Strategic Engagement (Wingmen Warriors 5)

He elbowed her gently. "Cool your jets, 'Lise, I was talking basic geography."

She measured her words. "I wanted a change of scenery. Your father helped."

"My father." Muscles bunched visibly under the creased flight suit.

He'd never allowed himself to vent or rant, always taking on everyone else's battles and ignoring his own. Who would be there to help him through the grief over his father's death?

The Kathleen person he'd called for?

She couldn't begrudge him that. Especially when the boys would need a woman's influence more than ever. They also needed their brother steady. Daniel's hero worship for his father had died in a rift they'd never bridged, which would only make the coming weeks tougher for him.

Mary Elise let herself touch him. Just his arm. Lightly. "I'm so sorry."

He didn't answer for an extended moment before he stood to leave, pulling away emotionally as well as physically. As she'd known he would. He had always been more at ease with simple. Uncomplicated.

Daniel paused in the doorway. "I'll take you up front to patch through a call."

She struggled to understand his words in the wake of the liquid heat pulsing through her veins. "Patch a call?"

"Home."

She frowned. "My apartment's empty right now."

"I meant Savannah, I don't have your parents' number or I'd do it for you. Unless there's someone else you'd prefer to contact." His eyes chilled. "Like your husband."

"My ex-husband."

"Right." His emotionless gaze pinned her. "Do you want me to call Kent McRae?"

Hearing her ex-husband's name sent a tremor through her. Followed by a completely different shiver over realizing Daniel had cared enough to track her transition from Mary Elise Fitzgerald to Mary Elise McRae. From a single college journalism student to the wife of a major newspaper publisher.

And who was she now?

Alive. Just how she damn well intended to stay. "I'm not planning to go home. I'll turn right around and return to Rubistan and my job."

"Think again." Familiar chocolate-brown eyes hardened into the different, darker Danny.

What in the world had he seen and experienced during their years apart? "Excuse me?"

"We may have escaped Rubistan without being searched. But they knew. Once you and the boys come up missing at the same time, it won't take longer than a puff on that guard's cigar to link you to this. If you go back, you'll be jailed—or dead—an hour after you touch down."

All those thousands of emotional paper cuts flamed to life in full-blown dread. The implications of the past hours swelled into certainty. She hated the helplessness. Most of all hated that she would have to turn to Danny for answers after a year of hoping never to need anyone again. "What happens after we land in Charleston?"

"What kind of ID do you have?"

"I didn't have time to grab my purse before I got in the crate," she answered automatically, pushing the words through numb lips. "But I always keep my passport on me."

"Good, then you'll be processed through the base. In the meantime, you have to stay somewhere. With your parents or me?" Daniel leaned closer, bay rum obliterating hydraulic fluid in a sensory tidal wave. "It's your call to make, and quite frankly, I need you more right now."

Chapter 3

"You need me?" Mary Elise enunciated slowly.

Daniel watched her brows pull together over confused green eyes. He wasn't feeling much steadier himself.He braced a hand against the bulkhead and planted both boots for balance. Where the hell had his words come from?

There were probably a hundred different services he could call to help at a moment's notice. He knew at least a dozen women who would enjoy nothing more than mothering the boys as a way to entice him into being "emotionally available."

And none of them were Mary Elise.