Strategic Engagement

Restraints fell away. His. Hers. Until everything became theirs as they moved together in a frenzied pace of gasping breaths and demands.



His mouth closed over her breast, pulled, drew. The rock of waves beneath them increased the hot friction of skin against skin until she wasn't in control anymore. But then, neither was he.



His dog tags pressed, almost cut into her slick skin. Not that she could think or care, her mind focused totally on Daniel and completion.



Yet also not wanting that end and the afterward that would accompany it when they would have to face each other. Deal with the line they'd crossed that couldn't be retraced. Had she won or lost in demanding his surrender?



And then she couldn't think anymore, just felt the quickening of his pace, his heart, his heated breath against her flesh.



Her memory must have been faulty because no way could she have forgotten this. Knew she never would forget.



"Danny."



His name rode her scream of release. Her name swelled from his hoarse shout against her neck as he buried his face in her shoulder.



And echoing in her head with a resonation that soothed and excited and scared the hell out of her all at once, she heard…



Welcome home.



Daniel sprawled in the hammock, scanning the expanse of ocean in the fading light, his booted foot on the dirt nudging a lulling sway. Mary Elise lounged with her head at the opposite end, keeping watch over the other stretch of ocean. He drew lazy circles along her ankles and wondered when he'd developed a foot fetish. Of course, the woman did have pretty toes in those sandals.



Toes? He was in big trouble here.As much as he'd enjoyed the hell out of Mary Elise when they'd been younger, this woman flattened him. There was an intensity about her now that demanded more from him than before.



And he didn't just mean in bed.



"I asked you a question, Daniel."



Man she had that schoolteacher tone down pat, and damned if he could remember the question because he'd been busy drooling over her feet.



"Danny?" She scooped up a pinecone and pelted him on the chest, dead center on his survival vest. "I'm tired of talking about me. What have you been doing with your life since finishing the Academy?"



Talk would be good, keep his mind on task rather than on thoughts of taking her back into the cabin.



But once the sun set… He cleared his throat and mind. Talk. "I started out in a regular flying squadron—then became a test pilot with C-17s out at Edwards Air Force Base in California for a few years. Flew with all the newest cutting-edge gizmos on the planes. Figured out which ones worked, which ones didn't and why."



"You enjoyed that." Her soft affirmation blended with the rustling branches and gushing waves.



"Oh, yeah." Almost as much as he would enjoy peeling those copper-colored shorts from her body in another hour.



"Sounds dangerous."



"Sometimes." His thoughts skidded over to less tempting terrain. Would she run screaming from stories of his more-than-one emergency landing? Even a crash landing in the middle of the California desert?



"So you have connections."



Her question yanked him back to the present. "So you're a dog with a bone you're not letting go of."



She toed him in the side. "You're calling me a dog? First washed-out hag and now dog?"



He grabbed her foot in a firm hold before she could damage a kidney. "You have the prettiest feet."



She snorted.



Still, he couldn't unwrap his brain from the notion that his job bothered her, a problem he should have considered before. The stresses of military life had broken up plenty of marriages in the squadron.



Whoa. Marriage?



Wasn't he thinking about trying the dating thing as grown-ups? Not that they'd ever really dated in the first place, just shot straight from pals to nonstop sex. The next logical step included taking things slow, spending time together, healing old wounds and progressing from there.



But he couldn't stop thinking about her old engagement ring in his flight suit pocket, his permanent reminder not to repeat past mistakes. Couldn't stop remembering what it had once looked like planted on Mary Elise's finger.



She scrunched her toes, drawing him from his haze. "Ouch," she squawked.



His hand jerked away from her foot. "Damn, 'Lise, I'm sorry."



"Gotcha!" She toed him in the side again, her gaze unrelenting. "I told you already. I'm not going to break."



He smiled. God, he loved her spunk, her steely will. This woman was far from breakable.



Memories bombarded him of their hours together, rediscovering each other on the water bed. The floor. The sofa. "I figured that out."



"I'm stronger out of bed, too. I realize there are things about your job you can't tell me. But don't hold back on what you can share because you're worried I'll turn all Victorian on you and you'll need smelling salts. Got it?"



He forestalled her lethal toe. "Yes, ma'am." The ring in his pocket seemed to scorch a brand through the fabric and into his skin. If he even intended to consider those thoughts, then she needed to know more about him before they both landed in way over their heads. "About connections, let's just say once you get a high-security clearance for one mission they tend to tap you for other missions since you're already in the loop."



"And you enjoy that," she answered with understanding and no censure.



"Oh, yeah."



Her fingers trekked inside the leg of his flight suit, scratched along his calf. "And you enjoy that?"



"Oh, yeah," he repeated. "I think I could really get into this shared control gig."



Next thing he knew, he had the ring out of his pocket and wasn't sure who was more shocked, him or Mary Elise.



Her hand flew out of his pants leg. "You kept it."



