Joint Forces

That her husband wouldn't tell her pinched her pride and heart more than her over-tight skirt constricting her breathing. "It's always helpful to hear things from another person's perspective. Adds surprising insights."



"Fine. We'll play this your way then if it'll get me out of here quicker."



Unease itched up her spine like the healing skin over her cut foot. She couldn't shake the feeling of disloyalty in hearing what J.T. had chosen not to tell her. Damn it, why couldn't this one have been shuffled to someone else? But even if her boss had relented, the move to a new counselor would mean starting all over again, perhaps delaying Bo's return to flying.



"The part where local warlords got ahold of us at first, was … tense. That's when I got these." He held up his hands. The right could have passed for normal with only one thin scar across the top. But the left shouted pain with fading incisions, the skin pale and peeling after so long in a cast. "Wondering what they would do with us was hell—fearing they might turn us over to one of their terrorist bosses. I wouldn't have made it out alive without your husband keeping them off me."



J.T.'s bruises.



The itch along her nerves turned to a vicious rash—ugly horror spreading through her as Bo confirmed all her worst fears about J.T.'s capture.



The longer her husband stayed silent, the more she'd hoped maybe the images haunting her were just the product of an overactive imagination. So much easier than admitting the worst had happened and her husband wouldn't even tell his wife.



Bo swung his boot back up on his knee, fidgeted with the long black laces. "There were already American hostages over there then, part of what we were checking up on—"



Pausing, he glanced up from his laces. "I swear I'm not being cagey. I can't say more than that for security reasons and it won't make any difference to what's going on here."



"I understand." Understood that her husband was a part of these things he couldn't talk about. Scary things that man-speak translated into the simple word tense.



"Anyhow, the Rubistanians intercepted the rebel caravan, and the bad guys turned us over to the good guys."



"Just turned you over?"



"Yep. They knew they were outgunned, so they gave us up rather than die."



More manspeak understatement. No doubt. "What about the days that followed?"



"Consisted of questioning while we waited for international channels to clear, and for the Rubistanians to poke around inside our plane. I don't remember a whole lot since I was drugged up for the pain most of the time."



"Does it help to downplay the events?"



He looked up, his eyes clear of the fog from reminiscing, if not the horrors of what he'd endured. "Yes."



Pain pulsed from him. She couldn't miss it even with the distance of training. The toughest part of her job. And this was a near stranger. The words would be hell coming from J.T.'s mouth.



If he ever told her.



"I don't mean to sound inane, Lieutenant, but you do realize that if you climb back into the plane, this could happen again?"



"I accept that as part of my job."



"And you're okay with it?" she asked, only noticing as the words fell out of her mouth that she'd opted for J.T.'s abbreviated manspeak.



"Only a moron is going to be totally okay with it."



The sanest response he could have given. Rena could all but see him step that much closer to his plane again.



"But I'm less okay with quitting. I owe a debt."



"The time left on your Air Force obligation can be spent in another job."



"That's not what I meant." He pushed to his feet, restless pacing resuming. "I was brought up by people who gave everything for other people, for me. I need to do something to repay that. I figured out pretty damn fast I wasn't meant for the priesthood." He tossed her a roguish wink that almost lit the dark shadows from his eyes.



Bo scooped a crystal paperweight off the corner of her desk, tossing it one-handed in the air. "And I'm too selfish in a lot of ways to go for the self-sacrificing gig. I like my toys. But I have to give something back. My Air Force commission allows me to settle the debt with the fringe benefits of some kick-ass toys."



He gave the weight a final pitch, snagged it midair, then replaced it on her desk. "I'm not as good as the people who brought me up. And I'm not some genius who can cure cancer." He placed his scarred hands on the edge of her desk. "But once I left the home, I discovered that these hands that were so good at playing music also had a talent for loving a woman and flying an airplane. These hands are who I am. I won't let anyone take that away from me."



He pinned her with his eyes, direct, no shutters or walls blocking her from seeing the man's burning drive to crawl back into that plane.



Then he spun away, hands on his hips, shoulders heaving. "Screw this. I've had enough. Isn't the government's nickel spent out for today yet?"



She could have continued for hours exploring the Cro-Magnon implications of what he'd revealed. But that wasn't her job. Instincts told her that while this young man might well have hang-ups, they had no bearing on his fitness to fly.



And about how his hands had been broken? What had happened that day? He'd definitely closed up for the afternoon, but she'd made the break in getting through to him. They would move on to that in the next session.



Still, she couldn't help but wonder, did men really think their entire worth could be summed up with their job and sex? Did her husband think that? With J.T.'s walls so high, she didn't know how she would ever find the answer.



And at the moment, with Bo's recounting of the capture still clanging horribly in her ears, she doubted her ability to keep her own defenses in place around J.T. while finding the answer. Even a hint of encouragement from her reticent husband and she would fall into their old patterns of comforting him the only way he ever allowed.



Naked. With hot, sweaty sex.



