Guardian (17 page)

Although, honest to God, she wouldn’t have minded a Valium. Or a stiff drink. Something to calm her fried nerves.

Like all-night sex until tensed muscles melted?

Outside the garage, David punched in the security code and the door rumbled upward, revealing a sleek silver Jaguar—his sister’s car. He opened the passenger side for her, like this actually was a date. “Climb in.”

“But your friend isn’t here yet.”

“No worries. We’ll wait around.”

She slid into the front seat and sank into pure luxury. She caressed the butter-soft leather that had never seen a spilt sippy cup or a smooshed Gummi bear. “It’s generous of your friend Chuck and his fiancée to hang out with the children and Nanny today.”

“They’re actually about to move to Texas next month, so Chuck took some time off before he starts his new job with the air force OSI. Jolynn’s got some accounting job lined up.”

“Then they must be busy with moving plans.”

“Chuck and Jolynn are good people. They want to help Caleb. And they know I would do the same for them in a heartbeat.” David started the engine, the finely tuned machine purring to life with a sensual power. “Besides, Jolynn had been itching to get her hands on my Scout for months. She’s quite the mechanic in spite of her spike heels and love of jewelry.”

A female vintage-car mechanic?

Now
that
was surprising, given what she’d seen of the woman when she sat with her husband one day in the court galley. Jolynn was a woman with a slim, sleek elegance that rivaled Madison’s. Sophie smoothed her hands over her old jeans and double tank tops, reminding herself David’s eyes lingered unmistakably on her curves.

Sophie gave herself a mental head thunk. When had
she become so shallow? But without question, they were both fast on their way to taking things to the next level. It was only a matter of finding the right time.

No more ifs or maybes. A slow simmer started in the pit of her stomach as she let the reality settle inside her. More than anything, she wanted to plunge down that roller coaster and trust that the safety bar would protect her.

She wanted a completely uninhibited night of sex with David.

*    *    *

Flying was almost as good as sex.

David gripped the yoke of the Cessna C-172, single propeller but powerful, sleek for a smaller ride. The clear sky spread out in front of him like satin sheets with pillowy clouds. The rush, the power, the total freedom pumped him full of adrenaline.

Had Caleb Tate felt the same way? Had he allowed the rush of the flight, of testing a new gear, to distract him enough to blow a hole into a civilian’s house, nearly killing a child?

The rush of the flight faded. The tan stretch of desert stretched below them, housing developments behind them. The Vasquezes’ old home was on a family farm rather than a subdivision, their land near a testing range. The Vasquezes had bought the place to give their children room to play and ride their horses.

“Sophie, we’ll be over the Vasquez house in about five minutes.”

When she didn’t answer, he shot a quick look at her strapped in beside him. Her fingers were twisted in her lap, white-knuckled.

“You okay?” he asked. He hadn’t considered she might get airsick.

She nodded tightly. “I’m fine. I’ve flown since Lowell died, and it’s easier each time, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever climb into a plane without thinking about how he died.”

Shit. He hadn’t even considered that angle, which made him an idiot. He wanted to haul her into his arms—but then he always wanted that. “We can turn back now. Just say the word.”

“No, really. I want to do this. Anything I’m feeling is nothing compared to what Ricky Vasquez has been through.” She swept her hair back from her face, so damn beautiful with the sky as a backdrop, she took his breath away. “Just talk to me, okay, David? Silence leaves me too much time to think.”

“Fair enough.” He pulled his eyes off her and back on the job of flying. He scanned the control panel, altimeter, fuel gauge, instinctively registering readings. “What would you like to talk about?

“You asked me about my Bronze Star. Tell me about your Distinguished Flying Cross.”

“You already know the details.” He increased his airspeed five knots.

“What makes you say that?” Her voice mingled with the hum of engines and nearly imperceptible rush of air over the craft, a sexy symphony to his ears.

“You cross-examined me on the witness stand and you’re a damn good lawyer. Which means you did your research on me.” He fed more fuel to the engine. “The write-up is in my file.”

“I only know the facts, a simple paragraph with bare-bones details. There’s always more to it than that.”

And how right she was.

For him, there was always more. Secret missions had to leave out details by pure nature of the job. Anyone who worked dark ops tests or special operations had to check their ego at the door, because there would be no accolades in the news, no parties. Just him and his buds, toasting one another silently with a beer at the end of the day.

And that was enough for him, knowing the job made a difference. “I was the fire control officer in an AC-130. I was tasked to hold off Taliban fighters that were after some pinned-down SEAL team.”

All of which was in the write-up.

“I heard you stayed in the fight well past daylight, into the night, at serious personal risk.”

The night had been pitch black, with only antiaircraft fire lighting up the sky and ping, ping, pinging off the side of the plane, punching holes through metal. The AC-130 had stayed in the air, circling while he took aim, as he would continue to do until he won or they downed him. Quitting wasn’t an option. Quitting meant those ambushed SEALs would have died.

“I stayed as long as I was needed, until a helo could drop in pararescuemen to pull out the SEAL team.”

“You must have had to make each shot count for the ammo to last long enough.”

“It was…tight.” More than tight. If the battle had gone on another fifteen minutes, he would have been bone dry, out of ammo and options. “That new modification to the gun turret would have made that day a helluva lot easier for all our guys on the ground that day.”

And for his crew in the air.

“If it works properly.”

He didn’t bother answering.

“David, can you deny that this case is personal for you?”

“Fine, yeah, this project has become a personal mission for me on a lot of levels. The ‘gadgets’ I test save soldiers’ lives. The sooner a conflict ends, the more souls are saved on both sides. So when some lawyer tries to tie our hands and shut us down, sure, I get irritable.”

