Strategic Engagement
Page 13

Christos Price jerked his gaze off Shelby Dawson's belly button ring and back to his father. A dazed look in his eyes glinted like the water streaming down the olive complexion inherited from his mother's Greek roots. "Yeah, Pop. I guess so."
The teen hefted himself from the pool. Right by Mary Elise. Which offered Daniel a convenient excuse to check on her. Just making sure she was comfortable with everyone, of course.
Yeah, right.
She'd settled in with his friends as he'd known she would, already absorbed in conversation with Julia Dawson while they both held sleeping children. Austin snoozed away on Mary Elise's lap, his soggy body soaking her silk shorts set. Not that she seemed to care or look in the least ruffled. Just natural. She should have kids of her own with some lucky bastard who would get to touch her incredible red hair.
Crap.
Daniel backed into the resuming game as they swapped sides, which gave him a perfect view of Mary Elise's night-lit lounge chair. When she'd told him about being pregnant with his child, he hadn't given much thought to the baby itself, or life after the wedding. He'd focused on shutting down thoughts of the future because they contrasted too much with what he'd dreamed for so long.
Yet once she'd lost the baby, once he'd lost Mary Elise in his life, he'd spent the next year thinking about what their baby would have looked like. What she would have looked like holding it.
And that image mirrored the one he was seeing too damned closely for his peace of mind.
He considered waking Austin up for another round of chicken just so he wouldn't have to keep staring at Mary Elise holding the little guy. But the boy's needs came first and God the kid pitched holy hell when taken away from Mary Elise. The boy was breaking his freaking heart with the tight-fisted dinginess to the only mother figure in his world right now. Maybe he could convince Mary Elise to stay in the area.
And then she'd be too busy to meet that lucky bastard who would father her children.
The rogue notion chugged through him as he pumped another serve into the air. She had to settle somewhere, and apparently their Savannah hometown no longer held any allure for her. The idea took flight, leveled out like the ball lofting over the net.
He staunchly ignored the insistent voice telling him he was doing this for himself. So what? Yeah, he wanted her around, but because he needed her to stay put. Made logical sense that she should stay in Charleston. Two plus two equaled four.
His gaze zoned back in on Mary Elise smoothing a hand along the sleeping child's back while her laugh carried on the ocean wind.
The next ball whizzed right by Daniel's head.
Kent McRae closed the Mercedes door—forced to park out on the street where some damned fool might scratch the paint. A nuisance, but an overabundance of vehicles packed the condo lot.
He wove his way through the maze of trucks and SUVs with military ID stickers on the windshield. Adrenaline snapped through him until he wondered why he'd ever bothered to pay someone to take on these tasks before. And to think he never would have known this quiet thrill if necessity hadn't forced him. Help wouldn't be arriving for another four to five days, and he'd sworn not to act decisively until then.Striding along the lengthy row of Palmetto trees, he checked again to ensure Mary Elise was still engrossed with the pool party and her old lover. Her lover now?
Kent kept his strides even, loose, his hands unclenched. He wouldn't allow her the power over his emotions. He was in control.
He neared the line of mailboxes. As much as he might enjoy ending it now, he couldn't. The boys were off-limits, as per his accomplice's demands. He owed his accomplice too much in tracking Mary Elise's every move to step off their designated course now. And he always paid his debts.
As if he would hurt innocent children like some monster, anyway. He focused his revenge on the deserving.
Meanwhile, he needed Mary Elise off-kilter so she wouldn't become overconfident and opt to disclose her tale of woe to an old boyfriend. Having been married to the woman for three years, he knew which buttons to push. Watching her hand tremble as she'd touched that False Unicorn plant had been … satisfying.
Locating the correct box number, Kent straightened the knot on his favorite tie, silk with pelicans patterned in diagonal lines. A gift from Mary Elise two years ago and now a reminder of unfinished business. A final swipe to smooth his tie crinkled papers inside his suit coat pocket. He tugged out the folded pamphlets guaranteed to make more than her hand tremble. Innocuous fertility clinic literature to most. Pointed for her since she'd visited the same chain of clinics more than once.
A quick glance over his shoulder assured him no one watched. Kent slid out his lock pick and set to work on Baker's mailbox. Given how involved they were in their pool play, he should be well in and out before anyone noticed him. He wouldn't want to upset the boys. No, he wasn't a monster.
Just a man in control of his destiny with a debt to repay.
Chapter 8
Danny blasted out of the water like a sea monster, swiping his arm across the pool to spray Trey before he ducked behind Darcy. Mary Elise watched, smiled, couldn't help herself. Even allowed herself the pleasure of following his leap from the pool, his loose-hipped stride to the ice chest illuminated by a halogen lamp and crescent moon.
Oh, God. Danny was so cute, the boyishness somehow all the more charming coming from a muscle-bound main. Evenings like this made it easy to forget the ways she and Danny had annoyed the hell out of each other.Distance, she reminded herself. Make lists and keep her distance from the enticing, playful Danny. For starters, her list making used to bug him. Go with the flow, he would tell her. Explore. Find adventure.
She'd found more than enough adventure with Daniel Baker and a bottle of champagne, thank you very much.
The party had wound down to half speed, quiet laughter no longer overriding the shush of gentle ocean waves. As much as she'd enjoyed conversation, she didn't mind the moment of peace.
