until their mother came to visit. and left again.

the next year, bringing a new baby girl with her. again leaving of her own free will.

as a confused teenager, it had been easy to hate the spoiled brat their mother chose to keep with her. as an adult, monica found her feelings for yasmine more complex. but even with the tempering of years, they'd never been what anyone would deem as "close."

yasmine pinned her with an accusatory glare. "even if i had been allowed to call, i have no reason to trust that monica would be willing to help me."

monica let herself soak up jack's soothing touch for two exhales before forging ahead. "well, ouch, yas, that stings worse than when you tried to rip out one of my earrings."

"i was four at the time. as i recall, sydney had hold of the other earring."

monica gasped. how could yasmine be so cruel as to mention sydney offhandedly?

or did she not know about the kidnapping? information didn't flow freely here.

keagan snapped the file closed. "all a moot point now, anyway. we can't release her back into the community in case her request is valid."

and couldn't risk her sharing anything she may have seen or heard.

yasmine's haughty jaw dropped open. "everything is all right? i will be leaving for the united states?"

keagan turned to the commanding officer. "colonel?"

placing his lmr on the corner of the desk, stone-faced colonel cullen blinked slowly, assessing. "there are state department channels we need to process through. beyond that, we don't have a disposable number of pilots on hand to ferry people back and forth. she'll have to wait until we've completed our mission here, and she'll be under house arrest until we go."

yasmine's brown eyes flashed with fear, fast then gone. "which means what exactly?''

"you're free to walk around the compound, but you may not leave."

"and i will be watched?"

silence spoke louder than any affirmation.

"thank you." her chin dipped in a regal-princess nod at odds with her dowdy dress and faded red scarf. "where will i sleep?''

colonel cullen's eyes snapped up, then away. "you can bunk with your sister."

"no!" monica and yasmine answered simultaneously.

monica flushed. silence returned, broken only by the voices building outside the foggy window beside the colonel.

jack palmed monica's back. "personally, i prefer my flight surgeon not be dead on her feet when she treats me, which is why doc hyatt got private quarters in the first place, unlike the rest of the crew dogs bunking double. a roommate would be disruptive enough even without the guard. don't we have another room, even a closet available?"

thank you, jack.

keagan dropped the file on the desk. "we can't put her in the luggage return hangar with all the colonel's soldiers."

crusty leafed through papers on a clipboard. "there's a storage closet we were using for extra bedrolls. we could stack those in the hall instead and set up a cot for her."

relief sighed from yasmine so loudly monica wanted to laugh. needed to laugh. except life just wasn't that damned funny lately.

yasmine rose, slowly, with an imperialistic poise that would have no doubt propelled her beyond a first-runner-up slot at the miss texas competition. "i should return to the kitchen."

a truck backfired outside. once again?

oh, god, a shot. not a truck.

"down! shooter," someone shouted, inside or outside.

pop. the window shattered, sending glass and military personnel flying. another bullet whistled past.

no time to think. training assumed control. monica launched toward her sister. saw the colonel tackle her first.

monica hit the ground. hard. jack? where was jack?

his arm hooked around her waist. "quit worrying about your sister. she's fine."

he jerked monica as he rolled. toward the wall. under the table and out of the line of fire.

her heart thudded against his. another shot took out the jagged edge of pane. glass spewed inside. shards tinkled along with shouts and gunfire.

then nothing. just barked orders but no more shots.

still pinning yasmine, colonel cullen reached for his radio on the desk corner. already the lmr squawked reassurance-only a hungry local trying to steal a box of rations.

monica sagged against jack. adrenaline gushed from her pores in the aftermath. the irony of it struck her like a stray bullet.

they were nowhere near the terrorist compound. it was just a regular sunny day in rubistan...interspersed with the occasional gunfire. and to think her mother left red branch, texas, for this.

jack eased his weight off her, his arm sliding until his hand rested just below her br**sts in the tangle, his leg moving in what turned into a firm, hot nudge between her legs that left her hotter. he stopped. his eyes widened with realization. accidental positioning, sure. but no less potent.

