Yet hadn't she kissed him? Waited for him? Her clean aloe scent teased into his memory along with the taste of her when they'd kissed. Progress? Maybe, but then he'd realized how much more he wanted for her, all or nothing. Win or lose, no in between, in what promised to be a tough-as-hell battle without much of a foundation to withstand the storm in the making.

No trust either way. He realized now that it hadn't been there to start with or they would have told each other more.

Easier to tell crap that didn 't matter.

In a splash of further realization as blinding as a floodlight for a guy wearing NVGs, it hit him why she hadn't told him about Yasmine. Because it mattered. It hurt too damned much.

Exactly the same reason he hadn't told her about Tina.

He would have sworn he was over losing her. God, it was fifteen years ago. Yet right now he could almost feel the pinch of a bandage being ripped from an old wound only to find the whole damned thing had festered under the protective covering.

Froot Loops. Things from the past dogged a person no matter what. He wasn't over Tina's death. The cut-off-at-the-knees pain of it burned all over again from being exposed, leaving him in need of somewhere to hide out alone to lick his wounds until he could put himself back together again.

And in that one-second flash, his problems doubled to a pair of women in his head. And no one in his bed.

Chapter 9

Knowing she should be in bed didn't stop Monica from waiting for Jack. She'd met with Crusty about Yasmine, checked in with the command post about the drop, even watched Jack's plane land. He was fine, the mission a success, not that she expected anything less from him.

Standing outside his room to catch him after debrief, she told herself she was waiting around to tell him about Yasmine. She knew better.

She needed his level steadiness to settle her world after the conversation with her youngest sister. While Jack's I-don't-give-a-shit attitude often drove her crazy, other times she envied his ability to shrug things off. He didn't dwell or let stuff out of his control bother him.

Froot Loop memories. He accepted life's quirks, banging back a handful of cereal while acknowledging he didn't like little planes. No apologies or mad dash for a shrink to analyze for possible claustrophobia. Adapt. Move on.

He knew how to let go of his past.

She needed that now. So much. God help her, she was slowly beginning to wonder if she needed Jack.

And there he was, all wide shoulders and hard angles, with the sweaty swirl of dark hair along his brow. Jack strode down the hall, Rodeo behind with a pensive frown marring his normally suave, unflappable demeanor.

Jack turned to his copilot. "Go ahead without me and you can have first dibs on the shower."

Rodeo thumped him on the back. "Take it easy, man."

The copilot skated one more curious glance Monica's way before circling past and into the two-man room.

Jack didn't move, making Monica come to him, an odd sensation after so long of always finding him in her face and space. As if drawn by a magnet, she stepped closer, closer still until she stopped short. Intensity radiated from him, something dark, alien, even a little mean and so unlike Jack. His stand-back vibes created boundaries around him until the magnet feeling suddenly shifted poles to propel her away.

What the hell was going on? "Is everything all right?"

"Just fine." He swiped a hand through his sweaty hair creased from a serious case of helmet-head. "You could have just hung out in the command post to hear how things went."

"I already did that."

"Then why are you here?"

His abrupt tone acted like a cold splash over her. Was the thrill of the chase gone? She'd started to weaken so now he didn't care anymore? Damn but that possibility bit. Even while she'd predicted it might happen, she couldn't stomach the thought that the past seven months had meant that little to him.

Still pride was difficult to subdue. She refused to be like any of the ex-live-ins her father had gone through, red-eyed, weeping women jamming possessions into a suitcase once her father booted the woman out for becoming too needy. "I found Yasmine wandering around the halls after you left."

"Was she coming out of the Colonel's room?"

"God, no."

"Then I wouldn't worry about it. She can't leave, and everything important is sealed tight." He shuffled from boot to boot, eyeing his door, obviously wanting the hell away from her ASAP.

Damn him. Well, he could just sit tight for five freaking seconds and answer her questions. She wasn't going to bolt off into her room next door like some intimidated rabbit. "What if she's not being straight up?"

"She's being watched. There's really not much more we can do than that except shunt her back into the Rubistanian community after we're through. Which of course could put us in sticky diplomatic waters because of her mother."

