By Break of Day (The Night Stalkers) (14 page)

Kara considered heaving a meatball at her, but threw her balled-up napkin instead.

Connie’s grin flashed briefly once more before she departed, leaving Kara to fetch the napkin from where it had fluttered harmlessly to the immaculate floor of the empty kitchen.

“A sailor’s life is a very itinerant one.” Lieutenant Boyd Ramis had called them all into his cabin up on the hangar deck shortly after dinner.

Justin felt an incredible sense of déjà vu. The first time he’d sat here, he’d been so hopelessly naive. Fresh out of SOAR training, he’d thought that he knew what he was doing. They’d been in the Arabian Sea at the time.

Then Kara Moretti had walked into the briefing room, and his world had tilted worse than a pinball machine in a typhoon. Twenty-four hours later he’d been flying a raid deep into Somali territory and rescuing hostages during the peak of a tropical storm. Since then he’d flown in a dozen different countries, both friendly and a bit less than.

He’d also taken a lover who now sat in exactly the same seat she had before, close beside Captain Claudia Casperson. Once again the blond and the brunette sat side by side on the couch in Ramis’s topside office. How Justin’s emotions had traveled such a distance in such a short period of time was beyond him.

“Once again”—Ramis managed to sound both noble and put-upon—“it is up to the hardworking Navy to travel to a remote destination with no reason given. I have been informed that there will be no operations while en route.”

Justin glanced around but saw no more clarity on anyone else’s faces than he felt on his own. A herd of longhorns on a cattle drive had more sense of where they were going than anyone here did. He saw Michael’s unending patience and did his best to emulate it. Experience had shown that Ramis would get around to the point only when he was good and ready.

“We are to transit the Med once again, this time via Sicily, Athens, and Cyprus…”

In his peripheral vision Justin saw Kara start to look toward him and then stop herself. Only four people in this room knew about the trip into the heart of Israel; even Ramis hadn’t known that’s where they went, though it wouldn’t be a hard guess. That the
Peleliu
was headed back in that direction only meant more trouble.

“…which we are told to take at a moderate rate to ‘avoid unnecessary equipment wear and tear.’” Ramis was plenty smart enough to not buy that for a single second. “The transit that we made in four days going west is projected to take eight going east. We already have notified teams to shift all of your aircraft down onto the hangar deck.”

At least there they’d be out of sight. But that meant a week trapped aboard without a single flight. There was only so much ground training and vehicle maintenance that could be done.

“All except Captain Roberts’s
Calamity Jane.
”

That snapped Justin’s attention around—his thoughts had been on the verge of wandering over to Kara and her easy smile.

“Captain…” Ramis addressed him directly but was clearly speaking for the rest of the room. “Your crew is presently installing jump seats on your cargo deck. You are hereby cleared for the four-hour flight to Camp Darby, outside Livorno, Italy. You and any SOAR flight crew and officer-level action personnel who would like to are hereby cleared for a one-week leave. Departure in thirty minutes.”

An image flashed into Justin’s brain so hard that it almost hurt.

Kara Moretti in a scant bikini on an Italian beach.

Or riding a horse over Texas grassland in a denim shirt with the tails untucked and tied together, exposing her slender midriff. He’d buy her a proper Stetson, though she’d probably want it in pink or something equally silly. Still, it would look so good on her.

“Yes.” Kara did a fist pump. With deep familiarity, he could pick out her words through the burst of excited talk. “Brooklyn pizza, here I come.”

New York? He’d blown through a couple times with Mom when he was a kid, but never liked it much. The city was filled with crowds tighter than an Army barracks and more noise than a battle zone. Because of that, he and the Big Apple had never much taken to each other. If that’s where she wanted to go, he’d go.

But New York? Really?

Kara felt like a scene from one of those cowboy-comes-to-the-city movies when they landed at JFK airport. The New York girl and six-two of cowboy lover at her side.

It was clear she wasn’t the only one imagining that. Several of the civilian flight attendants had flirted with Justin though she was right there beside him. Hitting baggage claim had the same dynamic. Kara was used to men’s gazes tracking her across a room—her feeling was let ’em look and dream ’cause they were never going to touch. But it was strange that this time so many of the women were tracking the man beside her.

She wasn’t quite sure how it had ended up this way. Justin had flown them across the Med to Camp Darby, he and his crew singing off-key Christmas carols for way too much of the four-hour flight. The fact that it was May didn’t seem to factor in even a little bit.

From there most of the various crews transferred over to the airport in Genoa before scattering to different flights. There she and Justin had simply gotten on the same plane without ever really discussing it. It was early afternoon by that point in the travel, the middle of their “night,” so she’d been too tired to think of protesting.

Not that she minded.

Not really.

