Strategic Engagement

Great. That "and stuff" would no doubt be unfit for kids' eyes, like the time he'd returned to find Hannah waiting with a shrimp casserole and a ribbed tank top that encased gravity-defying double-D's. And Hannah was smart as well as hot—a biochemist researcher at the medical university, for crying out loud—what more could a man want? Yet still he wasn't interested in the brainy blonde.



Blonde? Not redhead. Crap.



Two more hang-ups cycled through.



He flipped the coffeemaker on as the next message picked up. "Daniel? Elaine. Uh, just wanted to let you know I'll be in Charleston on business next week and, uh, thought maybe we could, well, have dinner or something. I'll cook. Well, call me."



An image of auburn-haired Elaine taunted him. Daniel glanced heavenward and barked, "Okay, okay, Big Guy. You've made your point."



He'd actually had a semiserious relationship with Elaine, a chef at a five-star joint. He'd even donned a tie for her once, not that he hesitated in breaking things off six months ago when he'd transferred from California. He'd cited the long-distance-relationship reason, already realizing they wouldn't work out. She'd offered to pack up her ginzu knives and follow him.



Damn, but he felt bad.



Not bad enough to mislead her by letting her food processor back into his life. Like his life wasn't screwed up enough right now anyway. And then he still had to puzzle through whatever had Mary Elise so on edge. Daniel reached on top of the refrigerator for a box of Pop-Tarts.



"Is she a good cook?" Trey's voice drifted from behind him.



Pivoting, Daniel ripped open the pastry box. "Run that by me again?"



His brother stood in the archway, knobby knees showing just below the hem of a Thunderbirds air show T-shirt. Not a hint of bedhead in sight in his dark hair, the kid carried a puffed-chest air and haughty look that would have done their old man proud.



"Is that Elaine lady on the answering machine really a good cook?"



"Yeah, she's a great cook. If you're into stir-fried sprouts and snails." Daniel pulled out a pack of Pop-Tarts and tossed aside the box.



"Actually, I like escargot. Calamari too."



Figures. "Charleston has awesome seafood restaurants. Shrimp trawlers bring stuff in fresh every day."



Trey sniffed, "I've eaten in restaurants around the world. My mom taught us to like anything since we traveled so much. She also said that healthy stuff would help us grow."



The boy's condescending glance ran the length of Daniel as if that inch missing from making him six feet tall might have been added with more squid and fewer Moon Pies.



Daniel laughed. The kid was snotty, but gutsy. Gutsy, he could work with. Trey would need that grit to carry him through the transition.



"No worries, kid." He passed the pack of Pop-Tarts to his brother. "We'll find someone to cook for you between restaurant visits. Even I know a growing boy can't live on Twinkies and Mountain Dew."



Trey offered another of his snooty sniffs and shuffled to the refrigerator while days of messages clicked through in the background. Daniel didn't bother shutting off the speakerphone since nothing classified would come through his home phone. And aside from Hannah's message, he didn't expect anything R-rated on his voice mail this time.



Reaching over his brother's head, Daniel pulled a can of orange juice from way back on the top rack, an unconsumed leftover from one of his flight lunches. "Here, kid, vitamin C."



"My dad left us lots of money, you know, for shopping and stuff."



Daniel mentally counted to ten. "Thanks, but I can afford a few groceries."



His brothers could keep their damned trust fund. He didn't want a penny of his father's money, and he'd told his old man the same when he'd walked out the door to attend the Air Force Academy. Now he could support the boys fine on his own until they turned twenty-one.



If Trey didn't off him first.



Daniel unhooked a coffee mug from under the cabinet. "You feeling okay today?"



There. That sounded vaguely parental. He paused the coffeemaker long enough to pour himself some much-needed java.



"I'm not a baby who can't tell you if I'm sick." Trey nibbled the edge of a Pop-Tart with a skeptical scowl.



"Okay. Okay." He'd let the doc handle that one. While Kathleen had given Trey the all's-fine yesterday, she still wanted both of the boys checked out by a pediatrician. After he shopped for bunk beds. And clothes. And food. Healthy food. Damn.



When the hell was he supposed to go to work? Thank God Mary Elise was with them for a while.



"Mary Elise doesn't want to stay here with us."



Had the kid taken up mind reading? Maybe Trey could figure the woman out. "No sh— Uh, no kidding."



Another thing to change about his life. His language. Just what he needed, Austin swaggering into preschool cursing like a crewdog.



Preschools? Double damn. What did he know about freaking kiddie day cares?



"Hello, Daniel." The deep bass rumbled from the speakerphone. His father's voice.



Shock sucker punched Daniel. His lungs constricted, tight. For a surreal moment he wondered if the past days had been a sick game. His father would come pick up Trey and Austin. Life would go back to normal.



Except for Mary Elise.



Trey's gasp slammed him back to the present. Daniel's gaze locked with his brother's saucer-wide eyes staring back from a pale face as they listened to the voice of the one man who joined them.



And it wasn't a dream or game. The message was more than two weeks old. Daniel listened to the words, the voice, couldn't make himself shut down this last link to a father he hadn't been connected to in years.



"Son, call back as soon as you receive this message. We need to talk about…" He cleared his throat.



Mary Elise? She had said his father arranged the job for her. How long had she been there? Maybe she'd only just arrived.



But why would his dad play Cupid when father-son chitchats were pretty much nothing more than a biannual affair? At best.



