Andrea glared at him. “Did he tell you that?”
“As a matter of fact, he did, and you’re looking pretty peaked to me.” Nickerson gave her his most inscrutable expression.
“Don’t coddle me, Nick.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, ma’am. I’d as soon coddle a two-headed rattler. I’m going over to the chow hall to pick up something hot for lunch. Anything sound good to you?”
Andrea forced herself to consider the question. “Soup sounds good. And maybe a sandwich or two.”
Nick nodded. He was accustomed to Andrea’s appetite. “How about dessert?”
She shrugged. “If you see anything that looks decent.”
“Okay. Back in a jiff.”
He was coddling her, and she knew it, but much as it annoyed her, it touched her, too.
Her shoulder throbbed steadily, and her stitches itched maddeningly, but the wound was still too tender to scratch satisfactorily. The worst part of being shot, she decided, was being unable to get comfortable no matter what she did. That and the troubling dreams that plagued her. Getting shot at made a person aware she wasn’t immortal.
And Dare MacLendon, damn his blue eyes, had made her just as aware that there was more to life than a career. Never had she dreamed that it could feel so good to be held, or that it could be so wonderful to lean against someone else’s strength. Not only had he awakened desires she didn’t want, he’d awakened a need to be held. For those few brief moments he’d made her feel safe, secure and cherished.
She hated to admit it, but more than anything in the world she wanted to dive into those strong arms and let them shelter and protect her. Female foolishness, she told herself irritably. It had no place in her life or plans. She’d be damned if she’d let a man interfere with her future. No, henceforward she wouldn’t let Alisdair MacLendon within arm’s reach.
Her mind made up, she forced herself to sit forward and reach for the paperwork on her desk. Andrea Burke had more important things to do with her time than moon over a man.
For the next ten days she was quite successful in keeping her resolution, nor did Dare test her resolve. She told herself she was glad he appeared as eager to avoid her as she was to avoid him, but in a small corner of her mind there was a sad, nagging ache of disappointment.
And then, just a week before Christmas, she answered her telephone to hear a familiar voice.
“Good afternoon, Burke,” said Colonel Alisdair MacLendon.
Andrea told herself that her heart was not doing a silly little tap dance at the sound of that voice. No, it was just a muscle twitching, a delayed effect of the wound in her left shoulder.
“Good afternoon, sir,” she managed to reply coolly.
“I need a favor, Burke,” he said. “I want you to take me out tonight or tomorrow and show me how security is handled at the missile sites.”
It was the last thing on earth she felt like doing. Did he lie awake nights thinking up ways to annoy people? “Why?” she demanded bluntly, and never mind protocol. “Why this sudden interest?”
“Because I’m responsible for those sites just as I’m responsible for everything on this base. It behooves me to know how it’s handled.” His tone lay somewhere between sarcasm and exaggerated patience. “Well?”
Well, if she couldn’t get out of it, she didn’t want to postpone it. In fact, the thought of spending some time alone with him caused her traitorous heart to leap and her blood to rush. “This evening,” she said when she felt she could trust her voice. Weak, Burke, she scolded herself. You’re really weak. “Say seven?”
“Good. Pick me up at my house. I’ll be looking for you.” He disconnected with a click.
Leaning back in her chair, she eased her arm from the sling and began the limbering exercises the doctor had given her. What the devil was going on? She winced as her healing muscles pulled. Well, if he really wanted to go all the way out to Romeo, the nearest missile site, he could damn well do the driving.
Dare was watching for her, and as soon as the blue truck pulled up in front of his house, he trotted down the walk and came around to the driver’s side.
“I’ll drive,” he said. “Scoot over.”
Andrea was glad to. It had been a long day—too long, really—and her shoulder was aching just about as bad as it ever had.
“Are we really going out to the Romeo site?” she asked. The more the afternoon had waned, the more difficulty she’d had in believing he was really interested in security at the missile sites. It was possible, of course, given his predilection for sticking his nose into everything. Still, something felt odd about the request.
