Explosive Alliance (Wingmen Warriors 9)

"I hope so. She told me more about those missing minutes and who she was with. She said she's been speaking with this person she calls Eddie for a couple of weeks now and that he claims he knew Kurt." Paige clicked on the intercom beside the door, Kirstie's light snoring snuffle coming through. "This Eddie character was even at the air show."

Bo wished he'd tracked that bastard right then and pummeled answers from him. "The cops will be able to hunt him down."

She settled beside him on the swing. "At least she's sleeping, and how crazy am I, turning on listening monitors like she's a baby again?"

"'Not crazy at all. The incident scared a year off my life and she's not even my kid." And Sister Nic wasn't his blood relative, either, but he still thought of her as his mother.

A little less understanding tonight would be nice for his sanity.

"Vic's a mess." Paige slumped back on the wooden swing, her legs extended, her toe tracing through the ever-present Dakota dust. "He's up in his room with a bottle of booze.

I reminded him this could happen to anyone. The same thing even happened when both you and I were watching her at the air show."

"What did he say to that?"

"Just nodded and said he'd be fine in the morning."

Bo wasn't so sure. He hooked an arm around Paige's shoulder and drew her to his side.

She tipped her face up to his with an easy intimacy and familiarity to her kiss that left him longing to race her over to the barn. Something he knew couldn't happen here tonight.

Crooking a finger in the neck of his T-shirt, she stroked along his chest. "I hope you don't mind too much, but we're not going to be able to go off alone. I want to, but…"

"You can't leave Kirstie. Of course I'm sorry we can't be together tonight—" his knuckles grazed along the side of her breast before cradling her face "—but I understand."

"Thank you." She arched up to kiss him again, nothing hot or out of control but so damn sweet and perfect he wanted more just like it.

Although even an idiot would see she needed comfort. "How are you?"

"Scared. Mad at myself for being too preoccupied to realize what was going on in her mind." Her head lolled back against his arm while bugs droned in the distance. "I thought she was past the worst of losing her father, but now she's talking to strangers just to feel closer to her dad."

This woman needed so much more from him than a few Kleenex followed by a laugh.

"Some things take longer to get over than others."

"You lost both your parents when you were as young as Kirstie. How did you manage?"

Decision time. If he truly wanted to give this thing between them a chance, time to submit to the root-canal telling of a few ugly truths about his past. "Actually, they didn't die at the same time."

A frown pinched her brows together. "They didn't?"

"My mother died when I was five. My folks had already split, but my dad didn't fight for custody then or after she, uh, passed away. He couldn't take care of me on his own—" too expensive, too much trouble, too bratty "—so he turned me over to the good sisters. He had a heart attack when I was fifteen."

While serving twenty-five to life for popping the used-car dealer who'd been taking him for a spin in a three-year-old Mercedes that Jackass Dirtbag had decided he wanted—

without the car payments.

Paige's hand fell to rest on his thigh with a soft comfort easier to accept than an emotional display. "How did your mother die?"

"She cut her wrists." He cleared his throat. "Because my father wanted a divorce."

Paige's hand gripped tighter on his knee. In shock? Or reassurance? She stayed quiet, though, thank God.

"A violent death like that—like with Kirstie's father—it's tough for a kid to get over."

He still woke up sometimes smelling the blood. The shrink they'd made him see after the shoot down and capture had told him the dreams were normal, and offered extra insights that had sounded like BS at the time. But what the hell? They might help with Kirstie.

"For a while after losing a parent that way, there's a fear that people are going to leave you, which makes a kid do things like run off. She might think she's leaving before being left or testing the grown-ups who are still around."