As she had well learned during her annual childhood flights to America. Just when she lost the foggy feeling, she found herself on the return flight to Rubistan.
Crusty swept a palm branch out of the way for her to pass. "Do you have children?''
"No." A fact she mourned would never happen, but did not want a husband that would come with the baby.
Since Crusty did not seem likely to budge on his tight-lipped protective stance in talking about his family, she shifted her attention from the rumpled pilot to her spiky-haired escort from the OSI.
"What about you? Do you have someone at home to call?"
At her question, Max Keagan jerked, his sea-green eyes widening. Like a man being stalked, he stepped back from the perceived predator.
A giggle bubbled, but she suppressed it. "No need to worry." She angled closer. "I do not have designs on your neon-green shirt."
No, sir. Her attention gravitated toward desert camouflage these days. Surely only in her imagination could she distinguish his deep rumble from the collective swell of masculine voices drifting from a hundred yards away.
"I have a fiancee."
"Congratulations." She sagged back against a palm tree trunk. "When is the wedding?"
"No firm date, yet."
Not a chatty man, and she could not hide from the fact she wanted an excuse to stay out here where she could see the Colonel.
Crusty stepped into the conversational hole. "His fiancee is also in the military." He offered bare essentials. "Scheduling is hell. My guess is we'll all get about ten minutes notice that they're ready to get hitched."
Crusty's comment elicited the first grin from the spiky-haired man. "There are plenty of folks who would pay good money to see me in a tux. Wonder if they make pineapple-patterned cummerbunds?"
Yasmine laughed, couldn't help herself after so long of holding back from any kind of emotion. With restraints lowering, thoughts of opposites blending filled her mind, uniform and unconventional, different worlds coexisting.
Silk scarves and starched uniforms mingling.
A shiver tickled through her at the sensual image. And for a moment in the middle of a stark airfield, she let herself dream and laugh.
Drew planted his boots to prep himself as more of Yasmine's laughter drifted in the gritty wind. Sure as shit, that tinkling sound slammed into him with all the force of a grenade.
Watching her flirt with the two younger men while he tried to listen to a captain detailing a duty roster, Drew told himself he didn't give a damn. He reminded himself this should be exactly what he wanted, hell, had even asked for since telling her to take her scarves and all-out smile elsewhere.
She hadn't stopped turning up anywhere he found himself, but she no longer spoke to him. A whole twenty-four hours and he was already pouting like a kid.
He closed his eyes, pressed his forefinger and thumb to the bridge of his nose. If only he could stop seeing a rose silk scarf in his head.
Rose? The sun must be cooking his brain, a common enough occurrence around this woman.
Since when had he started noticing what women wore? And pink was pink, damn it. Not rose. Next thing he knew, he'd be watching the fashion network and whipping out a credit card for a fuchsia scarf.
He may not be the most creative Joe Sensitive on the planet, but he knew his job and his place. He nodded to whatever the hell it was the captain just said, eyes on the four Rangers flinging their bodies through the air, landing. Damn near perfect.
Except damn near wasn't good enough.
Next thing he knew, his boot jammed itself in the porch latticework while he hauled himself up. "Follow me, boys."
He might be getting old but he was not going soft.
"Break your ankle practicing and you won't be any good to anybody. Break your ankle out there in the field and you're gonna be a liability to your fellow soldier who'll risk his life to carry you out." He jerked a thumb toward young Santuci. "Keep an eye on the private here."
Santuci beamed like a star pupil. Kid wasn't much older.
Drew lined up beside Santuci. "You ready, Private?"