Explosive Alliance (24 page)

He kept thinking what could have happened to her. What may have happened to her. Thank God there didn't seem to be any signs of abuse. Still he wanted to wrap her up in his protection.

Except she wasn't his, and if he let himself mull it over too long, he might envision himself as a part of a family. This family. Paige, Kirstie, him—another kid on the way and a dog to greet him at the front door.

A puppy—Honey—curled up alongside his foot, over six weeks old now, soon to go to a new home.

Everyone here would move on after he left. Paige would find somebody to settle down with. Kirstie would have a secure life, just as he'd hoped to discover when he'd landed in Minot two weeks ago.

Except, he didn't want them to find someone else. He wanted a chance to explore the possibility that maybe he was that someone in their lives. No more bimbos and pretending to look for a real relationship.

Pretending?

Hell, yeah, pretending, going through the motions of searching for a wife, all the while picking women he would have never fallen for. Sister Nic had been right when she'd said he was close to understanding.

Which left him with a crapload more decisions to make.

The screen door creaked behind him. He glanced back over his shoulder to find...a weary Paige. Her hair had long ago given up on staying inside the rubber band. Her khaki skirt and all-white T-shirt carried travel-wrinkles, along with a coffee stain dribbled right between her breasts from when her hand shook on the plane. And still he wanted her.

Way to go being a sensitive guy. The last thing she needed was him telling her...what? That he wasn't sure how he felt, but he knew he felt more than he ever had before?

Better to keep the conversation safe and light. If ever a woman looked like she needed a laugh...

He set aside his guitar, propping it against the porch railing. "Is Kirstie okay?"

"I hope so. She told me more about those missing minutes and who she was with. She said she's been speaking with this person she calls Eddie for a couple of weeks now and that he claims he knew Kurt."

Paige clicked on the intercom beside the door, Kirstie's light snoring snuffle coming through. "This Eddie character was even at the air show."

Bo wished he'd tracked that bastard right then and pummeled answers from him. "The cops will be able to hunt him down."

She settled beside him on the swing. "At least she's sleeping, and how crazy am I, turning on listening monitors like she's a baby again?"

"'Not crazy at all. The incident scared a year off my life and she's not even my kid." And Sister Nic wasn't his blood relative, either, but he still thought of her as his mother.

A little
less
understanding tonight would be nice for his sanity.

"Vic's a mess." Paige slumped back on the wooden swing, her legs extended, her toe tracing through the ever-present Dakota dust. "He's up in his room with a bottle of booze. I reminded him this could happen to anyone. The same thing even happened when both you and I were watching her at the air show."

"What did he say to that?"

"Just nodded and said he'd be fine in the morning."

Bo wasn't so sure. He hooked an arm around Paige's shoulder and drew her to his side. She tipped her face up to his with an easy intimacy and familiarity to her kiss that left him longing to race her over to the barn. Something he knew couldn't happen here tonight.

Crooking a finger in the neck of his T-shirt, she stroked along his chest. "I hope you don't mind too much, but we're not going to be able to go off alone. I want to, but…"

"You can't leave Kirstie. Of course I'm sorry we can't be together tonight—" his knuckles grazed along the side of her breast before cradling her face "—but I understand."

"Thank you." She arched up to kiss him again, nothing hot or out of control but so damn sweet and perfect he wanted more just like it.

Although even an idiot would see she needed comfort. "How are
you?"

"Scared. Mad at myself for being too preoccupied to realize what was going on in her mind." Her head lolled back against his arm while bugs droned in the distance. "I thought she was past the worst of losing her father, but now she's talking to strangers just to feel closer to her dad."

This woman needed so much more from him than a few Kleenex followed by a laugh. "Some things take longer to get over than others."

"You lost both your parents when you were as young as Kirstie. How did you manage?"

Decision time. If he truly wanted to give this thing between them a chance, time to submit to the root-canal telling of a few ugly truths about his past. "Actually, they didn't die at the same time."

A frown pinched her brows together. "They didn't?"

