Anything, Anywhere, Anytime (4 page)

"May I ask for what reason, sir?" she answered in her native tongue. Dim-witted humility did not sit well with her. But she had learned to curb her temper and mouth in the year since her parents' deaths in a flu epidemic had thrust her from pampered protection into a nightmare. Selecting a peppermill from the shelf above, she speckled the sheen of fat bubbling to the top of the pot.

"It's standard procedure for a representative from military intelligence to interface with locals during a deployment."

Military intelligence? Nerves churned like the roiling stew. She reassessed her assumption that he was merely one of those arrogant fliers and searched for a convenient kitchen accident that would take her away. "I have bread to make."

And she pitied the people who would eat it.

"Well, the thing is, if I don't talk to you, you might not get to stay on. That is if you want to continue working here."

Her eyes flew to the bubbling goat. "Of course."

Yet, if he was truly military intelligence, then he would have already seen her falsified papers—and could catch her in a misstep.

"What was your name again?"

"Bahijah Faris." A lie.

"And your parents?"

"Dead." Truth. Pain sliced in clean, relentless swipes, but she would not let it win. She rolled through her borrowed identity. "I live with my brother and his wives. Money is very limited, so I must help."

If only the real Bahijah had been bright enough to carry this off. Of course if Uncle Ammar had been smarter, he would not have sent his niece. How stupid to think she would be loyal to him—a man who was nothing more than a fourth cousin interested only in the inheritance of anyone with whom he could claim even a distant relationship.

Ridiculous since everyone in this small country was related somehow. Too bad Ammar had slipped away from justice once before.

She hated stupid mistakes. Of course, babbling stupidity could well drive
this
man away. "Faris is a very old and honored name here. It means 'wounded soldier on horseback,' which my grandfather says—"

"Where does your brother live?" His mouth smiled. His eyes didn't.

"Outside the capital."

"What are you here to do?"

Boil up goat and horse meat for servicemen who are told they are eating beef, you ignorant male.
"I am on the cooking staff."

A pride-pinching duty given her true status, not that she could let that show.

She wiped her hands on her apron. "I need to collect the vegetables now or there won't be an evening meal."

The flyer intelligence contact scooped up a handful of dates and backed away. "By all means, then, don't let me keep you."

Making tracks toward the pantry, she scanned the sparse crowd. Searching. She would need to find another candidate, soon. And if her uncle's information was correct, she would have many, many more men to choose from by the week's end. Failure was not an option.

Only survival.

How much torture could one guy survive in a single night?

Icy shower pellets stung Jack's skin. Talk about caught between a rock and a hard place. Stay in the shower until his Johnson succumbed to terminal shrinkage or step out there and explain to Monica exactly why she wasn't going on the mission to Rubistan. Either way, he was dead meat.

At least the cold water worked enough numbing magic so he didn't have to face her with his Johnson saluting.

Jack opened the shower door. Monica's gaze flicked him like a brief brush of a flame before shifting away.

She thrust a towel at him.

"Thanks." He tied it around his waist before grabbing a second towel and scrubbing his head.

"I don't want to fight with you anymore. I just want to get my sister back."

He peered at her through the fluffy white folds. The pain staining her eyes threatened to level him.

Draping the towel around his neck, he clutched the ends to keep from gripping her shoulders to pull her to him. "You'll see her soon. Just be patient a while longer."

"Oh, Jack, you know I don't do patient well, never have."

Her early graduation from college and med school attested to that. At thirty-four years old, Monica always lived life on fast-forward while he took his time.

Images blindsided him of how impatient she could be while he took his time stroking her to the edge, holding back.
Now, Jack . Now.
Her husky drawl reached to him through vivid memories.

Space. Pronto. He angled past her and out of the too damned small bathroom. Fishing in the top drawer, he yanked black sweats free. What a dumb-ass idea to strip down. What had he expected to accomplish?

Her joining him.

He hitched the sweats over his hips. "How did you find out about the mission?"

