Unable to resist, not that he"d ever had much luck resisting Lori, Gray skimmed his lips over hers, kissed her once, then again. A nice safe twelve or so inches separated them. He couldn"t get closer or any more intimate, not with a sleeping kid on his shoulder.
Adrenaline letdown in the aftermath of his hazardous flight left him susceptible. He wanted those warm sheets and Lori"s soft arms around him. All those moments when he"d thought he might never see her, kiss her, touch her again hammered down on him.
Too much emotion. He needed to pa.s.s off the sleeping kid and get away from the temptation of Lori and those welcoming daisies arched over her door.
Easing his face away, he nipped her full lower lip one last time and stared into her stormy eyes. "Come with me tomorrow. I have a reason, something I want you to see." He would come up with something by morning. "I know I"ve asked a lot. But do this one last thing for me."
No answer had been this important since his first pilot training check ride. His fingers worked a ma.s.sage on her scalp, a silent plea for her to relax and trust him. A smart woman wouldn"t.
"Okay."
Relief made speech tough. Thankful Lori had checked her brain at the door for once, he pa.s.sed over the sleeping child. He should have offered to carry Magda inside, but he needed to keep his feet firmly on the other side of Lori"s threshold since he was already on shaky ground around her. "I"ll pick the two of you up around noon."
"I"ll be waiting with both my shirts."
Apparently her brain had checked back in, and just in time. Intelligent thought seemed to be in short supply for him. If he didn"t pull it together before he picked her up in the morning, he might do something they would both regret. If he hadn"t already.
What in the world could Gray want to show her? They crossed yet another bridge over the intercoastal waterway to his parents" seaside condo.
He"d been so serious the night before, so unlike himself. She couldn"t resist his invitation. After spending the entire party with her stomach in an uproar over the possibility that Gray could have been hurt, could have- Blinking quickly, she focused on the glittering ocean.
She simply couldn"t walk away. Not yet.
Beach music pulsed low, Gray humming if not singing. Magda drummed her feet against her car seat in time as she stuffed French fries into her mouth, a Happy Meal box on her lap. Gray had detoured to buy it for her even when Lori insisted Magda could wait. The stubborn man had pulled into the drive through anyway and bought himself a Big Mac, too.
Used to winning, more comfortable being in charge, she found his quiet mulishness an odd challenge. Funny how she"d been so focused on the playful exterior a year ago, she"d missed deeper implications of his determination. His resolution no doubt had carried him through in achieving two such ambitious career goals.
What else hadn"t she noticed about him?
Like the annoying way he kept popping his knuckles and flexing his feet. Why couldn"t he have worn long pants instead of those khaki shorts? Muscles bulged along his bare calf with each flexing stretch. "Could you stop that, please?"
"What?"
She stared pointedly at his cracking fist and feet.
His hand paused midcrack. He straightened his fingers and shrugged, his untucked plaid shirt rippling over his broad shoulders. "Oh, yeah. Sorry. Just working out the bends."
"The bends?"
His fist curled, finishing off the popping in the silence as Gray stared at her legs.
"Eyes on the road, Major." She tugged her silky sun-dress over her knees. Why in the world had she worn a dress to a picnic? She"d convinced herself she would be cooler, ignoring the fact that Gray had told her countless times how he liked seeing her legs bared by a dress.
His hands clenched and unclenched again around the steering wheel. What was he doing? Murmurs of residual panic still taunted her. "Gray? Are you okay? What are the bends?"
He shrugged again. "Just a byproduct of a rapid decompression. The air in your system expands. Now that I"m back at regular pressure, all those air bubbles in my joints are shrinking."
"Does it hurt much?"
"Yesterday"s incident wasn"t bad." He dismissed it with a wave. "We got on oxygen fast, descended quickly. No sweat."
All that stress and pain from something he claimed was a "simple" in-flight emergency? As if there could be such a thing. What other rigors did flight life put on his body?
"But does it hurt?" she asked, already knowing the answer and not sure why she felt the need to push her point. Perhaps she needed him to reach out to her with more than a smile. Any woman with an ounce of nurturing instinct couldn"t resist a man in pain.
Gray flexed his ankle and almost suppressed his wince. "I"ve treated patients with worse."
Lori blinked through a sting of tears that wouldn"t accomplish anything. In fact, tears had landed her in that tender kiss the night before that still tingled along the roots of her hair.
When he"d kissed her, she"d considered pulling him into her house and not letting him go until sunrise. Or maybe until several sunrises. But she"d been too emotional to risk an encounter with Gray, and more than anything, she hated weepy displays.
Admonitions from her parents fluttered through her mind. Dry your eyes, Lorelei, sugar. There"s a new adventure right over the next border.
