Ex Marks the Spot (Harlequin Next)

by Merline Lovelace

  “That’s what they said.”

  “So when do you start?” Sue Ellen huffed.

  Andi wasn’t about to admit she’d already started. Ignoring the pulsing ache just under her breastbone, she arranged the CDs next to the handy-dandy little box that was a combination of stereo, AM/FM radio, CD player and iPod dock.

  “There. We’re done.”

  She sat back on her heels and surveyed the high-ceilinged room. With her books lining the white-painted built-in bookshelves and her collection of Swarovski crystal critters displayed in a glass-fronted curio cabinet, the house already felt like home.

  A yawning Sue Ellen stretched both arms above her head. Her tank top separated from her shorts, exposing the diamond nestled in her belly button. Andi blinked at the glittering stud.

  “When did you get that?”

  “A couple weeks ago. I figured I might as well do something with my engagement ring from number two. Especially since I paid for it.” Contorting into a U, Sue Ellen contemplated her navel. “Looks good, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s, uh, eye-catching.”

  “You should get a belly ring or stud. Something in emeralds to match your eyes.”

  “Not allowed.”

  The automatic reply slipped out before Andi remembered she didn’t have to conform to the Air Force’s uniform regulations anymore. She could have any part of her pierced or tattooed she wanted. Not that she wanted either. Still, it came as a small shock to think that her body—like her life—was now her own.

  “What do you want to do for supper?” Sue Ellen asked with another joint-cracking stretch. “I hear a great new seafood place just opened in Navarre Beach.”

  “I’m all gritty and sweaty. How about we just order in a pizza?”

  “That works for me. Mushrooms, onions and green peppers on my half. You make the call while I fetch us something cold to drink.”

  She returned a few moments later with two champagne flutes.

  “I brought a bottle of ’03 Piper-Heidsieck with me. Thought we should celebrate your arrival in style.”

  After shedding husband number two, Sue Ellen had joined a wine club in an attempt to expand her interests and put her old life behind her. In the process, she’d developed a passion for fine vintages.

  Andi, on the other hand, couldn’t tell the difference between a $6.99 supermarket brand and a hundred-dollar label. She suspected this Piper-whatever would go down like the nectar of the gods. Unfortunately she couldn’t sample it.

  “I’d better stick to Diet Coke. I’m not supposed to drink alcohol while I’m taking these antibiotics.”

  “Oh, shit! I’m sorry. I didn’t think about that.”

  “Hey, it’s no big deal. Just the opposite, in fact. I’ve lost five pounds since I gave up beer and margaritas.”

  Sue Ellen kept her thoughts to herself as she went back to the kitchen to trade champagne for diet cola, but she couldn’t help worrying whether her friend’s weight loss was due to more than just abstinence from alcohol.

  Andi seemed healthy enough. Her eyes held the same sparkle they always had. Her sun-streaked brown hair showed a glossy sheen. Tall and trim, she carried herself with the same athletic grace and unconscious air of authority she always had, in or out of uniform. Yet the medical evaluation board had deemed her condition serious enough to mandate retirement from active military service.

  Since learning about Andi’s condition, Sue Ellen had spent countless hours on Google looking up articles about subacute viral endocarditis, the condition Andi had developed as a result of that damn bug. She’d struggled through descriptions of the various forms of the disease and associated treatments, which might ultimately require replacement of damaged heart valves. Most patients had to be hospitalized for long periods and treated with massive doses of antibiotics administered intravenously. In rare instances, highly motivated patients with a previously stable heart and a viral-type infection could be treated at home.

  Andi was nothing if not highly motivated.

  Sue Ellen knew Dave had done his own extensive research and consulted the cardiologist at the base who’d been faxed Andi’s medical records. The doc couldn’t violate patient-physician confidentiality, of course, but she had helped Dave understand the parameters of the disease. Dave, in turn, had explained it to Sue Ellen. Strange how concern for Andi had bridged the gap spawned by the divorce.

