“At least twice a week,” he said. “I have to keep my flight skills current, and that’s the only way to do it.”
“Makes sense,” she murmured. There was an aluminum staircase leading up to the cockpit, and she gripped the sides of both seats, hauling herself into it. She took the copilot’s seat and sat down. The cockpit was large in one way and small in another. A person had to squeeze through the opening between the two seats, and as Dan moved to the pilot’s seat, his hip brushed against her arm. It couldn’t be helped but Sloan, feeling starved for any kind of contact with him, willingly absorbed that momentary graze. It was impossible to stop her hunger for him.
She noticed there were two lunch sacks sitting up on the console in front of them. Dan reached up, handing her one.
“I made us lunch this morning,” he offered.
“Thanks,” she said, trying to keep the emotion out of her tone. This was so much harder than Sloan ever expected. Four years was like four days without Dan in her life.
Dan sat back in the seat, opening his bag. “It’s tuna. We never had tuna fish at Bagram, so I didn’t know whether you liked it or not.”
“No…this is fine. Thanks.”
He lifted his boot, placing it against the console, looking out of the Plexiglas. “There are some sweet pickles and chips in there, too.”
Giving him warm look, she dug out the different plastic bags. “Looks like you thought of everything.”
“I wish I was better at it.”
The comment didn’t go unnoticed by Sloan, but she was too strong to ask what he was really referring to. She had a job to do and was hoping like hell that Fahd Ansari wasn’t around yet because she wasn’t at her best today.
“I saw you out here checking out the landing gear earlier,” she said, wanting to get on a benign topic.
“Yeah, from now on when I come in every morning, I’m going to do a very thorough walk-around.” He gestured to a couple of loose aluminum panels on the opposite wall. “I’m going to hire carpenters and get the siding nailed down so someone doesn’t slip into the hangar unnoticed.”
Nodding, Sloan chewed on the sandwich. “All good improvements.”
“Have you had a chance to see anything else we might do to improve security?” he asked.
“Not yet. I’m up to my eyeballs in your flight schedule.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do without Samiah.”
“Yeah, she’s sharp, on top of things, and she worships the ground you walk on.”
“She’s a good woman who got dealt a hand of bad cards in life,” he groused, frowning. “Life for a woman here in Sudan sucks.”
“Yeah, on that we can agree.”
He cocked an eyebrow, his smile increasing. “Oh, come on. We’ve been pretty good at agreeing on a lot of things in the past.”
“Yes, we did.” She stopped tasting the sweet pickle.
Dan watched her and his smile dissolved. “I keep hurting you, Sloan. I don’t mean to.” She was the last person he ever wanted to hurt, and yet, he’d hurt her the most.
She shifted in the seat. “We have to work together, Dan. But we can’t pretend we don’t have a past. We do. Neither of us can wipe our memory of it. There will be plenty of times, now and in the future, when we’ll probably harken back to that time together. It can’t be helped.”
“It’s like it was yesterday,” he admitted, staring down at his half-eaten sandwich.
“I know,” she managed, “I thought four years would make it easier to work with you on this assignment.” But it didn’t.
“Being around you brings so many memories back to me, daily things, little things. I didn’t know how important they were until I walked out on you,” he sighed.
“We’ll just make the best of it, Dan. That’s all anyone can ask of us.”
“One day at a time,” he agreed.
CHAPTER 7
On the third day, Dan took Sloan up in the Chinook. It was cool in the early morning, dawn still on the horizon, a pink ribbon reflected on the smooth, glassy sea. She sat in the copilot’s seat, nylon harness on, a pair of earphones over her ears, dark glasses sitting up on her baseball cap. Her earphones were plugged into the inter-cabin system, so she could talk to Dan without shouting over the noise. She noticed he had put a large wooden crate in the back and strapped it down, but didn’t ask what was in it.
Sloan loved the vibration of the twin blades. The cool air conditioning in the cockpit felt wonderful compared to the hot days and her stuffy apartment at night. She smiled, watching Dan out of the corner of her eye. He was all business now. His gloved hands were on the cyclic and collective, boots on the rudders, his profile rugged. He wasn’t pretty-boy handsome, he was too intense and focused for that. Automatically, her lower body clenched as her eyes fell on his mouth. Four years had only sharpened her appetite for him, she lamely discovered, unsure of what to do with herself. Over the past few days, there were times Dan would look at her, his gaze slowly moving down to her breasts, or lower. It wasn’t something he did knowingly. It was a worshipful feeling that he wrapped her within: as if she was the only woman in the world that he wanted to love, to hold, to keep forever.
The past overlaid the present and Sloan remembered times when she sat below the cockpit in one of those nylon seats near the stairs. She had always enjoyed watching Dan fly because he was intense, alert, and so damn good at hauling the Chinook around in the sky. Sloan always felt safe in his hands as he flew her team into or out of an op. There was just no one better than Dan in her opinion.
She watched as he swung back, flying close to the coastline, the yellow sand gleaming in the first light of the rising sun. The darkness of the Red Sea changed remarkably, and Sloan gasped with pleasure. The deeper water was a marine blue. As the elevation increased, the water became a dazzling turquoise, so clear that at three thousand feet, Sloan thought she could see some hammerhead sharks trolling around a small reef about a quarter of a mile off the coast. The water nearest the wavelets and beach was a pale green. “It is so beautiful from up here,” she breathed, amazement in her tone as she leaned toward the window on her left. “The colors…”
“Yeah, I like this route. There are tons of islands off the coastline. They’ve got more shipwrecks than Florida ever thought of having,” Dan said. “We’re flying north, Sloan. I’m going to land this bird at a small, local airport. From there, we’ll rent a car and take our scuba gear with us. We only have to drive about two miles to reach it.” He turned, giving her a playful look. “You up for some downtime?”
Was she? Hell yes! Her lips twisted and she pulled her dark glasses on, the sun too bright through the Plexiglas. “How long have you known that I would love to go scuba diving?” Her heart raced as he gave her a teasing, boyish look that always melted her.
“Yesterday. You’ve been putting in long hours, and I know you’re still fighting jetlag. There’s nothing on our schedule until next week, so I figured we’d have a play day.”
Shaking her head, a grin crept across her lips. “I’d love to dive. It looks like the reefs are all over the place and so close to the beach.”
“Good, I knew you’d be up for this. The reefs in the Red Sea have some of the best scuba diving in the world.”
“How often do you do this?”
“About once a month. I’ll fly the Chinook to the airport, rent a hangar and a truck, and then go out to some really beautiful areas to dive. I catch fish with my spear, and eat it on the beach at night.”
“You sleep on the beach?”
“Yes. It’s safe enough for a man, but a woman should never be out there alone. That’s different.”
“Are we going to camp out?” Her heart was beating so rapidly in anticipation that Sloan felt like squirming in her seat. Dan had flown the helo over the beach, lowering another thousand feet in elevation. She could see a small airport far ahead and to her left.