She leaned into his kiss, her fingers still linked with his. Their eyes met and held, her thumb stroking along the ridge of a scar and silently questioning.
As much as he wanted to dodge anyone rooting around in his head, he owed her something in return for all she'd told him. Might as well go for broke since he suspected there was no getting out of this relationship unscathed. "I hurt my hands when things went to crap during a mission overseas in Rubistan."
Horror widened her eyes. "You were injured during a crash?"
"Not exactly. Yes, we were shot down." His brain echoed with the shattering thump, the shriek of warning alarms, the bark of the aircraft commander's voice, Scorch, instructing them all to strap down tight. "You may have heard some of the news reports about terrorists using shoulder-held missile launchers. They popped some planes in Iraq that way, too."
"Why didn't we hear anything about what happened to your crew?" She unfurled her fingers and cradled his hand in both of hers, starting a gentle massage. Did she even realize or was her healer instinct in overdrive?
God, it felt good, though, somehow making words he'd only spoken in the mandatory psych evals easier to spill. "When things are hot in another country, you don't hear much about other things going on in the military. We were a blip in the news, downplayed—a good thing as far as I'm concerned."
"Can you tell me why you were there?" she asked with a rarely found understanding and acceptance that he couldn't share all. So many relationships broke up over just that.
"We were there transporting intelligence equipment that picked up on terrorist chatter and the like." The reason OSI agent Max had been along, although Tag had been forced to destroy all the data before they crash landed, so what the hell had they accomplished? He could almost feel the sun burning the back of his neck as he'd run full-out across the desert, searching low dunes for somewhere to evade and set up a rescue beacon. "Can't say much more than that, but you get the idea."
"I think I do." She blinked hard and brought his hands one at a time to her lips. "If you landed in a country we're not at war with, how did this happen?"
"That doesn't mean everybody likes us there. We were picked up by tribal warlords first
—" A ragtag and rabid group in beat-up trucks with plenty of weapons who'd found the crew trying to evade them by lying flat in a dug-out sand pit. "I got a little cocky. Dared look a warlord in the eyes. Had my right hand stomped, the other bashed with the butt of an AK-47 before Tag rolled between me and the next blow."
He shrugged, forcing himself to relax while she continued her subtle massage along one finger at a time as two tears slipped down her cheeks. She didn't sniffle or sob, just kept rubbing even after the tears dripped from her chin onto his wrist.
More determined than ever to shield her, he left out the rest of why they'd been flying over Rubistan. The OSI had been trying to track the link from drug-trafficking terrorists through a military traitor handing shipments over to a U.S. civilian pickup point back in the States. Kurt Haugen. That much information she did not need and he would damn well carry it to his grave.
A fierce protectiveness pounded through him, primitive, irrational and likely unwelcome.
But he'd be damned if he would cause Paige one more ounce of heartache.
His sense of honor pinched at his gut. Hard. As much as he told himself he was doing the right thing in keeping this relationship light, he still saw the shadows in her teary eyes he knew would still haunt his dreams. Which gave him all the more incentive to delay sleep as long as possible.
Bo dropped a kiss on her nose, red-tipped from crying tears for him. "Let's go get that ice.
Although I have better ideas for using it than on my hands."
Chapter 13
He would never look at an ice cube the same way again.
Paige arched her arms over her head until her knuckles skimmed the headboard, but kept her eyes closed to avoid morning a few seconds longer. A post-sex stretch was without a doubt the best stretch ever. And when that came after the best sex ever? She wanted to keep right on arching as long as possible in case this weekend with Bo was all she would have.
At least she had her body back again after fears her past with Kurt would freeze her forever. She sagged on the mattress and rolled onto her side, clutching the sheet, eager to make more new memories to replace the old. They could stay in bed all afternoon and picnic naked. As soon as she found him.
The scent of coffee and bacon in the air answered her question about the empty space beside her. Gliding her hand along the bare spot as if to capture a remaining hint of the man, she let her mind drift through possibilities of...
A long-distance relationship? Telephone calls and trips crosscountry. And he was considering leaving the military. Maybe he would return to teaching, which enabled him to live anywhere....
Yeah, right. Like he would relocate to North Dakota to hang out with a woman he'd known two weeks, and she couldn't even believe she was considering this. Incredible sex must be scrambling her brain. She needed to accept this pocket of happiness and quit thinking about tomorrow.
A rustle sounded outside the window. A squirrel?
Paige wrapped the sheet tighter. The purse-snatcher incident and break-in had her imagining boogey men behind every tree. She snagged her glasses off the bedside table for a clearer view of the window and the overgrown wisteria bush blocking most of the yard from sight.
Had Bo relocked the window after pitching the phones outside?
"Bo?" she called softly, inching to sit up.
The bush rustled, swaying as if swept aside.