to vent or rant, always taking on everyone else’s battles and ignoring his own. Who would be there to help him through the grief over his father’s death?
The Kathleen person he’d called for?
She couldn’t begrudge him that. Especially when the boys would need a woman’s influence more than ever. They also needed their brother steady. Daniel’s hero worship for his father had died in a rift they’d never bridged, which would only make the coming weeks tougher for him.
Mary Elise let herself touch him. Just his arm. Lightly. “I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t answer for an extended moment before he stood to leave, pulling away emotionally as well as physically. As she’d known he would. He had always been more at ease with simple. Uncomplicated.
Daniel paused in the doorway. “I’ll take you up front to patch through a call.”
She struggled to understand his words in the wake of the liquid heat pulsing through her veins. “Patch a call?”
“Home.”
She frowned. “My apartment’s empty right now.”
“I meant Savannah. I don’t have your parents’ number or I’d do it for you. Unless there’s someone else you’d prefer to contact.” His eyes chilled. “Like your husband.”
“My ex-husband.”
“Right.” His emotionless gaze pinned her. “Do you want me to call Kent McRae?”
Hearing her ex-husband’s name sent a tremor through her. Followed by a completely different shiver over realizing Daniel had cared enough to track her transition from Mary Elise Fitzgerald to Mary Elise McRae. From a single college journalism student to the wife of a major newspaper publisher.
And who was she now?
Alive. Just how she damn well intended to stay. “I’m not planning to go home. I’ll turn right around and return to Rubistan and my job.”
“Think again.” Familiar chocolate-brown eyes hardened into the different, darker Danny.
What in the world had he seen and experienced during their years apart? “Excuse me?”
“We may have escaped Rubistan without being searched. But they knew. Once you and the boys come up missing at the same time, it won’t take longer than a puff on that guard’s cigar to link you to this. If you go back, you’ll be jailed—or dead—an hour after you touch down.”
All those thousands of emotional paper cuts flamed to life in full-blown dread. The implications of the past hours swelled into certainty. She hated the helplessness. Most of all hated that she would have to turn to Danny for answers after a year of hoping never to need anyone again. “What happens after we land in Charleston?”
“What kind of ID do you have?”
“I didn’t have time to grab my purse before I got in the crate,” she answered automatically, pushing the words through numb lips. “But I always keep my passport on me.”
“Good, then you’ll be processed through the base. In the meantime, you have to stay somewhere. With your parents or me?” Daniel leaned closer, bay rum obliterating hydraulic fluid in a sensory tidal wave. “It’s your call to make, and quite frankly, I need you more right now.”
Chapter 3
“You need me?” Mary Elise enunciated slowly.
Daniel watched her brows pull together over confused green eyes. He wasn’t feeling much steadier himself.
He braced a hand against the bulkhead and planted both boots for balance. Where the hell had his words come from?
There were probably a hundred different services he could call to help at a moment’s notice. He knew at least a dozen women who would enjoy nothing more than mothering the boys as a way to entice him into being “emotionally available.”
And none of them were Mary Elise.
He tried to tell himself his motives for keeping her close were rooted in protectiveness. That long-ago connection had kicked into overdrive in the past few minutes. Right about the time he’d mentioned calling Savannah.
He didn’t consider himself an intuitive guy, a fact reinforced by his double-digit tally of breakups. But even he could sense something was wrong here. Her edginess should be easing with every mile they put between themselves and Rubistan.
Should be.
But wasn’t.
Eleven years of distance between them didn’t matter. He owed this woman, and until her frown smoothed, he wouldn’t back off.
He was doing this for her. And for the boys. Not because he wanted to find out if the freckles dotting her smooth creamy skin had faded with age. “I need your help with stuff like asthma meds and nut allergies. At this rate, the boys won’t make it through the week with me.”
Mary Elise straightened in her seat. Daniel looked deeper into those lush green eyes that had once been so expressive and wondered when she’d learned to close herself off.
“I’ll make a list.” Her cool efficiency almost covered her underlying edginess. Almost. “Starting with Austin’s EpiPen.”
“Eppie what?”
“Epinephrine injection pen. Medicine in case he accidentally eats something with nuts or peanut oil or—”
“Stop.” He made a giant T with his hands. “Time out. You can compile lists all day long and it won’t change the fact that I have no experience with kids. I need help settling the boys.”
She pleated her pants between fidgety fingers. “You haven’t made any accommodations for them?”
“Hell, Mary Elise, I was a little busy planning how to smuggle them out of Rubistan without getting our asses shot off.”
“Oh.”
“Apology accepted.”
Her hands flattened on her trim thighs, a smile playing with her lips. “Uh, sorry?”
He winked. “No problem.”
A smile and a wink linked them more than all his earlier speeches.
The deafening din of engines and the closed curtain offered a bubble of privacy and protection from being overheard. Not that he had thoughts of unrolling the past with her. He hadn’t been much for emotional sharefests then, either.
Besides, he didn’t want to trek back to the past. Too many memories waited there of a time he’d been less of a man. Too much his father’s son—seducing an innocent, betraying a friendship. His father’s wedding had marked a time of rotten decisions for everyone.
Halfway into a bottle of champagne, Daniel had found himself watching nineteen-year-old Mary Elise with new eyes. Another shared bottle and some consolation later, Daniel