“No. We’ll drive up the road a dozen miles or so and have coffee someplace.”
All her good resolutions faltered as something inside her went liquid and weak. Had he gone to all this trouble just to steal some time alone with her?
“How’s your shoulder doing, Andrea?”
“You want the real poop or the polite answer, sir?”
“That bad?”
“That bad, sir.”
He was genuinely sorry to hear it. “I thought by now it would be considerably better.”
“It’s better than it was.” She wanted to change the subject. “I heard we’re getting a storm tonight.”
“Four inches of snow and a twenty-degree temperature drop,” he agreed. “We’ll be back before it gets bad.”
She nodded. The storm wasn’t supposed to hit until between eleven and midnight. She wondered, though, why he was heading away from town along a less traveled stretch of road. Did he think someone might follow them?
“Ah, Colonel?”
“Hmm?”
“Is there a point to all this James Bond stuff?”
MacLendon chuckled quietly. “Actually, yes. We’ll talk about it over coffee.”
Resigned, Andrea settled back and tried to find a comfortable angle for her shoulder. If there was one, she hadn’t yet discovered it.
Dare pulled over at a truck stop about fifteen miles west of the base. The place was pretty well deserted, boasting only one interstate rig and a couple of pickups out front. Inside there were a counter and numerous booths with ragged plastic-covered seats. Dare chose a booth at the far end of the diner, away from the other patrons.
An elderly waitress with a Swedish accent hurried over to take their orders. Dare wanted coffee and apple pie. Andrea settled for coffee and tried not to think about how badly she wanted to be standing beneath a hot shower, letting the warmth steal the stiffness from her muscles.
Only when they’d been served did Dare speak.
“Well,” he said slowly, “it wasn’t a goose that put the hole in that bomber. It was plastique.”
Andrea’s head jerked up. Shock overrode her fugitive disappointment at learning he’d brought her here to talk business. For a moment she was simply speechless. “My God. But why? What could anyone possibly hope to accomplish?”
Dare shrugged. “Who knows? Simple terror? Something more complex? We won’t know unless we find the culprit, which brings me to the point of all these James Bond tactics you asked about. Andrea, the OSI investigators say the perpetrator had inside help. Or that someone on the inside used someone on the outside as a diversion. Either way, we have big trouble.”
For a long moment Andrea made no response. Dare saw the shock in her eyes, then saw her control it rapidly.
“Why,” she asked finally, “do they think it’s an inside job?”
“You’re the security expert. You tell me what it would take for a terrorist to get into the nose of that B-52 to plant plastique. Hell, that’s the easy part, I guess. The hard part is getting into the controlled area so he had access to the planes. OSI is very impressed with you and your squadron. You’re doing a marvelous job, one of the best they’ve ever seen. And that’s why they’re convinced that the culprit had inside help. They believe that’s the only way he could get past your security.”
“A uniform. A badge. It’
s simple.”
“Not that simple. OSI tried four times in the past two weeks to gain illicit entry to the area. Your guys stopped ’em every time.”
“Since the shooting—”
MacLendon silenced her with a shake of his head. “Sure, everyone’s on his or her toes, but they were on the alert even before you were shot, because of that business with the fence. You beefed up your patrols long before that incident.”
Andrea shifted restlessly and winced as her shoulder pulled. Finally, frustrated by her own discomfort, she propped her chin on her right hand and stared glumly into her coffee. “An inside job. Damn. Who do they suspect? My people? The mechanics? The pilots?” It gave her a queasy feeling to realize she might actually know someone capable of such an act.
“Right now everybody’s suspect. Everybody except you and me. You because of the shooting incident, and me because I called OSI.”
Without moving her head, she raised her eyes to his. “What do we do about it?”
“Stay alert and pay attention. What else can we do? Plastique pretty effectively wipes out fingerprints.”