she couldn't move, couldn't find air or space or anything but his face filling her vision. and the hell of it was, she found the hold of his stare just as captivating as the warm corded thigh between her legs.

ten minutes ago she would have sworn she couldn't remember the sound of her mother's voice. but right now, mama whispered through her head sure as a surprise honeysuckle spring breeze in the middle of the desert.

sugar, this is exactly why i left red branch, texas.

chapter 6

two hours and one disarmed local rioter later, jack flattened a hand against the closed door outside monica's quarters. he should go to bed. he would go to bed.

as soon as he looked at her again and reassured himself she was alive and not full of bullets.

being a military spouse sure sucked sometimes-even when the marriage was a freaking farce. he'd sometimes wondered how tina would have handled his combat missions. he'd never considered what it would feel like to be on the other end of the worry. yeah, it definitely sucked, especially given he already understood how damned bad it cut being the one left behind by death.

one look and he would leave her alone.

a dumb-ass decision when his anger still crackled inside him, adding an extra blue tinge to the flame from his fear of losing her. permanently.

too many emotions fired, but then he'd never been one to play it safe. no question, the hungry look in her eyes when she'd stared up at him from their clinch on the floor had been anything but safe.

with two knuckles, he rapped twice. "it's me."

"come on in." monica's husky texas drawl sucker punched him right through the shabby tin door. "it's unlocked."

unlocked? he'd address that later when he wasn't mad and she wasn't in defensive mode. and when he could stop remembering the world of want in her eyes earlier.

he swung wide the door to the office converted into sleeping quarters. a desk, a couple of chairs and a shelf littered a corner by a door open to a tiny private toilet and shower stall. a thin cot stretched against the other wall with barely enough room for a restless night. but big enough if the two of them were absolutely in sync, the way he and monica had always been in bed.

eyes off the cot, pal.

her military bag lay open on the desk to reveal neat stacks of clothes. ziplocs sealed each toiletry from an accidental spill. orderly. clean. his germ-nut doctor-wife all but lived with antibacterial soap holstered to her hip.

the only time she got good and messy, sweaty and relaxed, was during a ball game. and sex.

don't look at the bed.

instead he studied the straight curve of her spine as she leaned against the windowpane. silky caramel-brown hair fell free just past her at attention shoulders, a few waves crimping it after being contained in a french braid. more than air, he wanted to kiss his way up her spine, under her aloe-scented strands to her neck, coax her head to fall forward and that stiff posture of hers to go limp and languid.

time to shut down those thoughts or soon he would be stiffer than her spine. "you should have that window blacked out so you can sleep during the day when you need to."

"sure. later." monica traced a finger along the pane, drawing circles in the dirt. "i'm sorry for not explaining about yasmine before."

at the ring of her honest regret, some of his anger deflated. who was he to toss stones when he hadn't told her about tina? "we all have our secrets."

he still wasn't sure why he hadn't told monica, and now sure as hell wasn't the time to bring it up. of course, he never talked about tina, and it had been so damned long ago. still, no question in his mind, wife number two would be pissed to learn there'd been a wife number one she never knew about. another hole to dig himself out of.

damn. they were one messed-up couple.

he sauntered across the room. stopped at the other side of the window. looked at her while she looked at the world where her mother once lived, where both her sisters lived now. he waited, since patience seemed to be his one trump card around her.

monica's slim finger slowed on the glass. without a word she ducked around him, riffled through her duffel bag and pulled out a pack of antibacterial wipes. he almost smiled at the predictability, but her need to tidy her world seemed somehow sad right now.

after she cleaned her fingers, she swiped the disposable cloth over the window for a clearer view, flatted her palm over the pane as if to reach through to something outside. "how can a mother abandon her children like that? regardless of whether she loved us or not, she was responsible. even a dog stays with her puppies until they can fend for themselves." her hand fell from the smudged view of endless sand mottled by rippling heat. "of course, i guess she figured it out in time for yasmine."

monica paused, crinkling her nose in self-disgust. "eww. sibling rivalry sounds so juvenile."

he'd learned early not to pick sides in his sisters' battles, and they loved each other. the animosity between monica and yasmine bore no resemblance to any family relationship he'd witnessed. "she doesn't make it easy for you."

