Operation Willow Quest (15 page)

“And spying on other countries defense systems
is the ideal occupation?” she asked bitterly.

“Someone’s been reading too many thrillers. We
do plenty of other, less exciting stuff,” he said with a kink in his brow, but
he didn’t hold her gaze.

“I’m sure all the other stuff is heaps more
fun,” she muttered, taking a sip of her drink. “Besides, even the so called
‘feel good’ stories usually turn up to be hiding something—like the fact the
family probably dumped poor
Benji
three hundred miles
from home to get out of paying a vet to put him down.”

Del
stared at her,
seemingly appalled, and said, “You know you’ve got a real problem, lady…and why
do you have to turn everything into an argument?”

“Me? You’re the one who put down my career.”

“I don’t see how hanging around bars and
lowlifes all day constitutes a good career.”

“I don’t hang around bars all day.” She gritted
her teeth angrily.

“What would you call
doin
’
this story on
Trèago
then?”

“Justice. He’s a threat to my family. I won’t
stand by and let my sister become a widow,” she said. “At least not by
Trèago’s
hand. What Tate does with his career is his
problem,” she threw in.

Del
sat down on the end of
the bed and watched her. “You think he shouldn’t be in the unit?”

“I think he should be at home with his wife and
daughter,” she elaborated bluntly, “but I’ve learnt to keep my opinions to
myself since Summer bit my head off the last time I was stupid enough to voice
them.”

“He knows what he’s doing,’” Del said, after a sip of his drink, looking
down into the amber liquid thoughtfully.

“No one can control everything, Del; you may be the best
in the world at what you do—but in the end, it all comes down to when it’s time
to go—it’s time to go.”

“Like your husband?” he asked after a moment of
silence.

Willow
looked up at him,
surprised by his question.

“His job wasn’t exactly a safe desk job
kinda
career—he was a war correspondent, so how come you
put up with his career?” he asked, taking another sip.

“Because I was young and stupid and thought
he…we…were invincible,” she admitted, “but now I know better. That’s why I
don’t want Summer to have to go though the same thing,” she said forcefully.

“What about you? Your job takes you to some
pretty dangerous territory.” Del asked the
question cautiously; this was a side of Willow
he hadn’t seen before. She was finally opening up to him and what he was
discovering only made him want her more.

“How do you know?”

“Summer shows us your stories.” He didn’t
mention he kept a small collection at home, that from time to time he liked to
read over. “She’s proud of her big sister,” he said quietly.

“Oh. Well, you know
Summer,” she stammered awkwardly. He realized she hadn’t known her sister had
done that. Clearing her throat, she went back to his earlier question. “It’s
different for me, I don’t go into the middle of a potentially dangerous
conflict—not the way you guys do,” she pointed out. “I’m careful about when and
where I go, and besides, I don’t have anyone depending on me coming home.”

“I wouldn’t say that. You have a lot of people
counting on you coming home after an assignment.”

She looked at him blankly before shaking her
head. “I don’t mean Summer—that’s different. I know she’d miss me, she’s my sister,
but there’s no one’s heart that would be ripped out because I was gone.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” he said quietly,
staring at her a moment before dropping his gaze and getting himself another
drink.

He could tell she was thrown off balance by his
remark, sensing she was staring at his back as he fixed his drink. Then she
turned up the volume on the television and the sudden noise covered the awkward
silence.

Settling back on the end of the bed, Del glanced over at Willow
and frowned as he caught her soft yawn. “Take the bed,” he said, getting up and
moving towards her chair.

She hesitated before eyeing the soft mattress
and fluffy pillows, then got to her feet slowly. Settled on one side of the big
bed, she looked over at Del’s
large form sprawled on the chair. “There’s plenty of room here, you may as well
share it,” she said gruffly.

Del
looked at her for a
fraction of a heartbeat, then stood and headed toward the bathroom. “I’m going
for a shower.”

Blinking at his abrupt remark, she shook her
head and muttered something he didn’t hear. There were no clouds of steam
following Del
on his departure from the bathroom—his skin still tingled from the brutal
assault of the cold water he’d drenched himself in, hoping to curve his all too
intense feelings towards a certain person lying in his bed at this very moment.
With a towel wrapped around his hips, he stalked across to his pack and dug
through it, looking for something clean to wear. He pulled out the first things
that came to hand and stomped back into the bathroom without sending even a
flicker of a glance toward the bed.

After pulling on his jeans and tugging a
t-shirt down over his head, he stepped from the bathroom and crossed to the
vacant side of the bed. She’d fallen asleep while he’d been in the shower and
lay peacefully, her dark hair a stark contrast to the crisp white pillow
beneath her.

Her face looked calm, and for the first time in
days, in repose.

Lowering himself down on the edge of the bed,
he swung his injured leg up carefully to rest. A grimace flashed across his
face, although the sharp pain had become an all too familiar experience lately.
Leaning over, he gently took the remote from her hand and switched channels to
find something—anything—to take his mind off the futile temptations within
arm’s reach. Giving up with a dejected sigh, he clicked the television off and
closed his eyes. His body, slightly out of condition due to his forced
confinement while he’d been on crutches, had begun to ache from all the
activity over the last few days. However, while his body longed for sleep, his
mind still tossed over the conversation he and Willow had been having earlier.
Is she still in love with her husband?
 
He wondered why he’d never thought of this
until now. In truth, he’d never really given any consideration to the
possibility. After all, he’d never known her when she’d been married, but the uncomfortable
notion that she’d not gotten over her husband weighed heavily on his mind.