Sighing, Andrea lifted her coffee cup and sipped.
“Andrea?”
“Mmm?”
“I’ve been meaning to tell you; you’re one damn fine officer.”
Color rose in a deep flush from her neck up. Dare watched in fascination. He wouldn’t have believed Andrea could blush so profusely. The rush of color canceled all resemblance to Huck Finn, not that he had any problem with her looks. Her green eyes flickered and lowered, avoiding his gaze.
“Andrea?”
“Sir?” She retreated swiftly into formality, and his eyes gentled, although she was too busy fiddling with her coffee spoon to see it.
“We need to talk.”
“I thought we were talking, sir.” Her heart accelerated slightly. Instinctively she knew the direction he was taking.
“I know you’re angry with me.”
“Angry, sir?” She kept her face blank. Why the devil couldn’t he leave this alone?
“I can’t leave it alone,” he said, as if he read her mind. “It’s like a toothache. You keep poking it with your tongue.”
Her hazy green eyes took on that gleam he knew so well. “I believe, sir,” she said smoothly, “that this is the first time I’ve ever been compared to a toothache.”
“Cut it out, Andrea. And drop the ‘sir’ business.”
“We’ve tried that, sir,” she reminded him. “You may have noticed it only works for a few minutes at a time. It also strikes me as being about as wise as playing catch with a live grenade.” And if her heart pounded any harder, it was going to burst from her chest.
The mistiness was gone from her eyes, he noted. While her cheek still rested tiredly on her hand, her gaze had grown clear and unwavering. If he chose to pursue this, he was going to get the unvarnished truth from her. He wondered suddenly if he were up to it. Alisdair MacLendon had never been a chicken, however, so he advanced into the fray.
“What are your career plans?” he asked bluntly.
She ran her tongue along her upper lip, considering. “Two weeks ago I would have said I wanted to retire at the rank of colonel. I’m not sure now. I mean, I knew that if I played with guns there was a distinct possibility I might have to use one. I guess I didn’t really believe it.” She straightened and took a sip of coffee. “I just don’t know anymore. I have to be able to live with myself, one way or the other.” Suddenly her gaze transfixed him. “What about you, sir?”
“Me? I’m a year away from retirement, if I want to take it. And I’m thinking about it, Andrea. I’m thinking about it very hard.”
“But you’re up for general.”
“I can retire as a general just as easily as a colonel. There are a lot of things I never got around to doing, and I find myself thinking about them.”
She was softening. Captain Burke was slipping away like a veneer. Taking advantage of the moment, Dare charged ahead.
“About what happened between us, Andrea…”
Her head jerked up, and her eyes were suddenly snapping. “Yes, sir, let’s talk about that. It’s high time we cleared the air on that subject.”
Uh-oh, thought Dare with amusement.
She saw the resignation pass over his face but didn’t relent, even though she was tempted. She’d been having this argument with herself since Thanksgiving, and now that she was wound up, she wanted to cite all her reasons, to make him understand what she felt he’d failed to.
“I’m not sure you fully understand my situation. The simple fact is, my entire career can be destroyed by a single indiscretion. You’re a man. You’re expected to chase skirts. If the skirt happens to belong to a subordinate officer, it doesn’t matter in the least unless she chooses to make some kind of fuss about it.
“On the other hand, I’m a woman. In these liberated times it’s okay if I have an affair, but it will never be okay for me to have a personal relationship with my commanding officer. One whisper of something like that will label me forever as a woman who uses her body to get ahead. I can forget the whole idea of a career if that happens.”
“Whoa, Andrea. Easy.”
She shook her head, and her green eyes met his forthrightly despite the color that climbed up her throat. “It’s not that I don’t want to kiss you.” Which was one heck of an understatement, she thought. It was about all she seemed to want anymore. “I think, however, that the price may be a whole lot higher than I’m willing to pay for a casual affair.”
