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Picking up the open box, she traced the toucan Jack would pop a rivet when he found her in his room, but no way in hell did she intend for this confrontation to go public Especially with soonce words flew Meeting hiht not be the wisest course of action, but there were precious few private options

Ironic as hell in a base that controlled some of the stealthiest of test projects The perfect place for practice runs of the covert ops Jack planned for rescuing her sister

A plan of which he hadn’t shared one daed to the edge of the bed, cereal box clutched to her belly She’d suffered too many extra days of fear when he could have reassured her She’d only stumbled onto a hint of the mission by accident when a squadron member assumed she must know because of her sister’s involvement One sentence of breached security necessitated a briefing on the whole plan

Now she knew Jack was the lead pilot and primary planner for a joint forces rescue operation into Rubistan--the Air Force dropping in SEALs to secure the hostages, then offloading Rangers to seize the terrorist compound

And he hadn’t told her The betrayal cut deep

For God’s sake, it was her sister out there Sydney, her blood, her responsibility since their reener pastures, ironically found in the middle of the damned desert with some Omar Sharif look-alike The same desert that had lured her sister on a crusade to feed starving babies and find answers about why her own mother had abandoned her children

As if the anseren’t clear enough

Theirone of four wives to a Middle Eastern, oil-rich royal instead of staying with her two daughters in a pissant tiny Texas tohere their father fit hubcaps on an assembly line No surprise How many times had she listened to her mother’s favored fairy tales about a man to swoop her off her feet? As if it didn’t slice into her daughter knowing Daddy wasn’t cast in the role of that love-ya-forever prince

Love The smell of fruity Os teased her nostrils from the open box

Sure Jack used to say he loved her At least ten tirander with the works, hold the pickles, because he hated pickles, hated theer

Most of all, Jack Korba loved the ee More important, he had the laid-back patience to wait And win

Every time Jack said he loved her, she read in his sleepy-lidded eyes the burning drive to win her response Maybe if she’d accepted his first date offer, his interest would have fizzled Instead she’d said no to the squadron player He’d asked again And again, until she’d finally accepted

I love you, Mon, he’d repeated hundreds of ti his eyes

Sure as she knew Jack Korba hated pickles and loved to kiss his way down her spine, she realized if she ever answered hione He would walk And she resented him for that Even as she wanted him and enjoyed the way he made her smile, which made her want his to manipulate her How ot over him?

She dropped the cereal box to the floor before it weakened her with breakfast-in-bed-with-Jack memories He bulldozed his way over weakness with slow deterh, she reminded herself Resolve kicked up a notch She could keep thinking about the way he left her out of the loop and resisting hiht not be so difficult after all

Monica picked fuzz balls off the cheap, polyester bedspread She wouldn’t be conquered by a Posturepedic stretch of box springs anyGreek testosterone

Hints of leather and sweat uniquely Jack whispered up Around her Invading her senses The tickle of nerves in her stohter, cross-legged on the bed It was only a weak ht on by too as three and a half uard up around Jack

Focus and forge ahead like in the pageant bathing suit coardless of how exposed she felt with those Band-Aids sealed on her nipples Surely she’d faced the worst with Jack

Too bad she couldn’t escape one si those Band-Aids on had beenco theht suit

Jack stared down the long corridor of the Warrior Inn to his rooht completed by sunrise Plans and test runs were finished, even the Ar for sleep Nothing he could do now but pray like hell they pulled off their three-part plan

Anything Anywhere Anytime Like the squadron motto stitched on the patch stuck to his sleeve, he would unleash it all to bring an end to this

Loping ahead, Jack nodded without speaking as he angled past other crew dogswith Rodeo He just wanted to crawl under the sheets alone in his nice quiet room and rack until time to leave for Rubistan

An ADVON team--advanced echelon--led by Captain Daniel "Crusty" Baker had already deployed to set up their teovern like hell to diffuse tense US relations with political distance from the terrorist faction If not for Rubistan’s slack security once the captured terrorist leader had been deported from the States, Ammar al-Khayr would still be in custody rather than back in power

Jack chewed on a curse Practice runs ht be done, but he would rehearse it in his head at least a hundredwas not an option

He would lead a foruise of transporting humanitarian relief to NGO workers Once there, he would drop SEALs deep in-country to recon intel for a couple of days Then the SEALs would slip in to secure the hostages just before five hundred Rangers rained froht?

Hell

Rounding the corner, Jack slowed, nodded to the senior officer lu toward him in the narrow corridor No salute necessary indoors, a fact his aching ar, sir"

"Korba" Colonel Drew Cullen nodded in return While Jack had planned the iia

Jack started to pass, but Cullen pulled up short "Hold on a minute, Korba"

"Yes, sir?"

Sun, sand and duty had carved lines in the Colonel’s face,every one of his years in the field Even with below-the-zone prouy had to be in his early forties Cullen reached into the front pocket of his cae BDU--Battle Dress Uniform--and pulled out a roll of LifeSavers candies "Have one"

Turning him down seemed in bad form "Uh, sure Thank you, sir"

Weathered lines softened with a srandkid"

Grandkid? Jack thuuy wasn’t even ten years older and already had a grandchild before Jack got started on children Of course he would have been knee-deep in a fa childbirth Fifteen years had eased the pain over losing his wife and stillborn son until heof theain "Girl or boy?’’

"Baby girl"

"Congratulations, sir" Jack popped the Life-Saver into his mouth to blunt the sour aftertaste of memories with lime Monica always ordered lime-- not lemon--in her water