He’d regretted his callous remark about
defending her ghosts—she had every right to be an advocate for the people in
her life unable to defend themselves against
Trèago’s
far-reaching claws, and he felt like a heel for allowing his jealously to rear
its ugly head. A far greater threat at the moment though, and the main reason
he wanted to keep those files from her, was the last file he’d opened and begun
to translate. It too had been a list of targets intended for a hit, but he
hadn’t needed to read Spanish to translate the names he found there. They
jumped out at him from the computer screen as clear as day. Maddox,
Delaware,
Tupperoni
,
Maloney, Summer Sheldon-Maddox and Willow
Sheldon. They’d all been there, added, no doubt, by one very pissed Samuel
Trèago
. He knew Willow
hadn’t seen that particular list—he’d closed the document as soon as he’d seen
it, but it confirmed what he already knew—
Trèago
was
far from being done with any of them, just yet.

Forcing his brain to shut
down, he closed his eyes and blocked out everything else. For now he’d sate his
tired body and tomorrow he’d worry about the poor state of his mind.

* * * *

It was an early start the next morning. They
met Del’s
mini extraction team in a quiet place before sunrise. At the small airstrip,
they were hustled into a waiting helicopter and flown the relatively short
distance across the border back to US
soil where they had boarded yet another flight to meet with the embassy people
in Los Angeles.
With any luck, they’d then be able to catch a late and final flight back to Hawaii that night.

Willow
flicked through an
airline magazine on the trip to LA, distracted, all too aware of Del who sat beside her.
The airline’s lack of leg, arm, and seat room did nothing to help her
predicament. She felt every single move of his wide-shouldered presence beside
her. She wasn’t sure why the light brush of his blond-haired arm set off a shot
of electricity up hers whenever he leaned forward to put his drink on his tray.
Or why, with each attempt he made to stretch his cramped legs, her stomach
flipped in anticipation. With a frustrated click of her tongue, she warned
herself to snap out of whatever shock-related symptom she was suffering from
and start thinking what she was going to do when she got back to Honolulu. She didn’t intend
to stay in town long—she needed to get home. But she knew Summer and it was
going to be a struggle to get away. Giving up on the magazine, Willow shoved it back in the seat pocket and
sat back.

“You know, you should try and get some sleep,” Del told her. She looked
at him and saw his eyes were closed and he seemed to be unaffected by the whole
attack-of-boredom she was suffering from.

“I can’t sleep,” she whispered, and
sighed—irritated to
realise
he didn’t appear to have
any such problem.

“You don’t know when you might get another
chance,” he warned.

“I’m not tired.”

The silence settled back between them and Willow leaned back and
closed her eyes. It was no good—she was to hyped-up to sleep. Rolling her head
sideways, she studied Del
as he slept, something she couldn’t do when he was awake because she kept
getting distracted by the striking blue of his eyes. They were the kind of blue
found in the Arctic ocean and had a strange habit of darkening when he was
angry—
Which is pretty much whenever the
two of us are within ten feet of each other
. Without the blue-eyed gaze on
her now though, she was able to take her time and really look at him.

A tough face, full of sharp edges, strong lines
and nothing that could ever be mistaken for softness anywhere. He’d grown rough
stubble on his jaw over the last few days and the dark shadows gave him an even
more ferocious appearance than normal.

Willow’s gaze dropped from his face and skimmed
across the navy blue buttoned shirt he wore with the sleeves rolled up to
expose thick, softly-haired arms. Two large veins stood out along the muscles
of his forearms and she had a mad desire to trace them with her finger. His
legs, now scrunched rather uncomfortably against the seat before him and
encased in soft, worn denim, did disturbing things to her pulse. Swallowing
uneasily as she
realised
where her thoughts were turning,
she dragged her gaze off him and turned to look out the window.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. She wondered
what was wrong with her. She was a widow, for Pete’s sake. Michael hadn’t even
been gone for two years. What was she thinking? Guilt reared up inside her. She
should be still grieving surely? And yet she wasn’t…not really. She missed
him—sometimes the ache of loneliness caught her unaware. They’d shared not only
a life, but a career as well. Michael had been her best friend and she missed being
able to talk to him, but she no longer grieved for him and that was a thought
that worried her more than she cared to admit. She could no longer hide behind
her grief.

A soft sound drew her attention back to Del once more. He’d
rolled his head sideways and was now watching her with that steady unflinching
gaze that seemed to be constantly weighing her up.

“You all right?” he asked in a soft drawl.

Willow
gave a shrug, pushing
her jumbled thoughts aside. Her eyes fell to his hand and saw he was absently
rubbing his injured thigh.

“Is your leg hurting?” she asked with a mild
touch of concern.

Looking down at his leg, he slowly removed his
hand and gave a wry smile. “Not much.”

She didn’t believe him but she didn’t feel like
arguing either, so she let it go. The hum of the aircraft’s engines created a
soothing backdrop and added to the illusion they were somehow isolated from the
rest of the passengers.

“Thank you for coming down here. I really don’t
know what would have happened to me if you hadn’t been there,” she said
quietly. Looking back now, Willow was sure that
without Del’s
help she’d probably be sitting in some prison cell—or worse, if
Trèago
had been behind the police raid. “I’m sure you had
plenty of other stuff you’d have rather been doing.”

Del
looked her over in
contemplative silence before a slow grin crossed his face. “Not really.”

“I know I can be a bit—”

“Pig headed, stubborn, bad tempered…” Del filled in helpfully.

“I was going to say ‘obstinate,’” she said
dryly.

“You know, using big words like that might be a
bit risky on a dumb old marine,” he pointed out, as he enjoyed the way her eyes
narrowed as her temper built.