  Thank God Andi had agreed to come to Florida instead of moving to Ohio to be close to her older sister. Carol was smart and savvy but had troubles of her own. She was also no good in a crisis, as she’d be the first to admit.

  The roar of a powerful engine pulled Sue Ellen from her thoughts.

  “What the heck…?”

  The deafening thunder drew both women to the living room windows, where they spotted a riding mower chugging across the lawn next door. Dave sat in the driver’s seat, his back bare to the still-hot evening sun. New-mown grass dusted the gleaming skin.

  “’Bout time he cut those weeds,” Andi commented. “I must have shamed him into it.”

  Sue Ellen hooked a brow. “That’s what you guys discussed when you went over there last night? Weeds?”

  She knew she’d made a mistake when Andi turned to her with a frown creasing her brow.

  “Who said I went over there?”

  “You must have mentioned it.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You sure? I distinctly remember us talking about him this morning, at the kitchen counter.”

  “About him, yes, but I never said I went to his place—last night or any other time.”

  Her angry glance swept to the man on the mower and back again.

  “Dammit, Sue Ellen. What’s going on here? Have you and my ex-husband formed some sort of unholy alliance?”

  Caught, she could only admit the truth. “Not an alliance, exactly. More like a loose confederation.”

  “But you don’t even like him.”

  “Hey, he damn near broke your heart. That makes him scum in my book.”

  Sue Ellen had never bought Andi’s stubborn contention that the divorce was by mutual agreement. She’d been through two herself. The hurt was inescapable.

  “The point is, Dave is as worried about you as I am. That puts us on the same side.”

  Andi’s mouth folded into a thin line. “I didn’t come down here to be worried about or fussed over.”

  “I know, I know. We won’t fuss. I promise. And we won’t intrude. We just feel better knowing one of us is only a shout away.”

  Some of the stiffness went out of her friend’s back. Sue Ellen swallowed a sigh of relief and played her trump card.

  “Dave won’t impose, Andi. And he won’t be watching you through the windows. He told me he’s got some sort of deployment coming up.”

  “He told me the same thing.”

  “There you are, then. You probably won’t see much of him until he goes, but you’ll know he’s nearby…if you need him,” she tacked on hastily.

  CHAPTER 3

  Sue Ellen’s blithe prediction that Andi wouldn’t see much of her ex got shot all to hell the very next morning. She not only saw him, she saw a whole lot more of him than she wanted or needed to.

  She woke early, still on a military schedule, and took her coffee down to the beach. Although the sun was just a hazy red ball hanging low in the sky, the temperature was already pushing seventy. A warm breeze rustled through the tall sea oats. The feathery stalks brushed Andi’s thighs under the ragged hem of her cutoffs when she took the path through the dunes.

  Once past the dunes, she kicked off her flip-flops. Sand curled through her toes as she carried her shoes and coffee mug to the eddying surf. Except for the fisherman trolling far down the beach, she might have been alone in the universe. Turning her back on the angler, she left a trail of footsteps that filled up and disappeared with each new wave.

  Just like life, she thought wryly. You make a niche for yourself. Carve out your own speci
al pattern. Then a wave washes in and gradually obliterates it. Or not so gradually. Her wave had slammed down without warning, carrying all the force of a tsunami.

  Since then, the realization that she’d have to carve a new pattern had rolled around inside her belly like a lead ball. For some reason, though, the queasy feeling seemed to have dissipated.

  Maybe because she’d severed the cord and put the Pentagon behind her. Or because she’d left D.C., with its frantic traffic and constant obsession with itself. Or just because she was strolling through the surf on a warm, hazy morning with nothing more pressing to do than hook up her computer and notify folks of her new address.

  “I can handle that,” she informed the seagull who swooped in for a landing a few yards away.

  A second gull landed beside the first and fluffed its feathers. Both birds trailed after Andi, their heads cocked in expectation.