"My mother died when I was five. My folks had already split, but my dad didn't fight for custody then or after she, uh, passed away. He couldn't take care of me on his own—" too expensive, too much trouble, too bratty "—so he turned me over to the good sisters. He had a heart attack when I was fifteen."

While serving twenty-five to life for popping the used-car dealer who'd been taking him for a spin in a three-year-old Mercedes that Jackass Dirtbag had decided he wanted—without the car payments.

Paige's hand fell to rest on his thigh with a soft comfort easier to accept than an emotional display. "How did your mother die?"

"She cut her wrists." He cleared his throat. "Because my father wanted a divorce."

Paige's hand gripped tighter on his knee. In shock? Or reassurance? She stayed quiet, though, thank God.

"A violent death like that—like with Kirstie's father—it's tough for a kid to get over."

He still woke up sometimes smelling the blood. The shrink they'd made him see after the shoot down and capture had told him the dreams were normal, and offered extra insights that had sounded like BS at the time. But what the hell? They might help with Kirstie. "For a while after losing a parent that way, there's a fear that people are going to leave you, which makes a kid do things like run off. She might think she's leaving before being left or testing the grown-ups who are still around."

"By pouring bubbles in a baptismal font and spelling out hellfire with fertilizer on the lawn?"

Or choosing women he couldn't fall for so the pain of rejection would be less if they left. Understanding sure was a bite in the butt tonight. "Something like that."

"And will she get over that feeling?"

"She has you like I had Sister Nic, so yeah, I think she's going to be fine." He hoped.

"I'll
take that as an incredible compliment. Thank you."

"It was meant as one, and you're welcome." He let himself play with a lock of her hair, a reward for spilling his bleeding guts at her feet.

"I enjoyed meeting Sister Nic. I'm sorry we didn't have longer to visit."

"So you could wrangle all my secrets out of her?"

She angled a glance his way. "Do you have more secrets?"

"You know more about me than anyone else, more than even Sister Nic since I never fessed up to the fertilizer incident."

Would she realize the importance of how much he'd told her? He'd charmed women for years, but Paige saw through his bull and demanded honest emotions. Scary, and, damn, he hoped she didn't push for more. He'd had enough for one night.

She turned her head to kiss his neck, a perfect mix of soothing and sexy. Kind of like her. Her soft curves melding to his side spiked his temperature.

He couldn't have her tonight, but that didn't mean they couldn't have some fun, and maybe he would luck into one of her smiles along the way. "Tell me what your room looks like."

She grinned against his neck, a sensual caress of full
lips he'd felt along more than his neck the night before.

"Surely I've left the door open enough for you to see in since you've been here."

"I didn't dare look because then I'd start walking toward you, and your brother would jam a shotgun between my shoulder blades."

She laughed as he'd hoped, shifting back to safer ground. "It's nothing fancy really, just delft hues."

"Delft?"

"A shade of blue."

"You'll have to be more specific since I have a Y chromosome."

"Very light blue, like your eyes."

"Got it. Blue walls." He tapped the swing back into motion, the chain creaking in response.

"With white trim." She traced the outside seam of his jeans from hip to knee. "I have an old blue-and-white flowered water pitcher of my grandmother's that sparked the look of everything else."

"What about the bed?"

"You've been wondering about my bed?" She skimmed her hand over his knee to the inside seam.

"Wondering about what you look like in your bed." He grazed the side of her breast with his knuckles, painful when it couldn't go anywhere, but more torturous not to touch her at all.

"It's a large four-poster, all white with a white chenille spread."

"Chenille?"

"Y chromosome again?"

"Definitely."

"It has fringe along the edges and kind of a bumpy woven pattern along the top." She worked her way slowly up the inside seam.

"Okay, note to self for future fantasies about a certain hot Dakota babe." He eyed the skyful of stars and fantasized about flying her somewhere deserted and making love out in the open. "Chenille sounds itchy to sensitive places. Toss the spread to the ground before crawling around naked with Paige on the bed."