Rubbing Austin's back, she tried to ease his fitful sleep, letting him snooze on until she could tuck him in his own bed. She could only risk four more days to smooth the transition and then she would have to leave.
Survival instincts screamed at her to run. Now. Long-denied maternal instincts, however, insisted she protect this precious little boy's wounded heart by staying as long as she could risk.
Enough cash waited in her account to carry her for a month, even finance a visit to a clinic to update her meds. Franklin Baker had managed to reroute her transactions while she was overseas so Kent couldn't trace them. She had no way of knowing if Franklin's accounting cover stayed in place. Once she presented ID to withdraw money, she would have to go.
Damn, she was tired of living like this, but what else could she do if even her own parents didn't believe her? Postpartum delusions, Kent had told them when she'd had no choice but to break her long silence over the growing problems in their marriage. Depression from the final late-pregnancy miscarriage.
Yeah, she sure as hell was depressed over losing her child and her marriage. But no way had she imagined the cold steel of a gun barrel pressed to her head as an assassin tried to coerce her into the car so he could launch her vehicle off a bridge in a fake suicide.
All on Kent's payroll.
She'd fought. Escaped. And no one had believed her. The more she'd insisted, the stronger the accusations of paranoia became. One mention of putting her in an institution from Kent with his monied influence and she'd hauled ass out of the country.
Unease tickled along her spine, like a caterpillar making its way ever so slowly up her back. The sense of being watched. Mary Elise held herself still, refusing to cave and look. Much more of this and she would be acting as crazy as Kent convinced her parents she was.
"Mary Elise?"
She jolted. Looked up and found Darcy Renshaw climbing up the pool ladder.
Relief shuddered through her, shaking the caterpillar sensation free. She was being watched, by one of Daniel's fellow flyers.
Dripping wet, Darcy sank to the middle of the lounger and sat cross-legged with a long-legged grace that had her fiancé eyeing her with smoky appreciation from across the pool. "Can I get you something to drink?" She stretched to offer up a bag of sunflower seeds from the smorgasbord on the table. "Or anything to eat?"
"You've already done so much. All of you have. I'm a little overwhelmed by it all, so many gifts and so many people. Please say you wrote everything down, like the clothes Tag brought, or was his name Jim or J.T.?" The loadmaster with shoulders as broad as Danny's. God, she hoped his wife knew what a lucky woman she was. "See, already I can't remember half the names, and men can be dense about things like thank-you notes."
"Don't worry about it. No one expects thanks. This is what we do for each other."
"Still…"
Darcy's finger sawed along her dog tag chain pensively. "I'll bet you're tough to help."
She shrugged. Help meant dependency and debts, and she was through with that.
Darcy's laser gaze eased. "There are a lot of us to meet at once, with call signs and real names doubling up what you're trying to learn. You're probably best off just remembering the call signs." She gestured with her fistful of sunflower seeds. "Over there, the big blond guy with the baby who brought the football, that's Bronco. He's married to the flight surgeon Kathleen—or Athena, if we're using nicknames—who took care of Trey when you landed."
"Bronco?" She glanced over at the man with his wife, packing up their baby daughter to leave. "Because he looks like a bull?"
"No," she said with a wicked glint lighting her eyes. "Although I'll have to use that on him next time he rolls out a crewdog prank. Actually, he turned down a pro ball contract with the Broncos to stay in the military."
"Wow. Mind-boggling that he would give up that much." Of course Daniel had also given up his family money to pursue his own dream. A calling more than a job, he'd once explained to her as he filled out his application to attend the Air Force Academy. "So there are stories behind some of the names. I guess I just thought they usually linked to someone's personality or the last names, like yours, Wren Renshaw. Or like Danny's, Crusty Baker."
"Sure it goes with his last name, but also with the fact that he's a bit of a mess." Darcy grimaced. "Uh, I don't mean that as an insult. His scruffiness is kind of cute."
And yet there was so much more to this man who flew military planes and commanded respect from a crew with as much ease as he unraveled equations—or dunked Trey.
God, if only she could view Daniel as simply scruffy or cute it would certainly save her a lot of yearning she had no choice but to ignore. "No offense taken. I've known Daniel a long time."
Curiosity flared in Darcy's eyes again. "Then, like Bronco, other names are tied into a watershed event." Darcy pointed to the Nordic-looking guy moving in on Hannah while Bo's back was turned. "Scorch set his mustache on fire once in the Officer's Club bar with a drink called a Flaming Dr Pepper." Her finger shifted toward a laughing hulk of a man digging into the ice chest to fish out two beers, passing one to Crusty. "There's a great story about Cobra over there, but it's best not to share the details with kids around."
Slowly the men and women became more than a few names and loud revelers for Mary Elise. They took on personalities in a tight community she'd invaded.
Absorbing the pieces of Daniel's world, she realized distance didn't seem to be helping anymore. He'd exploded back into her life and mind. She wouldn't be able to stop envisioning him in his new environment, wondering about him, how he was handling the changes. Even with a live-in nanny, he would be thrown feet-first into parenting those boys. At least, she hoped he would.
Her hand gravitated to cup the back of Austin's head, protectiveness twining through her as surely as the boy's silky soft curls wrapping around her fingers.