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Intellectually he understood that soldiers died in training.

Training hard kept combat casualties substantially lower. But he'd never expected to be a statistic.

Damn it, he wouldn't let the cold defeat him with negativism.

If they could just make it to the river. He was certain they were heading that way at least. They were more likely to stumble on help the closer they were to water.

People did live out here. The place wasn't totally abandoned. With some luck—or another miracle—

maybe they would stumble onto a cabin, or at the very least a rustic Quonset hut, erected by the military or abandoned by some ice fisherman.

And if they found one?

Wait. Scratch that. Not
if.
When.

He must be colder than he thought if he was allowing doubts to creep in. Strange. He never worried about Alicia in the air. That wife of his had grit, focus and invincibility to spare in the clouds. But right now, he was scared as hell of being stuck out here watching her die.

"Talk to me," he demanded.

"Talk," she huffed, "to yourself, Rose-Bud."

Apparently she had some grit left in reserve. "Still need that caffeine?"

She stomped ahead. Pissed?

"You're mad?"

"What would I have to be mad about?" she snipped.

Uh-oh.

Alicia high-stepped around a drift. She walked along their zigzag path close to trees where branches blocked the bulk of the snowfall. God, she was hanging tough when he'd expected her to collapse long ago. His own muscles shouted in protest, but he was starting to realize Alicia was a wingman who held her own on the ground, too.

Why couldn't they apply that synchronicity to their home life as well as the workplace?

"You know what really torques me off, Rose-Bud?"

"Haven't a clue." But no doubt he was about to learn. He liked that about her, her take-no-shit attitude.

He liked a lot of things about her, such as her grit.

That grit also made it hard as hell to resolve anything. If he wanted to try. Which he didn't anymore.

Did he?

She ducked around a tree, her foot landing on a fresh patch of snowfall. "You let me work my butt off starting that fire in the cave and all the time you had a lighter."

Scooping up a branch, he knelt to sweep away her tracks. "Wouldn't want you to break rules."

A snowball thunked him on the head.

Well, he'd claimed to like her unexpectedness. Just about as much as he liked surprising her right back.

Slowly, he rose, finding Alicia waiting with another arm arced back, snowball missile aimed and ready.

"Watch it, my love. You start surprising me too much and I'm going to get turned on."

He waited for the explosion.

Instead, she laughed, surprising him again.

"Good God, Josh. It's fifty below. I can barely feel my toes. How in the world can you feel your...uh...well... you know."

Yeah, he sure did know, and damned inconvenient timing it was. Shouldn't his body be focused on survival? Instead, it was screaming for him to procreate before he died.

Back to her question and off thoughts of procreating. "I trusted you could start a fire in the cave, so I figured it was best to conserve the lighter fuel for an emergency."

Her arm sagged to her side. The second snowball splatted to the ground, icy missile and anger diffused.

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"For trusting me to pull my own weight."

Her sincerity knocked him off balance as much as her unexpected anger. He couldn't afford to have his concentration shaken, especially not now. Time to regain distance. "No problem. And, hey, that's a mighty fine butt you were working off anyhow."

Her laugh echoed again, hoarser this time. "Good thing you're my husband or I could write you up on sexual harassment charges for a statement like that, Colonel."

Except he was only her husband for a short time longer, which made her joke fall flatter than the abandoned snowball.

A holiday miracle sometime soon sure would be nice. But he'd given up counting on miraculous rescues when he was fifteen years old watching people bleed out all around him.

These days, he knew if there was any saving to be done, he could only count on himself.

She was in trouble.

Alicia battled to stay awake. Walk. One foot in front of the other. She would hold her own. She absolutely would not slow Josh down, but she felt pretty much like an ice sculpture from an Alaskan snow festival they'd once discussed attending.

They'd stopped twice already to build a quick fire and drink. Thank heaven for his Bic lighter, faster than her flint, but probably running low on butane.

Pretty much like her energy supply.

He'd offered to drag her along, dogsled style. She'd told him to eat his shorts. She wasn't quitting. Surely they would stumble on something soon. Meanwhile, think happy thoughts.

