"No shit. And we will." Two lazy strides brought him beside the bed. Close. Too close, yet not close enough. "In four weeks, at the lawyer's office, just like your summons told me. I have the date on my calendar. Shouldn't be tough to dissolve drunken vows said in front of a preacher wearing white leather fringe and a bad wig."
Her husband—for now—dropped into the bedside chair. Unlaced his boots one at a time and let them fall to the floor. Thud. Thud.
Kind of like her heart. Her hands fisted in the bedspread to keep from reaching to smooth away the weary lines creasing the hard angles of his face.
Monica swung her legs over the edge of the mattress. "That's not why I'm here."
"Uh-huh." Standing, he gripped the zipper tab on his flight suit and tugged.
Gulp. Toeing off on the floor, she inched down the side of the bed. Away. "Uh, Jack..."
Broad shoulders shrugged out of the green uniform.
"Jack!"
One leg, two legs, flight suit free. For a guy who usually moved slow, he shucked his clothes fast, leaving lots of Jack with his back to her while he wore nothing but shamrock shorts and a black T-shirt.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Getting undressed," he shot over his shoulder, gripping the hem of his T-shirt and starting the upward sweep. "Feel free to keep talking."
If she could unpaste her tongue from the roof of her mouth. Heel, hormones. Heel now, damn it. >Picking up the open box, she traced the toucan. Jack would pop a rivet when he found her in his room, but no way in hell did she intend for this confrontation to go public. Especially with so much other baggage between them that could well start spewing once words flew. Meeting him alone in a room with a bed might not be the wisest course of action, but there were precious few private options.
Ironic as hell in a base that controlled some of the stealthiest of test projects. The perfect place for practice runs of the covert ops Jack planned for rescuing her sister.
A plan of which he hadn't shared one damned detail.
Her knees folding under her, she sagged to the edge of the bed, cereal box clutched to her belly. She'd suffered too many extra days of fear when he could have reassured her. She'd only stumbled onto a hint of the mission by accident when a squadron member assumed she must know because of her sister's involvement. One sentence of breached security necessitated a briefing on the whole plan.
Now she knew. Jack was the lead pilot and primary planner for a joint forces rescue operation into Rubistan—the Air Force dropping in SEALs to secure the hostages, then offloading Rangers to seize the terrorist compound.
And he hadn't told her. The betrayal cut deep.
For God's sake, it was her sister out there. Sydney, her blood, her responsibility since their mother had hauled ass to greener pastures, ironically found in the middle of the damned desert with some Omar Sharif look-alike. The same desert that had lured her sister on a crusade to feed starving babies and find answers about why her own mother had abandoned her children.
As if the answers weren't clear enough.
Their mother had picked the prestige and cash of being one of four wives to a Middle Eastern, oil-rich royal instead of staying with her two daughters in a pissant tiny Texas town where their father fit hubcaps on an assembly line. No surprise. How many times had she listened to her mother's favored fairy tales about a man to swoop her off her feet? As if it didn't slice into her daughter knowing Daddy wasn't cast in the role of that love-ya-forever prince.
Love. The smell of fruity Os teased her nostrils from the open box.
Sure Jack used to say he loved her. At least ten times a day. But then Jack also loved his airplane. His grandmama. Roller coasters. Elvis. A double cheeseburger with the works, hold the pickles, because he hated pickles, hated them with as much passion as he loved that cheeseburger.
Most of all, Jack Korba loved the emotional charge of a challenge. More important, he had the laid-back patience to wait. And win.
Every time Jack said he loved her, she read in his sleepy-lidded eyes the burning drive to win her response. Maybe if she'd accepted his first date offer, his interest would have fizzled. Instead she'd said no to the squadron player. He'd asked again. And again, until she'd finally accepted.
I love you, Mon, he'd repeated hundreds of times, determination firing his eyes.
Sure as she knew Jack Korba hated pickles and loved to kiss his way down her spine, she realized if she ever answered him, the challenge would be gone. He would walk. And she resented him for that. Even as she wanted him and enjoyed the way he made her smile, which made her want him all the more.
And he'd used those feelings to manipulate her. How many times did he have to twist her heart around before she got over him?
She dropped the cereal box to the floor before it weakened her with breakfast-in-bed-with-Jack memories. He bulldozed his way over weakness with slow determination and a loose-hipped strut
Stay strong and hang tough, she reminded herself. Resolve kicked up a notch. She could keep thinking about the way he left her out of the loop and resisting him might not be so difficult after all.
Monica picked fuzz balls off the cheap, polyester bedspread. She wouldn't be conquered by a Posturepedic stretch of box springs any more than by six feet two inches of tempting Greek testosterone.