Though while she’d taken boyfriends home before, this felt different.

“You sure about this?” she asked as they boarded the A train out of JFK and toward the city. Justin eyed the jam of evening commuters with caution.

“A bit less so than when I was back in the airport. Awful lot of folks here, moving fast in a mighty small space. Always took a cab.”

“That’s like fifty bucks. Subway is way cheaper, trust me.” And he’d followed her aboard. The subway train ride had started out by the airport and was going against the tide of the main evening commute. They’d easily found seats and had their duffels propped on the floor between their feet.

New York had really fixed up the subway cars since she was a kid. They were clean, with a minimum of graffiti, and a transit cop looking bored as shit stood two-thirds of the way down the car. While they were here, she’d make sure they went at least once into the city proper during commute hours, just to mess with Justin’s head.

It was an evil thought. Normally she did her best to avoid that exact situation, but watching Justin’s face in the packed crowds and seeing him learn to ride the surges of the subway along with the shifting masses crammed into every car could be worth the price of admission.

“Your hat does make you stand out a bit, Justin.”

“Reminds me of home and family. It also keeps you from losing me in the crowd. I get lost in this herd and I’m not ever gonna be finding my way. I reckon that alone makes it worthwhile.”

“I don’t have any plans on losing you.” Which was an odd thing for her to say. But nobody looked like him or moved like him, perhaps not in the whole city. The hat was just the icing on the cake.

“I don’t plan on losing you either, Kara.” His expression was oddly serious.

She was about to comment on it when they reached her stop. She almost lost Justin right there. He was moving at a leisurely pace, standing and shouldering his duffel. By the time he reached the door, well behind her, the surge of people loading from the platform had him being all polite and holding back. If she hadn’t noticed and rushed back to snag the door as it closed, he’d have been whisked off into Manhattan proper.

“Gotta be quick on your feet now, Cowboy. You’re in the big city.”

“Yes, ma’am. I can see that now. Or I could simply change my tactics.” He grabbed her hand and held it as they walked along the mostly empty platform.

It was an odd sensation. They certainly hadn’t held hands while walking around on board the
Peleliu
. Except during sex, they’d held hands only that once while sitting aboard his Chinook helicopter.

Kara had never been big on it. In high school and the neighborhood, guys used hand-holding to stake their claim. Even worse was when they hook their arm around your neck until it felt like you were in a permanent, vicious headlock. Signaling not only “this one is mine,” but also gaining some kind of strange validation among their friends that they had a girl attached to their side, as if they could grab one any time they wanted.

Yet Justin made it feel like the most natural thing—aside from their heavy packs, the exit gates, and the narrow stairs that climbed the three stories up from the subway. On the sidewalk she was walking along the so-familiar streets holding hands, which made the neighborhood feel completely new and strange. They moved like a walking roadblock to the natural flow of traffic on the sidewalk. She’d always looked down on couples that did that. She’d wondered if she should pay a kid to walk out ahead of them with a “Wide Load” sign to clear their path.

Justin, despite his hat, didn’t gawk like some hick. Of course, this was just Brooklyn. Most of the buildings were only three or four stories, all tucked together side by side and leaving no gaps between them.

“I have been to the city before,” he told her when she asked, then he’d shuddered. “To think I could be out on the ranch right about now is a sad, sad thought.” But it was his teasing voice, so she didn’t feel too bad about that. Besides, a ranch, no matter what size his might be, would be just as foreign to her.

She knew the first place she had to go and led Justin the roundabout way home to reach the family pasta shop.

“Kara!” Mama’s shout was ecstatic as she hustled out from behind the counter.

“Mama!” Kara fell into her embrace. There. Now she was home.

* * *

To give them a moment of privacy, Justin inspected the shop. The two embracing woman completely blocked the single long aisle. Along one wall were packages of biscotti, olive oil, dried pastas, and dozens of other dried ingredients. It was a tiny grocery store dedicated to making pasta dinners.

Down the other side of the shop ran a long glass-fronted cabinet. Trays and trays of fresh pasta were lined up: spaghetti; lasagna; little dumpling things; the big, round tube ones; and a dozen others he couldn’t begin to name.

At his end, close by a cash register that might have been built during the war—perhaps the American Civil War—were great tureens of sauces: green pesto, bubbling red sauce with and without sausage, a whole container of meatballs each nearly as big as his own fist, and a half-dozen other sauces, some red, some yellow with butter. They filled the air until the shop was thick with flavor. He did notice that there was no Texas-style, but what did they really know here in New York? He pitied the poor people their uneducated ways.
And wouldn’t Kara beat the crap outta you if she heard that sentiment.

The heavy plank flooring, plaster walls, and beaten copper ceiling might well date back to the Civil War.

