Hot Zone (Elite Force #2)(36)
Author: Catherine Mann

He scooped up the kid and tucked him into the backpack sling. The little guy didn’t protest as he had the day before, but he still wasn’t giving in completely.

Amelia took up her walking stick and gestured for him to lead the way. “Talk to me about your—”

He tensed.

“—your job. The pararescue mission.”

He snatched up the chance to talk about anything else as handily as she snagged two bananas left from their food stores of last night.

“We train for rescue missions—land, sea, mountain. There are only three hundred of us.”

“Sounds like a movie title.” Grinning, she tucked her walking stick under her arm and peeled a banana.

“You’re poking fun?” He cocked an eyebrow. “You’re supposed to be suitably impressed with my kick-ass profession.”

“Like a groupie?” She pinched off a piece of the fruit and passed it to Joshua as she walked. “There are groupies, I assume.”

“There are people impressed with the uniform, more so than the actual mission, the calling,” he conceded.

“To rescue airmen and other service members. I think I read somewhere you motto is something like…”

“‘That others may live.’”

“Heavy stuff. Honorable. And very lucky for people like me.” She smiled her thanks again, before continuing, “Given that you’re here, you’re obviously called in during natural disasters.”

“And smaller-scale civilian rescues on occasion.” He studied her gait, wishing she had boots like his rather than the simple gym shoes she’d been given at the hospital. “We also work with NASA during water landings in case of emergencies. We work with SWAT and the FBI.”

“You’re in Florida now?”

“Florida, Japan, Alaska twice…” His mind traveled back through the years to that first assignment after training. His first tour in Alaska. With Marissa and Tilly.

“But you’re in Florida now.” Amelia snapped him to the present again with her crisp, no-nonsense voice.

“Technically, although we haven’t spent much time there. We were in the Middle East until a couple of months ago.” While most people looked forward to homecomings, he would have preferred to skip that part, all the happy family reunions.

“You must be ready for some downtime.”

He looked ahead, steering her past a thick overgrowth of poison ivy. The kid did not need exposure to that. At least the dust was thinner here than in the city.

“I’m not much into vacations. Too boring for me. What about your job?” He wanted to hear, and how strange was that? They had this in reverse, sleeping together and then doing the bar-style pickup conversation, getting to know each other. “You have a high-pressure career of your own.”

“Go ahead and get the lawyer jokes out of the way.” She peeled the remaining banana for herself. “I believe I’ve heard them all, but you’re welcome to give it your best shot.” She bit the top off with a wicked smile.

Was she playing with him? “I wouldn’t be so rude.”

“Then I’ll go ahead for you…” She danced ahead of him, walking backward along the sand. The landscape stretched ahead with trees and more trees hemming them in, closing off any view of the city still miles away. “There are only two lawyer jokes, you know.”

“Really? Only two lawyer jokes?”

“That’s right.” She winked. “The rest are true.”

Her words jolted a laugh out of him. Beyond not coddling him this morning, she’d managed to do what not many could at times like this. She made him smile. “You have a sense of humor about yourself. That’s rare.”

“Believe me, in this profession, you have to laugh or you would go crazy.” She turned away, walking ahead with her stick in front of her again, stabbing at bushes. “People lie…”

She jabbed. “And they lie.”

Again Amelia jabbed. “And they lie some more. Even upstanding people flinch at telling the complete truth. I can spot bullshit a mile coming.”

“You still haven’t told me why you became a lawyer.”

“And I don’t have to tell you.” She glanced back with another of her glittering smiles, but there was ice in her blue eyes this time.

“Ah, lawyer skills.” He couldn’t resist jabbing too, with words. “You get me to spill my guts, then you don’t say a thing.”

“No one forced you to talk.” Her whisper drifted over her shoulder, the edge carrying something else he recognized well.

Pain.

“You’re right. You didn’t.” He lengthened his stride and walked alongside her, the soft sand giving under his boots. “My apologies.”

“No”—she glanced up at him—“I’m sorry. We’ve gone past the holding-back stage, I think.”

“Getting naked—or almost naked—together does take away certain boundaries.” And just that fast the air crackled between them, the awkwardness that he’d caused last night finally—thank God, finally—easing.

“I was thinking more of the life-and-death thing, but whatever.”

“Ah, that’s right. The sex meant so much to you that you walked away before I could pull up my pants.” That stung now even more than before.

Her hand fell on his arm, soft and cool against his sunburned skin. “That wasn’t very nice of me. I’m sorry again.” She reached past to tickle the chin of the kid squirming in the pack. “I don’t do so well with relationships these days. The past has a way of dogging a person, you know.”

That he did. He reached back to pat the wriggling kid’s shoulder. “You would blame all men because your ex was a jerk?”

“Are you really sure you want to have this kind of conversation?” Her feet slowed, her smile fading. “I got the impression this morning that you want to keep things lighter…”

That he did.

He grasped the shift in conversation with both hands and settled on the first topic that came to mind. Easy enough, with the kid grabbing hold of his ears tightly. “Your parents must be excited about their first grandchild.”

The air went thick, heavy with more than humidity. He ducked under a branch.

Her hand slid from her nephew and she stepped over a turtle lumbering across their path. “My mother doesn’t speak to my brother and me anymore.”