Strategic Engagement (Wingmen Warriors 5)

"Maybe I don't notice how I put my shirts on."

She shook her head. "I don't think so. If that were the case, you'd have your T-shirts on right side out some of the time. But you don't. You think through and have a reason for everything you do, Danny. You always have."

A smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Not everyone realizes that. You're scary, you know."

"Yeah, right. I'm intimidating as hell."

He chuckled. She joined in with ease, their laughs blending between them until she squeezed his hand.

His hand?

She looked down and found their fingers had entwined over the small pad. When? How?

They both yanked, back.

He smacked the pad down on the counter. "The seams scratch."

"What?" She fisted her tingling hand by her side.

Daniel kept his back to her, scribbling notes along the pad. "The outside of a T-shirt is smoother than the inside with the seams. It's more comfortable to wear the shirt inside out. Damned silly to put the smoother side out just so the world thinks you look better while those seams are chaffing away."

He spun to face her, lighthearted Danny firmly stamped across his features. "Time for me to punch out of here, but I'll try to finish up soon. I have to swing by base legal and start paperwork for the boys before flight debrief, then a meeting with my commander. After that, we can head out to buy whatever you and the boys need."

She watched him move, Danny so at ease in his own skin and with the world when his life had been flipped upside down. How much of it was pretense? "You know, Trey's just like you."

He snorted. "You mean Austin, right?"

"No. You and Trey are both torn up over losing your father, and neither one of you can bear to accept a bit of comfort."

The smile fell away, replaced by the newer Danny, the man who drew a gun in foreign countries with little or no backup. "Like you're any different."

A gasp caught in her throat.

Danny tapped her forehead. "Exchanging troubles is a two-way street, Mary Elise. One neither of us seems comfortable traveling anymore."

He waited, and for a weak minute she actually considered leaning against one broad shoulder and telling him everything. Except she understood Danny too well—rather than just offer help as his father had done, he would take over, guns blazing into the middle of her mess.

Or worse yet, he wouldn't believe her about Kent's threats any more than her parents had. Either way, for the sake of the boys, she needed to keep him as far away from Kent as possible.

She stepped back. Away from Danny and the temptation of broad shoulders.

He nudged the pad toward her, no risky hand-to-hand exchange this time. "Here are numbers where you can reach me. If there's a pressing emergency, call this one. The copilot, Renshaw, lives in this complex with her fiancé."

"Spike?" She followed Daniel across the living room to the door.

"Right. Up on the second floor. He's off today and can be down in seconds," Daniel paused under the porch overhang. "Promise me you'll call if you need anything. Not just for the boys. For you too, okay?"

"Okay." She lied. And suspected he knew it.

Daniel loped toward his shiny blue truck. Apparently he took more care with his vehicle than his flight suits.

She stood in the open door, mug cradled in her hands, and let the heated ceramic warm the chill that increased as Danny backed up and drove away. She stared at his empty spot long after the truck's rumble faded.

Shaking off whimsy, she spun toward the condo. Her feet tangled on the arrangement of flowerpots by the neighbor's door. Mary Elise knelt to right one lopsided pot and scoop stray soil. She patted it back into colored planters filled with ferns, pansies and impatiens. Her hand stilled on a final one tucked in the back in an incongruous bland terracotta pot.

False Unicorn. She fingered the small greenish-white flowers, their blooms having held on beyond summer blooming season. She'd been so touched when Kent brought her a small pot similar to this once, the simple romantic gesture more special than the dozen roses he'd given her after the second miscarriage. Or so she'd thought. Then he'd explained how False Unicorn root supposedly increased fertility and prevented miscarriages.

By the end of the year, he'd bought her a window garden full of other such plants like red clover blossoms and blue cohosh. Not that he actually expected her to use them. He'd hired specialists, after all. Eventually, hope had withered along with words and creativity while her window garden blossomed in mocking contrast.