Explosive Alliance (8 page)

Labrador-beagle-mix puppies pranced around her ankles, yipping and nipping, begging for attention. She lowered to sit on the grassy ground with Waffles's litter of pups. Her hands drifted to stroke floppy ears while she watched, her memory filling in details currently fuzzy.

Across the field, the airplane hatch swung open. Deja vu whipped over her faster than the evening wind carrying the scent of barley and the earthy fertility of spring. Just like the day before, Bo Rokowsky's body filled the open portal, green flight suit stretching across broad shoulders as he leaped to the ground.

He walked around the plane with confidence, securing tie-downs and setting chocks on the bare landing strip beside the small metal hangar.

There was something fascinating about those zipper-suited sky gods, and yeah, something intriguing about this one in particular. She allowed herself a Paige-of-the-Past moment where she sagged against the chain-link kennel and daydreamed. Puppies clambered willy-nilly over her lap while fantasies kept an equally frolicking pace. In her mind she could be eighteen again. She would be twenty pounds lighter in looks and a million pounds lighter in concerns. Free to flirt.

Except, if she was eighteen that would make Bo Rokowsky all of eleven or twelve. Ugh. And bottom line, she wouldn't trade her daughter for a million do-overs with guaranteed happy endings.

Paige angled herself away from visions of the plane and its pilot. Five-week-old Brownie collapsed against her thigh with huffy exhaustion. Draping him over her leg, she stroked the tired puppy to sleep while two more chewed on each other's ears. The remaining four settled against Waffles for supper.

Nice. Normal. Exactly the sort of grass-roots-values life she wanted for her daughter.

A double shadow stretched, easy to distinguish the two even without glasses, her hulking brother and a certain lanky pilot.

Vic strode past to scoop up a puppy scampering close to the exit. "Baby sister, I don't know what you did to convince this guy to help out, but we'd be idiots not to pounce on his offer." He thrust the squirming mutt toward Bo. "Let me wash off. Then I'll drive you back out to base so we can discuss scheduling." He thumped Bo on the back. "And thanks for the heads-up."

Without another word, her brother lumbered away. Leaving her alone with Bo? What was up with that?

Great. The only thing worse than Vic in overprotective mode was Vic in mega-consent mode. And wasn't she quite the contrary brat today? Darn Bo Rokowsky for making her all itchy.

She patted the snoozing puppy in her lap. "So we're all set?"

Bo dropped down beside her, cradling his mutt in one hand and rubbing it with the other. "I'll make the arrangements with my commander to take leave while I'm here. I'll still be on call if Mako needs me to fire up the plane for a test, but otherwise, I'm free. I'll start after the paperwork's filed Monday."

Paige watched his big, scarred hand rub over the downy fur. She swallowed hard to erase the visions of how painful the injury must have been to require such intricate incisions. "You like dogs?"

"Who couldn't like this dog?" He lifted the puppy eye level.

"It's not a purebred."

"Neither am I."

He said it to be funny, but she wasn't sure he thought so. "What kind of dog do you have back home in Charleston?"

Bo rested the animal on his thigh again, shadows masking his expression as the sinking sun brought the anonymity of night. "I'm gone too much to have a pet. Wouldn't be fair to an animal, boarding him for months at a time."

An insightful statement, which made the guy hot and funny
and
sensitive. Man, she really needed him to say something jerklike soon or she'd be sagging in his hand like that happy puppy. "You're gone that much?"

"Over half the year on a regular basis, even more lately with all the commitments overseas."

"Wow, that's rough."

"I'm seeing the world, playing with the coolest toys the U.S. Government has to offer. Retirement comes around fast enough. I'll have a dog then." He nodded to the sleeping pup on her leg. "Although it looks like the animals boarded here aren't lacking in attention."

"We try to play with them and let them out as much as possible. Cuts down on the cage cleaning, too.

Kirstie helps with the walks and treats."

"Seems she's looking to follow in her mama's footsteps."

"Maybe she will." Paige toyed with the dog's ear. "Better than following in her father's, I guess."

