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  Kate was doubly cautious. “I listened in via the radio net with the rest of the test cadre that night when Jill and Doc Richardson jumped a chopper and raced to the injured cop. That wasn’t an experience I’d want to see repeated. We’d better not stray too far from the truck.”

  That suited Dave just fine.

  “No problem. I’ll just back it around and let down the tailgate. We can perch there while we wait for the show.”

  With the truck in position, he and Kate climbed out. They couldn’t have asked for a better night for star watching. Above the black mass of the mountains, the sky was deep and dark. A couple of million stars shone with the brilliance only visible at these high altitudes. The nip in the night air had Dave reaching into the back seat for a worn leather bomber jacket. When he offered it to Kate, she declined.

  “You’d better put it on. My flight suit will keep me warm.”

  When Dave lowered the tailgate, Kate propped her hips on the edge. He opted to stand and watch the northern sky for signs of unusual activity. The moments slid by with only the still, dark night around them. Kate checked her watch a couple of times. Dave couldn’t tell from her expression whether she was relieved or disappointed that nothing happened.

  “I got a call from my brother last night,” he said after a while.

  She angled her head around. “The one having problems with his marriage?”

  “That’s the one. Ryan said he and Jaci are calling it quits.”

  “Ouch.” Her face softened in sympathy. “Been there, done that. It’s not fun.”

  “Didn’t sound like it from Ryan’s perspective.”

  “What made him finally decide to walk?”

  “I’m not sure. He was pretty drunk when he called. I couldn’t get much out of him.”

  “You said they love each other despite their problems. Maybe they’ll patch it up.”

  “Maybe.” He hadn’t forgotten her remark that love can sometimes hurt. “What about you? What made you decide to walk?”

  Her mouth twisted into a rueful grimace. “A nineteen-year-old blonde. Evidently she was just what my ex needed to stroke his ego after the way I’d pounded it into the dust. His phrasing, not mine, by the way.”

  “In other words, he couldn’t keep up with you on the golf course.”

  “Or off it.” Her shoulders lifted under the blue Nomex of her flight suit. “Took me a while to stop feeling guilty about that.”

  “Is that why you skittered away from me after we got back from Ruidoso? You were afraid I couldn’t keep up with you on or off the course?”

  “I didn’t skitter away. I merely redrew the lines we had already established.”

  “The lines you had established. I’ve been thinking about those.”

  He pushed away from the fender. A single step placed him in front of her. His hands slid up her arms, gliding over the smooth fabric of her flight suit. With a gentle tug, he pulled her to her feet.

  “Dave, we agreed. Not on-site.”

  “Well, technically we’re off-site. I angled the truck around. The tail end is sticking clear over the perimeter road.”

  Anger flared hot and quick in her eyes. Planting her palms flat on his chest, she stiff-armed him. “So this was all a ploy? A ruse to get me out here?”

  “Partly. I did see a strange glow last night. I also wanted to get you back on neutral ground, so we can rekindle the fires we lit last weekend.”

  “We can’t.” Jerking free of his loose grip, she folded her arms. “And even if we could, I don’t want to compete with Denise and Alma.”

  “Denise I remember,” Dave said, exasperated, “but only because you keep bringing her into the conversation. Who the heck is Alma?”

  “She’s a waitress at the Cactus Café. About five-five. Brown hair. Lots of mascara. Remember her?”

  “Now I do,” he replied with a sheepish grin.

  Talk about ironic. Dave had been sure he’d never forget that wild night. Since tangling with Kate, though, he could barely remember his name at times, let alone his carefree days before he arrived on-site.

  “Let me guess,” he said wryly. “You bumped into Alma when we stopped to gas up in Chorro.”

  “Bingo.”

  “And she’s the reason you’ve been giving me the deep freeze all week?”

  Arms still folded, she tapped a foot and considered her answer. Dave had spent enough time with her by now to know she wouldn’t dodge the issue.

