bored numerous terrorist-training camps.
Cantou's deposed dictator was still on the run, with powerful ties and a hunger for nukes. Recent CIA intelligence indicated the nutcase's minions were smuggling uranium out of the U.S. and Russia.
Thoughts of Cantou brought him too quickly back to memories of Alicia. A year and a half ago, they'd met flying missions in the Cantou Conflict, ousting that dictator. Alicia had strutted into the Officer's Club bar on her first day at Kunsan Air Base in Korea. That walk of hers managed to be cocky and sexy all at once, knocking him flat on his butt.
Watching her trudge ahead now, he wondered how she managed a strut even in snowshoes. It boggled the mind and the laws of physics.
A half hour later after endless ready-to-explode-his-head tension, he needed a distraction. Well, one other than thinking of her every other second while she ignored the hell out of him.
How freaking inconvenient that even when the love left, attraction still clung with tenacious claws that would put a polar bear to shame. "Damned boring, just walking, no talking."
He really hated being bored. Almost as much as he disliked being ignored by this woman when he couldn't stop snow-angel fantasies.
"Solve quadratic equations in your head," she answered without missing a step.
That might work. He'd done it often enough in grad school at sixteen, caught in the middle of keg parties with hot co-eds all too old for him.
By eighteen, he'd completed a master's degree, worked at NASA while earning a Ph.D. until he was old enough to enter Air Force flight training at twenty-one. NASA, navigator training and a below-the-zone promotion had brought plenty of women in his path. He'd saved the equations for work then.
Here he was, thirty-five years old and back to equations. Damn. "Excellent suggestion. Something like calculating the clamp pressure required from my teeth to rip off your panties should keep me occupied."
Ignore that, Renshaw.
She stopped. Turned with a grace that defied those damned snowshoes. Nailed him with a look frostier than the icicles spiking from the trees. "Thong or French cut? Cotton or satin?"
Oh, yeah. Now they were talking. "Obviously what you're wearing today." He swept aside a branch weighted low by snow, startling an artic hare from the underbrush. "Why would I care about anything else? If you're feeling shy about sharing first, allow me. I'm wearing Scooby-Doo boxers with a holiday theme since Scooby's sporting a Santa hat. Granted, they aren't very military-looking, but the regs only require that while in flight I wear a hundred-percent cotton."
"Thanks for enlightening me, but I'm so not interested in your Scooby snack right now."
Yeah, he pretty much got the message on that one loud and clear. Not for the first time he wondered about that dude in her past, the one she'd almost married except he'd died first. What secret had the poor bastard carried to his grave about understanding this woman?
"Ouch." Josh thumped his chest with his oversize arctic gloves. "You know how to wound a guy. But I recover fast.
Now, back to your underwear. I do believe I've solved the mystery." "Oh, goody. And how did you manage that?"
"Elementary, my dear Renshaw. Since we just finished slipping the surly bonds of earth in an aerospace vehicle owned by the Department of Defense, I deduce, as per regulation, your undergarments are one-hundred-percent cotton."
Damn, it had been a long four days in the survival class with her, but at least they hadn't been alone together—until now. Stupid though it may be, he wanted some kind of reaction from her. "As far as what design? While you do have the butt for a thong, I'm going to guess necessity overcame fashion and you opted for something a little more practical."
Sighing, she hitched her hands on her hips. "You know, I really hate you sometimes. If only your brain and shoulders weren't so hot."
"You like my...brain?"
"Fine," she snapped. "You win. You want to talk? Let's discuss who gets what when we split up the household goods."
His humor faded faster than his breath puffing vapors into the sub-zero air. "One in four decisions made while cold will be incorrect, my love."
All the more reason he shouldn't be thinking about sex.
His traitorous Scooby snack throbbed, anyway. Good God, it was cold as hell. Just what he needed, a frozen erection.
"Don't call me that." Her chin trembled. From anger? Or something softer?
"Call you what?" "My love."
"Why not? You can call me all sorts of things—Josh, Colonel, Bud, Rosen. Jerk. Take your pick.
Meanwhile, I have..." He quirked his gaze up to the murky sky, ticking through numbers on his fingers. "Seventeen more days until our appointment with the attorney to start the process whereby we officially begin making you no longer 'my love.'"