been head-over-heels in love with him, but she had loved him. Once. He’d been her friend, and the betrayal of how easily he’d let go after she lost the baby had hurt.
His indifference hurt now.
He shouldn’t still have the power to wound her. Her ex had done so much worse to her and she’d held strong. She’d be damned if she’d let Daniel trample her heart with one distant look.
Mary Elise gripped the barred edge of the seat to steady her hands. She might not be able to regulate her pulse or her feelings, but she could control what she did about them. Bigger worries loomed, anyway, far more important than discovering if Daniel Baker still administered the most thorough, long and intense kisses she’d ever known.
“Danny, could you pass me the smaller bag inside the crate, please? The black canvas one. Trey needs his inhaler.”
“Don’t…want it,” Trey insisted.
Daniel’s forehead trenched. “The kid has asthma? Why didn’t someone tell me?” He shifted away, mumbling, “And why didn’t someone mention who the hell would be accompanying them?”
So it bothered him after all. Mary Elise stifled the urge to do an impromptu victory dance and rubbed soothing circles along Trey’s back while Daniel reached into the crate.
His flight suit stretched across narrow hips that veed up his back into broad shoulders. Muscles rippled under taut green fabric with restrained strength. He pivoted around with athletic fluidity, pitching the bag toward her.
“Thank you,” she said, avoiding eyes that told her too well she wouldn’t be able to dodge talking soon.
Mary Elise yanked the zipper open and rifled inside the pouch until her fingers closed around the inhaler. She snapped off the cap and thrust her hand toward Trey.
He brought the medicine to his mouth and pumped once, twice, again.
She prayed they wouldn’t be stranded in the air with Trey in a full-blown attack. “Come on, hon, take one more hit off the inhaler, okay?”
His shoulders heaved with a shuddering inhale.
Mary Elise waited for signs of relief. Years spent tending her chronically ill mother had left her with more knowledge about lung disease than some doctors. Her mother’s illness had also left her unsupervised, free to tromp alongside the neighbor boy. Never once had Danny complained about a pesky tagalong two years his junior. He’d shrugged off any teasing—when had Danny cared what others thought anyway—and labeled her his mascot.
Daniel knelt beside her. The scent of bay rum mingled with the pervasive air of hydraulic fluid. “What else can you do for him?”
Mary Elise focused on the hydraulic fluid. Fat lot of good it did her with the warmth of Danny’s arm inches away from her breast. “His nebulizer’s in the other bag. We can set that up if the Albuterol inhaler doesn’t do the trick.”
Trey’s heaving shoulders slowed.
She swept a hand over his pale brow. “Better, hon?”
The boy nodded.
Daniel held out his hand for the inhaler. “Hey, buddy, let me take that for you.”
“You’re not…my buddy. Don’t even…know you.”
Mary Elise stiffened.
Daniel stilled, then slowly retracted his hand. “That’s right.” His arms fell to rest on his knee. “We don’t know each other. And we’ll duke that one out later on terra firma back in the States. Right now you just take care of yourself.”
Trey clamped his mouth shut and fixed his gaze somewhere over his brother’s head.
Shoving to his feet by Tag, Daniel ruffled Austin’s sweaty curls. “Hey there, sport.”
Austin studied him with wary eyes, but at least not openly hostile. Daniel tugged off his flight gloves and reached into his thigh pocket. His hand whipped back out with a chocolate bar. “Snickers?”
Austin’s brown eyes sparkled.
Mary Elise rose, Daniel topping her by only a few inches. A perfect fit. Double damn. “He’s allergic to nuts.”
“How about licorice?”
“He might choke.”
Daniel’s jaw flexed. “Three Musketeers bar?”
Mary Elise refrained from asking for an apple, a senseless request after the kid had already been offered candy. “That would be fine.”
Daniel fished the treat out of his seemingly bottomless pocket for Austin, then turned back to his other brother.
Trey hunched back in the seat, arms tight across his chest. “I’m not hungry.”
Uh-oh. The kid loved licorice. Mary Elise waited for Daniel’s reaction. Prayed somewhere inside this harder new Daniel there still lived the Danny who’d sat with her during her bout with chicken pox, teaching her to play poker, tutoring her in math, making her laugh so she wouldn’t scratch.
Shrugging, Daniel zipped his thigh pocket closed. “Fair enough. I have to head back up to the crew compartment. If you decide you’re hungry later on, Tag here can give you a hand.”
Mary Elise winged a silent thanks for the easy out Daniel offered Trey. Maybe they would be okay after all.
“Mary Elise?” Daniel called. “Got a second?”
Big-time uh-oh. She didn’t want this talk right now, not when the old Danny still hovered in her memory.
Better pitch those sympathetic leanings back in the crate and maintain her distance. Keep it light. Do the old friends routine.
Old friends who happened to know every inch of each other’s body.
Daniel cupped her elbow, his grip hot, firm—familiar. And it had been so long since a man had touched her. Her body absorbed the sensation. Stupid. Wrong.
But pulling away would lend too much importance to a simple gesture. She kept her eyes forward and suppressed a shiver. He was a good-looking guy, no question, in a rumpled way that defied her need for order.
Hormones, pure and simple.
The day’s danger and stress left her vulnerable. That must be the reason she wanted to tuck against his broad chest, the only reason she yearned to savor the comfort of bay rum and chocolate.
Her eyes landed on the little round scar beside his brow. Two weeks after her recovery, Daniel’s chicken pox had spread fast and furious. She’d brought a deck of cards to his house and reamed him out for not telling her he hadn’t been exposed before. He’d just shrugged, scratching the corner of his eyebrow.
How could he be such a stranger and so familiar all at once?
His boots thudded along the metal tracks lining the belly of the plane as he put space between them and the boys. Tucked in a corner, he stopped, releasing
