Derek had never given any particular thought to a woman’s apartment. It was a place. Some all done up girlie, some in need of a firehose washdown. Way back in high school he’d developed a standard that kept him clear of the latter type. Though clean sheets or couch was as far as his attention usually wandered.
Stepping into Abby’s apartment felt more like he was entering a shrine.
Her invitation had been wordless, no more than the slightest tip of her quarter-empty beer bottle toward the door of the briefing room. Her eyes had stayed wide when he’d nodded a careful yes.
Not that her apartment was exceptional in any particular way. Standard-issue one-bedroom-apartment base housing with a sitting bar separating a small kitchen from the living room. The doors must be closet and bedroom, which meant that the bathroom was only accessible through the bedroom. Practical rather than a home for entertaining.
It was Army spotless, nothing out of place. Not even any obvious sign of its occupant’s gender. A single box’s worth of books on the standard-issue shelf unit, because in the Army you learned to travel light. The Perfect Storm. A couple books by Linda Greenlaw. Derek checked the first book, yeah, the woman who’d been the surviving swordfisher captain of that debacle. The actress who’d played her in the movie had been hot enough that he’d watched several of her flicks: The Abyss, Marian in Robin Hood, and a couple others. Kinda like Abby: slender, unconventionally pretty, screamingly competent, and—Derek kept the smile to himself—decidedly awkward socially. The actress’ acerbic wit and cutting comebacks were replaced by a quirk for a smile and Abby’s joy in a bad joke.
There were several more titles with keywords like Maine and lobster, or both. The expected big section of Chinook pilot memoir and well-worn Chinook helo manuals—a pilot who studied the mechanics as well as the operation. He liked that. A couple of military romance stuff, again helos. Abigail Rose was a two-track gal: Maine-style fishing and helicopters. Nothing else.
The other shelves had prop-up-frame photos of crews around helos or family aboard lobster boats; same two tracks. Always a lotta guys with Abby stuck in the middle each time, standing out because she was a half-head shorter than all the others.
A blue velvet medals’ case. He glanced for permission before flipping the lid. Derek had it halfway open before Abby’s expression behind that tight nod registered.
She was standing in the exact center of the living room. Her fists jammed hard enough into her pockets to overlap the front despite the open zipper. As if he’d been?—
“Shit, Abby, sorry.” He closed the case’s lid, but not before noticing the number of awards neatly arranged across the plush interior. Or how many of them had the C or V device for combat or valor in combat. His were up on the wall in his Fort Bragg apartment for all to see. Hers were tucked away for her eyes only and he’d just… Crap! It felt like he’d just been peeping at naked photos of her. “It’s…”
She remained frozen.
He wasn’t used to explaining himself around women. He also wasn’t used to caring about much beyond the obvious once he got alone with a woman. “You aren’t like, uh, other women I’ve…met. It’s like, I dunno.” Could he sound any more inarticulate? “Like I want to understand you way better than I do.” That, at least, was true.
Still no movement or change.
“Look. I’m sorry. I’ll go if you want me to.” Was he about to lose the scamper bet? He’d wager that, if she gave him the shuffle tonight, it might be the end of a chance of anything between them. And he didn’t like the sound of that option much.
She continued to stare at him, thinking mighty hard. Was she about to think him right out of her life? Nope. Definitely not his first choice.
That’s when he noticed her oversized jacket. She’d shrugged it on just before they’d stepped out into the dark from the briefing room. A classic sheepskin-lined leather bomber jacket, old, well-worn, and originally for a much bigger person. Now in the light he saw that it bore unit patches spanning decades. One bore the image of a Bell H-13 Angels of Mercy used for Korean War medevac missions. A Vietnam-era patch showed a skull spitting gunfire from its red eyes—1st Aviation Detachment. He didn’t know who they’d been, but the twin rotors mounted on the skull said they’d flown one of the early Chinooks. Then the 176th Assault Box Cars he knew were another Chinook outfit. Box Cars again, but a couple decades later on, beside a Desert Storm patch. A modern screaming eagle of the 101st Airborne and finally a Night Stalkers’ Pegasus patch.
He glanced back at the photos and could see the jacket’s history as it moved from one flyer to the next, finally passing to Abby. One hell of a legacy. How did a person live up to that? He’d always liked special? Who the hell was he kidding? Abby was in a whole different league.
His mama was a grade-school teacher and Papa was a trimming machine operator at the Georgia-Pacific paper mill—always had been, always would be. Derek had figured the Army was his only ticket out of town. That an escape route had turned into a career was a great bonus.
But still, there she stood. And here he stood. He walked away from the bookcase, circled around the couch and coffee table until he stopped directly in front of Abby. Only then did he realize that he’d copied her stance, Army boots planted shoulder wide with fists jammed into jacket pockets. His boasted only his own history: 82nd Airborne and 75th Rangers. No one wore a Delta patch, technically there wasn’t one for the highly classified unit. He did have the US Army Special Operations Command flash of the knife within an arrowhead symbol laid on a map of the globe. It identified him as one of thirty thousand, not one of the three hundred most elite.
Their shared stance and posture made him smile.
Which, much to his surprise, made her own smile quirk to life. Right. Captain Abigail Rose missed nothing and would have seen that he’d echoed her without intending.
He made a shrug, not with his shoulders, but rather with his hands in his pockets, tipping them outward just enough to ask the question of what came next.
She answered with a shrug that reached her shoulders and the smile that now reached up to her eyes.
He raised an eyebrow.
She raised both and started a silent laugh.
Without removing his hands from his pockets, he leaned forward to kiss her mid-laugh.
The backs of their hands touching through the fabric of both their jackets, they shifted together. This time their kiss was no tentative brush of the lips, at least not for long. Derek could feel Abby shift onto her toes. Not for height, but to increase the pressure between them.
She tasted vaguely of the beer she’d never finished and the char of the burger she’d eaten. But those were just notes, small accents to emphasize whatever she was. He followed the kiss along her jaw and under her chin. She tipped her head aside as he sought her collarbone. Not down her front but to where it lay hidden under the edge of her turtleneck above the nice slope of strong shoulder.
Abby tipped her forehead against his shoulder, drawing him closer. He spread his jacket open, and she slid between his pocketed hands. Easing her own jacket open, her hands rested on his hips and their bodies brushed together. Her slender figure pressed against his in the doubled cocoon of their open jackets.
Warm leather, the salt of hard-work sweat since dried, the least hint of av-gas, which added to rather than diminished the image. Instead of grabbing her, tossing her to the couch, and testing his palms against those fine curves, he pulled her tighter into his jacket until her cheek rested on his shoulder and his on her hair.