Oh, God, why had she said that? She wanted to gobble the words back down and let the acid in her stomach burn them away along with so many painful memories. She forced her eyes to stay on the puppy and hoped Bo would ignore her slip.

"What does a person do to become a veterinary technician?"

Thank you.
"I have an associate's degree in veterinary technology. It's a two-year degree, much like a two-year nursing degree. I can do lab work, testing, start and maintain IVs, catheters, take X-rays, perform anesthesia on animals, and such. I can give injections even pick up some emergency calls if Vic is out, but can't prescribe medicine or diagnose. And I can't do surgeries." She leaned toward him with a wicked smile of her own. "Although Vic has let me neuter cats on occasion."

"Neutering, huh?" He grimaced.

"Uh-huh."

"You're one tough lady."

"I'm getting tougher." Her hands curved protectively around the pup while words bubbled up in spite of acid and good sense. "I was going to attend vet school like my brother, but I met Kurt and didn't want to leave the area. We got married and started moving around so much it was difficult to enroll again. Once we settled in Charleston, Kirstie came along. I always figured after she went to kindergarten... But then..."

He turned his head along the fence to look at her in the dark. "Things fell apart."

"Pretty much."

Overhead, halogen lights flickered, sensors kicking in with nighttime. "How did you meet him?"

His question jolted her more than the lights stuttering to life. She should have expected him to continue the conversational thread that she started not just once but twice. Subconsciously trying to scare him off?

"Um, we were taking a chemistry class together at Minot State University. We'd both lived in the area all our lives, but went to different high schools."

"Does Kirstie have other relatives here, then, from her father's side?"

God, he made it easy to talk, and even though the memories hurt they just kept flowing right out of her mouth, so many stored words. "No. He was an only child of older parents, like mine. His parents are dead now, too, thank heavens, because it would have broken their hearts to see what he became."

Like it broke yours.

He didn't say the words but she could almost hear them, anyway. Certainly she could see them in his expressive eyes now crystal-clear blue in the blazing security lights that showed far too much for her to feel at all secure. Still she searched, wondering what more she would read, and found the last thing she expected...

Understanding.

Then his face smoothed back into the charmer smile, and he lifted the puppy to eye level again. "What's this fella's name?"

"Fella? You'd better brush up on your male-female anatomy lessons, pal, because that's a girl."

"Ahh. I should have guessed. Girls always are much more fun to hang around with than guys, anyway."

She rolled her eyes. "Do you always lay it on this thick?"

"Pretty much."

Honesty again. She liked that. She let herself lean back against the chain fence and enjoy the moment, sitting alone in the dark with a handsome man who thought she had a nice ass and was worth the effort to charm. She'd spent so many hours as a teenager sitting in this same yard dreaming of a man who would wine and dine her as a break from shoveling manure out of stalls.

She'd been a fool in the making even then. "I really didn't know what he was doing."

Nightmares still woke her in a cold sweat, horrific dreams where people pointed accusatory fingers at her. Kurt Haugen had been her husband, the man she'd chosen to give her body and life to, and he'd become scum. There must be something bent or twisted within her since she'd chosen him. She must have known and just turned a blind eye. Surely she knew something more even now, since he'd died without fingering all his connections.

Her only defense? She truly had been a blind idiot. "I was stupid and too trusting, but I swear to God, I didn't know," she vowed again.

"I never thought you did."

An exhale rattled from her, and she wondered why it mattered so much that he believe her, this man who would mean nothing to her, a man who would be gone in a couple of short weeks. But she needed to hear the words and hope maybe tonight she could sleep with the peaceful assurance that somebody other than her family really believed her. She didn't bother to say thank you. The words probably would have slammed to a halt against the lump clogging her throat, anyway.

Bo's hand slowed along the sleeping dog's back. "You never did say what her name is?"

Paige started to tell him the dog's name was Butterscotch, but stopped, tugged by the way he cradled the puppy and talked about someday having a pet when he could give it the attention it deserved. "We haven't named her yet. How about you decide on something before you come back Monday?"

She braced for another of his killer smiles—a smile that never came. He just returned her stare with somber intensity that stirred more of that dry lightning inside before he set the soon-to-be-renamed dog on the ground beside her and stood.

