Out of Uniform (Wingmen Warriors 14)

His foot pressed the accelerator, the SUV’s tires gripping for traction even with the four-wheel drive. He forced his focus back on the road as he neared the Lodge. He just needed to see her, find out what she was doing, be sure she wasn’t making it with some other guy.

Everybody should know what a slut she was. They should hear the truth about her, but he couldn’t tell them. He’d needed to be attentive, loving. Appearances mattered. What people thought of him mattered if he ever wanted to put his life back together again.

He turned off the highway onto the side road, hunting rifles rattling in the floorboards as he bumped and jostled toward the out-of-the-way restaurant. All he’d wanted was money and a way out of the ball-and-chain life he’d been stuck with.

So why didn’t he just leave? Loose ends. If it weren’t for their kid, he would have walked away from her a long time ago.

He couldn’t wait for luck to turn his way any longer. He needed to take fate into his own hands.

Dee stared out the truck window. She wanted to ask more about Jacob’s military world, a place where he felt comfortable, even if the gates and fences and airplanes roaring overhead left her feeling a bit claustrophobic. But Jacob was even more reticent than he’d been on the drive earlier.

Perhaps the icy roads simply demanded his full attention.

At first, she’d wondered if Jacob’s moodiness could be a by-product of her having thrown herself at him. What had she been thinking? Obviously she hadn’t been thinking of anything but soaking up the comfort of his strength.

Dee spun thoughts of him over and over as they drove along the gravel road toward Marge’s Diner. She could imagine him in a uniform. The mental picture was more than a little exciting, the brooding, twenty-first-century warrior. It seemed right somehow.

The same man running a motel for years on end…That image didn’t gel at all. Already she recognized his need for action, his inescapable manner of taking charge. It wasn’t frenzied, just even-paced, steady, as he took care of everything from filing a police report to making sure she remembered to eat.

Jacob slowed the truck, wheels crunching across the diner’s parking lot. Trucks and Suburbans dominated the unmarked spaces. A replica of a prairie schoolhouse sat perched by a lake. The candy-apple-red building splashed color onto the otherwise gray mountainous horizon. A pier spiked out of the frozen waters, providing a narrow wooden path above the sheet of ice.

Not at all what she’d expected.

She’d been looking for some fifties throwback diner with jukeboxes and counter service. Had she subconsciously substituted something from her own hometown into expectations for Jacob’s area? She reached into her mental recesses in hope of finding the face of her child….>“Jacob, I want to take a look at your arm before you two head out to the police station. And don’t bother to tell me you’re fine. I know all about the ego you boys tote around, and I’m not backing down.”

Jacob’s arm. How could she have forgotten his injury just because he’d ditched his sling? She’d been so immersed in her own mess that she hadn’t even given him any warning of what they would hear. She was being selfish, especially after all he’d done for her.

Now if she could just scavenge some communication skills she had no way of knowing she possessed.

Hunger roared to life within him, a hunger fired by more than the woman walking beside him as they left the police station and settled into his truck.

They’d filed an official report. During their afternoon at the station, they hadn’t learned anything new from the police about her. The cops had actually been more interested in the fact that the Suburban plates hadn’t appeared in any data bank. Had Mr. Smith written down the wrong number by accident or on purpose? No way of knowing.

Jacob gripped the steering wheel tighter. He’d done all he could for today. With a trip to the doctor and the cops. Now he couldn’t avoid thinking about what they’d learned from Doc Bennett.

Dee had a child.

Just when he’d thought he couldn’t be surprised anymore, there came the latest bombshell. Jacob slid the key into the ignition and cranked the engine. He hooked his arm along the seat, turning to look out the rear window as he backed out.

Seeing Dee stopped him cold.

She wasn’t crying, not outwardly. She simply sat, her fingers gripping the lap belt over her stomach. And she was shaking, not much, but enough for him to notice. Her teeth began chattering.

“The heat should kick in soon.”

She nodded tightly, her face front, her gaze veering neither left nor right.

He slid the truck back into Park. “You okay?”

Dee nodded again.

“You’re scaring me a little here.”

Her head tucked, the bare curve of her neck showing through the glide of her hair. “It’s a lot to take in. That’s all. I’ll be fine. How’s your arm?”

“I’m cleared to go back to work when my leave’s over in a couple of weeks.”

“That’s wonderful. I’m so relieved to hear it.”