"Turnabout's fair play. Now close your eyes.">Her hour walk to the farmhouse earlier had been uneventful. Painfully so. Tanner's silence had heaped on the guilt, a silence he'd maintained through their trip to the E.R. and check-in with the base security police.
How long would it take for him to forgive her, if at all? She didn't have much practice in resolving arguments, another by-product of her solitary life. Even when her sisters had started with typical sibling battles, Kathleen had climbed her favorite tree. Once the winds of war had drifted away, she would catapult to the ground.
How odd that Tanner was the only one she argued with. More often, she opted for silence while she followed through on her own plan.
Kathleen went to her closet, thankful she'd left most of her belongings—extra clothes, her line badge, military orders—in her room at the Edwards Inn so she hadn't lost much in the explosion. She slipped into an overlong poet's shirt and black leggings. Her eyes gravitated to the dressing table, straight to the nutcracker necklace dangling from the mirror, her Athena spike propped beside it. She and Tanner had more than arguments and attraction between them now. Those two tokens carried far more memories and thoughtfulness than a hothouse full of roses.
The prospect of experiencing more such moments made her hungry to figure out how to make him forgive her.
Not so hungry, however, that she would compromise her work principles. She wasn't bowing out of the investigation, and Tanner could just get over himself on that one.
But their time alone together was running out. Kathleen didn't intend to waste it in a cold silence deadlock.
At the E.R. Tanner had been on full-tilt grumpy status, pacing the halls, scowling and looking so worried. She hadn't been able to stop herself from hoping that maybe the day, night, New Year wouldn't be a bust after all. Never an impetuous woman, she'd actually found herself asking the E.R. nurse for condoms. Just being a careful, responsible twenty-first-century woman, given how hot they'd been for each other.
Yeah, right. In her heart she knew better.
Waking up in Tanner's arms, she'd worried about being hurt. Now she wondered if there might be larger regrets in store for her if she'd didn't explore their crazy attraction.
Her fingers paused along the buttons. Had she been reverting to days of old, hiding in a tree?
Slowly she slid the top button open again and spritzed cologne in the vee.
Time to catapult off that hidden branch and play out the fantasy that hadn't let her go for twelve years.
The hunger for him had interfered with her work since she'd been stationed in Charleston. No doubt it hindered the investigation. She'd even married the wrong man because he reminded her of Tanner Bennett, something she still couldn't believe she'd admitted in the dark of the chapel.
She needed to find out what drew her to him and what wouldn't let her go. Maybe he was right. They needed to work each other out of their systems. Get over him and get on with her life, because she couldn't go on as she had been any longer. Her ex-husband might have made her wary of men, but her failed marriage hadn't left her immune to them.
Her lips remembered Tanner's heated kiss, his promise to "jump her" if she gave the sign. This was supposed to have been their night. Maybe it still could be if she worked things right. After twelve years of mental foreplay, they would finally give in to their hormones. She turned the thought around in her mind until it settled with undoubted certainty.
Was she scared? Hell, yes.
Was she backing down? Not a chance.
She laced her white canvas shoes and grabbed a purse, not letting herself think overlong on the one that had blown up the day before. Digging inside, she pulled out a set of keys. They glinted in her palm with the same silvery flash she found in Tanner's eyes every time they kissed. She'd planned to pass over the keys to their new rental car as a Christmas token of her own, a peace offering to end his silent treatment.
Maybe her cease-fire offering would evoke a side benefit she hadn't expected.
If she compromised and gave him the cars keys, perhaps she might luck into the driver's seat when it came to who did the jumping.
Standing by the lobby coffee machine, Tanner bolted back a gulp of piping-hot java, as if that might somehow drown his thoughts of Kathleen upstairs, changing.
Dangerous territory for those thoughts, fella.
Their silent ride back to base with a farmer and two turkey sandwiches had been tense, silent and full of regrets. Tanner found regrets as unpalatable as dried-out stuffing.
Already his anger had cooled to lukewarm. Hearing the E.R. doctor pronounce Kathleen fit and healthy had gone a long way toward tempering his mood.
After grabbing more sandwiches from the hospital vending machine, he'd checked in with the base security police. Not that minimal manning for the holidays offered much help' merely taking the complaint and requesting they return on the twenty-sixth. Frustrating, but expected.
Now that he'd showered and changed, there was nothing left for him to do but hang out in the lobby with the coffee machine and the uniformed airman stuck at the check-in desk. The airman peeled back tinfoil from a plate of food while watching parades on the corner television. The kid, probably not more than nineteen, picked at a Christmas dinner his mama must have sent.
Tanner's stomach grumbled for some of that pumpkin pie and a return to the holiday excitement he'd found that morning. Leftovers, like anger, came to a quick end around him. Neither were worth hanging on to—they just spoiled the longer they stayed packaged up.
Now that his temper had faded, what did he intend to do about Kathleen? She wouldn't leave. She'd made that clear as the morning sky.
Which only left one option. It looked as if they would be completing the investigation together.