by Jo Leigh
The silence was awkward and painful. Finally, Luke turned to face him.
O’Malley saluted. It was the first time Luke had seen the sergeant do so when not in public. The salute held, sharp as a blade, full of respect.
Luke acknowledged, swallowing past the lump in his throat. Then he turned tail and left.
8
IT WAS TOO EARLY on a Friday morning to deal with television producers. Sara shut her cell phone, then her eyes. She should have taken control of the situation, and she hadn’t. What kind of a public relations professional couldn’t make a glorified production assistant bend to her will?
A bad one. That’s what kind. Sara thought about calling Kathleen Freeman back, but the woman had insisted. It was Sara’s own fault. It had been stupid to participate in the Q & A last night, and she’d only done it because Pearson had been ill.
Now if she wanted the publicity they would get from the popular San Diego show, it meant traveling with and talking to Luke Carnes for the better part of the day. Checking the time, she realized they’d have to leave soon.
She called his room, and when he didn’t answer, she rang his cell.
He sounded out of breath as he answered, “Solo.”
“I need you to be in your flight suit and ready to go in twenty.”
“Flight suit? A talk?”
“A television show. San Diego Today. They had a cancellation, and we’re the replacement.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
Sara thought about the day to come, the opportunities for things to go wrong, and she hardened her voice. “The clock is ticking, Solo.”
“I’ll meet you in the lobby.”
She studied her timetable. Everything had to be rescheduled, and she called her support staff. When she met Luke in the lobby, she felt sure that things would run smoothly in her absence. She wasn’t nearly as certain about spending the day with Luke.
He looked ridiculously hot in that damn flight suit. She always imagined him striding out of a billowing white cloud, helmet under his arm, cocky and sure and one-hundred-percent hero. There was a reason the show’s producer had asked for Luke. Who wouldn’t?
He waited for her at the exit, and they didn’t speak as they got in the car. In theory, the studio was about forty minutes from the motel. With Southern California traffic, it could take hours. It didn’t have to be weird or tense. If he were any other member of the team, they’d have been able to talk, to while away the time pleasantly. Simple.
“TV, huh?” He buckled his seat belt. “I’ve never been on television.”
“You’ll be great.”
“That depends. What’s the format of the show?”
She pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward the 405 Freeway. “Question and answers. Two hosts—one male, one female. They get good ratings, although it’s daytime and not our target audience.”
“So why are we doing this?”
“It’s good PR, that’s why.”
“So why just me?”
She looked at him as she braked for a light. “Not just you.”
He smiled. She merged onto the freeway. So far, so good. It would be fine as long as it didn’t get personal.
They drove along in silence for a couple of miles, and while the quiet wasn’t unpleasant, exactly, there was a bit of tension. Which was normal. Television appearance and all.
“Any suggestions?” His voice was calm, easy.
“About…?”
“How to handle the questions.”
“Don’t screw up.”
He chuckled, and that helped.
“Seriously,” Sara said. “Do what you always do. Pretend the cameras aren’t there. Listen to the question. They’ll try to get you to say something provocative, but so do the students. You’ve been handling them well.”
“They’re so young,” he said. “So sure of everything.”
She glanced at him, not quite as surprised at this contemplative change of subject as she would have been a few days ago. “They want to matter. They haven’t given up yet.”
His nod was slow. “I knew what I was going to be when I was seven. When kids who are twenty, twenty-one, tell me they don’t know what they want to do with their lives, it throws me. That’s probably the most difficult thing, knowing how to respond to that.”
“You were lucky,” she said. “Most people have no clue and they end up boxed into the wrong careers for all the wrong reasons.” She slowed down with the traffic, kept her eyes on the road as they came to a dead stop.
“Right.” Luke shifted so he was angled more toward her. “They want money or fame and to be noticed. They’ve been told their whole lives that they could do anything, everything. But that’s not true, is it? Even if you work really hard, do the right thing, give it your best shot, there are no guarantees. You could still end up poor, unloved, unappreciated.”
It was alternate-universe Luke, or maybe a Luke from a far-distant future. He’d always been the embodiment of the American dream. He worked hard, he did the right thing and reaped his rewards.
Luke had passed all the outward tests: bravery, courage, honor, sacrifice. She’d never thought he would have any real perspective, though. How could he, living in the center of the dream as he was?
When she glanced at him again, he met her gaze with a look she wasn’t able to decipher. Not even a guess.
“I went down in Afghanistan,” he said. “The plane crashed in the Khwaran Ghar mountains. The investigators determined that it was a technical glitch, not pilot error.”
She felt hit. Slammed. Devastated for him even as pieces of the puzzle started to fit together. Knowing him, he’d waited until the last second to eject. He was incapable of not trying everything possible and impossible to save his plane. She knew of Khwaran Ghar, that the mountains there were surrounded by Taliban cells. “Crashed. Not shot down?”
“No. They haven’t shot one of us down in years. A software malfunction.”
“Jesus. I’m sorry.” It would have been horrible for any pilot to lose an F-15, but she knew no matter what the official cause of the problem, Luke would blame himself. It was his superhero complex. A good pilot would have figured out a way to get back to base at the very least. A great pilot would have seen the problem before they took off.