  “Sorry, guys. All I have with me is coffee. I’ll bring some goodies tomorrow.”

  Looking thoroughly disgusted, the gulls flapped off. A busy little sandpiper took their place. Darting in and out of the water, the tiny, bright-eyed creature wove a network of spidery tracks.

  Smiling at its antics, Andi found a spot out of the reach of the eddy and plopped down. Her bare feet burrowed into the sand. Her elbows rested on her knees.

  She could handle this, too, she thought. Early-morning walks along the beach. Glorious sunrises. Not another human in sight except the fisherman and the jogger now splashing through the surf a mile or more away.

  Turning her face to the sea, she sipped her coffee. She was lost in contemplation of the sun burning through the haze and burnishing the sea into an endless vista of emerald laced with sparkling diamonds when the jogger entered her field of vision. From the corner of one eye she saw his long, easy stride slow, then check.

  “Andi?”

  Oh, no! She wasn’t ready for another meeting with her ex-husband. She still hadn’t sorted through their first one. Swallowing a groan, she put up a hand to shield her eyes and squinted through the shimmering heat already rising from the sand.

  The other night Dave had presented her with an up-close-and-personal view of his bare chest. This morning the chest was covered—more or less—by a gray T-shirt with the sleeves ripped out for ventilation. His black Lycra biker shorts left most of the rest of him available for view, however, and emphasized the bulge between his thighs.

  Wrenching her gaze upward, Andi managed a cool smile. “Morning, Dave. Changed your routine, I see. You used to run in the evening.”

  He’d always claimed a long run relieved the stress of the day. It also brought him home drenched with sweat and pumping pure endorphins. As Andi knew all too well, those busy little neurotransmitters induced a sense of euphoria popularly called “runner’s high.” In the process, they stimulated the release of sexual hormones.

  She couldn’t count the number of times Dave had seduced, sweet-talked or just plain swept her off her feet for a bout of steamy postrun sex. The sudden graphic memory of one unforgettable session on the kitchen counter set her endorphins to sparking and snapping.

  “I still run in the evening when I get the chance,” Dave said, jerking her thoughts away from scattered appliances and cool, smooth marble. “I’m flying this evening, so I figured I’d better get my run in early.”

  “Oh. Well. Don’t let me keep you.”

  “No problem. I’ve logged my miles.”

  Uninvited, he dropped down beside her. The tang of well-worn running shoes and healthy male sweat competed with that of damp sand and salty air.

  “What kind of flight do you have?” she asked, more to take her mind off the muscled calves stretched out beside hers than to make conversation.

  “We’re looking at a new avionics package for the H-model MC-130. I’m dropping a team of combat controllers to see how compatible the avionics are with our pathfinder satellite system.”

  “Is this a HALO drop?”

  She’d learned to speak Special Ops-ese during their years together. HALO for high altitude, low opening. HAHO for high altitude, high opening. CCT for combat control team. MATC for mobile air traffic control. All the acronyms that defined Dave’s life.

  “This one’s a night free fall.”

  “Into the gulf?”

  “Another puddle of water,” was all he would say.

  “So they’ll have to inflate their rubber duck,” Andi murmured, visualizing the team’s plunge from a low-flying aircraft into dark, unfamiliar waters and subsequent scramble into an inflatable raft.

  “That,” Dave agreed, “or sink like stones. We’ve added another eight pounds of equipment to the hundred-plus they already carry in their rucksacks.”

  She winced in sympathy. To earn their coveted scarlet berets, his combat controllers went into austere and often dangerous locations carrying everything necessary to establish an airfield and direct aircraft. In addition to chemical gear, parachutes, scuba equipment, radios and weapons, they lugged portable runway lights and a motorcycle they could assemble in minutes for swift travel over rough terrain.

  His other special-tactics teams went in similarly burdened with specialized equipment. The PJs—pararescuemen—more than earned their maroon headgear, the combat weathermen their distinctive gray berets.

