a kid.”
“Twenty-two, according to the briefing info we got on the hostages before rolling out. He’s not that much younger than either of us. Hell, I’m a couple of years younger than you and that never seemed to matter to either of us.”
She saw jealousy—and hurt. The first would have made her defensive, but the latter made her lean forward and stroke his jaw lightly.
“Well, I am not seeing him. Why would you think that?”
She was still so raw from their relationship, she didn’t know when—if—she could think about commitment again. And how scary was that? She was nowhere closer to finding out anything about her mother and she’d screwed up any possibility of a relationship with Jose. She wanted a family of her own, but she couldn’t think of being with anyone else.
But what about Jose? Had he already moved on? Was that why he thought she could?
She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Are you seeing someone new?”
“I make it a point not to be dumped more than once every six months. Since you broke it off with me four weeks ago, I have five months left to be careful and stay completely single. No risks to the heart.”
Her fingers still carried the feel of his unshaven jaw. “Risks to the heart?” How the hell could he place this all at her doorstep? Anger welled inside her. “If we’re laying it out there, don’t forget I wanted more with you.”
“Just so we’re clear here.” He tugged the end of her braid. “I asked you to move in with me.”
The connection of his hand on her hair shimmered clear to her roots and pissed her off. “Yeah, well, call me old-fashioned but I was hoping we could have it all—house, family, rocking chair retirement with grandchildren—and you also made it clear that was never going to happen.”
So much for keeping her distance.