It was the last two words that got to him: casual affair. Was that how it looked to her, as if he were toying with her entire future for a few casual couplings? Casual was not the word for any of the things Andrea made him feel. He hadn’t really examined those feelings, but he guessed it was time to do so. Before they decided how to settle this thing between them, he owed her that much, at least. And, he decided, he owed her equal honesty.
“Andrea, this isn’t casual for me. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s definitely not casual.”
Her eyes widened; then she blinked in that way she had when she was momentarily taken aback. “Oh.” Suddenly all her arguments fled from her head. Not casual. The admission at once terrified and elated her. She didn’t want his interest to be casual, but she didn’t know how she would handle it if it wasn’t. Lord, she’d turned into a dithering idiot!
“I’m not sure you’ll be grateful when you think about it,” he said drily. “A casual affair is a lot easier to dismiss.” Reaching inside his parka, he retrieved a pack of cigarettes and lit one. For a guy who’d nearly quit a couple of months ago, he was starting to smoke an awful lot.
“What are you saying, sir?”
“I’ve been where you are, Andrea. I know better than you think just how you view things and what you want out of life. Maybe in ten or twelve years you’ll understand where I’m coming from. When you devote your whole life to an institution, you get very few personal rewards. You wake up one morning and find you’ve missed most of what life is about. It’s not a happy experience. So I’ve reordered my priorities. That’s why I kissed you, and that’s why I’m going to kiss you again.”
Andrea drew a sharp breath. Something deep inside her clenched pleasurably, but she tried to ignore it. “Sir…”
“Quiet, Captain. Don’t worry. I have absolutely no intention of damaging your career. There won’t even be a whisper of impropriety. But I will kiss you again.”
Andrea found herself fascinated by his hands. Large, strong, long-fingered hands. Their backs were thinly sprinkled with fine black hairs, and it took no great leap of the imagination to picture that hair elsewhere. She swallowed. The truth was, she wanted him to kiss her right now, and it was getting harder and harder to remember why that was wrong.
“Andrea.” One of his hands reached out to cover hers.
She looked up, and there was such an unconcealed wealth of longing in her eyes that MacLendon felt as if he’d
been socked in the chest. Never had anyone looked at him that way.
He withdrew his hand and deliberately pushed up his parka sleeve to look at his watch. “What time would you get back tonight if you really had gone to Romeo?”
“About ten-thirty.” The moment was shattered. Her answer was businesslike.
“We’ve got time for more coffee, then.” He stubbed out his cigarette and signaled the waitress.
Andrea nodded, dropped her chin into her hand again, and let her eyelids droop. The day had been too long at two-thirty that afternoon, and now it was nearly nine. Her shoulder throbbed in time to the beat of her heart. How long would it be before she got her old energy back? And how long would it be until the sight of Dare’s face stopped hurting worse than her shoulder? It was an almost physical pain that pierced her each time she looked at him.
When they stepped outside, it was immediately obvious that they had made a big mistake by staying so long. Snow whirled wildly everywhere, and the wind had strengthened considerably. Visibility was reduced to about ten feet.
“We’ve got a problem,” Dare remarked when they were safely closed up in the cab of the truck. “Still, it’ll be easier to explain what we’re doing in a ditch five miles east of here than what we’re doing out of our way at a roadhouse.”
“We won’t go into a ditch,” Andrea said wryly. “There isn’t a single bend in the road between here and the base. You could tie a rope around the wheel and we’d get home all right.”
The corners of his mouth moved upward, and he turned on the ignition.
The state highway engineers had taken advantage of the state’s flatness and unceasing winds. The road was somewhat elevated above the surrounding fields, so that the never-ending wind swept away the snow and kept the roads clean. Drifts and ice were not the danger; whiteout was. When they set out, it was still possible to see the white stripe at the edge of the road. Dare drove a cautious thirty miles an hour.
Before long, however, they were in a full whiteout, unable to see even as far as the front end of the truck’s hood.
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