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Somehow, telling him about this disaster in a letter hadn’t seemed right. Nor had calling him halfway around the world to drop a bomb of a whole different sort than he was used to. The kind of shock she had to deliver deserved face-to-face time.
Yes, she’d been slightly concerned that her husband might meet another woman in the eleven months he’d been gone but, considering he was in a foreign country fighting a war, Rina had figured that possibility was pretty slim.
She covertly watched as Chase met the other officers. He moved with a familiar, well-oiled grace—precision-timed movements he’d honed with hours in the sky. From a safe distance in the corner she let her eyes wander across his body. It was good to see him…whole.
Not that she’d ever tell him that.
The last year of her life was supposed to have been amazing. She’d landed one of the most coveted assignments in the air force. The competition was fierce for each position within the squadron. It had been the culmination of years of work. Her father had been so proud of her.
She should have been ecstatic. Instead she’d spent the past eleven months living in fear—that Chase would die, that someone would discover their marriage, that her entire world and the career she’d spent her life building would be snatched out from under her.
Their one stupid mistake could cost her everything. If anyone in the air force found out that she and Chase were married—and by Elvis!—and hadn’t informed their superior officers, hadn’t filed necessary paperwork…they could be accused of fraud, demoted, asked to resign their commissions.
Not to mention she’d look like a complete idiot. That would do wonders for the reputation she’d built as a level-headed, competent officer.
At the very least they’d receive a formal reprimand in their files which would kill any forward momentum their careers had. Being stationed in Timbuktu wasn’t her life’s dream.
Actually, she wasn’t entirely certain what her life’s dream was anymore. She simply couldn’t shake the sensation that something wasn’t right. That something was missing.
And she didn’t mean her husband. One night together did not make a relationship long enough to miss. No, the sensation had started long before he’d rematerialized in her life eleven months ago. It had just gotten stronger once he’d walked back out of it again.
Rina sighed silently, not knowing what to do about it. Easier to concentrate on the mess she’d managed to create in one shining, unforgettable, destructive night.
She’d had a plan.
A plan that had been exponentially complicated when Chase had been assigned to the Thunderbirds. It would have been one thing if she’d simply contacted him once he got home, presented him with the annulment paperwork and they took care of the problem with no one the wiser.
But now they had to work together. Not to mention that she was in charge of his medal ceremony. A ceremony she’d just learned the President of the United States was planning to attend.
Chase was taking over the third position, right wing, for the four-man formation within the squadron. In all the years they’d both served in the air force not once had they been stationed together…until now. It was sheer luck—or misfortune depending on how you looked at it—that Chase had become an overnight media sensation by saving the life of a visiting senator and his assistant while in Iraq.
The air force hadn’t wanted to miss out on that kind of publicity. The Air Demonstration Squadron was the public face of the air force. Who better to place on the team than someone who would gain media attention no matter where they performed?
“Captain Rina McAllister, let me introduce Major Chase Carden. Rina is our public affairs officer.”
His eyes settled on her. She could feel them, not by the weight of their study but by the tingling sensation at the nape of her neck. Her shoulder blades itched to roll the sensation away. A plastic smile, not unfriendly but not quite real, died halfway to formation on her lips as he took her in. Something wicked sparked at the back of his eyes right before he snagged her outstretched hand in his.
She’d meant to be professional, to handle meeting the newest pilot for the Thunderbirds squadron with nothing more than the calm indifference everyone would expect.
Yeah, right.
Her palm began to sweat where it rested against his. Her lungs suddenly felt as if she’d sucked a brick through her partially opened mouth instead of much-needed air. And someplace, deep between her thighs, she began to tremble with a muscle memory she’d tried hard to forget.
“Sabrina.”
She cleared the brick from her throat, firmly dislodged her hand from his and said, “No one calls me Sabrina.” Hadn’t she mentioned that to him before?
“I do.”
Some nasty urge she should have fought wanted to wipe the twinkle in his deep blue eyes away. He set her on edge. She didn’t like it. Especially not here. Here where she was perfect, efficient Rina.
“No. You don’t.”
Their commander looked at them, a puzzled frown puckering his eyebrows. “Do you two know each other? I didn’t think you’d been stationed together before.”
Chase opened his mouth. She had no idea what he might say and couldn’t take a chance. She cut him off before he could do damage they’d both regret.
“We haven’t. My father introduced us several years ago. It’s been a long time, though. Right after I finished the academy.”
She’d spent the past eleven months keeping the biggest mistake of her life a secret until she could make it disappear completely. She wasn’t about to let one slip of Chase’s tongue ruin everything.
Although she could remember Chase’s tongue doing other things…Clamping down hard on the thought, Rina tried to refocus her attention.