He adjusted the fuel feed again, scanning the horizon for the Vasquez place.

“Well,” he said, “anything to say to that?”

She shook her head. “Nope.”

“This should be personal for you, too, Sophie; your job can’t always be so…cool.”

“Are you calling
me
cold?”

“Whoa, hold on, don’t go putting words in my mouth there, Counselor.”

He’d thought of her as coolly in control—before he’d gotten to know her. Before he’d felt the heat of her body against his, the passion in her response. There was so much more fire in his ice princess than he ever could have guessed.

Hell yes, she would be
his.
No more shadowboxing around the subject. The time had come to bring the attraction out in the open, to address it—to act on it.

He glanced down at the control panel to gather his words, the whole seduction gig was so far in his past. There hadn’t been time for anyone else since his divorce, and the last year of his marriage had been an armed standoff at best.

This attraction to Sophie was so tenacious and special, he wasn’t sure there were words. If his hands had been free, he could have shown her.

His hand twitched to adjust the fuel.

Again?

His brain went on alert, his eyes locking on the gas gauge. Was it his imagination or was the indicator moving visibly? Faster. Until there was no denying what he saw. Fuel was draining from the aircraft.

Training assumed command over thoughts of the woman beside him in danger.

“Sophie, we have a problem with the airplane.”

“What do you mean, ‘problem’?” Sophie struggled to push the words past panic. Her fingers dug into the seat, her ears roaring with the mingling sounds of the engine and her heart.

“We have a fuel leak,” David said calmly. “We need to land as soon as possible.”

Sunlight streaked through the windscreen from the wide-open sky. It was a long, long way down to the stark desert below. Although the plane sounded fine, a leak didn’t mean a crash. She needed to stop imagining the worst just because of Lowell.

She swallowed down the fear and dug deep for the warrior calm drilled into her. “Okay, so we don’t see Ricky’s house today. Of course we should go straight back to the airport.”

“Sophie, it’s more pressing than that.” His voice stayed as steady as his hands on the yoke. “We’re not going to make it to the airport.”

She scanned the horizon, empty except for desert and more desert. “Is there another landing strip nearby?”

“We have to land here, now.”

She looked down again, searching for some sign of civilization. No houses, just scrub, cacti, and Joshua trees. Her stomach lurched up to her throat. “We’re going to crash.”

“No,” he said so confidently she almost believed him. “We’re going to have a controlled emergency landing in that dry lake bed ahead.”

She scrounged up her analytical lawyer side and studied the large, flat, circular patch that looked like an alien spacecraft had once landed there. Intellectually, she understood that plenty of planes landed on dry lake beds deliberately.

But this landing was not on purpose, and the leak could have horrific consequences. “How bad is the fuel situation?”

“At best, we’ve got three minutes left,” he said as evenly as discussing how much milk remained in the fridge. “Make sure you’re securely fastened. I need to call in our emergency to the control tower so they can send out someone to pick us up.”

To pick up their remains?

She couldn’t afford to freak out. The last thing David needed was a distraction. She would hold up her end, wouldn’t let him—or herself—down.

Reviewing crash protocol from her survival-school days, she checked her seat belt again, going through the motions by rote, the way training should kick in. And through it all, she reminded herself to breathe. Just breathe.

Dimly, she registered him calling in to the control tower, his voice steady and calm. “Center, this is Cessna five-three-zero-zero
declaring an emergency. Have a fuel leak and will be setting down on Delamar Dry Lake. Over.”

After just those few words, he went silent, intently focused on the barren desert stretching ahead.

*    *    *

Bile burned the back of her throat. She’d stood down Taliban insurgents, ducked through incoming fire to run from tent to tent and write wills for soldiers. But something had happened to her since Lowell’s fatal accident. She’d lost her edge, her nerve, her ability to distance herself from the situation and trust her professional instincts.

One breath at a time, she willed herself to focus. She couldn’t surrender to the panic-inducing images of Lowell’s crash, the mangled remains of the plane and his body battered beyond recognition. Fear for Brice, of leaving him orphaned, mushroomed through her as the plane dove closer and closer to the dry lake bed. Her son would not attend another parent’s funeral, damn it.

The engine sputtered. Her heart echoed the staccato skip. “David?”

He didn’t answer, his hands steady on the yoke and controls, adjusting the trim.

The engine stopped.

The single propeller on the nose slowed.

Her eyes shot to David, his lean body tensed and focused in camo and a cotton T-shirt. The world was painfully silent as, wings level, they glided downward. She grew light-headed in spite of each measured breath. Her heartbeat grew louder and louder in her ears, the eerie hush filled only with the sound of her gasping for air.

Lower, lower, only a few…more…seconds until…

The landing gear kissed the ground in a perfect landing.

She blinked fast, looking around as they cruised down the lake bed, dust poofing around them. As fast as the crisis started, it was over. The Cessna slowed, finally stopping.

David whipped his seat belt off. “Deplane. Now.”

His barked order snapped her out of her fog. She needed to get the hell out of this leaking aircraft. She whipped her belt off and popped open the side hatch. Reaching for her purse at the last second, she leapt to the dry, dusty earth.

Her knees folded and she hit the ground. Sand and rocks tore at her palms.

David grasped her shoulders. “Run! We need to make sure the plane isn’t going to blow.”

Blow up? It was like a sadistic repeat of her car accident, merging with the horror of Lowell’s death. She pushed herself to her feet again, stumbling away from the plane. David’s footsteps beat a reassuring pace behind her. She knew he could go faster without her dragging him down, so she pushed herself harder and faster until he grabbed her by the elbow.