Monica glided into the room, her walk an intriguing mix of military precision cut by a hint of a sway. She stopped beside him, arms behind her back, palms flattened against the wall as she leaned.

"Joker came in to update his flight physical for immunizations." She hooked a stray hair behind her ear. "He thought I knew, so he wasn't guarded in what he said. Once I looked at what he was being given and did some digging around for a few days, I figured it out. Or at least enough where..."

"You had to be briefed in on the rest." Damn. He jerked a T-shirt over his head, tried not to wince at the pull to his arm.

"Are you okay?"

"Fine."

"Anthrax immunizations hurt, don't they?"

"A little." A lot. He worked his arm in a circle and stayed silent. Snagging his box of Froot Loops, he frowned at the neatly folded bag before tearing it open to toss back a handful.

"You can take one dose of Motrin, you know, without going off flying status."

"Uh-huh," he grunted, munching.

"Damn flyboys, always afraid of medicines and then they're big babies about the pain."

A self-deprecating smile snuck free. Yeah, she knew her job and patients well. "You'll be sorry to hear, but I think I'll live."

He reached for another scoop of cereal.

She grabbed his wrist to stop him, held his gaze as firmly. "That's not funny, Jack. Regardless of what we've been through, you know it would hurt me if something happened to you."

So Monica still had feelings for him. Damned silly to launch into one of his grandma's Kleistos dances over a simple comment. Not that he was asking for anything from Monica anymore, right?

Only fifteen minutes alone with her and already he'd peeled away all his clothes and half his resolve. He didn't know what he felt around this woman, and she didn't seem inclined to give them time to figure it out.

He jerked his hand free and ate his Froot Loops before she could seal his bag closed again. And he didn't doubt for a minute she'd done it the first time. If a man wanted to eat his cereal stale, big damn deal. He crunched.

"So, Jack? Do you want to replace one of the other doctors with me, or can you justify adding another flight surgeon to the roster?"

"Not going to happen. Against regs for you to fly with me since we're married." He jammed his cereal box back on the refrigerator, top open. If she didn't want to be his wife, she could keep her cereal-sealing hands to herself.

"You really underestimate me, don't you?"

Ambush ahead. He scrambled for a recovery but she beat him to the end of the runway.

"I'll be in a different plane." She unzipped the top of her military bag and dug inside. "And if we're chitchatting about the fuzzy edges of conflict of interest, you haven't said a word about Blake Gardner's SEAL platoon running one leg of the mission."

He blinked. She couldn't be planning to unpack and stay in his room. What was she talking about anyhow?

Blake Gardner?

"The boy's club in action, huh?" She yanked out a clothespin. "You can rescue my sister. Blake can help his old girlfriend. But I'm supposed to sit back and wait when she's my own flesh and blood."

"It's dangerous." And Gardner was in his own personal hell over not being able to stop Sydney from going.

A hell Jack had no interest in visiting because of Monica.

Stalking back to the refrigerator, she snapped the clip on his cereal bag and closed the box lid so damned predictably he wanted to laugh. It sure as shit beat shouting.

"Get real, Jack. Are you going to follow me around for the rest of my Air Force career—and make no mistake, this is a career for me. Are you going to work your Korba magic and charm all my superiors into slotting me on only the safe missions? Step out of the Dark Ages and join the modern world."

Her eyes narrowed, jade depths just as intense and potentially hazardous as those NVG views. "What's really going on here? You've never had a problem with my job before. Quit pulling this smoke-and-mirrors garbage and talk to me."

"We're married," he repeated.

"So? Husbands and wives can't work together? Sure I'm not supposed to fly over on your plane since we're married. Not that anyone knows to call you on it. But I'll ride on one of the other jets, anyway."

He stepped closer until his dominant Greek nose almost touched the pert tip of hers. "I don't want you there."

Pain flashed for a whole second—a damned tidal wave of emotion from Monica—before she doused the spark. Well, fine. He hurt, too. Not that it stopped him from wanting to wipe away her worry.

"I can understand that, Jack, but you know how damned scared I've been for my sister these past months."