With a shrug, the commander walked away toward some of the enlisted waiting to meet the newest members of the squadron. Chase lingered a moment too long before leaning in closely to speak in a low, rumbling voice for her ears only, “I don’t remember you objecting to Sabrina when I was buried deep inside you, screaming your name.”
A bolt of heat shot straight through her, electrifying every nerve ending on its path to her curling toes. His words were unexpected. That was the only reason her body reacted.
It wasn’t because his lips were close enough to her skin that all she’d have to do was simply turn her head and they would connect with the sensitive side of her neck.
Her body was melting. She could feel each deserting cell as it went AWOL against her better judgment.
She’d had a speech prepared, had an idea in her head about what this first meeting of theirs would be like. None of the scenarios she’d run through had involved a complete and total sexual meltdown.
Laughter echoed off the wall down the hallway, dragging her mind back from the brink of insanity. Jerking away from him, Rina pulled her spine straight, yanked her shirt flat and raised completely blank eyes to Chase.
“This isn’t the place for that kind of discussion, Major. It was one night. A long time ago. And it doesn’t matter.”
WHAT A COOL LITTLE LIAR she was. It did matter. She might not want it to, but her body remembered every last second of their night together. Her stiff little nipples fighting against her standard-issue shirt proved that.
He sure as hell remembered every last second, in living, vivid, Technicolor detail. He also remembered waking up alone in a big, cold bed.
He had not been happy.
Chase had known she’d be here today. Her presence was the only bright spot in the events that had led up to his appointment to the squadron. Any pilot worth his salt wanted a chance to perform with the best of the best. And he did, too. He just wished his chance hadn’t come at the expense of several soldiers.
What he hadn’t known was how he’d react to seeing her. He’d expected to be angry, a little upset at the very least. He had not relished having the tables turned on him that morning. He was usually the one to back out gracefully after a one-night stand.
But perhaps that was the problem. For him, it hadn’t been a one-night stand. It had been the culmination of six years of wondering what they would have been like together if they’d gotten the chance. And the reality had shot his fantasies out of the sky in a blazing burst of orgasmic proportions.
Apparently, she hadn’t felt the same—if her behavior then and now was any indication. Instead of the warm, sexy, unbelievably amazing woman he’d held in his arms, Sabrina McAllister had reverted to the calm, cool exterior she clung wholeheartedly to. The urge to fluster her was strong.
It had bothered him that he’d thought of her—exclusively—for months. No woman had ever held that kind of control over his interest before. Plenty of beautiful, sexy, smart women had been part of his life through the years. But only Sabrina McAllister had stayed there long after she was gone.
Maybe it was being in Iraq, with a shortage of time, energy and availability for sexual conquests. But he doubted it. Something in his gut told him it was Sabrina herself. Which was a problem.
He didn’t know what to do with her—or his all-consuming desire to possess her again. He’d only talked to her for five minutes and he could barely concentrate on anything else.
He didn’t want a long-term relationship.
He traveled enough being a pilot. He was at the mercy of the air force whims. He had no control over where he went or when he’d be home.
But that made his attraction to Sabrina complicated. If they weren’t working together he would have simply indulged in a wild affair for as long as it lasted and then walked away when they were both done. But now walking away wasn’t an option.
The problem was he had no idea if he could keep his hands off of her. Or if he even wanted to try.
Shaking his head, he decided he didn’t need to solve the problem today. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he watched Sabrina stride away. The straight, knee-length skirt of her uniform played against the backs of her thighs. Each step stretched the material taut over the curve of her derriere. He’d had firsthand knowledge of the body she preferred to keep covered.
It was one hell of a juicy secret. One he didn’t mind keeping all to himself.
Shaking away the memories, Chase focused his attention back to where it belonged…his new assignment.
The past several months of his life hadn’t exactly been a picnic—and if that wasn’t the understatement of the year he didn’t know what was.
As if spending each and every day with the responsibility of protecting fighting men and women hadn’t been enough, he’d somehow become a very reluctant war hero. A simple action on his part had gotten him way more attention than he’d ever wanted. What had started out as the mistake of a lifetime, losing a multimillion-dollar plane to ground fire, had turned into the media sensation of the nation.
His job had been simple. Protect the convoy heading into the northern part of the country. And he’d failed. Miserably. He’d been unable to help himself, let alone the men and women he was supposed to protect.
He’d simply been doing his job when he’d found the New York senator and his assistant cowering behind a blazing pile of metal after ejecting from his totaled plane. The fact that the man was being groomed to run in the next presidential election hadn’t helped Chase any. Nor had the man’s undying and unending praise as he’d granted interviews to every damn news outlet in the country.
People had died. Because of his call they’d diverted a helicopter meant to pick up wounded from another part of the convoy half a mile away. Another chopper had been sent but it hadn’t gotten there fast enough for some. Soldiers had died—soldiers who might have made it if they’d gotten medical attention sooner. And that was his fault. The mission hadn’t been a success. And he sure as hell didn’t deserve a medal. But apparently, he was the only one who saw it that way.