Flying always made her happy, in control of her craft and her fate. Kicking ass and taking names. Saving lives and making a difference while following a calling to serve that hummed through her veins in a legacy passed down from generations of Renshaw warriors. The drive to serve called to her aviator sister and brother as well.

Her fingers twitched convulsively as if around the stick in her F-15E Strike Eagle. Exhaustion lured her mind back to that life-changing mission, the day she'd earned her Silver Star.

Asleep on her feet, she dreamed of the first time she'd flown with Josh...

Sweat flowed freely in the F-15E. The two-seater cockpit was overheated from stress, raising damp spots on her flight gloves. Alicia kept her hold loose, light, her thumb poised over the control buttons.

She would stay calm—even though more perspiration plastered her hair to her head under her helmet as clouds whipped past her windscreen.

She drew measured hits off her oxygen mask, microphone embedded to pick up her every word, even their breaths. Her WSO's exhalations echoed through the headset Darth Vader-style in an alternating rhythm with her own.

They'd been on their way to attack an ammunition depot when the call for emergency close air support came mid-flight. Enemy fire had downed a CH-47 Chinook helicopter full of Army Rangers. They needed close air support ASAP until a rescue force arrived.

Her first real combat engagement.

She'd been deployed for Afghanistan and Iraq, but mostly Southern Watch patrolling missions. Never had she waded into the hairy action or needed evasive maneuvers on those sorties.

Which explained why they'd paired her—a young captain—with a combat-seasoned weapons system officer for her early missions in Cantou.

Major Joshua Rosen sat strapped in the WSO's seat behind her—the fella who'd hit on her in the O'

Club bar. Nothing inappropriate, just genuine interest from Major Tall, Dark and Hunky who happened to have a kick-butt sense of humor.

She'd dissuaded far pushier in the past. Yet still, something told her this magnetic man wouldn't be as easy to keep at a distance as the others.

None of which she could afford to think about now.

Easing the stick forward, she pointed the nose down, rolled in and out of the clouds. Asian jungle sprawled ahead of her, puffs of smoke rising from the trees. Little sound invaded the cockpit, just the minor whispering of air. The roar of engines filtered away behind them. The plane hauled full out, bringing them down, near.

Radar wouldn't do crap for them now. Bad guys looked pretty much the same as good guys on the screen. Visuals combined with talk-on from the ground would guide them.

Close air support was scary stuff. Any mistake could make the difference between taking out the threat

—or their own people. Bud Rosen in back would be helping her scan visually with the aid of binoculars when necessary.

Her focus wired in on the stick in her hand, the voices in her headset, the five multifunction display screens in front of her.

Her headset crackled with calls from the ground. Gunfire and explosions popped and crashed through the airwaves. "Hound twenty-one, we need these guys taken out. We can't hold 'em off much longer. I need some fire on the top of the east to west ridge, north of the downed helicopter."

"Roger." Josh's response clipped through. "I think I've got it visual. Are you talking about the guys two hundred meters west of the rock cropping?"

"That's affirmative, Hound twenty-one."

More clipped instructions and questions batted back and forth through her headset as the commander on the ground talked them onto the target. Her control panel blazed like red-and-green Christmas lights.

"Where are the friendlies?" Josh asked.

"We're a hundred and fifty meters west of the target, just north of the downed chopper."

Alicia's fist clenched the stick, her eyes glued to the steering commands on the holographic images on her HUD—heads-up display. A hint of a mistake on her part and they would drop the munitions on their own troops.

No more time for questions. The call went up. Put down laser-guided five-hundred-pound GBU-12s—

guided bomb units.

Circling the plane over the target, she continued her steady stream of situational awareness updates to Bud. With his head now down in the infrared scope in the back picking out targets, he needed her to keep him updated on the bigger picture. Damn, she hoped the info and her voice were steady.

Rosen put his forward-looking infrared camera on the target, squirting the laser once, locking in the range finder to compute a bombing solution. "Give me a right three-sixty. Come back to a heading of zero four zero. Bomb pickle ten seconds after roll out."