She"d always scrubbed away those tears and tackled the next challenge, a small part of her fearful that if she lagged she would be left behind. She couldn"t regret her upbringing, as it had made her stronger and independent-skills that earned her respect in her job, and she loved her job.
But she wouldn"t say it was her life anymore, not like Gray"s military career. "Can I ask you something?"
"Like you"ve ever held back before."
"Good point." She chewed on her bottom lip, caught his transfixed stare on her mouth and stopped nibbling before they ended up in a ditch. "All that talk about the military being in your blood, I hear you. But why not just serve as a doctor? Why do you put your body through all this? We"ve spent less that two weeks together, and you"ve taken a leg full of shrapnel and had the air sucked out of your body."
His calf flexed. "I thought about getting out."
"You did?"
"Right after Desert Storm. I worried I might turn into my old man and decided to try med school. I"d considered it before, but flying tugged me, too. Confused the h.e.l.l out of me sometimes when I was growing up." He spiked a hand through his hair, all the combing his short cut needed. "Six months into med school, I knew it wasn"t going to work. Not the way I"d planned. Med school was the right choice. But not civilian life."
The Explorer wove a winding path through the cl.u.s.ters of condos-thatched wooden buildings shaded by towering oaks and hanging Spanish moss. Sunlight dappled a Hansel and Gretel breadcrumb-like trail alongside the road. What a beautiful place to call home. "Okay, so you"re not getting out of the military. But plenty of other guys can fly that plane. You don"t have to do everything. You"re a doctor, Gray. Why not make your mark in the service that way?"
"There"s the fundamental difference in the way we military people think. Every one of us honestly believes we can make a specific difference or we would have gotten out long ago. Just as I have to be a doctor, I have to fly." In front of his parents" condo, he slid the car into park. Gray released the steering wheel and flipped his hands over. "Could another set of hands have gotten Magda out of Sentavo? Maybe. But maybe not. It doesn"t really matter, since knowing won"t change a thing. This is what I do."
The intensity in his eyes scared her. Fascinated her. How could she not admire him? Want him.
Her hand reached up to his jaw, and she allowed her fingers the pleasure of caressing his beard-stubbled face. Just as she considered tracing his bottom lip...
Magda flung her Happy Meal toy on the floor. Lori blinked away the moment.
She twisted to retrieve the toy, pausing to straighten Magda"s strawberry jumper and blow a kiss. Seeing Magda so happy and excited, Lori couldn"t regret joining Gray for the day. The little girl deserved so much more from life than she"d seen so far.
Lori spun back around as Gray"s family poured from the front door like water from an emptying aqueduct-a younger, heavier-set version of himself, his mother and his lanky sister, along with in-laws, nieces, nephews...
She lost count as they gushed down the steps. Envy nipped her, followed by a hefty bite of anger. She would have traded a hundred Barbie house dreams to spend an afternoon in a family like this.
Realization tingled over her as she wondered if she hadn"t done just that.
*** Lori tapped her toe on the porch, launching the swing in motion. She cradled Magda in her lap, the gentle rocking as soothing for Lori as the child.
An ocean breeze bowed the rushes along the marshy coastline, then detoured through the lower deck screened-in porch. The precious perfume of baby shampoo and sunshine twined around her.
She"d had an awesome day.
d.a.m.n.
Every minute had been exactly as she would have wanted-if Gray had brought her to his parents" home a year ago as a precursor to a proposal.
Instead he"d brought her to say goodbye.
Irritability swept away her contentment. Maybe she could bang around some dirty pots in the kitchen. Lori turned to Angela seated at a rattan table with a gla.s.s of milk. "I feel guilty sitting out here while they"re doing the dishes."
"Fair"s fair. We cooked. They clean. They"re probably almost done, anyway. Just enjoy holding Magda. They grow up too fast." Angela sipped, bracelet jingling as replaced the gla.s.s. "Thank you for coming today."
"Thank you for including us."
"That"s not quite what I meant, dear."
"I know."
Footsteps hammered on the overhead deck as the men and children thundered down the wooden plank steps, fanning out onto the yard. Gray tossed a football underhanded to his brother as they divided into teams along the sh.o.r.e.
Magda squirmed in Lori"s lap. "Doc!" she squealed and pointed. "Doc!"
Gray turned, smiled and gestured for Magda to join them. "Send her on out. I"ll watch her."
Lori eased Magda to the ground and walked her across the porch, the sticky hand so dear clutching hers. Lori nodded, pushing the door open. "Go ahead, sweetie."
Magda bolted forward, arms pumping, her strawberry jumper a blur as she sprinted toward Gray. "Doc!"
