“Was he a good kisser?”
“At nine, how would we know?”
“Your papa catch you at it?”
“No, but a good-sized wave did. Knocked us both breathless against the side of the cabin. Chipped his tooth.” She opened her mouth and tapped one tooth in from her right upper incisor. “Did it with the top of my head. Still has the chip as far as I know.”
“You marked him for life.”
“Yep. He never recovered. Married and two kids, but I’m the one who marked him.”
They talked of high school sports and Spec Ops Forces testing. Somewhere around favorite foods she felt herself drifting off. When Derek offered his shoulder, leaning against him seemed the most natural thing in the world.
40
Every one of Derek’s instincts were ringing alarm bells.
Abby’s last sigh of contentment before her breath evened out into the lazy song of sleep told a whole story. Whatever her conscious mind thought, her subconscious had made a definite decision about him. One that apparently included sleepy, cozy thoughts.
Personally, his inner dial was set to run for the trees, except there were none to run to high over the Atlantic. No matter what she thought, it wasn’t a guy thing. There was no Y-chromosome gene that said screw ’em and get out. It was just the safest reality.
He wasn’t even one of those guys who claimed they just wanted to spare the women future pain. Fighting as a D-boy ranked as one of the ultimate high-risk occupations, and ending up injured or dead had accounted for too many of his teammates. Photos with a D-boy’s face were never published until after they died, because the crazies hated Delta operators even more than Navy SEALs. Once revealed, they would be personally hunted. But Derek always figured that if a woman fell in with a D-boy, and he made damn sure she knew what she was signing up for, then it was the woman’s choice.
No one could know the risks better than a person like Abby. How many missions had she run with her helo filled with the dead and dying? The downing of Extortion 17 and Turbine 33—two Chinooks that went down hard during the War in Afghanistan—would have both been before her time, but he’d wager she’d flown with plenty of people who’d lost friends among those fifty-six. Henderson, Beale, and Gibson would definitely have lost friends among them.
All three had served at the highest levels to go beyond the front lines in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. The only explanation for the Three Colonels’ presence was the importance of this Miss Watson. Must be a hell of a lady.
He rested his cheek on Abby’s hair.
What the hell was he doing? The soft feel of it almost had him bolting upright. But…he didn’t.
What the hell had happened to him? Forty-eight hours ago he’d rolled onto her helo and gone forward to check in with the pilot. Now he was flying off to invade a friendly country. Yet that wasn’t the weird part of the scenario.
Derek had always favored a be-here-now mindset. It served him well as a Delta Force operator. Women had always been the ultimate iteration of the mindset. Delta trained constantly, often on a thoroughly chaotic schedule just to keep them on their toes. And being the nation’s top counterterrorism unit, they were on call-up at all times.
They often launched with no time for even a phone call. His folks had gotten used to it. They knew that if they didn’t hear from the chaplain or his commanding officer, they should always assume that he was fine. His friends were either in the field with him or had long since lost touch. Connections with women? When a dinner date could easily be blown off for a month spent incommunicado while crawling through Burmese jungle? That didn’t work so well. What did work was if his attachments didn’t…well, attach.
Somehow, slipping past all his guards, Abby had undone that in a single night. He’d wanted to stay with her. Wanted to watch her wake up and have sex before the new day started.
And he definitely shouldn’t have started trading stories with her. Because the more he found out, the more he wanted to know. She made him want to be with her. She made him…laugh.
Most women, truth be told, made him want to leave.
Not this one.
41
“Why do I get the feeling that I’m not done with her?” Derek had tried to find the center of the rain shadow cast by the monstrous airplane without much luck. Technically ten degrees above freezing, the English air didn’t feel that warm for a second.
The Brits had cleared one end of the massive Base Hangar for them—being British they’d named it for exactly what it was, the base’s primary hangar. A quarter-mile of contiguous open space, it covered over five acres. Further down the row it had swallowed a pair of C-17 cargo planes getting fresh tires and an Airbus A-400M in the middle of an engine replacement. No one working on them yet, but the day was still early by anyone’s standards except the Night Stalkers.
Most of the crews had sought refuge from the chill rain inside the hangar while the C-5’s loadmasters pulled out Charlene One. Because that was Abby’s and—what he was coming to think of as his bird—he’d stayed by the ramp to watch the process. Abby and her senior crew chief Sam ignored the slashing ice water as they monitored the loadmasters’ every step. His best move was to stay out of the way, but the added bonus of watching Abby had been enough to keep him out here alone.
Except he wasn’t alone. Dilya and her dog had retreated from the rain by heading for the hangar at a dead run. He confirmed twice that he could see her hot-pink parka there. The way she could slip up to his elbow was still unnerving more often than not.
But at that elbow instead stood Colonel Gibson as if it was a sunny day in August.
“Uh, sir?”
