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Pulling Mary Elise into his arms had to be the stupidest thing he’d done since his rocket blasted a hole in the yard and through the neighbor’s stained-glass window twenty years ago.
Daniel thudded down the carpeted hall into his living room and dropped to the edge of the leather sofa. One foot at a time, he unlaced his boots and thunked them on the floor. Sleeping would be tough enough with Mary Elise a couple of doors down. Now it would be impossible with the feel of her body imprinted anew in his brain and a persistent auburn hair twined round his wrist.
So what if he preferred redheads? He had a “type.” Big deal. Most guys had a type or a preferred female attribute that attracted them. Made perfect sense and had absolutely nothing to do with Mary Elise.
Slumping back on the sofa, he scooped up a Rubik’s Cube from the end table and clicked through rotations while sorting through his life. He normally liked puzzles and the order they restored to his world. He might wear wrinkled flight suits and inside-out T-shirts, but he had reasons. He appreciated order and logic.
Yeah, he had a type—spunky redheads. Except Mary Elise’s spunk had been tempered to a quieter, steely will. What had happened to the scrawny girl who followed him into a nuclear plant, jotting notes for a school newspaper exposé?
And what had she been holding back from telling him during the flight? His hands whipped across the cube, lining up a new row of blues before shuffling yellows. Her voice may have quieted over the years, but the passion in her expression when she’d looked at him hadn’t diminished. He’d stood in his bedroom doorway staring into her eyes, green eyes alive with confusion and pain and yes, even a desire so strong an emotional half-wit like him could read it.
Then and now he could only think what it would have been like if the day’s outcome had been different. Too easily things could have gone sideways. Tag’s call on the headset to alert him of a problem could have been worse. Finding Mary Elise in that crate had shocked a year off his life.
Finding her dead in that crate would have killed him. He’d forced that image out of his mind all day. During those few quiet moments in the doorway, the scenario had blindsided him like a bogey flying in from a six-o’clock position. This incredible titian-haired crusader who snuck junk food to a kid with a health food fanatic mom and crawled into crates with frightened little boys at the risk of her own life could have died before he had the chance to hold her again.
So he’d pulled her close in honor of those good memories they’d shared. And his logical brain taunted him with an irrefutable fact. He had to hold her again.
The next morning Daniel measured coffee grounds while listening to three weeks’ worth of messages on his voicemail. He’d barely had time to fling his duffel bag on the bed after a covert TDY dropping CIA officers deep into Cantou before the call from the Rubistanian attaché had rung through.
Cell phone tucked under his chin, Daniel returned the bag of coffee to the steel cabinet in his galley kitchen and tucked the paper filter into the coffeemaker. He figured he would have at least another hour to get his head together before Mary Elise and the boys rolled out of bed. He never needed much sleep at a pop himself, and the bunking conditions hadn’t been the best. A fact that had more to do with a raging arousal harder than the sofa.
And a host of memories even more unrelenting. So persistent even his morning ritual of a five-mile run on the beach followed by a workout in the clubhouse gym hadn’t helped. By the time he hit the cold shower and changed into a clean flight suit, he accepted the fact that Mary Elise had lodged herself in his brain again.
Daniel jammed the glass pot under the water purifier while listening through the seventy-five accumulated messages.
Two hang-ups.
The dry cleaners calling for him to pick up his service dress uniform. As much as he might wish otherwise, he couldn’t get away with wearing everything wrinkled and unstarched.
Next message, an automated telemarketer.
PunchingDelete, he shut the water off with his elbow, juggling the coffeepot before finally opting for speakerphone.
“Hey, Dan?” Feminine Southern tones crooned through the speaker, filling the sparse kitchen. “Hannah from upstairs in 18-B. If you get this message, give me a call and let me know when you’ll be back. I can ask the superintendent to let me in so you’ll have milk and stuff waiting when you get home.”
Great. That “and stuff” would no doubt be unfit for kids’ eyes, like the time he’d returned to find Hannah waiting with a shrimp casserole and a ribbed tank top that encased gravity-defying double-D’s. And Hannah wassmartas well as hot—a biochemist researcher at the medical university, forcrying out loud—what more could a man want? Yet still he wasn’t interested in the brainy blonde.
Blonde? Not redhead.
Two more hang-ups cycled through.
He flipped the coffeemaker on as the next message picked up. “Daniel? Elaine. Uh, just wanted to let you know I’ll be in Charleston on business next week and, uh, thought maybe we could, well, have dinner or something. I’ll cook. Well, call me.”
An image of auburn-haired Elaine taunted him. Daniel glanced heavenward and barked, “Okay, okay, Big Guy. You’ve made your point.”
He’d actually had a semiserious relationship with Elaine, a chef at a five-star joint. He’d even donned a tie for her once, not that he hesitated in breaking things off six months ago when he’d transferred to South Carolina. He’d cited the long-distance-relationship reason, already realizing they wouldn’t work out. She’d offered to pack up her chef’s knives and follow him.
He felt bad.
But not bad enough to mislead her by letting her food processor back into his life. Like his life wasn’t screwed up enough right now anyway. And then he still had to puzzle through whatever had Mary Elise so on edge. Daniel reached on top of the refrigerator for a box of Pop-Tarts.
“Is she a good cook?” Trey’s voice drifted from behind him.
Pivoting, Daniel ripped open the pastry box. “Run that by me again?”
His brother stood in the archway, knobby knees showing just below the hem of a Thunderbirds air show T-shirt. Not a hint of bed-head in sight in his dark hair, the kid carried a puffed-chest air and haughty look that would have done their old man proud.
“Is that Elaine lady on your voicemail really a good cook?”
