Taking Cover
Page 23

Her hour walk to the farmhouse earlier had been uneventful. Painfully so. Tanner's silence had heaped on the guilt, a silence he'd maintained through their trip to the E.R. and check-in with the base security police.
How long would it take for him to forgive her, if at all? She didn't have much practice in resolving arguments, another by-product of her solitary life. Even when her sisters had started with typical sibling battles, Kathleen had climbed her favorite tree. Once the winds of war had drifted away, she would catapult to the ground.
How odd that Tanner was the only one she argued with. More often, she opted for silence while she followed through on her own plan.
Kathleen went to her closet, thankful she'd left most of her belongings—extra clothes, her line badge, military orders—in her room at the Edwards Inn so she hadn't lost much in the explosion. She slipped into an overlong poet's shirt and black leggings. Her eyes gravitated to the dressing table, straight to the nutcracker necklace dangling from the mirror, her Athena spike propped beside it. She and Tanner had more than arguments and attraction between them now. Those two tokens carried far more memories and thoughtfulness than a hothouse full of roses.
The prospect of experiencing more such moments made her hungry to figure out how to make him forgive her.
Not so hungry, however, that she would compromise her work principles. She wasn't bowing out of the investigation, and Tanner could just get over himself on that one.
But their time alone together was running out. Kathleen didn't intend to waste it in a cold silence deadlock.
At the E.R. Tanner had been on full-tilt grumpy status, pacing the halls, scowling and looking so worried. She hadn't been able to stop herself from hoping that maybe the day, night, New Year wouldn't be a bust after all. Never an impetuous woman, she'd actually found herself asking the E.R. nurse for condoms. Just being a careful, responsible twenty-first-century woman, given how hot they'd been for each other.
Yeah, right. In her heart she knew better.
Waking up in Tanner's arms, she'd worried about being hurt. Now she wondered if there might be larger regrets in store for her if she'd didn't explore their crazy attraction.
Her fingers paused along the buttons. Had she been reverting to days of old, hiding in a tree?
Slowly she slid the top button open again and spritzed cologne in the vee.
Time to catapult off that hidden branch and play out the fantasy that hadn't let her go for twelve years.
The hunger for him had interfered with her work since she'd been stationed in Charleston. No doubt it hindered the investigation. She'd even married the wrong man because he reminded her of Tanner Bennett, something she still couldn't believe she'd admitted in the dark of the chapel.
She needed to find out what drew her to him and what wouldn't let her go. Maybe he was right. They needed to work each other out of their systems. Get over him and get on with her life, because she couldn't go on as she had been any longer. Her ex-husband might have made her wary of men, but her failed marriage hadn't left her immune to them.
Her lips remembered Tanner's heated kiss, his promise to "jump her" if she gave the sign. This was supposed to have been their night. Maybe it still could be if she worked things right. After twelve years of mental foreplay, they would finally give in to their hormones. She turned the thought around in her mind until it settled with undoubted certainty.
Was she scared? Hell, yes.
Was she backing down? Not a chance.
She laced her white canvas shoes and grabbed a purse, not letting herself think overlong on the one that had blown up the day before. Digging inside, she pulled out a set of keys. They glinted in her palm with the same silvery flash she found in Tanner's eyes every time they kissed. She'd planned to pass over the keys to their new rental car as a Christmas token of her own, a peace offering to end his silent treatment.
Maybe her cease-fire offering would evoke a side benefit she hadn't expected.
If she compromised and gave him the cars keys, perhaps she might luck into the driver's seat when it came to who did the jumping.
Standing by the lobby coffee machine, Tanner bolted back a gulp of piping-hot java, as if that might somehow drown his thoughts of Kathleen upstairs, changing.
Dangerous territory for those thoughts, fella.
Their silent ride back to base with a farmer and two turkey sandwiches had been tense, silent and full of regrets. Tanner found regrets as unpalatable as dried-out stuffing.
Already his anger had cooled to lukewarm. Hearing the E.R. doctor pronounce Kathleen fit and healthy had gone a long way toward tempering his mood.
After grabbing more sandwiches from the hospital vending machine, he'd checked in with the base security police. Not that minimal manning for the holidays offered much help' merely taking the complaint and requesting they return on the twenty-sixth. Frustrating, but expected.
Now that he'd showered and changed, there was nothing left for him to do but hang out in the lobby with the coffee machine and the uniformed airman stuck at the check-in desk. The airman peeled back tinfoil from a plate of food while watching parades on the corner television. The kid, probably not more than nineteen, picked at a Christmas dinner his mama must have sent.
Tanner's stomach grumbled for some of that pumpkin pie and a return to the holiday excitement he'd found that morning. Leftovers, like anger, came to a quick end around him. Neither were worth hanging on to—they just spoiled the longer they stayed packaged up.
Now that his temper had faded, what did he intend to do about Kathleen? She wouldn't leave. She'd made that clear as the morning sky.
Which only left one option. It looked as if they would be completing the investigation together.
The more time they wasted, the longer he would have to worry about her. She'd been right after all. They never should have stopped working for the holidays. With three days left until Cutter's wedding, maybe they could plow through and wrap things up for good. No doubt she would be happy to hear he'd backed off having her stay in Charleston.
