His eyes narrowed. She blinked back innocently to wait him out, an art well worth cultivating around this stubborn man.
"My ex-wife's name is Glenna."
Progress. Yasmine stretched her legs out beside his. "I will likely think of her as 'the bitch.'"
He choked on a cough. "Pardon me?"
"If she has made you this bitter about love, then she must be a bitch."
"Maybe I was a bastard."
"Were you?"
He was so close the heat from his solid body warmed her aching arms, tempted her aching heart.
"I was married to the Army. She said she felt like a second-rate mistress." He pinned her with gray-blue eyes that carried desire and no trust. "I'm still married to the Army."
"Of course you are. That is one of the things I most admire about you, your honor."
The gray of desire in his eyes edged out some of the blue. "For what it's worth, if I was in my twenties again this might be different."
"What if I was forty-two?"
That threw him for a second. "What the hell has that got to do with anything?"
"You seem to think you are ancient. Would you find me less attractive at forty-two?"
"You'll be hot as hell at forty-two and we both know it. Moot point. When you're forty-two, I'll be...sixty-one. Ah, shit, Yasmine. You're not helping your case here."
"Will you find me less attractive when I am sixty-one?"
"This is ridiculous."
"Well, then, can we have an affair?"
"Hell, no!" He shot five inches to the left. Away. The flashlight toppled.
"Why not?" She resisted the urge to crawl toward him. "I, of course, think you will be an oh-so-sexy, sixty-one-year-old in my forty-two-year-old eyes. But since you disagree, I will take what I can today. How is the age difference a problem for a short-term affair if you are not considering us being together when you are sixty-one?"
No answer. The flashlight rolled on its side and as much as she wanted to see Drew's face—his eyes—to gauge his reaction, she did not dare pause.
"Because you are considering what it would be like for us to be together then. And I am so very glad since it would be a sad thing if all of these feelings I am having were one-sided."
She allowed herself to move closer, to touch him, her hands on the solid deck of his shoulders. He flinched but did not pull away or tell her to go. She explored the roughened texture of his skin along his neck, the rasp of late-day beard against her fingertips. Skimming up, she traced his tight jaw, the scowling line of his brows. "Just so there is no misunderstanding. I fell in love with your eyes. With the man I see inside those eyes. That will never change. Never age."
She leaned, pressed her lips to his. Prayed. Please, please, that he would kiss her back, or touch her. Just a simple fall of his wonderful hands to her waist.
Nothing happened. And she could not even take comfort in the fact that he did not pull away since he had a wall at his back.
She sagged onto her heels. "You can relax. I do have on underwear and I am not going to drop my dress. In fact, that is the last time I will throw myself at you. If you ever want to kiss me or hear me speak your given name again, Drew Cullen, you will have to come to me."
Dignity intact, her heart in shreds, she backed to the corner, curled her throbbing arms around her knees and began her vigil to feign sleep through the sandstorm. The wind howled. Drew manned his radio. And she fought sleep for fear she would miss him coming to her. Or dream of his strong arms around her and mistake it for reality.
The wind howled on. The radio continued to crackle.
He never came.
"All right, flyboy, you can pull up your pants now," Monica instructed.