"Yes." He turned his back to her and resumed the reliable routine of cleaning and stowing his weapons. "Now get the hell out of my room so I can write the report."
"Do you have to write it tonight?"
"Before tomorrow. Yes. I do. That's my job." He emptied his pockets, his hand closing around a roll of LifeSavers.
A whispery rustle sounded behind him, his only warning that she approached until she eased close enough for him to smell her. A man could lose himself in that smoky sensuality.
And damn but did he ever need to lose himself tonight.
Anger, frustration and a pile of other emotions he didn't want to label popped through him like gunfire until he snapped at her, "Are you dense or just that pushy to stay where you aren't wanted?"
She stared back unflinching, her hands loosely clutching the scarf. "If I only went where I was wanted, I would not have anywhere to be lately, now would I?"
He would not allow himself to feel sorry for her. "Well, lady, at least you're alive."
Her clasped hands inched forward until she hooked one soft finger over his clenched fist. "I thought perhaps you might be upset by what happened. You do not like for others to know you are sensitive, an understandable thing for a man in your position."
"Upset?" He jerked back. "Yeah, I'm upset."
He stared down at the roll of candy in his hands. His fist clenched tighter until the fire of emotions inside him built into a collective blast. He hauled back. Flung the candy with a curse.
The roll exploded against the wall, raining lemon- and cherry-flavored fury on the floor.
Yasmine flinched, but didn't pull away or even speak.
"If you had any sense, woman, you'd get the hell away from me right now."
Still she didn't move or answer.
He wanted to punch his fist through the wall, which would break his hand and put him out of action. Damn it, he needed an outlet for the rage bellowing inside him.
More than that, he needed Yasmine to leave his room before he lost what little control he had left. "What do you want from me? I'm not in the mood for games. Damn it, I'm not even sure you know what you want." >Her hair?
Her hand drifted up to her bare head. She'd been so concerned about Drew she'd abandoned twenty-three years of training by leaving her scarf behind.
All because of a man she'd known less than a week.
The wind whispered her mother's voice over her. Ah, sugar, five seconds after I set eyes on your daddy stepping out of that Mercedes, I knew. He was the one.
As much as she loved her mother, she wasn't sure she wanted the kind of emotion that made a woman do reckless things. But what if she never had the chance? What if the ambulance speeding in the distance held Drew?
Yasmine's feet carried her a step farther outside, as far as she dared. She did not want her escort hauling her back inside where no one would care to give her answers to the questions already tumbling over themselves in her head.
She watched her sister sprint toward the open end of one of the planes. Light poured from the gaping back ramp, people massing into a clump of desert-tan uniforms. She would have thought she could recognize Drew anywhere, but there were too many, too far away.
A military ambulance streaked across the cement. Stopped. Unloaded, the mass of uniforms blocking her from viewing the patient.
Who?
Night wind whipped all around her as it had her first night cooking the goat stew. The chilly gusts were nothing compared to the icy fear stinging through her veins. Only a handful of days before she had stared into intensely beautiful blue eyes and everything changed.
She inched deeper into the biting wind's path. Time was precious. She should have remembered after her mother's and father's deaths too early in life from a fluke flu epidemic.
Just as the unrelenting gusts tore away facades with brutal force, she felt her own self-delusions strip away. She wanted more than just a memory to take with her when she left. She craved the freedom to be with Drew.
Jack threw away his half-full paper cup of coffee and charged down the side stairs of the mobile command post now that the Army ambulance had arrived. Not that he would be able to do a damned thing for the injured private.
His boots pounded pavement toward the open ramp of the medivac plane-—fully equipped for surgery. Shouldering through the crowd at the base of the plane, he worked his way into sight of the mayhem inside. He didn't know who the page had found, Monica or one of the other deployed doctors. Either way, he hoped to find the physician doing nothing more than setting some bones or stitching up an arm.