"I realize all of that, and I'm trying like hell not to let my bias against her affect the way I'm thinking." She mentally counted to cool her temper at Jack as well as Yasmine. "She said she was washing her spare set of clothes."

"Anything else?"

She crossed her arms under her breasts. "Not anything important."

His eyes fell to her chest. Interest flickered. "Okay, I'll mention it to Keagan and Crusty at the next briefing."

"Thank you."

He pivoted away. Double damn him.

Then his shoulders fell. With a sigh that sounded more like a snarl of self-disgust, he turned back. "What's wrong?"

"Don't put yourself out on my account," she couldn't resist muttering.

"Mon, I'm in a shitty mood. Doesn't happen often, but that's how it is tonight. So if you have something else to say, spill it now before I turn into a really surly son of a bitch."

Kind of felt like he was halfway there already.

Her arms fell back to her sides. "Why do I feel like such a grown-up tattletale?''

He leaned so close she thought for a moment he might kiss her. Instead his face blanked of emotion. "It's all about the Froot Loops, babe. And how the past has a helluva way of coming right back to cut us off at the knees when we least expect it."

Jack strode three paces past her to open the door to her quarters and waited for her to step inside. Standing in her gaping doorway, she watched Jack pivot, disappear into his room.

Babe. Pushing her away. Leaving her alone. But wasn't that what she'd asked for over the past months? For Jack to leave her be and quit pushing her to give more because she wasn't ready. She wasn't sure. She didn't trust her judgment around a man who scrambled her brains until she couldn't think. And without her reason, what was she?

Alone.

Her mama's voice whispered in the vented air wafting down the empty hall. Watch out what you wish for, sugar. You might just get it.

Life seemed to be granting her wishes in double doses these days.

Yasmine tipped her face to absorb the warmth of the midday sun, strolling across the cracked cement, ever aware of not one but both of her latest escorts. Crusty and his OSI friend walked a discreet but undeniable distance behind her.

She had wanted safety. Too bad neither of them was the escort she preferred. She was not sure whether to blame the Colonel because of their chat in the hangar the day before. Or if the escorts came due to Monica and their late-night run-in. Either way, she couldn't breathe even with a wide expanse of uninterrupted desert stretching in front of her.

Refusing to allow anyone to destroy her brief respite from the steaming kitchen, she resolved to soak up every remaining moment of what could be her final days in her homeland. Not that she actually had to work anymore according to the intelligence persons. But she was afraid of stirring talk among any of the other hired locals in case one might be spying for Ammar.

She shuddered in spite of the heat. No question, leaving this place was the right thing to do, but still an odd homesickness already tore at her soul. There was much to love about Rubistan, rich in ancient heritage and stark beauty.

Unlike the sweltering kitchen. Ugh! A detestable place.

Adjusting the drape of her favorite rose scarf, Yasmine stole a covert peek at the OSI officer with Crusty. Intelligence officers in her country certainly never looked like this man. Other intelligence personnel visiting her country either wore suits or, in more informal settings like this, wore khakis with a nondescript shirt. This man paired his pants with a shirt in outrageous colors, lime-green today, as if he did not mind drawing attention to himself. With his sun-bleached, spiked hair he looked more like a beach boy than an operative.

Excellent disguise. She could take lessons from him.

Her feet carried her farther, toward the buzz of voices. Toward one voice in particular she tried to tell herself she did not recognize right up until the moment the man came into sight.

Colonel Cullen's closeness back in the hangar had left her off balance. Surely if she watched him from a distance that would not be so obvious. And truth be told, she did not know if she was ready for another such conversation with him.

She had expected to trust him. She had not expected to like the sound of his voice. The rasp of his wit. The touch of his hands.

Did he sense her presence as she did his? She certainly could not tell from his attitude. He didn't even glance her way while he talked to his fellow officers.

Irritation itched more than her air-dried dress. Surely the clothing washed in harsh detergent and dried over a chair in her room had to be the reason her skin suddenly chafed, oversensitive to each brush of fabric.

She stopped. Two pairs of feet behind her stopped, as well.