  “Alma is part of the reason,” Kate admitted at last. “Only because she made me face up to hard, cold reality. The problem is it’s impossible to keep personal feelings from slopping over into our professional situation. For me, anyway. The thought of being the latest in your string of weekend flings made me furious until—”

  “I’m not keeping score,” Dave interrupted dryly. “You can check my bedpost. You won’t find any notches carved there.”

  “Until I realized I had no right to be angry,” she finished firmly. “We had some fun, that’s all. Neither one of us made any promises. I had no reason to feel hurt or jealous. More to the point, I don’t want to feel hurt or jealous. Not again.”

  “I can’t change the past, Kate. Nor am I going to apologize for it. But did it ever occur to you I might just be looking for the right woman?”

  “You have my permission to keep looking, cowboy.”

  “Funny,” Dave mused, “I wouldn’t have pegged you as a coward.”

  Stiffening, she lifted her chin. Before she could lash out at him, he offered his own take on the situation.

  “I don’t think you’re afraid of feeling hurt or jealous. You’re afraid of failing. You like to win, Kate. You want to be the absolute best you can be at everything. Golf. Work. Marriage.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “No. That’s good. Very good. You go into everything heart first.”

  She was still stiff, still a little torqued at being called a coward. Smiling, Dave brushed a knuckle down her cheek.

  “The problem is, there are no guarantees when it comes to this love business. Not for Ryan and Jaci. Not for us.”

  “Who’s talking about love?”

  “I am. I think.”

  At her look of astonishment, his smile took a lopsided tilt.

  “I know. Half the time I’m convinced it’s only plain old-fashioned lust. All I have to do is picture you in turquoise spandex and my throat goes bone dry. Then I watch you at work, see the sweat and long hours you put into this project, and lust gets all mixed up with admiration and respect and something I’ve had a hard time putting a name to.”

  “Dave, this is crazy. You can’t… You don’t…”

  She stopped, drew in a slow breath, and adopted the gentle tone of a nurse addressing a seriously ill patient.

  “Respect and admiration I appreciate. Lust I understand. I’ve felt more than a few twinges of all three myself where you’re concerned. But love…Well…”

  She glanced to the side, as if expecting the right words to materialize on the cool, crisp air.

  “It’s okay.” A grin stole into his voice. “The idea kind of gives me goose bumps, too.”

  It gave Kate more than goose bumps. It shook her right down to her boot tops. She’d worked so hard at convincing herself she was just another trophy in his collection, that one torrid weekend defined the parameters of their relationship. It stunned her to hear his feelings went deeper. And that they had confused him as much as Kate’s had confused her.

  But love…

  Her face must have expressed her welter of uncertainty, doubt and wariness. Chuckling, Dave stroked her cheek again with the back of a knuckle.

  “I don’t figure we’ll sort this out tonight. Or next week. Let’s just take it a step at a time. See where it goes.”

  “Where can it go?” Kate asked, echoing her conversation with Cari. “Once Pegasus proves his stuff, we all head back to our separate units. Unfortunately, I’ve discovered I’m not real good at long-
distance relationships.”

  “So you stumbled once. You didn’t win. Does that mean you won’t ever get back in the race again?”

  He knew what buttons to push, she thought ruefully. She hadn’t liked being called a coward. Nor was it in her to run away and hide from a challenge. Particularly when the stakes were as high as these.

  Could she love this man? Did she want to?

  The answer was staring her right in the face.

  “Okay,” she conceded with something less than graciousness. “Consider me back in the race.”

  “Good.” With a satisfied smile, he slid a palm around her nape. “Just to make it official, here’s the starting gun.”

  “Hey!”

  That one startled yelp was all she managed to get out before his mouth came down on hers. He kissed her hard and long, apparently determined to make up the ground he’d lost over the past few days.

  His taste and his tongue sent little sparks of pleasure through Kate, heating her skin as they traveled her length. Dave added to the sensations by tunneling one hand into her upswept hair, wrapping the other around her waist and bringing her hard against him.