“You want to talk about it?”
“No,” he said. “Not here. I wanted you to know, though, because the information’s out there. O’Malley heard about it.”
“I hadn’t. I would have thought—”
“It was classified. It is classified. I have no idea who he heard it from. I guess it doesn’t matter.” “It matters.”
“Traffic’s moving.”
Sara started as she looked at what was actually in front of her. She eased off the brake. “You—”
“Look, Sara. I don’t really want to talk about it right now. I only told you because I didn’t want you to hear from someone else.”
She nodded, took a breath. He’d let her off the hook. There was probably something she should’ve said now. Something comforting. But she had no idea what. As much as she liked the idea of treating Luke as if he were any other member of the team, he wasn’t. He hadn’t just been her lover, he’d been her friend. She still hated what he’d done to her. Doubted she’d ever forgive him. But she was also attracted to him, and if the way her heart ached for him right now was any indication, she still cared.
There were lines that couldn’t be crossed. Lines that shouldn’t. She had no idea where any of them were.
LUKE KNEW SARA HAD BEEN RATTLED by his confession. Not that she wasn’t the epitome of class and purpose at the studio, but she had tells: quick-as-a-blink sidelong glances, a stumble over a cable. Nothing anyone who didn’t know her as well as Luke would notice.
He wasn’t at his dashing best himself. Thank God he could fake it so well. The producer, Kathleen, was a good-looking woman who seemed shrewd and interested. She’d stood next to him while a makeup man had put
an uncomfortable amount of gunk on his face and neck. Sara was being treated to the same procedure by a makeup woman, and Luke didn’t think that was an accident. Not from the way Kathleen stared.
He had no business complaining. His face had bought him a million excuses, hundreds of open doors. After all, he was the luckiest son of a bitch on earth, right?
Finally, the makeup and the questions stopped, and Kathleen led them to the green room. There were two couches, a flat-screen television on the wall, and a strange assortment of snacks on a large square coffee table. Packaged Danish, cookies, a few apples, tiny boxes of raisins, as if the show was hosting schoolchildren. At least there was bottled water along with store-brand sodas. He grabbed a water and settled on the farthest couch. Sara sat in the other.
“Leanne will let you know when it’s ten minutes. Then she’ll bring you to the set,” Kathleen said.
“You received the video?” Sara asked.
“After we spoke.” The woman looked at Sara for perhaps the first time. “We can’t use the whole thing, of course, but it’ll be impressive.”
“Good.”
Then they were alone. Sara still wasn’t back to normal, and he needed to do something about that. “I want to claw my face off. How do women do it?”
“This is television makeup, you dope. Not daywear.”
“Still gives me the creeps.”
“Just don’t touch yourself.”
He arched a brow.
She rolled her eyes.
It was better. Between them. Not by much, but some. “You ever been on TV before?”
“Yes. Not a talk show, though. News briefs, that kind of thing.”
“Of course. You’d be really good at that.”
She seemed surprised. “Why?”
“You’re gorgeous and strong. You look like you can handle anything.”
She took her own bottle of water, drank a little, looked up at the monitor. “I can’t. Not anything.”
“Yeah, well, that’s probably not a bad thing.”
“What about you?”
He smiled, pulling on his flyboy act a few minutes early. “My ego’s too big to get in the way of feelings.”
“So some things never change, huh?”
He glanced at a magazine on the table, then back at her, deciding right then that since the line had been crossed into personal territory, he was going to stay there. “Do you still see Nicky?”
Sara’s eyes widened and her lips curled up in unconscious pleasure. “Yeah. We’re still close.”
“What’s she up to?”
Sara took a package of cookies from the table, fruit-filled something-or-other, and fiddled with opening it before she leaned back on the couch. “She’s married. He’s a nice guy, an artist from Glasgow. They live in New York above her gallery.”
“Nicky was pre-law, right? She’d gotten into one of the Ivy League law programs.”
Chewing on her very small nibble of cookie, Sara nodded. “Harvard. She went, passed the bar, got a great job, but she wasn’t very happy. She saved every nickel she could, and when she had enough to keep her afloat, she quit. Went to Europe, fell in love with modern art and Donnan.”
“I’d never have guessed. She always seemed so sure of herself, I mean, about the law.”
“I don’t think she changed,” Sara said. “The law wasn’t what she imagined. She still convinces juries to see things her way, only they’re called art collectors.”
“When did she get married? I remember a wager between you two.”
“We swore we wouldn’t do anything permanent until we hit thirty. She paid up three years ago. They’re trying for a kid now.”
Luke drank some water, thinking about Nicky and her rotation of college boyfriends. She was great. Beautiful, although not in Sara’s league, strong, determined. Smart as hell, too. It was difficult to imagine her as a wife or a mother. But then, it was difficult for him to imagine that of anyone in his age range. He’d never given it any thought. The idea wasn’t on his radar. Despite her bet with Nicky, the same wasn’t true for Sara. She’d wanted to be married. Had she been tempted? The thought made him tense so quickly, so deeply, he couldn’t pretend he was anything but jealous.