How ridiculous to pretend they were not there. Why not speak to them? Yes, they could sit here in the sun and talk. Nothing wrong with that, even if it happened to be close to where a certain rugged colonel met with his men.

"Gentlemen?" she called over her shoulder.

She could almost hear their confusion. She stifled a laugh. "Come walk with me and save yourselves the trouble of trying to keep up."

"No trouble, ma'am," Crusty answered, ambling forward, the ever-present wrinkles in his flight suit rippling as he walked. "No trouble at all."

Because she had not tried to make trouble. She may not have been able to lose them, but most definitely could have made them work.

However, her survival instincts recognized these men were not to be toyed with. As much as she told herself they would not resort to painful measures to subdue her, she was not willing to take the risk she might be wrong.

Suspicions did not fade easily. Getting to know her jailers would be wise.

Yasmine trailed her fingers along the rough exterior wall, flecking paint free, moving nearer to the end of the airport building. Nearer to voices. The Colonel's voice rode the wind toward her as he talked to two other men while four soldiers climbed to the one-story roof, a line of a hundred more filing alongside the building.

The four men...ran toward the edge?

Yasmine gasped. "Why are they doing that?"

Crusty tipped up his sunglasses and searched. "Doing what?"

She pointed toward the four lunatics hurtling through the air toward the sandy earth. Landing. Rolling to their sides. Ouch! "Jumping off the building. Falling down."

Laughing, Crusty dropped his aviator shades back into place. "Parachute training. Practicing their PLF—parachute landing fall. They're using the one-story, flat roof as a makeshift PLF platform."

"Fall? That seems silly. Why not land on your feet?"

"Because you might shatter your ankles or knees. Falling to the side in a controlled manner helps absorb the shock of the landing by distributing it out among different body parts." Crusty reached into the leg pocket of his flight suit, pulled out a small pack of peanuts. "Ever lay on a bed of nails? Same principle."

He proffered the snack bag her way in an obvious attempt to change the subject. "Want some?"

"No thank you." She watched the soldiers roll to their feet again and dust sand from their uniforms. "I thought these soldiers were only here to distribute food and medical aid."

"We all need to stay up on our parachuting skills." Crusty pitched back a handful of peanuts while the OSI officer silently pierced her soul with all-knowing, sea-green eyes.

She kept her gaze steady on Crusty, a man who never seemed to stop eating. Perhaps she could pry information out of him with a cookie—baked by someone other than herself, of course. "These are some of your Airborne Rangers, then?"

Crusty walked alongside, crunching peanuts, assessing her with narrow-eyed suspicion before answering. "Soldiers other than Rangers can be airborne qualified. Regardless, we always train. Always. What we do is dangerous even if it's a simple humanitarian run. And of course we're always working to be mission ready for the worst."

Her gaze locked on the Colonel's broad back in mottled tan camouflage as she wondered how shoulders that seemed so invincible seconds before now had mortality etched across them. "What if one of them breaks his leg and can not work?"

"Better his leg than his life from lack of training."

"But can't they die in training, too?'' How many odds had the Colonel defied over the years?

"It happens. A reality of a dangerous job. But training hard under controlled circumstances keeps our casualties lower, and ultimately keeps far more of us alive in combat."

"Are not the higher-ups in service like Colonel Cullen exempt from these dangerous training exercises?"

"Well, no doubt a commander becomes valuable for the overall knowledge he has, the cohesiveness his leadership gives to a unit. But he still has to perform in the field." Crusty pointed his half-eaten bag of peanuts toward the Colonel. "The Regimental Commander over there, for example. Above all, he's still an Army soldier. Airborne qualified. No different from an aviator wing commander staying current on his flight status. He may not fly as often—or in this case, jump—but he still has to be qualified. And he'd better not screw up in front of his men or his credibility is shot to hell, which means there goes the unit cohesiveness if they can't trust their leader."

Which meant her colonel still threw himself out of airplanes, an image that thrilled and scared her all at once with how much the man already affected her emotions.

And she didn't even know his first name.

What a stressful way to live. "Your wife is all right with this?"

"She's a special lady."

This man was definitely taken, and happily so until it almost stirred envy. "Did you have a nice conversation with your wife and little brothers last night?"