"Yes, ma'am. I'll see you then."

And for some scary reason when he said ma'am this time, she didn't feel at all old.

Bo felt the music soak into him, resonating through the strings into his fingers. Playing the guitar—or the piano, drums, even some saxophone when the mood called— brought the world back into focus for him by paring everything down. Only notes at his command remained.

Sprawling back on the lumpy sofa at the Minot AFB temporary lodging facility, he propped his tennis shoe against the coffee table, flight suit exchanged for jeans and a T-shirt. His right hand plucked while his left fingered along the frets in routine scales that somehow became a song of their own in the rhythmic musicality of warming up. His buddies didn't seem to object to his tunes, so he kept picking away, scales shifting to Bach on the guitar.

Rather than separating the crew into officer and enlisted quarters, they'd been bunked together in a suite with four rooms attached to a common room, as per the flight orders, maintain crew integrity. Not that Quade's closed door invited much camaraderie or bonding as called for in the orders.

Tag's door, however, stayed open while he sprawled on his bed talking to his wife on the phone. Mako perched on the edge of the sofa, his boots and polishing kit spread out over the coffee table in front of him. Bo let his fingers find their way along the strings until Bach morphed into a calypso beat that sounded a little too much like a tropical tune ready-made to serenade a luscious lady sunbather.

Nu-uh. Not gonna go there.

He forced his fingers to hammer out some Rolling Stones. Damn straight he wasn't getting much satisfaction these days. Sexual or practical.

Jansen was keeping an eye out for suspicious strangers around his sister, but didn't have any helpful insights. Bo's computer search on his laptop about Paige's dead husband hadn't brought any new info other than the standard questions about identifying the rest of the man's contacts, which shouldn't have surprised him. He'd spent countless hours over the past year researching the bastard.

And Paige.

Damn. He forced his strumming to segue into vintage Carlos Santana. A guitarist for the ages.

His soul settled.

At least something was going his way. He'd already spoken to Quade about taking leave while he waited around for the plane to be repaired. The commander had glowered and nodded, then headed into his room. Door closed. No chitchat.

Mako unwrapped the torn T-shirt rag from around two fingers. He tossed aside the polish-stained cotton cloth along with the small round tin. "Figures you would find the lone tree here in North Dakota."

"Tree?"

"You know—woman behind every tree." He swiped the buffing brush along the sides of his boot.

"Apparently from what I saw at the air show, you found that tree."

It took Bo a second to remember that Mako wouldn't have recognized her. While they'd partied together on TDYs over the years, the jokester tech sergeant was new to Charleston Air Force Base, a recent transfer into the maintenance squadron from McChord AFB in Washington.

"I already knew her from when she used to live in Charleston." Enough on the subject to cover his butt if someone filled in Mako, but not so much as to offer up more about Paige's past than she would want out there.

"Cute kid she's got," Mako pressed, awful damn nosy all of the sudden. Buff, buff with the brush along one side. Buff, buff along the toe with a reminder of puked-on boots that needed polishing. "Single mother, I assume?"

"Uh-huh. Widowed." His thumb slipped on a string.

"Pretty lady."

"Uh-huh." Understatement. Blond and lush even in jeans and no makeup, Paige resembled one of those WWII pinup posters he'd once seen in an Air Force museum.

"Are she and her kid the reason you're asking for leave while you're here?"

Bo set aside his guitar. "Something wrong with sightseeing? God knows we've all got leave time coming out of our ass since they keep us too busy to use it."

"So you're planning a trip down to Mt. Rushmore with that leave you asked the colonel about."

Why the hell was everyone pushing him to Rushmore? "Are you looking to start a travel agency? Next thing we know, you'll be passing out leis and discount booklets."

Mako tossed down the buffing brush, with a smirk. "That's a lot of defensive bad attitude over just hanging out with an old friend. I smell a story here."

Evading would of course prove the guy's point. "I'm taking time off to do a favor for a friend by flying her around some. Yes, it's the woman who was at the air show. She works with a vet clinic that makes emergency calls to remote locales."