of time to consider big leaps like marriage. There’s still lots of time, for that matter.” Luke, thirty-eight and barely through a similar crisis, lifted a brow toward his twenty-five-year-old wife. “We should have gone to Beale and worked it out. But I didn’t do that because she made me so frickin’ mad.”
It was silent in the kitchen for a moment. “Well,” Luke finally said with fake cheeriness, “I’d love to stay and chat about your pathetic love life, but I need to grab Art and get over to the hardware store before—”
Shelby was shaking her head dismally. “So you had a little hissy and said, ‘Fine, just go, then.’ Is that it? Kind of like, ‘My way or the highway,’ huh?”
“Aw, come on, Shelby,” Sean said pleadingly. “You know I’m not a guy with a temper! I’m a sweetheart. I’m not a fighter, I’m a lover. And I don’t have any problem seeing myself with one woman. You know? It’s just the whole marriage thing—it was not for me. Marriage scared the hell out of me. A couple of my brothers tried it and it screwed them up bad. And kids?” He shook his head. “Maybe when I’m old and worn out like Luke I’ll change my mind, but at the moment I don’t feel like being tied down like that.”
“Ah,” she said. “I see. So you’d like to have a nice chat with Franci and explain all this to her?”
“Something like that,” he said, making perfect sense to himself. “It’s no crime to have a fight, but we never should’ve given up what we had. We were good together.”
Shelby stood. “Not good enough, I guess. Too bad I have to get to class, Sean. You have such a deep hole to climb out of and I’d love to talk you through it. You know I’ve loved you since the moment I met you, and I’d be happy to help. But school calls…”
Sean stood from the table, as well. “What do you mean, such a climb?”
“Okay, the short version. You let her go because you didn’t feel in charge. You didn’t bother to look for her for such a long time that her trail went cold—and I imagine, to her, it seemed as if you didn’t care. You didn’t even know the names of her best friends. Or her mother’s friends. You paid no attention to the woman, except where it was useful to you. You even socialized with your friends, from your squadron, and then you were surprised that they hadn’t heard from her. And now I think you’re a little hurt that she won’t forget all that and give you another chance to treat her like someone you might get around to later, when it’s convenient. While she, at least at one time a few years ago, wanted to be thought of as someone you couldn’t live without.”
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“But your real problem is, I do,” Shelby said. “You didn’t realize how much she meant to you until she was gone.”
Luke drained his coffee cup. He put it on the table. “When you have time, Sean, you should take a little course from Shelby. She’s seen every chick flick ever filmed. She knows things about this you and I have never thought of.”
Sean swallowed. Looking down he said, “Real quick, from a girl’s point of view, what do I do next?”
“Not what you think,” Shelby replied. “You better not do what you did before. Whatever it was that made you arrogantly think she’d never be able to leave you? Not that. You better do whatever it was you did that worked for her, that made her think she wanted a life with you. If you can even remember that far back. Because, brother, I think maybe you’re too late. And if you’re too late, you’re going to have to accept that and respect her space. If you turn crazy and give her trouble, I’m not on your side anymore.”
When Sean was alone in the house, he began asking himself what it was that had worked on Franci. Once they’d become a couple, he’d had lots of tricks up his sleeve. He was remembering the many areas where they had been compatible. Suddenly, it was hard to remember that, on a few issues, they had rubbed each other the wrong way.
Getting her to go out with him in the first place had been a real challenge. She’d been in the air force a while and knew her way around the jet jockeys, and she had a firm policy against dating fighter pilots. They had a reputation for being arrogant, self-absorbed idiots with short attention spans where women were concerned. Sean and Franci never discussed it, but Sean assumed she must have dated at least a couple to come up with that assessment. Which, as Sean grudgingly recalled, wasn’t far off the mark.
But there had been lots of positive things, too, and right now he was becoming uncomfortable imagining every little thing he had done to make her crazy with desire, to make her purr with satisfaction, because the chemistry they had in the sack was phenomenal. Those times she wasn’t in the mood, he knew what to say to change her mind. There were places he touched that would not only convince her to give it some more thought, but could turn her into a wild woman. And could she ever turn those tricks back on him, making him gasp and groan, driving him right out of his mind. None of those little things had worked on any other woman the way they had on Franci. She had a way of taking him so far beyond pleasure, he went out of his mind. He’d never been to bed with a woman who could please him the way Franci had, and he’d been to bed with far too many women.
What had he been thinking, letting her walk away?
Sean searched his memory for how he’d convinced her to take a chance on him in the first place and his mind was a blur. He’d probably been relentless in his pursuit because he did remember how he had felt when he first saw her. He’d taken one look at her and thought, Oh, Mary, Jesus and Joseph! She just did something to him. He had a lot of experience with attraction, but this was animal attraction. Primal and raw. He’d wanted her immediately. And he still wanted her that bad.
Sean first saw Franci when she passed through Iraq to pick up a planeload of medical evacuees. He’d tried to get her coordinates so he could get in touch when he was stateside again. He’d seen her a few times—she was in and out, arriving on a medical air transport, hanging around until they could gather up all their patients, taking off for the States again. She wouldn’t give him anything—not even a name. Of course, he managed to find out her name pretty easily, but that was all.
Then when he saw her at Luke AFB in the officers’ club, he decided it must be kismet; they were meant to be. But she hadn’t been any easier to convince. He remembered hoping she was as beautiful on the inside as she was sexy on the outside, because anything less would break his heart.
And she was. She was smart, strong, independent, confident, sexy and loving.
Franci was the kind of woman men looked at, but her sexiness was understated, not blatant. Franci was not cheap or flashy; she was classy and cool. She was long legged and dark haired with large, deep, dark eyes and thin, arched, expressive brows. Her mouth was a little pouty—soft and full. He could remember every detail of her body. But he couldn’t remember how he’d caught her. Sean’s typical move was to charm a woman, make her laugh, smolder her with his half-closed eyes, suggest, without being crude, that he could deliver satisfaction. He’d never shown an ounce of humility; he’d always been confident.
But he wasn’t confident anymore. Now he was frustrated, and he didn’t have the first clue about how to fix it. For once in his life, he didn’t know where to start.
He went to the second upstairs bedroom where Luke kept his computer. The desk was covered with so many wedding gifts that it was hard to see the computer. He moved a bunch of things out of the way and got the thing turned on. Franci had no phone or address listing when he’d called information, but after spending a couple of hours on Luke’s computer, doing a real-estate property search, he found Francine Duncan