  “I heard the personnel from the 23rd were involved in last month’s rescue of a downed RAF pilot in the mountains north of Kandahar,” Andi commented.

  “Yeah.” Dave scrubbed a hand over his face. “That one was a bitch.”

  While the waves danced in and out, he shared the details of that particularly hairy mission, and the awkwardness between them faded in the familiarity of military operations.

  They’d always had this, Andi thought as she listened to the familiar rhythm of his voice. Shared careers. A common knowledge of people and places and weapons systems. Understanding of the sometimes overwhelming burden of responsibility each of them carried.

  How had they let those grinding responsibilities build into the wedge that drove them apart? When had their priorities gotten so screwed up that their jobs had become more important than each other?

  Okay, there was the small matter of a war being fought on several fronts. Not to mention highly specialized training, ever-increasing rank and a commitment to their troops that went bone deep. The higher she and Dave went in rank, the deeper that commitment ran.

  Kids would have forced them to reorder their priorities, Andi thought with a dart of pain.

  They’d certainly planned to have children. At first. They’d kept putting it off, waiting for the right time to start a family. Then it was too late. The cracks in their marriage were already showing. Neither she nor Dave wanted to bring children into an uncertain home, particularly with both of them gone so much.

  Oh, well. No point rehashing old regrets. Shoving those painful years out of her head, she said little as Dave described the aftermath of the rescue mission.

  “When we got him back to base, the Brits had a reception committee waiting. Our guys transferred him to an aerovac flight to the screech of ‘Wild Blue Yonder’ as interpreted by a former member of the RAF Halton Pipe and Drum Corps.”

  A smile played at the corners of Andi’s mouth as she envisioned the dusty airfield high in the mountains of Afghanistan. The wail of a bagpipe would echo across the runways and be heard for miles. She’d bet more than one turbaned head had whipped around in surprise.

  “I saw the RAF Halton Pipe and Drum Corps perform at the Edinburgh military tattoo some years back,” she commented. “They gave me goose bumps.”

  “They gave a few of the locals around Kandahar goose bumps, too.”

  Hooking her arms around her raised knees, she surveyed the emerald-green sea. “This is sure a long way from that part of the world, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  A long way from the Pentagon and the organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well. She and Dave might have been on another planet
. The air around them didn’t buzz with urgency. There were no decision papers to push through, no briefings to prepare for, no harried staffers making Andi’s life miserable with yet another change to a time-phased deployment schedule.

  “Funny,” she murmured, resting her chin on her knees. “I never pictured myself sitting on a beach with nothing more pressing to do for the rest of the day than hook up my computer. I always thought I’d have a clear picture of what I wanted to do after the Air Force and march quickstep into a new life. Now I don’t know what direction I’m marching in.”

  “You’ll figure it out, babe.”

  “You think?”

  “I know. This is just a temporary right oblique.”

  A half angle to the right, executed with military precision? Andi didn’t think so. It felt more like a rout step.

  She didn’t voice her doubts, however. She’d already come off sounding way too much like a wimp. They sat in silence until Dave checked his watch.

  “Guess I’d better clean up and get ready for work. You heading back to the house?”

  “I’ll stay in the sun for a while.”

  “Take it easy the first few times out.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You don’t want to burn.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Smart-ass.”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  Grinning, he got to his feet and dusted off, showering her with fine white sand in the process.

  “See you around, Armstrong.”

  “If you’re lucky, Armstrong.”

  The old retort popped out before she could catch it. Administering a mental head shake, Andi stretched out her legs and wiggled her toes. Dave started for the path that cut through the dunes but halted a few yards away.

  “When do you see the cardiologist?”

  “Next week.”

  “Keep me posted,” he ordered tersely.

  Andi thought about reminding him she didn’t have to follow orders any longer, his or anyone else’s. She settled for a noncommittal grunt and planted her elbows in the sand. Eyes closed, she tipped her face to the sun.