He worked the solitaire between two fingers until the diamond caught the fading sunlight, casting multifaceted sparks. "So I wouldn't forget what a relationship screw-up I am like my father."



"Danny," her fingers slid to his knee, "you made a single mistake at twenty-one. For God's sake, that doesn't make you like your father."



"I don't do relationships well, never have. There are plenty of women besides you who can attest to that. And just look at the mess with my father."



"He was proud of you."



Daniel jammed the ring back in his pocket where it could brand a reminder he needed before he ended up doing something totally illogical like asking this woman to marry him. "So damned much he didn't trust me enough to tell me when you came to Rubistan."



"I told him not to."



"So?" If that sounded arrogant, big freaking deal. His father should have called him, anyway.



"I wasn't in a good place right then." She plucked a leaf from a low-hanging branch, crumpled it in her hand.



"I can understand having someone try to kill you must have been rattling as hell. All the more reason extra support and protection should have been a good thing."



"Not just that." She studied him for four lazy swishes of the Pawley's hammock, her fist further mangling the leaf. "How much did you learn about endometriosis on the Internet while I was sleeping?"



"What makes you think—" He swung his foot back up on the hammock. "Ah hell, you used to do that when we were kids, too, read my mind and then follow me right into my messes. Yeah, I did some reading, wanted to understand how to help you. Where's the crime in that?"



"You can back off the defensive, Baker. I just wanted to confirm you have a core knowledge here."



He gave her a simple nod. This was obviously tough enough for her. He didn't want to make it worse by shoving his boot in his mouth.



"Then you know the more scar tissue that builds up, the more difficult it is to conceive, which explains how it was easier for me to become pregnant when I younger. But then in some cases with endometriosis, even if pregnancy occurs, the body—" she unfurled her fist and let the wind carry away the shredded leaf "—my body can be a hostile environment. Miscarriage rates are higher."



Hostile environment? He could hear too well the repeat of McRae's propaganda crap.



"After three more miscarriages, I told Kent I'd had enough. Enough of the doctors and hormone injections and surgeries. I just wanted a baby. I really thought he was okay with adoption." Her head fell back against the webbed ropes. "God, he had me fooled."



Her eyes slid away from him for the first time, which should have been a warning to prepare himself. But thinking about himself was the least of his concerns right now. He lifted her cold hand from her side and linked their fingers. A damned paltry offering, but all he could think of at the moment.



"Kent swapped my birth control pills for placebos. I got pregnant." Her flat tones carried on the wind, the hollow tones of a person with no tears left. "After all those treatments, for some damned reason I finally conceived on my own again. And then I made it past my first trimester. That had never happened before. The hope was … worse than anything else."



His gut twisted. Tight. Already he could see where this was going. It hurt like hell to breathe just thinking of what she'd been through. Images of their one lost baby had haunted him for a year. How much more had she suffered?



Alone.



"At twenty-four weeks, I gave birth to a stillborn son." Her words gut punched him. Even expecting it hadn't prepped him for the silent ache radiating from her. Nothing could have.



Here he'd been arrogant in wondering if she could handle hearing about his freaking job, and he was the one who damn well couldn't breathe. At least he had his head together enough to know she wasn't ready for him to talk or ask questions. She needed him to listen. He could do that much.



He should have been in her life to do so much more, but he'd been too busy staying out of Savannah because he didn't want to run into Mrs. Kent McRae.



"I overheard him with my damn traitorous doctor. Heard what they'd done to me with swapping the birth control pills." Her voice faltered for the first time. "What they intended to try again." One shaky breath and she continued, "I put on my clothes, walked out of the hospital and left Kent. Once the divorce was final, he tried to kill me."



Rage, barely banked from the day before, exploded within him, riding a silent curse and vow to send Kent McRae straight to hell.



Her fingers tightened around his. "No, I really wasn't in very good shape when I arrived in Rubistan. And your father just put his hand on my shoulder and told me it would be okay."



Waves echoed in the background for five gushes, six, seven and with each one, Daniel thanked his father for giving her that calm acceptance, that quiet strength that he never would have been able to manage. Nothing else mattered.



"He seemed to know the right balance to strike between helping me and urging me to do for myself. Giving me room to heal, room to grow." Her thumb brushed his wrist. "No offense my dear friend, but, Danny, you would have taken over, and I wouldn't have been strong enough to stand up to you then. And maybe I was prideful in not wanting you to see me like that. Weak."



His fingers tightened around hers. Damn staying quiet. He wouldn't let her buy into any more of McRae's garbage. "Weak is the last word I would ever apply to you."



"Thank you." She squeezed his hand back. "I asked your father once why he never told you where I was. He said he'd learned the hard way about letting a person find their own path in the world."



And in a flash of intuition Daniel had only just begun to acquire from his own brief stint at parenting the boys, he understood. His father had been making amends. Making peace through Mary Elise.



Daniel stopped fighting with his father's shadow long enough to identify his own. "I'm glad he was there for you."