Out of Uniform (Wingmen Warriors 14)

As much as he’d lost, she’d lost more. He sliced away his own needs, safer for him, anyway, and focused on hers.

Jacob pushed through the motel door and found her curled in the corner of the sofa staring out the window. He tossed his coat onto the coat tree.

Dee gnawed on a fingernail. “I should have gone with the cops.”

“You know there’s nothing you can do at the police station tonight. They have the number here. Maybe they’ll have some answers when we head into town tomorrow.”

Dee dangled her arm along the couch back, her fingers drawing little circles in the condensation on the window. Outside, snow began spiraling from the sky, heralding an approaching storm. “Blane could be anywhere by now.”

He knew that, but she didn’t need it confirmed. “The authorities were searching blind before. Not now.”

Dee exploded from the sofa. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing. I have to find them.”

“You need to be patient a little while longer.”

She ripped a coat off the rack. A surplus of adrenaline oozed from her. “My son’s out there somewhere. He’s only four. He can’t sleep without his airplane blanket and a story before bed. He’s never been separated from me for more than three nights at Blane’s, and Evan has a life-threatening peanut allergy. I can’t just wait here and do nothing. I never should have let that cop persuade me to sit tight.”

He shouldn’t have been surprised by her frenzy. She’d held it together throughout a hellish night. From past experiences in combat, he’d seen enough to know the adrenaline letdown would crash into her soon.

Two long strides and he caught her. He grabbed her arm just as she reached for the door. “You’ve done everything you can. Filing a police report. Calling everyone you could think of who might have had contact with your ex-husband.”

“It’s not enough.” She tried to wrench her wrist free, then flailed with her other. Her pitch rose, approaching hysteria. She jerked, scratched, kicked with surprising strength. “Jacob, damn it, let me go. I have to do something.”

He trapped both of her wrists and gave her a light shake. “Think. Even if I gave you the keys to the truck and a full tank of gas, what more can you do tonight?”

Reason returned to her eyes just before they flooded with tears. She sagged like a rag doll in his grip. “There really isn’t anything I can do, is there?”

“No, Dee, I’m afraid there isn’t.”

She crumpled against his chest. “Oh God, Jacob, this is so much worse than not knowing. I didn’t think anything could hurt that much, but I was so wrong.”

“I know.” Jacob gentled his hands along her hair again. He gritted his teeth against the need to bury his face in her neck. “I know.”

“Hold me. Please.” Half sobbing, gasping in air, she burrowed against his chest.

She squirmed against him as if to nestle closer still. He tried to ignore his reaction to her soft body wriggling against his. As much as he wanted, needed, burned to lose himself inside her and forget about the whole damned evening, she needed something else from him.

Or so he thought.

Her hands grappled at his shirt, his shoulders, his hair, dragging his head down to hers. Tapping the last dregs of his self-control, he held himself back.

With a none-too-gentle yank, Dee urged him closer. “Kiss me, damn it.”

He wanted to, needed to, but knew it was wrong. The wrong time. The wrong reason. But she sure as hell felt like the right woman. “You don’t know what you’re saying. It’s adrenaline talking.”

Fire snapped from her eyes, full force and full of will. “Adrenaline? Is that what it was yesterday? Or every day we’ve been together and I wanted this?” Her pupils widened until her eyes turned near-black, like heavy storm clouds. “For all this time I’ve been trying to remember, yet now I’m finding I desperately need to forget. Please, for just a few hours, help me forget.”

Good intentions fled. All his honorable platitudes seemed to have checked out for the night, and he couldn’t think of a single rebuttal. His fingers flexed around her wrists as he stared into the tear-misted eyes of this woman he wanted more than air.

Time to quit fighting it. He hadn’t been able to walk away from her the first time he saw her any more than he could turn away now.

Chapter 12

W as she getting through to him? If he turned her down, she would—

Do what?

Shriek her frustration at him and the whole world? She’d already done enough shouting for one night, for a lifetime even.