Strategic Engagement (Wingmen Warriors 5)

In a move so quick she didn't see him shift, he pulled her to him. But not for a kiss.

Daniel gathered her against his chest, held her close and a little too tight. She wouldn't allow herself the indulgence of bringing her arms up. She simply absorbed the familiar feel and scent of him, absorbed the differences she'd observed earlier, the harder edges of a man instead of a boy.

Why was he doing this to her? To them?

Daniel pressed a brusque kiss to the top of her head, then softly spoke heated words into her hair. "Crawling into that box was the stupidest thing you could have done. You damn well could have died today."

He held her tighter for one final, eternal moment that ticked by with countless clicks from the pendulum. Then he thrust her away, the door snicking closed behind him.

She stood frozen, an odd contradiction since every 'nerve within her had flamed to life.

Stupidest thing? Not by a long shot. Crawling out of that box and agreeing to stay with Danny beat her other decision by a mile.

Pulling Mary Elise into his arms had to be the stupidest damned thing he'd done since his rocket blasted a hole in the yard and through the neighbor's stained-glass window twenty years ago.

Daniel thudded down the carpeted hall into his living room and dropped to the edge of the leather sofa. One foot at a time, he unlaced his boots and thunked them on the floor. Sleeping would be tough enough with Mary Elise a couple of doors down. Now it would be impossible with the feel of her body imprinted anew in his brain and a persistent auburn hair twined round his wrist.Sow hat if he preferred redheads? He had a "type." Big freaking deal. Most guys had a type or a preferred female attribute that attracted them. Made perfect sense and had absolutely nothing to do with Mary Elise.

Slumping back on the sofa, he scooped up a Rubik's Cube from the end table and clicked through rotations while sorting through his life. He normally liked puzzles and the order they restored to his world. He might wear wrinkled flight suits and inside-out T-shirts, but he had reasons. He appreciated order and logic.

Yeah, he had a type—spunky redheads. Except Mary Elise's spunk had been tempered to a quieter, steely will. What had happened to the scrawny girl who followed him into a nuclear plant, jotting notes for a school newspaper exposé? The coltish teen who'd chewed him out for not staying away from her chicken pox?

And what had she been holding back from telling him during the flight?

His hands whipped across the cube, lining up a new row of blues before shuffling yellows. Her voice may have quieted over the years, but the passion in her expression when she'd looked at him hadn't diminished. He'd stood in his bedroom doorway staring into her eyes, green eyes alive with confusion and pain and yes, even a desire so strong an emotional half-wit like him could read it.

Then and now he could only think what it would have been like if the day's outcome had been different. Too easily things could have gone to hell. Tag's call on the headset to alert him of a problem could have been worse. Finding Mary Elise in that crate had shocked a year off his life.

Finding her dead in that crate would have damned near killed him.

He'd forced that image out of his mind all day. During those few quiet moments in the doorway, the scenario had blindsided him like a bogey flying in from a six-o'clock position. This incredible titian-haired crusader who snuck junk food to a kid with a health food fanatic mom and crawled into crates with frightened little boys at the risk of her own life could have died before he had the chance to hold her again.

So he'd pulled her close in honor of those good memories they'd shared. And his logical brain taunted him with an irrefutable fact.

He had to hold her again.

The next morning Daniel measured coffee grounds while listening to three weeks' worth of messages on his voice mail. He'd barely had time to fling his duffel bag on the bed after a covert TDY dropping CIA officers deep into Cantou before the call from the Rubistanian attaché had rung through.

Cordless phone tucked under his chin, Daniel returned the bag of coffee to the steel cabinet in his galley kitchen and tucked the paper filter into the coffeemaker. He figured he would have at least another hour to get his head together before Mary Elise and the boys rolled out of bed. He never needed much sleep at a pop himself, and the bunking conditions hadn't been the best. A fact that had more to do with a raging arousal harder than the sofa.And a host of memories even more unrelenting. So persistent even his morning ritual of a five-mile run on the beach followed by a workout in the clubhouse gym hadn't helped. By the time he hit the cold shower and changed into a clean flight suit, he accepted the fact that Mary Elise had lodged herself in his brain again.

Daniel jammed the glass pot under the water purifier while listening through the seventy-five accumulated messages.

Two hang-ups.

The dry cleaners calling for him to pick up his service dress uniform. As much as he might wish otherwise, he couldn't get away with wearing everything wrinkled and unstarched.

Next message, an automated telemarketer.

Punching Delete, he shut the water off with his elbow, juggling the coffeepot before finally opting for speakerphone.

"Hey, Dan?" Sultry Southern tones crooned through the speaker, filling the sparse kitchen. "Hannah from upstairs in 18-B. If you get this message, give me a call and let me know when you'll be back. I can ask the superintendent to let me in so you'll have milk and stuff waiting when you get home.">Daniel leaned a broad shoulder against the molding framing the sliding doors. "You sure you don't mind sharing a bed with the little guy tonight?"

"Not at all. I'm too tired to notice he's there."

Daniel eyed his bed, rumpled gray spread rising with each baby breath from Austin. "That pull-up thing is leak proof, right?"

"Says so on the package." A smile tugged at her lips as she thought of Daniel's boggled expression when they'd bought the sleeper-diapers, a purchase so conspicuously different from that of the airman behind them intent on buying a bottle of wine, a plastic-wrapped rose—and a box of condoms.

Mary Elise banished that memory. Pronto.