The Daredevil

He traveled enough being a pilot. He was at the mercy of the air force whims. He had no control over where he went or when he’d be home.

But that made his attraction to Sabrina complicated. If they weren’t working together he would have simply indulged in a wild affair for as long as it lasted and then walked away when they were both done. But now walking away wasn’t an option.

The problem was he had no idea if he could keep his hands off of her. Or if he even wanted to try.

Shaking his head, he decided he didn’t need to solve the problem today. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he watched Sabrina stride away. The straight, knee-length skirt of her uniform played against the backs of her thighs. Each step stretched the material taut over the curve of her derriere. He’d had firsthand knowledge of the body she preferred to keep covered.

It was one hell of a juicy secret. One he didn’t mind keeping all to himself.

Shaking away the memories, Chase focused his attention back to where it belonged…his new assignment.

The past several months of his life hadn’t exactly been a picnic—and if that wasn’t the understatement of the year he didn’t know what was.

As if spending each and every day with the responsibility of protecting fighting men and women hadn’t been enough, he’d somehow become a very reluctant war hero. A simple action on his part had gotten him way more attention than he’d ever wanted. What had started out as the mistake of a lifetime, losing a multimillion-dollar plane to ground fire, had turned into the media sensation of the nation.

His job had been simple. Protect the convoy heading into the northern part of the country. And he’d failed. Miserably. He’d been unable to help himself, let alone the men and women he was supposed to protect.

He’d simply been doing his job when he’d found the New York senator and his assistant cowering behind a blazing pile of metal after ejecting from his totaled plane. The fact that the man was being groomed to run in the next presidential election hadn’t helped Chase any. Nor had the man’s undying and unending praise as he’d granted interviews to every damn news outlet in the country.

People had died. Because of his call they’d diverted a helicopter meant to pick up wounded from another part of the convoy half a mile away. Another chopper had been sent but it hadn’t gotten there fast enough for some. Soldiers had died—soldiers who might have made it if they’d gotten medical attention sooner. And that was his fault. The mission hadn’t been a success. And he sure as hell didn’t deserve a medal. But apparently, he was the only one who saw it that way.

The attention did not sit well.

Wanting something to drive out the ever-present visions of torn bodies, burning hunks of metal and agonizing screams, he found himself following Sabrina, reaching out for her. He grabbed onto her arm, stopping her before she could disappear again. “Have dinner with me.”

Chase fought the urge to pull her closer into his space. Something in the tilt of her head told him that would not be wise.

“I don’t date pilots.”

Unable to stop himself, he moved nearer, pulling in a breath of her. The fresh strawberry scent of some female bath product washed over him. It was sweet and innocent, feminine and pretty. It didn’t match the passionate woman of his memories. Somehow it didn’t match the polished exterior before him either.

“Who said anything about a date? I believe we have some unfinished business to discuss.”

The alarm that widened her eyes surprised him. He hadn’t expected that strong a response from her. Maybe he’d assumed the wrong thing when she’d snuck away from him in the middle of the night.

“Wh…what do we have to discuss?”

“Why you disappeared, for one. The picture you left was a nice touch.” He moved into her space, letting his fingers brush lightly against the cotton sleeve of her shirt. He couldn’t touch her more, even if she’d have let him, without drawing attention. “Did you know I took it with me? To Iraq?”

She shook her head, her eyes swimming with emotions too tangled for him to pull apart and name.

She moved away from him, leaving him with a cold and clammy feeling he wasn’t used to and didn’t like.

“There are things we need to talk about. Dinner tonight would be fine. After that, it’s strictly business, though.”

He laughed silently as she spun on her heel and walked away.

Yeah, right. There was nothing just business about the energy humming between them. It had been there from the moment he’d met her seven years ago and it wasn’t going anywhere just because Sabrina no longer wished it to exist.

She might have run away from him before. But this time she had nowhere to go.

SHE’D GONE HOME, looked in the mirror and decided to leave her uniform on. It was a layer. A wall between the competent, military woman she was and the whimsical, reckless side of her personality that only seemed to break free around Chase.

Did barriers work if the person you were trying to keep out—or rather in—was yourself?

Rina didn’t know, but she was damn sure going to try.

She looked across the small bar table at Chase.

He was different. She’d been too preoccupied to notice this afternoon, but now that she had nothing to distract her…There was still plenty of his normal swagger and charm to go around, but underneath there was a sadness she hadn’t seen before.

Something made her want to soothe it away. But she couldn’t. Not and keep herself whole. If she let Chase Carden in he had the ability to obliterate everything she’d built—her life, her career, everything that mattered.

Looking at him, she knew any woman in this bar—hell, the city—would jump at the chance to be Chase Carden’s wife. And a small part of her thought maybe she would, too.

If he had wanted a wife, a relationship. If being a daredevil hero, an aerial jockey hadn’t been the single-minded goal of his life.

If it were real.

But it wasn’t.

Besides, if they started anything that remotely resembled a relationship their chances for an annulment would disappear like a puff of smoke. And an annulment was the only way for them to keep this whole thing a secret. And keeping this whole thing a secret was the only way they were both going to prevent the possibility of being court-martialed for fraud.

With the simple act of not reporting their marriage they’d both broken several major air force rules. And the air force tended to frown on that.

Chase had broken more by not completing all the required paperwork for entry into the Thunderbirds. There was no way he could have gotten her consent to the assignment…not when he didn’t even know she was his wife. Would the air force consider it fraud if he hadn’t known about the marriage? Possibly not. But it wasn’t worth the risk for either of them.

A simple, quiet, quick annulment and their marriage never happened. If she could just figure out how to tell him they were married in the first place.

“Would you like a drink?”

“No!”

Chase and their waiter both turned startled eyes to stare at her. Rina dropped her gaze back down to the menu in front of her, concentrating on the words, and tried to ignore the blush she knew was creeping up her face.

She didn’t want to let him unsettle her. Unfortunately, he did. No man had ever had the ability to set her on edge with a single look the way Chase Carden seemed to do.

He made her feel things she didn’t want to feel. Want things she knew she couldn’t have. And question the course of her life that had been set since she was five.

Without even trying. That’s probably what upset her the most. He had no idea he knocked her off balance. From the moment he’d walked in today she’d felt a little off center, like a ball spinning five degrees off axis—not enough to see, just enough to feel.

“I’m still paying for the last time I overindulged.” She gave a halfhearted smile and ordered a Diet Coke. Taking a deep breath, she let oxygen flood her body, bringing with it a familiar sense of equilibrium.

“Better?”

Maybe he had noticed his effect on her. She wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

“Maybe.” She let her lips twist into a self-deprecating smile.