Much more of this and he wouldn't be able to think. He stopped her trekking hand a scant inch from reaching a destination guaranteed to drain the last of his brain cells. He pressed a kiss to her palm and linked their fingers.

"Sounds like a great fantasy to me." She cuddled closer, her head against his shoulder as she fit to his side. "Thank you."

He didn't have to ask why. Oddly enough he knew she meant thanks for the smile, for holding her shaky hand while tears sneaked past her defenses, for coming back with her — as if he would have even considered otherwise.

Her breathing slowed and evened out until she drifted off to sleep against him as she'd done the night before. Except, life had exhausted her tonight rather than lovemaking.

While she slept warm and soft beside him, Bo stared out at the moonlit dirt and rocks stretching endlessly along the dry plains. What once looked barren to him slowly shifted in his mind, stirring something inside him. No great, startling moment like when he'd realized why he did, in fact, date bimbos. This understanding came to him in a whispering moment as gentle as the caress of Paige's hand along his skin or the subtle scent of her flowery cologne.

She'd taught him to appreciate the understated. The kick he got from watching Kirstie bounce in the passenger seat of the Cessna beat pulling G forces in aT-38. Rock concerts he'd caught in Europe didn't come close to the thrill of hearing the musicality of Paige's laugh. Paige had taught him to appreciate the joy found in a puppy lying across your foot.

He stared out across Paige's front yard that two weeks ago had been nothing more than a dusty stretch of desolate land leading on into monotony. Now he saw the way the wind swayed the branches of the lone tree, tossing a swing that held more than a few memories for him.

The grass was still clumpy and the mosquitoes still chewed his hide, but thanks to Paige he couldn't deny his sense of pride in the heartland of his country. A country he'd sworn to protect with his life. Suddenly his job in the military wasn't about cool toys and adventure, or even about repaying some cosmic debt in honor of those who took him in as a kid.

It was about protecting this patch of stark beauty and the people who walked on it.

He'd come to North Dakota looking for answers from Paige, and he'd found them, just not in the way he expected. And instead of peace, he'd uncovered more problems, since he couldn't figure out how to reconcile his calling to the Air Force with the possibility of stepping into this family.

Paige sidestepped the puddle left by a dog and swished the mop over the mess on the clinic floor. What a long damn day at work. Only Monday and yet the past weekend with Bo seemed forever away.

She chunked the mop back in the bucket and out again, slapping it against the scarred tile. Certainly there hadn't been a chance to slip away together since she wasn't letting her daughter out of her sight. Through the open window, Paige watched Kirstie corral the puppies back into the kennel with Bo's help—and ever-watchful care.

Cops were searching for a workman named Eddie who might have made repairs at the school and the air show. He hadn't done enough to be arrested, but certainly could be picked up for questioning. And it would help knowing where to look for the threat.

The whole day had been surreal. She'd kept Kirstie home from school and close by her side at work.

Vic was off in the truck on a call. Seth was at the doctor's after putting too much stress on his recently healed foot looking for Kirstie. Which left her manning the office and taking any fly-out calls with Bo and Kirstie. So far the day had been uneventfully exhausting, just routine exams, vaccines and a case of ear mites.

And an overexcited puppy leaving her a "gift" on the tile.

Paige swiped the mop along the floor, ammonia radiating up and watering her eyes. Bo's voice drifted through the window, closer, louder, along with Kirstie's as they finished rounds through the kennels to walk the dogs.

Of its own will, the mop seemed to
swish, swish
over the floor faster toward the open window and screen door. Bo and Kirstie settled on the top step, a lone puppy left out and resting on Kirstie's lap.

The little mutt Paige had asked Bo to name.

Kirstie cuddled the dog up under her chin. "Are you gonna take Honey back with you to Charleston?"

Even though she knew the answer to that question, more popped into Paige's mind. How much longer did they have left together before he went? Would she see him again after? She couldn't envision how, and that made her eyes sting in a way that had nothing to do with ammonia. Her chin dropped to rest on top of her hands propped on the mop handle.