  She curled her fingers into the soft, worn leather covering his shoulders. Her head went back, her chin tilted to find just the right angle. Within moments, she was breathless. Moments more, and she had to drag in big gulps of air when Dave broke off the kiss. She was still gulping when he reached down, hooked an elbow under her knees and deposited her on the tailgate with a small thump.

  His skin was stretched tight across his cheeks, and his wicked grin signaled his intent even before he reached for the zipper tab at the neck of her flight suit.

  “Dave!” She grabbed his hands, stilling them. “This is your idea of taking it slow?”

  “I didn’t say slow. I said one step at a time. And this, my very Kissable Kate, is the next step.”

  He tugged free of her hold, got the zipper halfway down, and bent to nuzzle her breasts. The warm, damp wash of his breath came through her cotton T-shirt. Shivers rippled over every square centimeter of Kate’s body. Sighing, she gave herself over to the pleasure.

  Her sigh got stuck in her throat as he took little nips through the soft cotton. Pleasure gave way to hunger and Kate knew she was in trouble. But when he eased the fabric off one shoulder, common sense told her it was time to put the skids on. Unfortunately.

  “Surely you’re not thinking we’ll get naked out here in the middle of nowhere, are you?”

  “Oh, babe,” he muttered against the curve of her shoulder, “I’m way past the point of being able to think.”

  “Dave! One of Jill’s patrols could come cruising by at any moment.”

  “Nah.” He nibbled his way back up to her throat. “I said a silent prayer to the mountain gods. Worked like a charm last time.”

  “Dave, we can’t. It’s too cold out here. And I want an official measurement. I’m not sure this truck bed is really over the perimeter line. We might have to—”

  Suddenly, she went stiff. Her breath left on a gasp.

  “Omigod! There it is!”

  With his face buried in the silky skin of her neck and his senses already close to overload, it took Dave a second or two to realize she wasn’t referring to a hidden sweet spot he’d triggered by accident.

  “Look!” Kate exclaimed, thumping him on the back with a fist. “Over there! One o’clock high.”

  Swallowing a groan, Dave dragged his head up and threw a look over his shoulder at the faint green glow just visible between the peaks.

  “Now it shows,” he growled, not at all happy to have his reasons for driving Kate out into the desert vindicated. She, on the other hand, could hardly contain her excitement. Wiggling free of his hands, she yanked at her zipper.

  “We’ve got to get back to the site. I need to access the solar observatory database, see if they’re taking readings on this.”

  Regret knifed into Dave at the disappearance of her lush curves. Despite her desire to return to the base, though, she couldn’t seem to tear herself away. She stood transfixed, her gaze locked on the distant haze. Dave guessed she was trying to calibrate the intensity of the light waves dancing in the atmosphere and causing those weird, moving shadows.

  He had to admit they were pretty riveting. He’d pulled some temporary duty at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska, had been treated to the spectacle of the northern lights. These weren’t anywhere near as intense, but they gave Dave some insight into why the rumor had persisted for so many years that aliens had landed near Roswell, New Mexico. Folks had probably spotted a green glow much like this one and let their fears prey on them. They wouldn’t have had the benefit of scientific data regarding sunspots and magnetic energy and solar flares. Kate and Stu Petrie had treated Dave to an extended discourse on the phenomena, yet the dancing lights still sent prickles of unease down his spine.

  “Do you think that eerie glow will impact tomorrow’s flight?”

  The casual question masked a dozen different concerns. That the team maintain the tight test schedule. That they wrap up the air portion and move on to the sea trials. That Pegasus get a chance to strut his stuff before being harnessed for plow duty in the trenches. If things turned sour down in Caribe, the Pentagon might have to move troops in and noncombatant civilians out pretty quick.

  Kate gave the haze a final, frowning glance. “At this point, I can’t say what the impact will be. All I can do is check the data and see if the observatory is projecting any significant activity in the earth’s ionosphere. We don’t want to take any chances with you or with Pegasus.”