It was like a barbecue shop for New Yorkers—the perfect Italian comfort food.

Though the Rolling Stones playing on the oldies station was a misfit.

A man who shared Kara’s skin coloring and age was eyeing Justin carefully as he dished up a to-go container of the marinara for one of the half-dozen customers being jostled by Kara and her mother, not that they seemed to mind.

But the cousin—no, he had the same eyes—the brother definitely minded. Not the jostling or the people, but the tall, blond Texan who stood a hand taller than any of them—even not counting his hat.

In the midst of a happy embrace, Kara’s mother was inspecting him over her daughter’s shoulder.

“And who is this?” She turned them both until they faced Justin, but she kept a hand around her daughter’s waist.

“Mama, this is Justin. Justin, this is Angela.”

“Mrs. Moretti.” Justin put on his best manners, belatedly tipping, then removing his hat. “It is easy to see that you’re kin, but it’s not so easy to tell you aren’t sisters.”

And he wasn’t totally whistling in the wind. Angela Moretti was a few inches shorter than her daughter and her curves were softened with age, but she was still a stunning woman. Though the dark eyes didn’t quite match Kara’s; he suspected Kara had her father’s eyes.

“He is a sweet talker, Kara. And it’s Angela to you. And you—” She turned on her daughter, then cuffed her an affectionate blow to the side of her head, then pulled her taller daughter over so that she could kiss the spot.

“Ow! Hey! What did I do?”

“Why did you not tell me you were bringing home a beautiful man when you call from Italy? Huh? You pick him up on the plane, the airport, or the subway?” She sent Justin a broad and friendly wink to show she meant no offense.

“When I called, I, uh, didn’t know he’d be able to—”

Mrs. Moretti turned back to face Justin and cut off her daughter mid-explanation.

“You watch this one close, Justin-who-she-doesn’t-even-know-your-last-name.” Another saucy wink. “She’s slippery. You fall in love with her, and then she breaks your heart like a boiled cream sauce.”

“Mama!” Kara cringed.

Which Justin found rather cute. Apparently nothing impacted Kara’s innate confidence except her mother.

“I would be Justin Roberts, Mrs. Moretti.”

“Polite and pretty. Too good for my Kara. You think I don’t know the truth about your heart.” Now she was back to her daughter. “Carlo’s always asking about you.”

“Sure, me. And Nadya. And Katarine. And anything else that has two legs with nothing betwee—”

“Yes. Yes. But he asks special about you. See, you broke his heart and he isn’t ever again the same.”

Kara attempted to silence her mother with another hug and offered Justin an eye roll in apology.

Actually he found himself quite enjoying this view of Kara and her mother.

However, the brother’s scowl had darkened even further. Him Justin was less sure about.

* * *

“We’ll see you at home.” Kara made good their escape. The shop was always busiest right before dinnertime, and between them and their duffel bags, they had quite jammed the flow of business.

They stepped out onto the bustling street as a light May rain spattered down, leaving little dots on the dry sidewalk. A glance upward said they would have to hurry or they’d be caught in a downpour.

“You might have introduced me to your brother. I think he already hates me.”

“Didn’t I? Shit! He’s Joe—middle brother. Al Junior’s my big brother. He’s a cop like Papa, and Rudi, just a year ahead of me, he’s the black sheep—left the force to go back to law school. Don’t worry about Joe. He hates everybody I bring home, so don’t take it personally.”

“Like your mama loves every one of them.”

“You have no idea.” Kara shook her head. “There were times I’d come home from a class or ROTC and find three old boyfriends sitting around the kitchen table eating Mama’s cookies and drinking a soda.”

“Sounds like you had quite a following,” Justin continued right over her as she spluttered over that. “So, did you always break their hearts?”

Kara pointed. “Best pizza in the neighborhood. I’ll take you tomorrow. Best pizza in Brooklyn makes it best on earth. When they start selling pizza on the moon, it will be the best in the solar system.”

“Evasion, Moretti.”

She stopped and looked up at him, shading her eyes against the increasing spatter of raindrops. “Always, Cowboy. So don’t be giving me yours. I’m hell on hearts.”

He laughed and leaned down to kiss her just as a flash and a hard thump of thunder rattled the windows. The heavens opened in a proper East Coast–style downpour and she didn’t care. The sizzle and thump wasn’t only in the sky. She actually moaned beneath his kiss. She never moaned, but there was no question it had been her. Kara clung to him as the raindrops grew from orzo to gnocchi sized.

Around them, New Yorkers scattered under a ragtag collection of umbrellas, raised collars, and newspapers refolded over their hair.

Her face remained dry in the tiny zone of safety beneath the brim of Justin’s hat. She let his kiss sweep through her until her knees were as weak as her hair was wet.