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He waited, and for a weak minute she actually considered leaning against one broad shoulder and telling him everything. Except she understood Danny too well—rather than just offer help as his father had done, he would take over, guns blazing into the middle of her mess.
Or worse yet, he wouldn’t believe her about Kent’s threats any more than her parents had. Either way, for the sake of the boys, she needed to keep him as far away from Kent as possible.
She stepped back. Away from Danny and the temptation of broad shoulders.
He nudged the pad toward her, no risky hand-to-hand exchange this time. “Here are numbers where you can reach me, if you want to put them in your cell phone. If there’s a pressing emergency, call this one. The copilot, Renshaw, lives in this complex with her fiancé.”
“Spike?” She followed Daniel across the living room to the door.
“Right. Up on the second floor. He’s off today and can be down in seconds.” Daniel paused under the porch overhang. “Promise me you’ll call if you need anything. Not just for the boys. For you too, okay?”
“Okay.” She lied. And suspected he knew it.
Daniel loped toward his shiny blue truck. Apparently he took more care with his vehicle than his flight suits. She stood in the open door, mug cradled in her hands, and let the heated ceramic warm the chill that increased as Danny backed up and drove away. She stared at his empty spot long after the truck’s rumble faded.
Shaking off whimsy, she spun toward the condo. Her feet tangled on the arrangement of flowerpots by the neighbor’s door. Mary Elise knelt to right one lopsided pot and scoop stray soil. She patted it back into colored planters filled with ferns, pansies and impatiens.
Her hand stilled on a final one tucked in the back in an incongruous bland terra-cotta pot. false unicorn. Frowning, she fingered the small greenish-white flowers, their blooms having held on beyond summer blooming season.
She’d been so touched when Kent brought her a small pot similar to this once, the simple romantic gesture more special than the dozen roses he’d given her after the second miscarriage. Or so she’d thought. Then he’d explained how false unicorn root supposedly increased fertility and prevented miscarriages.
By the end of the year, he’d bought her a window garden full of other such plants like red clover blossoms and blue cohosh. Not that he actually expected her to use them. He’d hired specialists, after all. Eventually, hope had withered along with words and creativity while her window garden blossomed in mocking contrast.
A chill iced up her spine. Rising, she searched the parking lot. Found nothing unusual. Her fingers slid from the tiny flowers and sought the warmth of her coffee mug.
Quit imagining things. The plant had nothing to do with Kent. She hadn’t heard even a whisper from him in the year since moving overseas. He’d either lost her trail or the edge to his insane fury had dulled.
But those fears were difficult to shed. Trust was hard to recapture. Mary Elise bolted inside, locked the door and tried to blot the image of the tiny plant outside. Tried. Failed. Hand gripping the knob, she sagged back.
Her gaze trekked across the living room to the bar separating it from the kitchen. Pop-Tart wrappers lay scattered across the counter with an open jar of peanut butter beside them.
Daniel’s life might seem wrinkled and disorganized from the outside, but his disorder was a choice for comfort in a man totally together on the inside. While she knew her dry cleaned and wrinkle-free silks shrouded a woman with a mess of a life.
* * *
Daniel bit out a crewdog-worthy curse with precision since there wasn’t anyonebutcrewdogs to hear him in the squadron corridors.
In seconds he would receive an ass-chewing from the Squadron Commander for skirting rules. Technically Daniel hadn’t busted a single regulation. But goodwill protocol on the other hand…
He hated playing politics. He left those niceties and games to his old man. Or rather once had.
Daniel ignored the pounding ache in his head and in a place some might call a heart while focusing on the more literal pounding yet to come. He lengthened his strides along the industrial carpet, past photos of previous commanders, by a planning room filled with crew members at work —the kind of toe-the-line officers who made life easier for men like his father and Lt. Col. Quade. Voices drifted into the hall—Marcus “Joker” Cardenas and Jack “Cobra” Korba. Solid flyers, intense and by the rules.
Unlike himself.
The Squadron Commander’s closed door loomed ahead. Man, the old open-door-policy days of Zach Dawson’s command were long gone. Just grit through it. Not the first reaming and sure wouldn’t be his last. Daniel rapped his knuckles twice.
“Yes.”
Okay, guess that meant enter. Daniel stepped inside the spacious office, stopping short of an oversize wooden desk looming with flags behind it. “You wanted to see me, sir?”
Lt. Col. Lucas Quade didn’t glance up from the file in front of him, the subtle put-down not lost on Daniel. He waited. Studied the rows of airplane photos, a C-17 framed alongside a print of the C-141 Quade flew earlier. Cornell diploma. With honors. Figures.
His old man had wanted him to go there.
Quade closed the file with precision before raising his gaze to Daniel without standing. “Is that how you report in a military manner, Baker?”
Ah, so that’s how the guy wanted to play it. Quade’s turf, they had to play Quade’s way. Just like days of old with Franklin Baker.