  She started for the passenger door, stopped, and spun around. Grabbing his jacket collar, she yanked him down for a hard, fast kiss.

  “Particularly with you, flyboy.”

  Chapter 10

  Kate didn’t sleep at all that night.

  She spent hours hunched over her computer collecting reports from every possible source. The solar observatory in Sunspot had recorded an increase in ionization in the earth’s upper atmosphere, but no disruption of satellite or radio communications as yet.

  By morning, she was hungry, hollow-eyed and more nervous than she’d ever been before jumping aboard one of NOAA’s planes to fly into the eye of a howling storm. She knew every piece of equipment aboard the specially modified P-3, knew just how it would respond when buffeted by hurricane-force winds.

  In contrast, Dave was going up in a new vehicle with only one operational test flight to its credit. The contractor representatives were confident they’d shaken the bugs out of Pegasus during the research and development phase—particularly after analyzing the data from the loss of the first two prototypes and incorporating design changes. But there was a good reason why the military didn’t accept ships or aircraft or other highly sophisticated weapons systems without extensive field tests. Real-world conditions too often caused failure of systems that operated flawlessly in a controlled R and D environment. And high-energy solar explosions were about as real world as it gets.

  As a result, Kate approached the 8:00 a.m. pretest meeting with considerably less confidence than she had previous such meetings. She was one of the first to arrive at the small conference room in the Test Operations building. Depositing her laptop and stack of briefing books on the table, she nodded to Russ McIver.

  “’Morning, Mac.”

  “Hi, Kate.”

  “Are you going to load Pegasus with the equivalent weight of a full squad this morning?”

  “That’s the plan. Any reason to change it?”

  Kate bit her lip. Pegasus was designed to carry a maximum of twenty fully-equipped troops or their equivalent weight in cargo. This would be the first test of how the vehicle performed fully loaded.

  “No,” she said slowly, thinking of all the weight and drag Dave would have to compensate for, “no reason to change it at this point.”

  The marine went back to flipping through the PowerPoint charts he’d prepared for the prebrief. T
oo restless to sit, Kate poured coffee into a mug emblazoned with the Pegasus test-cadre shield. Dave arrived a few minutes later and joined her at the pot.

  “You look dead,” he commented, eyeing her drawn face. “Gorgeous, but dead.”

  “Thanks.”

  By contrast, she thought wryly, he looked good enough to eat. His blond hair still gleamed from his morning shower, and his blue eyes showed none of the red tracks Kate’s did.

  “Did you get any sleep last night?” he asked her.

  “Not much.”

  One corner of his mouth kicked up. “Me, neither. That bit of unfinished business we started out on the perimeter kept me tossing and turning all night. We are going to finish it, Hargrave.”

  Kate didn’t argue. Sometime during the long hours of the night she’d accepted Dave’s challenge. She was back in the race. Despite the tension that knotted the muscles at the base of her skull, she flashed him a ten-gigabyte smile.

  “If you say so, Scott.”

  The rest of the cadre filed in, dumped their briefing books and hit the coffee. Everyone was in place when Captain Westfall arrived at precisely 0800. Chairs scraped back. Officers popped to attention. Even the civilians stood as a mark of respect for the naval officer whose drive and determination fed their own.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Take your seats, please.”

  After another shuffle, an expectant silence settled over the room. Westfall’s glance moved around the U-shaped table and settled on Kate.

  “Before we get into the actual mission prebrief, I’ve asked Commander Hargrave to give you an update on recent solar activity. We’ll make the go/no-go decision for today’s flight after we hear what she has to tell us. Commander.”

  Kate took the floor. The data she’d pored over last night was pretty well burned into her brain. She could talk her subject from memory, but had prepared a computerized slide presentation for the test team’s benefit. Her palm slick from a combination of worry and nerves, she pressed the remote. The first slide cut right to the heart of the matter. It showed a soft X-ray image of the sun’s “busy” side, with swirls of black clearly visible against the brilliant red corona.