* * *
Two bowls of frosted flakes later, Lori decided she needed to leave. Her clothes should be finished in the dryer soon. She sat cross-legged on Gray's blue-plaid couch and checked her watch for the fifth time in ten minutes. She'd spent most of the past hour working Magda's case from the phone.
Now she should call a cab, leave Gray a note and cut out. Her own work credentials would gain her entrance to see Magda.
And if Gray showed up at the hospital, too? They would behave like adults. She wasn't some high-schooler ducking behind the lockers to avoid a boy.
Lori swung her feet off the sofa and searched the apartment for the phone book. She roamed from the living room, through the kitchen. God, the man loved Air Force blue. His whole place was blue, wood and white. Of course he'd once told her buying a single color scheme meant he didn't have to waste time matching.
And he hadn't. No knickknacks warmed the decor. Just precoordinated furniture. Even his bedroom linens fit the bed-in-a-bag category. Only a smattering of framed airplane prints gave hints about the man who lived there.
A home, but not quite, like the motels and transitory apartments her parents had always chosen.
Lori found the phone book in his computer room and plopped in the office chair to call the cab company. While she waited on hold, she spun in the chair. Pictures of the C-17 littered the white wall, no surprise. His degrees must be in his office on base.
Twirling another half turn revealed a dry erase board, and his first homey touch. Notes scrawled along corners around the childish artwork dominating the space. Someone had drawn a purple outline of an airplane in the middle and labeled it for "Uncle Gray."
How long had it been there? And how sweet he hadn't erased it.
Images bombarded her. Ladislov's giggle when Gray had tickled his side to get him to cough. Magda's smile because of a simple do-rag.
Lori eyed the phone. Maybe she could wait for Gray a little longer. She reached to hang up. A brass picture frame glinted in the overhead light, halting her. She snagged the photo from the desk, the phone still cradled in her other hand.
Gray's family of five clumped together on a flight line. He must have been about nine or ten, his brother and sister younger.
Lori had met his parents. They only lived an hour away and had joined Gray and her for dinner twice. There hadn't been time to get to know the couple who'd brought up Gray, but she'd liked what little she'd found.
She had to face it. He'd had a happy home life, didn't have hang-ups about kids. Gray simply didn't want home and hearth for himself. He preferred the bachelor life.
So what was she doing waiting around for him? As if to confirm her decision, the canned music on the phone ended and the cab dispatcher's voice asked for her information.
Lori replaced the frame and gave the woman Gray's address, an address still memorized even after a year apart.
* * *
Fifteen minutes late, Gray pulled into the apartment's parking lot. Debriefs couldn't be rushed, although he'd tried. Throughout the whole meeting, he'd worked to puzzle through a way to resolve things between Lori and him.
If he had the chance.
He couldn't shake the feeling she would leave before he returned. Maybe she'd called a friend to give her a ride.
Not that it should matter. He could track her down at her place or the hospital, and they could still see Magda together.
God knows Lori had left him flat before. Why should one more time matter? But it did. He wanted her to be waiting inside for him, like the old days.
She'd stayed over more than once. Near the end, she had almost lived there as well. He'd certainly thought asking her to move in officially would be no big deal. Wrong. It had sparked another argument, one that hadn't ended with mind-blowing make-up sex.
Stuffing the past away, he whipped the keys from his car just as another car slid into place beside him—a white Chevy Cavalier just like his mother's. He wasn't a believer in coincidence or fate, but he had the sinking feeling one of the two was about to have its way with him. Gray strapped on some much-needed bravado and opened his door.
His mother's silver-blond head soon appeared over the roof. "Hello, sugar."
Dread turned his blood to sludge. His perfectly coifed mother, a woman with inbred grace, gentility and rose-colored glasses, wouldn't be able to appreciate the nuances of his current awkward-as-hell situation with Lori.
"Hi, Mom." He circled to his mother.
Gray skated a quick look at his apartment door. Was Lori still inside? His mother would leap straight to a wealth of conclusions he didn't even want to consider, much less ex-plain. Not that she would even believe him, anyway.
"I was on my way to the commissary to stock up and thought I'd drop in to see you."