Countdown.

Everything else faded, the vibration of engines, blur of sky and trees. Only the target and Bud Rosen's voice, his breathing, remained. She drew on the confidence of this invincible aviator who never once questioned her ability even though there were times on the ground when she seriously doubted her own judgment.

When had their breathing synched up?

Rosen's bass pulsed in her headset. "Laser on. Here comes impact... Weapon impact complete. Looks like a shack."

A direct hit. She bit back her sigh of relief. They weren't through by a long shot.

"All right, Vogue. Bring us back around and line her up again."

Three more go-rounds left. She hoped his confidence in her would hold because she sure as hell appreciated the safety net. "Roger, Bud, coming around...."

"Hey, come around." Josh's voice echoed in her head, dragging her back to the bitterly cold present.

The snow-speckled horizon flickered in front of her face with a large gloved hand waving in front of her.

"Are you with me, Alicia?"

She blinked, the swirling haze so much like the clouds in her windscreen for a confusing second. Odd that she should have that memory now. She could make it on her own without Josh's strength, but she'd always appreciated it, continued to be grateful for it now. "Sure. I'm fine. Totally okay."

"You don't look okay."

"Okay's
a relative term here." She planted her feet to combat the urge to sway in the wind like the towering pines.

"This sucks, big time. I'm freezing my butt off. I'm hungry. I'm exhausted. But I can keep going."

"Your skin's waxy." He tugged off an overmitten with his teeth, reaching to touch her face, the rasp of his flight glove a phantom caress to her numb cheek. "You look like hell."

"And your manners stink, Rose-Bud."

Even his light chuckle gusted a hefty white swell. Temps were dropping fast. She needed to hang tough for him.

"Well, I imagine we both probably stink by now and just don't know because the stink is frozen.

Regardless, you're still pasty. We need to stop. You will not lose so much as a toe on my watch."

Uh-oh. Overprotective alert. A safety net was all well and good, but not at the cost of his own life.

Death, loss of dreams, loss of trust in happy endings had haunted her holiday season once too often. His, too.

When Josh had told her about the siege at his college, she'd wanted so much to tell him more about her past, but the words wouldn't pry free. Then or now. "My toes are fine. I'm wiggling them inside my boots as we speak and I really don't have the energy to waste arguing. So no, don't bother asking me what my socks and underwear look like."

"Fair enough. As long as you're sure. You're absolutely certain your feet are okay?" He jerked her to a stop, not much effort required on that one. As he leaned forward, his parka hood nearly met hers, sealing off the snowy world. "No faking for my benefit?"

"Damn it, Josh, I am not faking." She stomped her numb feet. "Do you hear me? Why in the world would I fake anything?"

"You tell me."

The silent heat of his words combined with the somber laser of his eyes stilled her. Trees rustled overhead in the silence. Snowflakes trickled through the tree cover to dot their forest-green extreme-weather gear.

He couldn't actually be accusing her of... Oh, God, he was. He was insinuating she faked during sex.

And damn him, he was right. "What did you just say?"

Josh stifled the urge to let loose a string of curses, all directed at himself for being a dumb ass and spilling the one thing he'd vowed never to say to her. He'd been tempted to mention it—in the beginning when his ego stung like hell. But he'd kept his yap zipped, certain that with time he could work through whatever was holding her back.

Time had run out. He pivoted away. "Nothing. I didn't say one damned thing."

"Oh, no, hotshot." She grabbed his shoulder, thumping until he turned to face her again. "I heard you."

"Then why are you asking me?"

"I want you to be clear."

"I didn't say shit," he snapped, his words like one of those frozen boughs after enough hellish weather and life for one day. Week. Year. "Just three words to make sure your toes aren't about to fall off."

"Not buying that for even a second, Rosen." She thrust her mittened hand against his chest in what he imagined was a pointed-finger jab. "Your eyes said a lot more than three words and none of it had a thing to do with my toes."