Even with something as important as Mary Elise.
"You know, Tag, I believe I'll take you up on that offer in another half hour." Daniel flicked aside the hair on his wrist. "I don't need sleep, but I have to head back up front soon and I'd rather not wake Mary Elise. So, yeah, I would appreciate it if you kept an eye on them in case one of the boys rouses before her."
Tag lumbered in through the door, curtain closing behind him, and lowered himself into the other seat. "Small world, her showing up on this flight."
And an even smaller world on base. No doubt, gossip would make the rounds three times over by the next nightfall. Not from Tag, but Bo would have a helluva time sharing the inside scoop at the club.
"Family connection. We knew each other a long time ago." Daniel shot him a half smile. "That 'Danny' of hers probably gave us away."
"Ah, so you're old friends."
Daniel hesitated a second too long.
Tag's quirked brow shot up toward the older man's salt-and-pepper hairline.
Finally. Daniel settled for, "We have … history."
Tag nodded again. Waited. Studied the sleeping trio. Finally shifted his attention back to Daniel. "Is the older kid yours?"
The notion blazed across Daniel's mind in a flash of horror. Had she faked a miscarriage? He'd never seen Trey's mother pregnant. He could imagine selfless Mary Elise cutting him free so he could complete his senior year at the Academy.
Simple math severed the irrational thought. Trey was over a year too young. "No. Trey's not mine." Daniel's head thunked back against the bulkhead. Damn it, why couldn't Tag have shown up fifteen minutes later once the world had stopped rocking under his boots? "Ours would have been ten now."
Hell, he hadn't told anyone about that time with Mary Elise. Something about the way Tag didn't push made it easier to talk during a day when the past crowded his brain.
Daniel hooked a hand on his knee, boot propped beside the trailing hair, and lost himself in the hypnotic sway of red. "She miscarried early, before we had a chance to get married. I would have married her though. No way would I have let her down."
But he had, in so many other ways, both of them too damned young. He'd been knocked on his ass by how much a few short weeks of making love to her had shaken him. So he'd run like hell the minute she'd given him the green light.
"And here you two are again."
"Not for long. She'll settle back in Savannah and I'll be in Charleston."
"All of two and a half hours apart," Tag's dry tones mixed with the rumble of four engines. "Might as well be on different planets."
Daniel snorted. "I think I enjoyed you more when you stayed quiet."
"My wife likely disagrees," he answered, his dry wit more parched than normal. Not that the guy looked open to making the current sharingfest a two-way deal.
Tag canted forward, elbows on his knees. "While I'm on a roll, here's some hard-earned wisdom you can take or leave. So you had a thing going once? But you were too young to hang on to it. Makes sense. That Mars and Venus stuff is hard as hell for an old guy like me to figure out. It can be damned near impossible when you're younger."
Daniel shook his head, half believing, yet knowing he couldn't let himself off the hook that easily. "Where were you eleven years ago when I wanted to hear something like this?"
"Making my own mistakes," Tag answered with fatherly wisdom, even though his forty-one years made any true parental connection impossible.
"She and I are history."
Tag stayed silent.
Crap. Did parents go to a school to develop that look?
Daniel followed Tag's gaze. Straight down to Daniel's hand that had somehow found its way back into Mary Elise's hair.
He untwisted his finger from the strands, not a speedy proposition. The hair unwrapped and unwrapped in a long unraveling stretch.
"History," Daniel repeated as if he could will it so.
"Sure. You can take that route. Let go, quick and easy like. Or you can use the second chance to get your head on straight about this woman. Your choice. Don't screw it up—" he grinned, standing "—sir. I'll be back in a half hour."