And if they stuck close together, he wouldn't have to worry about her rappeling from a control tower.
Tanner sealed up a lid on his coffee cup. He would need the extra caffeine with all the work he planned to cram into a short time. Work that would help distract him from thoughts of jumping Kathleen.
"Captain Bennett?"
"Yeah?" He turned to the desk clerk.
"There's a message for you." The airman set aside his fork and pulled a folded paper from under the counter. "From a, uh, Captain Baker."
Crusty had been looking for him? "Thanks."
Tanner started to ask when Crusty had left the message, but the switchboard rang.
While he waited, Tanner read the few scrawled words: Need to talk with you. Soon. Crusty.
Folding and refolding the note, he hated the thoughts that charged through his brain. Crusty's obvious evasion. His hostility at persistent questions. Crusty suggesting a detour that would take them off the main road. It was one thing to consider his friend might have been negligent, but that he would deliberately set out to hurt them…
The raw spot on Tanner's palm stung. He could still feel the slick dampness of Kathleen's blood between his fingers. A fresh jolt of anger punted through him.
Crusty was hiding something, and Tanner intended to find out what. Once he had Kathleen safely settled away for the night.
The desk clerk tucked the phone under his chin. "Yes, ma'am. You can leave a message if you want, but he's not in his room because he's standing right here. Would you like to talk to him?"
Kathleen? Tanner reached for the phone, but the clerk was already hanging up. "Captain O'Connell said she'll be right down, sir, if you'll wait."
"Thanks. I could use more coffee, anyway." It was definitely going to be a long evening. What was she planning? He never knew for sure around Kathleen. It could be anything from demanding her rightful place in the investigation to rappeling off another church tower.
Footsteps sounded in the stairwell—hurried, light treads that slowed on the last three steps before the door eased open.
The determined gleam in her eyes left him with no doubts. She had her sights set on flinging herself off the tallest building.
Yet when Tanner looked deeper into Kathleen's eyes, he found an edginess lurking beneath her determination. She swept a hand down her flowing shirt, treating him to a tantalizing outline of her breasts, before she braced her shoulders and charged forward.
Tanner leaned back against the coffee cart and let her come to him. Better to see exactly where she was headed. He'd given as good as he'd gotten back at the chapel that morning. From past experience, he suspected Kathleen's anger might not be as quick to cool as his.
Her brisk strides drew his attention down to her slim legs. Had she poured herself into those pants? With her baggy shirt flowing below her hips, it wasn't as if she'd left everything out there for display. But the way those pants molded to her calves, her legs might as well have been bare. Her wet hair, the long shirt, made for fantasy material … Kathleen after a shower, wearing only his shirt.
"Hi." She cruised to a stop in front of him. With a flick of her head, she swung her hair into place. Revealing her bandage.
The fantasy image disappeared faster than the airman's food.
"Want some eggnog?" Tanner thumbed toward the milky carafe perched in an ice bucket, then stirred two fingers in the air over a potful of something resembling hot tea with floating dirt. "I'm not sure what's in that other thing there. Looks like somebody forgot to strain it."
"Hot cider. Those are cloves."
"Ahhh. Guess it beats cactus."
She sidled past him to pour a cup of cider. Fewer than three inches separated them as she leaned, shower-fresh and smelling so good his mouth watered.
Work, investigation, pin-pull actuators, load ramps, he mentally chanted to numb his body. It wasn't working.
Then she stepped away. Tanner finished his coffee in one long gulp, watched Kathleen over the rim, assessed his opponent.
Half sitting on a sofa back, she blew into her cup. Imagining those same puffs of air against his neck almost sent him across the room toward her.
He forced his eyes away, down to something safe, like her feet. Damn. She even had sexy feet with slim, bare ankles peeking just above her simple white canvas shoes.
Sexy, restless feet that shuffled, tapped, flexed, before she stopped and crossed them. Nerves looked strange on Kathleen. He'd never seen her wired before. Fired up, yes. But wired, never.
They couldn't work together with this kind of tension. Time to make the peace and set their eyes on work.
"I've been thinking." Tanner barreled ahead, unwilling to watch her twitch for another minute. "You were right about using this time to work on the case. We can take the 'night owl' out Friday. The rehearsal isn't until Saturday morning anyway, since that's all the time the crew could get off given the mess overseas. Lucky for Cutter, he was already set to rotate out. Meanwhile that gives us two full days to work through reports."
"You want to work with me."
"Yes."
"Let me help?"
He nodded. As long as he was spotting her if she pulled any lone-ranger stunts, he could live with that, not that Kathleen left him any choice.
She smiled, just a regular smile that shouldn't have the power to rob him of the ability to breathe. But it did.
Her eyes sparkled like a sky full of northern lights right outside his windscreen. Awesome, unexpected and rife with the power to distract him from his job until he crashed and burned.
Tanner pivoted away to refill his coffee. "Why did you want me to wait for you?"
"Oh! Right. I have something for you."
"For me?" he said over his shoulder, replacing the pot.
"Turnabout's fair play. Now close your eyes."