Chapter 8



Streetlights flickering on dotted the n**ed horizon.



Perfect. J.T. shifted gears on the truck, whizzing past their exit. Rena frowned, but stayed silent, the low tunes of the oldies station drifting from the radio.



He'd managed to kill enough time on base to make their drive home dip closer toward sunset. Excellent for his plans. Now they cruised along over the swampy tidewaters, bridges a constant for the waterlogged region. Twenty minutes later, he pulled off onto a two-lane rural road.



"Where are we going?" she finally asked from beside him. Her window down, she tugged the two long black sticks from her bundled hair and let it ripple in the wind.



Now he really wanted that drive.



Hopefully she wouldn't nix his idea before it even took flight. "I figured you've been cooped up in the house for so long, you could probably use time outside. I thought we'd take a ride before we head back to the house."



He could talk to her at home, but not without the risk of interruption. There were also too many doors to slam. A sun-set was romantic, right? Would she agree? His period of romancing her had been so damn short, he wasn't sure what she preferred. They'd spent most of their dating days in the back of her car.



This time he would keep his hands on the wheel and his flight suit zipped.



"Take a drive?"



"Sure. Why not?" Then he would conveniently detour somewhere scenic, overlooking the water where they could talk, away from interrupting teenagers. Already moss-draped oak trees alongside the road grew thicker, more private.



He reached behind the seat and pulled out a Coke.



Rena stared at it as if he held a snake. "You brought a Coke?"



"Uh…" He dropped it between them and reached back again to select a— "Diet Coke?"



He winced. Way to go, Romeo—insinuate she needs Diet when you're already on shaky cheapskate ground romancing her with a one-dollar sixteen-ouncer.



But she would know he was up to something if he started crawling up to her window with a fistful of daisies. A drive and a Coke seemed a safer, nonobvious way to start working his way back into her good graces.



Already up to his ass in the plan, he might as well forge ahead. He arced his arm behind the seat again and pulled out a chocolate Yoohoo. "Or this can count as calcium for the baby with some chocolate for you. You'll have to key me in on what you're craving, because I'm pretty damn clueless about what you'll like."



Would she get the double meaning? Subtext wasn't his strong suit.



She stared down at the bottles resting in her lap. "Have you been keeping a junk-food stash in your car all these years?"



"I stopped by the shoppette before I picked you up." He couldn't see her face clearly enough to gauge her reaction. "That's why I was late."



"You planned this?" Still she didn't so much as glance his way, but her voice went soft.



Progress. Onward. "I wasn't sure what you would want, so I bought a little of everything." He turned off the two-lane road onto a dirt path. "When you were carrying Nikki, you couldn't get enough pizza, but then first time I brought you one when you were pregnant with Chris, you threw up all over my flight boots."



"And then we had ice cream for supper instead."



Made love. Had more ice cream. "Peach ice cream."



"You remember?" Her face went as soft as her voice.



Ooh-rah for Romeo. "I remember."



He slid the truck to a stop at one of his favorite fishing spots, total solitude with a perfect view of the inland waterway. Everything moved slow. The birds. The fish. Even the shrimp boats took their time to cast and draw back nets, cast them again or simply troll to the dock.



Why hadn't he thought to bring her here before?



Hefting the bag from behind the seat, he upended it gently into her lap, releasing a waterfall of food.



Granola bars. Pretzels. Roasted peanuts. Spanish peanuts. Chocolate-covered peanuts. Cashews. Pistachios.



"Ohmigod," she squealed, sifting snacks through her fingers. "You really did buy a little bit of everything."



"I can't take total credit. Something the guys did at the squadron gave me the idea. So do you like it?" He picked up three kinds of peanuts. "Nuts equal protein."



She scooped a bag of peanut-shaped orange candies. "Circus peanuts? And we can call this protein?"



"Hey, whatever works for you, babe."



She clasped the bag of circus peanuts to her chest. "Like I used to tell myself the gallons of peach ice cream meant healthy milk and fruit."



Positioning the brown sack below the edge of the seat, he 'raked the junk food off her lap, and hell but Rena's legs felt good even through layers of her crinkly skirt. He set the bag to the side. "What is it that you need now? Help me out here."



"So I won't hurl on your boots and mess up that nice shine?"



"I'm not talking about Coke and ice cream anymore, but I don't know how to say what you need to hear. We have to find more … neutral ground, and damn, but it was hard before and since I got back…" He shut his eyes, opened them again because the memories kept pushing through anyway. "It seems like we're more screwed up than ever."



She touched his hand. "We've never really talked about what happened to you over in Rubistan."



"There's not much to talk about." Thinking about it sucked enough. "It was scary as hell waiting for the diplomatic channels to clear, but they did. And we all came home."



She wanted more from him. Only a fool would miss that. So much for giving her words, dumb ass. But if those words would upset her? If those words scraped like a blade against his insides on the way up and out?



He would find other words for her instead. "But I made it through since I always knew I would come home again."