“Good. Glad that’s settled.” She turned back toward the hangar.
He grabbed her by her jacket’s shoulder. There wasn’t time to block the fist headed for his solar plexus, but he did manage to tighten his guts before it landed. Though not quite enough.
Derek could breathe, if he was careful, but he couldn’t keep a hold of her.
“Anything else? No? Good.” And she was gone.
A shadow loomed over him.
“Billy. Great. Exactly. What I. Need.” Breathing was still being a challenge.
Bill Bruce didn’t answer. Instead, he grabbed Derek’s arm, turned him precisely in Abby’s direction like he was aiming a weapon, then flat-palmed Derek hard enough in the center of his back that he could either stumble into a fast trot or plant his face on the tarmac. He went for the shambling trot.
Sensing it wasn’t over, Abby didn’t return to her crew or head toward his crew. Instead, she headed around the hangar corner out of sight.
33
Halfway down the side of the hangar, Abby stumbled to a halt. She lay her shoulder, then her head against the corrugated steel. The cold did nothing to ease the heat of…hurt, rage, embarrassment? She didn’t even know. Could it be all of them at once? She could certainly identify with each individually. And they each were plenty painful in their own right.
Closing her eyes didn’t help. All it did was focus her attention on the sound of impact wrenches extracting bolts, forklifts running fast errands, and a soft laugh from the Delta team transmitted straight through the metal.
Opening her eyes was even worse. Directly in front of her, Derek Kylie leaned against the same siding, facing her.
“What part of go away… Never mind.” She closed her eyes again.
“This morning…night…whatever you Night Stalkers call the middle of the day when you’re supposed to be sleeping, I wasn’t walking out on you.”
She opened one eye enough to glare at him.
“Okay, I was. But not because I didn’t want to stay beside you.”
She opened the other eye. But if it was a lie, she couldn’t see it. Of course she’d never been good at that. Her personal style included falling for every straight line that came her way. If it was a joke, she could always follow what was going on. When it involved her emotions, none of it made any sense.
“Look, this,” he waved a hand around, “Fort Campbell. This is your home. Your world. I didn’t want everyone to think that I came in and took advantage of their top Chinook pilot.”
“So, you were going to sneak out without saying a word.” If she barfed up her pain on his boots, would he leave her alone? Too bad she hadn’t stopped for a midday meal—her midnight—before hurrying out to prep her helo for transport. Not much in her system right now worth throwing up.
“I was going to leave a note.” He grimaced. “Okay, I like to think that I’d have thought to leave a note once I was clear of the bedroom without waking you.”
“I’m guessing that you’re not big on that after you slide away from a woman’s bed.”
His grimace, shifting to a look of pain, answered that well enough.
“But…” She didn’t know why she prompted him. Maybe to see how deep a hole he could dig.
“This is your home. I wanted to give you the option of how you dealt with things. Last night was great.” His shift to a happy smile came close to earning him severely barked shins. “Okay, now I’m lying. It was better than that. But if you wanted to treat it as a single night of fun and keep it just between us, I was willing to support that. I wanted it to be your choice.”
Last night hadn’t been great, it had been the best time she’d had in way, way too long—like ever. One soldier to another… No, one warrior to another, had made it even better than that. There were a hundred things that required no explanation. No need to explain why she served. Being a D-boy and a Night Stalker, especially after a pair of highly successful missions together, there’d been no need to explain anything about internal drive to be the best—both of their motivations were built that way.
No need to explain the sidearm they’d each dropped on the nightstands rather than hiding under a pillow. Not even why she had plenty of protection beside the bed. Not that she’d used it recently—having to break the seal on the box had demonstrated that—but she would, of course, be prepared. And once committed to action, there’d been no holdback or acting by either of them. It was the freest she’d ever felt in a man’s arms.
His words slowly sank in. What if he was telling the truth? Had he been trying to protect her reputation or had he been slinking away like an asshole who didn’t want to wake up with a woman once he’d screwed her? The latter thought hurt like hell but the former made more sense. In their two nights of operations together, Derek had run dead clean. Even the way he worked with his team didn’t have a single fault she could pick out.
Protecting her made more sense. She closed her eyes and began thumping the side of her head against the metal siding.
He slipped his hand between her head and the metal, so she whacked it hard one more time and he jerked his fingers away.
“What?” He asked as he shook his hand out.
