Strategic Engagement (Wingmen Warriors 5)

She eyed the pen and paper. There'd once been a time she never went anywhere without a notebook handy for capturing the flood of words always ready to pour from her mind through her fingertips.

Written words trickled from her muse in short supply these days.

He waggled the small pad. "I won't impose on you forever. Just long enough to get through settling the boys."

A list. He wanted a simple list from her, not a creative writing essay or editorial or, God forbid, a story.

She gripped the edge of the pad without touching him

"Thank you." He held firm, linking them through a silly little pad of paper with Gravity Sucks printed through an image of a crashing plane. "How weird is it that I have people I spoke to just last week, friends and old girlfriends who I should be calling to pitch in here. But yet here we are."

"I know the boys." She tried to explain away the connection with the logic Danny so valued. Fat lot of good it did her.

The silence swelled between them, filled with the knowledge that their connection was more. Would it always be like this for them?

She studied the stitches, pockets, zippers along his flight suit as if the different clothing might help convince her this was a different man from the one she'd loved years ago. Her gaze traveled across his chest, to the strong column of his throat.

Her hand inched to the neck of his flight suit where the black T-shirt peeked free. With one finger she traced the raised seam of his inside-out shirt, a sight all too familiar. "I never thought to ask why you do this?"

Brown eyes deepened from milk chocolate to an intense, darker flavor no less enticing. "Do what?"

"Wear your T-shirts inside out. You've always done it and I never thought to ask you why before. It was just a part of the Danny picture that I accepted."

"Maybe I don't notice how I put my shirts on."

She shook her head. "I don't think so. If that were the case, you'd have your T-shirts on right side out some of the time. But you don't. You think through and have a reason for everything you do, Danny. You always have."

A smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Not everyone realizes that. You're scary, you know."

"Yeah, right. I'm intimidating as hell."

He chuckled. She joined in with ease, their laughs blending between them until she squeezed his hand.

His hand?

She looked down and found their fingers had entwined over the small pad. When? How?

They both yanked, back.

He smacked the pad down on the counter. "The seams scratch."

"What?" She fisted her tingling hand by her side.

Daniel kept his back to her, scribbling notes along the pad. "The outside of a T-shirt is smoother than the inside with the seams. It's more comfortable to wear the shirt inside out. Damned silly to put the smoother side out just so the world thinks you look better while those seams are chaffing away."

He spun to face her, lighthearted Danny firmly stamped across his features. "Time for me to punch out of here, but I'll try to finish up soon. I have to swing by base legal and start paperwork for the boys before flight debrief, then a meeting with my commander. After that, we can head out to buy whatever you and the boys need."

She watched him move, Danny so at ease in his own skin and with the world when his life had been flipped upside down. How much of it was pretense? "You know, Trey's just like you."

He snorted. "You mean Austin, right?"

"No. You and Trey are both torn up over losing your father, and neither one of you can bear to accept a bit of comfort."

The smile fell away, replaced by the newer Danny, the man who drew a gun in foreign countries with little or no backup. "Like you're any different."

A gasp caught in her throat.

Danny tapped her forehead. "Exchanging troubles is a two-way street, Mary Elise. One neither of us seems comfortable traveling anymore."