Daniel shook free the questions and, for his young brother's sake, reached to lower the volume. Trey sidled closer to the machine, his eyes glinting with a willfulness Daniel recognized well from the mirror.



Their father's voice continued to swell into the room. "I don't want to go into details over an answering machine. It would be better if you placed the call from the base on a secure line."



The message clicked to an end. Trey shifted from his guard post to let Daniel jam the off button.



Secure phones? The limited intelligence that had filtered in about his father and stepmother's deaths rolled through his mind. Their car had been caught in the crossfire between extremist dissidents and local militia. A tragic accident.



Right?



His heart pounded in his ears, each tight breath in sync with Trey's faster gulps of air.



Trey. Crap.



The nine-year-old stood rigid with his small can of orange juice in one white-knuckled fist and his Pop-Tart shaking in his other hand. Glassy brown eyes refused to shed tears. The T-shirt seemed to swallow him whole as his snotty air fell away, leaving behind a grieving little boy.



Daniel thumped his mug on the counter and knelt in front of Trey. "Hey, bud, I hate that this happened to him, too."



He cupped a comforting hand around the boy's shoulder.



Trey shrugged it off, chest filling his T-shirt again. "Like you even care about him." He flung his breakfast pastry toward the sink. Missed. The Pop-Tart slapped the tile floor. "I'll bet you just forgot to mail that 'World's Best Dad' card for Father's Day last year."



Shot well taken, kiddo. "Trey…"



"That's right. I'm Trey. Franklin Baker III. Third. Trey, after my dad. I was named for him, not you."



Damn but the kid fought with the gloves off. "I realize you're upset. Hell, I'm upset." Hell? Damn. Damn. Damn. Watch the mouth, Baker. "You don't want to be here. I understand."



"Like you want me here."



What could he say to that? His brother needed reassurance, but would recognize a lie in a heartbeat.



Daniel stared at the blueberry Pop-Tart on the gray-flecked tile while the drip, drip, drip of the coffeemaker echoed. Finally he scrounged for words in a situation he'd never imagined facing.



"Trey, you're a smart kid, like the old man. You were well named." No bull in that statement. "So I'm gonna be straight with you. No, this is not what I would have listed on my schedule for the year. Of course I wish you were with your dad and mom right now. That's the way things should be. But life didn't give us a choice, so let's help each other out here."



Trey wavered forward. His bottom lip quivered twice. Daniel squeezed the boy's shoulder.



"No!" Trey jerked back. "I don't know you and I'm not staying here." He spun on his heel and ran down the hall. The slamming door rattled dangling mugs.



"Damn." Daniel scooped the Pop-Tart off the floor and into the trash. "Damn. Hell. And crap!"



The sight of Mary Elise in the archway halted the flow of bottled curses. Mary Elise in his clothes. His gray sweatpants and a T-shirt from a missile-testing project had never looked so good. Fire-red hair streamed over both her shoulders, pert br**sts nudging the well-worn cotton to part the curtain of hair.



He needed air. He needed space. Both running low in his small condo.



Daniel turned away and hoped Mary Elise would get the not-so-subtle message that he wasn't in the mood for chitchat. Maybe she would go comfort Trey and leave him the hell alone. He realized his avoidance tactics were juvenile and didn't give a damn.



He jerked open the cabinet to look for … he had no idea what. He just knew he didn't want this attraction, and he definitely didn't want a soul-searching conversation about Trey and their father and the past with Mary Elise. He wanted to smile with her, joke about the incongruous notion of him packing Scooby-Doo lunch boxes and attending school plays. Anything to keep from facing so many truths.



First on the list, his relationship with his father sucked. With that as his only model, he didn't hold out much hope of his ability to parent two needy boys.



Next, and worse, came the gut-scraping knowledge that he hadn't done right by this woman, a person he'd cared about more than anyone then. Not that he had a clue how to tap into the emotional crap he knew she needed. Another blot against his parenting potential.



And damned if he didn't want to plunge right back into the same mistakes, if it meant a chance to plunge into her one more time.



He let his hand settle on a jar of peanut butter and reached for the silverware drawer.



Apparently Mary Elise didn't take hints. Or plain ignored them as she appeared in the kitchen.



He recognized the tilt of her chin well. She might be a more subdued version of the animated spitfire who'd trailed his tracks and kept him from falling irretrievably into mischief with her dry wit and wisdom. Yet even subdued to half power, this woman had an unmistakable will. The furrow in her brow said it all.



She intended to talk.



Given his self-control lay in the trash right beside that Pop-Tart, he figured the bedroom door and wide expanse of bed waiting a few steps away didn't offer much hope for getting through their conversation with an inch of sanity left.



Chapter 6



Standing beside Daniel in the galley kitchen, Mary Elise forced her brow to smooth and edged aside her urge to offer advice. Danny should hone his own instincts in dealing with the boys. She could already gauge from the way he'd talked to Trey that his intuition was on target. Sure, she might approach things differently, but that didn't make his way wrong.



And therein lay the core truth. He needed to set patterns in place that he could maintain, not her way, since she would soon be gone.She shouldn't tell him what to say to Trey, but she couldn't leave him alone with all that pain pulsing through the small kitchen. The echo of Franklin Baker's voice from the answering machine had shaken her, even if she couldn't hear the words. She could only imagine what Daniel must be feeling.