Monica pivoted and jogged toward a door opening onto the parking ramp.
How long would she have to wait for answers?
Not as long if she followed her sister. Yasmine crossed, paused in the doorway, searching for a benign place to wait where security would not drag her back to her room. Wind lifted her hair. >Shit. Where had that come from? Probably the same damned place as the jealousy chewing his hide.
"By the nose?" She stilled against him. "Are you trying to make me remember why I want to sign those papers or does being a bastard just come naturally to you sometimes?"
"Naturally. No doubt. And that's something else we'll have to deal with, isn't it?"
He'd had a belly full of deep-water talk for one night. Turning, he shut off the shower.
He swiped aside the plastic curtain, reached to snag two towels, passed one to Monica. Sawing the towel across his back, he forced himself not to look at her, not until he figured out where the hell his jealousy had come from.
"You know that's unfair." Her voice drifted over his shoulder.
"What?" he shot back while retrieving his clothes.
"About Hunter. Every time I postponed the wedding plans I had a TDY. You know we can't always get out of those."
Great. So she really did have a thing for the guy? He yanked on his boxers. "Whatever you want to tell yourself. How many times was it you canceled wedding plans with him? Four or five?"
Her footsteps stalled. "What was her name?"
He should have remembered she didn't fight fair.
"Tina," he answered, yanking his T-shirt over his head. "She was twenty years old, liked sci-fi movies and mushrooms on her pizza, and had just declared her major in electrical engineering before she gave birth to a stillborn son who she never even got to look at."
Monica wrapped the towel around herself, her wet hair clinging to her neck in clumps. "And you loved her. Your son, too."
Apparently, jealousy ran a two-way street, and yet the thought didn't make him feel one damned bit better. "Yes."
This time her arms didn't go around him, no talk of who was hurting, just the two of them standing near-naked with barer souls.
"How is it that by getting closer, I feel like we're further apart?"
Couldn't they even enjoy one damned night of afterglow? "I guess that means you're not going to invite me to sleep over for another round of Mistress Monica."
"There's the Jack I know, using laughs to avoid any tough talk." She unearthed an overlong jersey from her bag and jerked it over her head, towel falling to her feet.
Of course she picked it up and made tracks to hang the damned thing on the rack. God forbid she should just let it lie there growing musty while she talked to him.
"Well, Mon, the way I see it, things don't always have to be so goddamned complicated."
She didn't answer him. But she didn't snap back, either, a positive sign he needed to capitalize on before things exploded.
"Time out," he said. "Let's stop before either one of us says too much. Okay, before I say too much and you haul ass the other way. How about I throw some of those blankets on the floor and we sleep the day away until it's time for my night shift in the command center."
Still she stood at the towel rack with her back to him, and he was feeling every bit as predictable as her. Instead of calming her, he had them both off center and heading for a crash if he didn't maneuver a recovery soon.
"Damn it, Monica, you have a way of getting to me. I sure as hell didn't mean to lose control just now."
She glanced over her shoulder, a strand of wet hair swinging, clinging to her cheek. "I make you lose control?"
"Hell, yeah."
She stepped into the doorway. "Sleep?"
"Seems smart." Better than talking.