The attention did not sit well.
Wanting something to drive out the ever-present visions of torn bodies, burning hunks of metal and agonizing screams, he found himself following Sabrina, reaching out for her. He grabbed onto her arm, stopping her before she could disappear again. “Have dinner with me.”
Chase fought the urge to pull her closer into his space. Something in the tilt of her head told him that would not be wise.
“I don’t date pilots.”
Unable to stop himself, he moved nearer, pulling in a breath of her. The fresh strawberry scent of some female bath product washed over him. It was sweet and innocent, feminine and pretty. It didn’t match the passionate woman of his memories. Somehow it didn’t match the polished exterior before him either.
“Who said anything about a date? I believe we have some unfinished business to discuss.”
The alarm that widened her eyes surprised him. He hadn’t expected that strong a response from her. Maybe he’d assumed the wrong thing when she’d snuck away from him in the middle of the night.
“Wh…what do we have to discuss?”
“Why you disappeared, for one. The picture you left was a nice touch.” He moved into her space, letting his fingers brush lightly against the cotton sleeve of her shirt. He couldn’t touch her more, even if she’d have let him, without drawing attention. “Did you know I took it with me? To Iraq?”
She shook her head, her eyes swimming with emotions too tangled for him to pull apart and name.
She moved away from him, leaving him with a cold and clammy feeling he wasn’t used to and didn’t like.
“There are things we need to talk about. Dinner tonight would be fine. After that, it’s strictly business, though.”
He laughed silently as she spun on her heel and walked away.
Yeah, right. There was nothing just business about the energy humming between them. It had been there from the moment he’d met her seven years ago and it wasn’t going anywhere just because Sabrina no longer wished it to exist.
She might have run away from him before. But this time she had nowhere to go.
SHE’D GONE HOME, looked in the mirror and decided to leave her uniform on. It was a layer. A wall between the competent, military woman she was and the whimsical, reckless side of her personality that only seemed to break free around Chase.
Did barriers work if the person you were trying to keep out—or rather in—was yourself?
Rina didn’t know, but she was damn sure going to try.
She looked across the small bar table at Chase.
He was different. She’d been too preoccupied to notice this afternoon, but now that she had nothing to distract her…There was still plenty of his normal swagger and charm to go around, but underneath there was a sadness she hadn’t seen before.
Something made her want to soothe it away. But she couldn’t. Not and keep herself whole. If she let Chase Carden in he had the ability to obliterate everything she’d built—her life, her career, everything that mattered.
Looking at him, she knew any woman in this bar—hell, the city—would jump at the chance to be Chase Carden’s wife. And a small part of her thought maybe she would, too.
If he had wanted a wife, a relationship. If being a daredevil hero, an aerial jockey hadn’t been the single-minded goal of his life.
If it were real.
But it wasn’t.
Besides, if they started anything that remotely resembled a relationship their chances for an annulment would disappear like a puff of smoke. And an annulment was the only way for them to keep this whole thing a secret. And keeping this whole thing a secret was the only way they were both going to prevent the possibility of being court-martialed for fraud.
With the simple act of not reporting their marriage they’d both broken several major air force rules. And the air force tended to frown on that.
Chase had broken more by not completing all the required paperwork for entry into the Thunderbirds. There was no way he could have gotten her consent to the assignment…not when he didn’t even know she was his wife. Would the air force consider it fraud if he hadn’t known about the marriage? Possibly not. But it wasn’t worth the risk for either of them.
A simple, quiet, quick annulment and their marriage never happened. If she could just figure out how to tell him they were married in the first place.
“Would you like a drink?”
“No!”
Chase and their waiter both turned startled eyes to stare at her. Rina dropped her gaze back down to the menu in front of her, concentrating on the words, and tried to ignore the blush she knew was creeping up her face.
She didn’t want to let him unsettle her. Unfortunately, he did. No man had ever had the ability to set her on edge with a single look the way Chase Carden seemed to do.
He made her feel things she didn’t want to feel. Want things she knew she couldn’t have. And question the course of her life that had been set since she was five.
Without even trying. That’s probably what upset her the most. He had no idea he knocked her off balance. From the moment he’d walked in today she’d felt a little off center, like a ball spinning five degrees off axis—not enough to see, just enough to feel.
“I’m still paying for the last time I overindulged.” She gave a halfhearted smile and ordered a Diet Coke. Taking a deep breath, she let oxygen flood her body, bringing with it a familiar sense of equilibrium.
“Better?”
Maybe he had noticed his effect on her. She wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
“Maybe.” She let her lips twist into a self-deprecating smile.