Ah, shit. If she went soft on him, he was toast. His easygoing pop may not have taught him much, but his father had been rock-firm on one point. A man never hurt a woman. "I'm doing my best to end that fear for you."

"I know. But I don't understand why you kept this nugget of hope from me. You've never been a petty man."

She shamed him, but damn it, he had reasons— good ones. Like security. And not raising her hopes for them to fall.

He wouldn't fail. "If it had been as simple as just telling you, then hell, yeah, I'd have let you know. Except you would have insisted on a slot from the start—just like you're doing now." The truth pushed through, good thing since nothing else gained him ground. "Shit, Mon, after what went down between us in Vegas...

I can't spend the next week dancing around land mines." He stepped closer. "You know how it is whenever we're in the same room."

She stilled. The air conditioner hummed in the silence between them, need riding the breeze and dulling the edges of pain until the pull between them increased. Swelled. Demanded attention. He could have her. He knew it. The defensiveness in her eyes broadcast she knew it, too.

He couldn't allow himself to take that step forward, a move that would hurt her, both of them, even more.

"Don't push this. Plans are in place. Don't. Push."

"I have to. You'll figure out how to work with me around the same way I'll manage to work with you every day after the divorce is final." Her hand fell to his arm, hotter than the flaming immunization site. "Jack, for three and a half months I've tried not to think about what could be happening to Sydney. But still, possibilities smoke through my brain in this toxic black cloud." Her fingers tightened. "You know what these people are capable of. We all know what Ammar al-Khayr is capable of."

Vulnerability from the strongest woman he knew leveled his defenses faster than a SCUD missile. That her younger sister had to be there at all blasted everything else inside him to dust. He studied the floor, his bare feet, anything but Monica's eyes.

"I know you'll get her out of that hellhole, Jack."

Her faith rang clear. She might doubt him in other arenas, but not here at least. Of course he couldn't fault her for questioning him in the relationship department. Pop's advice didn't stop him from screwing up more than once. Which put him right back between that rock and hard place, wanting more time, while not wanting to hurt her again.

"Monica, you've said you trust me to get her. So we should put this on hold—"

"Please let me be there when you pull her out. Not some stranger. At the very least, she'll need a basic physical. She'll have to give an accounting of what..." Her voice cracked.

He swallowed, or tried to anyway, a tough-as-hell proposition with all Monica's pain clogging the air.

"Please, Jack, don't make her talk to a stranger."

Finally he sucked in air, only to find Monica's pain rode the gulp and seared his insides.

"Damn it, Jack, I'll do anything to be there when they bring my sister in." She gripped his arm. "Anything."

Anything.

His eyes snapped up to hers. The word sizzled between them with a promise of a mind-bending, all-day release from a long three and a half months apart.

Anything. Anywhere. Anytime.
His squadron motto mocked from the patch on his flight suit sleeve.

How many times had she whispered those words in his ear?

He could tell she damned well remembered, too. Her emerald-green eyes glinted, pupils widening. With heat. Passion. Just like they did when he filled her. Deeper.

No way could he move forward, fling her on the bed and take her up on the offer. He might get fuzzy on relationship nuances, but this one was pretty damned clear. It would be wrong to take her.

However, if she made a genuine move in his direction? Exhaustion fell away faster than paratroopers from a cargo deck.

Monica blinked, protective shields shuttering her eyes again. "You can put that thought right out of your head, Jack Korba. I don't care what the patch on your flight suit says." She threw down her gauntlet, giving no quarter, her determination leveling him and firing him up all at once. "Nothing, nowhere, no time are you getting me back in your bed."

Whoops.

Monica stifled a wince. She'd just challenged Jack Korba. Damn. Damn. Damn. God bless it, the man thrived on challenges and had patience in spades.

She watched his dark eyes narrow, flick with quicksilver determination. He may not have moved an inch closer to her, but anticipation sparked from him.

The way she saw it, she had three choices. Cry, because Jack puddled when a woman wept. Hell, he'd even married her because of a crying jag gone way wrong last time they'd been in Nevada.