A fake cough let him cover his mouth, hell, half his face, but he had the feeling that if she’d been watching him, she’d have seen it. He had no idea if she’d recognized the flush for what it was.
“What about you?” she asked, and there was a bit of a wobble in her voice. Could have been a reaction, yeah, but it could have been the thin ice they were both skating on. “You didn’t have close friends back then. Has that changed?”
“Yeah,” he said, grateful they’d both skimmed right over the fact that for years she’d been his best and only real friend. “I’ve made a few.”
“Fighter pilots, I bet.”
“Yep. And one weapons system operator. Alf.”
“For the TV puppet?”
Luke grinned. “Annoying Little Fucker.”
“Ah,” she said. “You boys are so cute about your pet names. It’s endearing, really.”
The reflex to stomp all over those fighting words was cut short by her bark of laughter.
“Oh, God,” she said, shaking her head. “Like shooting fish in a barrel.”
“Fine. Make fun. Get me all worked up just before a big TV interview.” Right, as if he hadn’t screwed her up by telling her about the crash. She’d respected his request and hadn’t brought it up again, but he knew she was shaken for him. Funny, spilling should’ve bothered him more, but he was always better when he was with Sara.
She held up her hand. “Sorry, sorry. Sometimes I forget what a delicate flower you are. I’ll be more careful.”
“Jesus,” he said, giving in to his own laughter. “Ruthless woman.”
“I am,” she said. “But I’ll stop now. Promise. Tell me about this Alf.”
“Little guy. Red hair, big eyes, farmboy down to his—”
Leanne stuck her head in the door. “We’ll be ready for you in ten minutes. I’ll be right outside.”
Luke stood up and met Sara’s gaze as she rose to walk with him to the door. Just as he was about to grasp the knob, he said, “I’ll tell you about him another time.”
Sara rested her hand on his arm.
He inhaled sharply, shocked her touch could still fry his whole electrical system.
“I’d like that,” she said.
He met her gaze, and it was as if she could see through him. His barriers, hard-fought but tenuous, dissolved in an instant and he was back there. Hurtling through space strapped to a scrap of metal. Landing so hard he’d thought that was it, that he’d never catch his breath again.
Then the real bad stuff began.
It was a wave of sense memories, a big one, so large he hadn’t expected it, wasn’t prepared for it. Before he could think, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Just held on to her as if she was the last thing holding him up, the only thing that could save him.
She kissed him back. He didn’t know if it was pity or surprise or what, and he didn’t care. It was Sara in his arms and on his tongue, filling him with heat and blood.
When she drew away from him, it was gentle and she didn’t seem mad. Not even a little. “You ready?” she asked.
He used the strength in her eyes to give him a jump start. “Let’s do this thing.”
NOW THAT THE INTERVIEW was over, all Sara wanted was to get out of the studio. What she mostly wanted to do was get back to the motel and hide in her room until she could figure out what the hell she was supposed to do about that kiss. But that wasn’t gonna happen, not yet.
“Thank you,” Kathleen said, shaking Sara’s hand. “It was even better than I’d hoped for.”
“I’m glad. We appreciate the opportunity to get the word out.”
“I would imagine it’s getting harder and harder to get people to join.”
Sara didn’t care for the implication, but she
was used to it. “True, but once people hear the scope of opportunities, quite a few come to see the service as a privilege and an opportunity.”
“Oh. Sure,” the woman said, and the dismissal couldn’t have been more obvious. Kathleen turned and shook Luke’s hand with much more enthusiasm. “You ever think about turning in your wings, you’d make a great anchorman.”
“No thanks. I’m one of those suckers who really do think it’s a privilege and an opportunity.”
Sara smiled at the censure in his voice, but more so at the blaze in his eyes. She’d thought she’d lost him for a few minutes there, but he’d taken his seat in front of the cameras and made magic. She’d held her own, she supposed, but she doubted anyone had given her a second glance.
Kathleen laughed as she dropped his hand.
Sara and Luke were out the door and in the parking lot before there was time for a breath.
“Do you happen to have, like, a million baby wipes in the car?” he asked.
She chuckled, and breathed a sigh of relief. He’d opted for ignoring the whole kissing business. Excellent. “No, but I’m sure there’s going to be a washroom at the restaurant.”
“Food. That’s a great idea. You know any place to eat around here?”
“Not a clue,” she said, beeping the car locks. “We’ll find something.”
“It’s on the expense account, right?”
“Yes,” she said, knowing where this was headed.
He opened his door. “Let’s go crazy and find a place that uses real napkins.”
She got behind the wheel and buckled up. “It’s the taxpayers’ money, hotshot.”
“I’m a taxpayer, and I’m starving.”
“Fine. We’ll go inside instead of using the drive-through.” “Hey.”
She grinned, and punched it out of the lot.
9
AFTER GETTING BACK TO THE MOTEL, Sara had to scramble to catch up with her day, returning phone calls mostly, but also going over tomorrow’s agenda. She knew O’Malley had taken over, so she wasn’t worried, exactly. It was a matter of concentration. She was having a difficult time not thinking about the crash. And the kiss. She wanted to know more about both, but he hadn’t offered, and she hadn’t figured out how to ask.