A simple, shared smile and the room closed in on her with warm intimacy. The jean shorts and T-shirt she'd yanked on over her ribbed tank and panties before going to the infirmary might as well have faded away. Max's gaze cruised a slow ride from her face all the way to her sandals. Those blue-green eyes held full knowledge of how little she'd been wearing earlier.
He'd noticed.
He hadn't forgotten.
And he liked what he saw.
Darcy forced herself to meet Max's probing gaze dead-on. No more backing down for her tonight. She scavenged for a smile and steady steps as she closed the space between them. Leaning against the table beside him, she crossed her ankles unobtrusively to ease the pressure on her leg. "Gilligan, Skipper, Professor, Mary Ann, Ginger and the Howells. To damn easy. Next time, no quarter, Doc. I can hold my own."
"Fair enough. Renshaw scores, winning back her gun." Max lifted a hand from his thigh to reveal her Beretta.
Damn. How the hell had she forgotten it?
He flipped it to hold by the barrel and passed it to her, handle first.
"Thanks." She tested the reassuring weight of her military issue Beretta M-9, the grip still warm from his touch. "The security police weren't too happy with me for discharging my weapon in the VOQ."
An understatement. But then the Base Commander had strutted into the infirmary interview and—surprise, surprise—smoothed things over for the daughter of his old friend Hank Renshaw. Darcy ground her teeth against a fresh kick of frustration over special treatment she didn't want or deserve.
Max nudged aside a shell casing on the floor. "Good thing you were on the first story in a corner room or someone could have caught a stray shot."
"I never miss." She took comfort in the familiar weight.
"Everyone misses sometimes."
"Not me." She pointed the gun away, pushed the release and ejected the clip. "I got my first gun for my fourteenth birthday. A Colt Woodsman, twenty-two caliber. Some fathers like Bronco take their kids to the zoo. Mine took me to the shooting range."
The General, then the Colonel, had wanted to make damned sure his little girl could defend herself next time trouble tried to snatch her away. He'd trained her well.
Darcy switched the gun to her other hand, slid back the action, locked and cleared the chamber. The familiar ritual soothed her tattered nerves.
Nope. She hadn't worried about missing. Once she'd remembered her gun in her bag by the bed, she'd known she could take out the snake. If only she could have done it faster.
Bile burned her throat.
Darcy turned away from Max's prying eyes. She scooped up her flight bag from the floor and sank to the edge of the bed before her knees gave out. She tucked her gun inside. "Thanks for charging to the rescue."
"No problem."
"Your method for handling the snake worked much better than mine." Breathe in. Breathe out.
The past and present melded at a time when her defenses registered somewhere between nil and nonexistent. Max's voice echoed in her head with a faraway timbre.
"Local pest control will probably thank us either way, since the tree snakes have all but wiped out the bird population on Guam."
"It must have heard my call sign is Wren."
She blinked back the memory of a dirty hand draping a snake over her shoulders and reminding her that good girls listened. Good girls also didn't try to give hints about her captors during a phone call to her father.
Darcy swallowed. Hard. She had thirty seconds, tops, to get Max out of the room before she hurled. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but could you go now? I'm past ready to sleep."
Footsteps sounded just before Max eased into sight, kneeling in front of her. "I wanted to make sure you're okay before I turn in."
"As you can see, I'm all right." Four valuable seconds passed and still his fine butt stayed in her room. Twenty seconds left.
"Call me if you start feeling any ill effects from the bites."
She nodded tightly, her mouth firmly closed.