"thanks." a wry smile flickered as she pitched the dirty paper cloth into the trash. "even if you're sucking up, i still enjoyed hearing that."

"i aim to please."

she snorted. "still angling for that spanking, are you?"

"monica."

"yeah?"

"we don't have to laugh right now."

her head fell forward, hair sliding to shield her face and emotions. "thank you."

he'd seen her. she was okay. he should go. he needed sleep. his boots wouldn't move.

with a toss of her hair, she looked up again. "i don't want to be one of those people who blames their parents for everything. i'm an adult. i make my own decisions."

"yes, ma'am, you do."

"then why can't i let this go?"

finally she'd given him an opening and he sure as hell didn't want to screw it up. not just because he wanted more from her, but because it was tearing him up to see her indomitable spirit bent.

he scrounged for what his brother would say and came up dry. hell, he'd just have to go with his gut and pray. "when i was a kid, we always spent summer days with grandma korba. me, my brother tony and our sisters. our parents both had to work to keep the dry-cleaning business in the black. child care was too expensive, and of course grandma korba... well, she said she'd watch us and nobody argued with her."

monica smiled that gorgeous grin that made her perfect high cheekbones all the more prominent, exotic. "i think i would like her."

she would. if they ever met.

he left the statement unspoken. "every summer, grandma allots five days for her pilgrimage."

"pilgrimage?"

"to graceland."

monica poked him in the gut with one finger. "you're making this up."

jack raised his hands in surrender. "believe me, no way would i make up anything this out-there. she would stuff all four of us in her green pinto and leave chicago behind for tennessee. now in order to afford the nights in a motel, she packed her own food. a jug of kool-aid, loaf of bread, peanut butter, jelly, and cereal for breakfast."

he smiled at the warmth of the memory and at the pleasure of sucking monica in until she wasn't looking out the window anymore. "frosted flakes were messy if you ate 'em dry, so we saved those for the motel and cracked open the froot loops first. we'd pass that box around and around. by the time we hit the tennessee state line, we were fighting over the prize at the bottom of the box."

she laughed, smiled, lighter. "i thought you said we weren't going to laugh?"

"well, what can i say? i'm me." he hooked his hands on his h*ps to keep from touching her. "and i still love froot loops and the king, thanks to those summers. but i don't like small cars. or even small planes, for that matter, after being wedged between tony and one of my sisters for five hundred miles."

distance be damned. he let himself slide a hand behind her neck, cup it with firm insistence as he made his point. "childhood affects us. good and bad, nobody's fault. there's just no way around it."

she flicked his zipper tab with one finger. "since my childhood's a walking advertisement against marriage, you're shooting yourself in the foot here with this argument."

maybe. maybe not. "yeah, i know. but i learned something in vegas a few months ago."

"never drink tequila with a girl from red branch, texas, unless you're prepared to say 'i do'?"

he definitely didn't feel like laughing over that one. "not funny, mon."

she released his zipper and let her hand rest on his chest. "then what, jack?"

"i only want you if you want me, too." a truth he'd only just realized himself and it definitely scared the laugh right out of him.

her fingers fisted against his heart, green eyes full of weakness he could exploit. "it's not that i don't want you."

"stop." he tapped her mouth closed. "we don't have to do this now. as a matter of fact, i'm mighty damn sure we shouldn't."

"why did you come in here, then? i can tell you're still pissed with me over the yasmine thing."

he shrugged, walked over to her neat-as-a-pin duffel. his fingers played with a ziploc full of cotton balls beside another bag sealing up facial cleanser. while his anger might have deflated, it hadn't disappeared, even with fault on both sides.

damn. he was tired. tired of measuring his words around her. tired of holding back and wondering and waiting-a helluva statement on his frustrated state of mind given he considered himself one of the most patient men on the planet.