"Hey, Miss Magpie. Come be on my team." He tied a bandanna around Magda"s head and dubbed her his copilot. Game calls, teasing shouts and laughter drifted through the screens.
Lori sank back to the swing, wrapping her arms around her waist, her lap too empty. "It"s so idyllic here."
"I"m a lucky woman."
"Yes, you are."
Angela nudged her milk away and fished a roll of antacid tablets from her pocket. Absently she thumbed one free and popped it in her mouth. "But it wasn"t all luck. I"ve worked hard."
Ah, finally the other shoe drops. She"d wondered when Angela would weave in her bid for a new daughter-in-law. "Of course you have. Relationships are work."
More than even she could tackle. She"d worked like crazy to earn Gray"s love a year ago, just as she"d worked to gain her parents" attention, and it still hadn"t changed a thing. Of course she knew him better now. Should she have worked harder to understand him then rather than simply judging?
Angela rolled the pack of tablets between her fingers as she stared out over her family. "There were times I wasn"t sure we could hold it all together, but we did. I"m very proud of that."
Gray launched into the air, catching the football. Ball tucked to his chest, he snagged Magda under the other arm. He ran, the little girl squealing as her bandanna-covered head bobbed with each jostling step. His powerful legs pumped, those khaki shorts leaving too much muscled thigh in view for any normal woman to ignore. Lori"s emotions were anything but normal around Gray.
Draining another swallow of milk, Angela waved to her older son as he sprinted past. Her hand fell to her lap. "I"m going to miss having him close."
Me, too. They"d been apart for a year, yet she"d taken a strange comfort in knowing she might run into him, could drop in if the crazy notion took hold. Which it had. She"d almost caved more than once.
Angela stuffed the antacid roll in her pocket. "You do know you"ve gotten closer to Grayson than anyone else ever has. Probably closer than he"s let even his own family get."
Lori fidgeted on the suddenly uncomfortable wooden swing. "I"m not sure we should be -"
"Why not?" Gray"s mother raised her hands and leaned back. "I realize we don"t know each other well, but time"s running out. Consider it one last desperate measure from a concerned mama."
While Lori wanted to be resentful of the intrusion, she understood motherly concerns better every day. Parenting brought a host of worries with all those blessings, and she wouldn"t trade a moment of it. She"d just never expected to tackle it alone.
An ache lodged firmly in her stomach, and she eyed the gla.s.s of milk with longing. "How did you do it, Angela?"
"Do what, dear?"
"Send Dave off to work every day not knowing if he would come home, and if he did what kind of shape would he be in?"
"He wouldn"t have given it up for me." The older woman turned away, her head gravitating toward the solitary man walking along the sh.o.r.e. "And I never asked him to."
"You"re a good wife." Better than I could be.
"No, I"m a very greedy one. You asked me a question, and you deserve an honest answer. How did I do it? It was better than the alternative. Not having him at all. I faced that for four G.o.d-awful years." Angela paused for a steadying breath. "I"ll take what I can have of him."
What could Lori say to that? Not a darn thing.
Angela gripped the armrests and eased to her feet. Her hands whipped wrinkles from her cotton day dress. "Time for a drink check before everyone dehydrates."
"I"ll help."
"No need, dear. You sit tight and relax. I"ll be right back." Angela turned the power of her smile on Lori, almost covering the concern in her eyes.
Gray thought he was so much like his father. Why couldn"t he see he had bits of his mother in him, as well? He had her smile covering an iron will.
And that stubborn fool had just scored another touchdown. His uninhibited victory dance tripped right over Lori"s already tender emotions.
He"d broken her heart once. He was well on his way to doing it again. How she wished she were like Angela, able to take what she could before he finished her off once and for all.
Gray had offered half measures, living together, accept whatever the future held. She"d existed that way her entire childhood, with an unsure future, holding second place to her parents" jobs. She wanted better for herself-and for Magda, because she wouldn"t be able to let that little girl go. Ever. No more foster parenting. Lori wanted to file for adoption. Magda was her daughter.
Lori"s gaze strayed unerringly toward two bandanna-clad heads. Why did Gray have to look so very much like Magda"s father?
Lori stilled the swing and watched Angela speak to Gray before she joined her husband. Clasping Dave"s hand in hers, she tipped her face up to him. Love glimmered from her like the sun glinting off the lightly cresting waves.
G.o.d, she wanted that for herself, just once. Her gaze gravitated back to Gray, and she couldn"t stop from wanting it with him. Hadn"t Angela said there were times to just take whatever she could from life?
While she couldn"t see living the rest of her life that way, maybe she could adopt the att.i.tude for one selfish day.
He"d wanted to make the most of their last day before they said goodbye. Well, she had a d.a.m.n good idea of how they should spend their last night together.