* * *
What in the world could Gray want to show her? They crossed yet another bridge over the intercoastal waterway to his parents' seaside condo.
He'd been so serious the night before, so unlike himself. She couldn't resist his invitation. After spending the entire party with her stomach in an uproar over the possibility that Gray could have been hurt, could have—
Blinking quickly, she focused on the glittering ocean.
She simply couldn't walk away. Not yet.
Beach music pulsed low, Gray humming if not singing. Magda drummed her feet against her car seat in time as she stuffed French fries into her mouth, a Happy Meal box on her lap. Gray had detoured to buy it for her even when Lori insisted Magda could wait. The stubborn man had pulled into the drive through anyway and bought himself a Big Mac, too.
Used to winning, more comfortable being in charge, she found his quiet mulishness an odd challenge. Funny how she'd been so focused on the playful exterior a year ago, she'd missed deeper implications of his determination. His resolution no doubt had carried him through in achieving two such ambitious career goals.
What else hadn't she noticed about him?
Like the annoying way he kept popping his knuckles and flexing his feet. Why couldn't he have worn long pants instead of those khaki shorts? Muscles bulged along his bare calf with each flexing stretch. "Could you stop that, please?"
"What?"
She stared pointedly at his cracking fist and feet.
His hand paused midcrack. He straightened his fingers and shrugged, his untucked plaid shirt rippling over his broad shoulders. "Oh, yeah. Sorry. Just working out the bends."
"The bends?"
His fist curled, finishing off the popping in the silence as Gray stared at her legs.
"Eyes on the road, Major." She tugged her silky sun-dress over her knees. Why in the world had she worn a dress to a picnic? She'd convinced herself she would be cooler, ignoring the fact that Gray had told her countless times how he liked seeing her legs bared by a dress.
His hands clenched and unclenched again around the steering wheel. What was he doing? Murmurs of residual panic still taunted her. "Gray? Are you okay? What are the bends?"
He shrugged again. "Just a byproduct of a rapid decompression. The air in your system expands. Now that I'm back at regular pressure, all those air bubbles in my joints are shrinking."
"Does it hurt much?"
"Yesterday's incident wasn't bad." He dismissed it with a wave. "We got on oxygen fast, descended quickly. No sweat."
All that stress and pain from something he claimed was a "simple" in-flight emergency? As if there could be such a thing. What other rigors did flight life put on his body?
"But does it hurt?" she asked, already knowing the answer and not sure why she felt the need to push her point. Perhaps she needed him to reach out to her with more than a smile. Any woman with an ounce of nurturing instinct couldn't resist a man in pain.
Gray flexed his ankle and almost suppressed his wince. "I've treated patients with worse."
Lori blinked through a sting of tears that wouldn't accomplish anything. In fact, tears had landed her in that tender kiss the night before that still tingled along the roots of her hair.
When he'd kissed her, she'd considered pulling him into her house and not letting him go until sunrise. Or maybe until several sunrises. But she'd been too emotional to risk an encounter with Gray, and more than anything, she hated weepy displays.
Admonitions from her parents fluttered through her mind. Dry your eyes, Lorelei, sugar. There's a new adventure right over the next border.
She'd always scrubbed away those tears and tackled the next challenge, a small part of her fearful that if she lagged she would be left behind. She couldn't regret her upbringing, as it had made her stronger and independent—skills that earned her respect in her job, and she loved her job.
But she wouldn't say it was her life anymore, not like Gray's military career. "Can I ask you something?"
"Like you've ever held back before."
"Good point." She chewed on her bottom lip, caught his transfixed stare on her mouth and stopped nibbling before they ended up in a ditch. "All that talk about the military being in your blood, I hear you. But why not just serve as a doctor? Why do you put your body through all this? We've spent less that two weeks together, and you've taken a leg full of shrapnel and had the air sucked out of your body."
His calf flexed. "I thought about getting out."