The Daredevil

He didn’t want a long-term relationship.

He traveled enough being a pilot. He was at the mercy of the air force whims. He had no control over where he went or when he’d be home.

But that made his attraction to Sabrina complicated. If they weren’t working together he would have simply indulged in a wild affair for as long as it lasted and then walked away when they were both done. But now walking away wasn’t an option.

The problem was he had no idea if he could keep his hands off of her. Or if he even wanted to try.

Shaking his head, he decided he didn’t need to solve the problem today. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he watched Sabrina stride away. The straight, knee-length skirt of her uniform played against the backs of her thighs. Each step stretched the material taut over the curve of her derriere. He’d had firsthand knowledge of the body she preferred to keep covered.

It was one hell of a juicy secret. One he didn’t mind keeping all to himself.

Shaking away the memories, Chase focused his attention back to where it belonged…his new assignment.

The past several months of his life hadn’t exactly been a picnic—and if that wasn’t the understatement of the year he didn’t know what was.

As if spending each and every day with the responsibility of protecting fighting men and women hadn’t been enough, he’d somehow become a very reluctant war hero. A simple action on his part had gotten him way more attention than he’d ever wanted. What had started out as the mistake of a lifetime, losing a multimillion-dollar plane to ground fire, had turned into the media sensation of the nation.

His job had been simple. Protect the convoy heading into the northern part of the country. And he’d failed. Miserably. He’d been unable to help himself, let alone the men and women he was supposed to protect.

He’d simply been doing his job when he’d found the New York senator and his assistant cowering behind a blazing pile of metal after ejecting from his totaled plane. The fact that the man was being groomed to run in the next presidential election hadn’t helped Chase any. Nor had the man’s undying and unending praise as he’d granted interviews to every damn news outlet in the country.

People had died. Because of his call they’d diverted a helicopter meant to pick up wounded from another part of the convoy half a mile away. Another chopper had been sent but it hadn’t gotten there fast enough for some. Soldiers had died—soldiers who might have made it if they’d gotten medical attention sooner. And that was his fault. The mission hadn’t been a success. And he sure as hell didn’t deserve a medal. But apparently, he was the only one who saw it that way.

The attention did not sit well.

Wanting something to drive out the ever-present visions of torn bodies, burning hunks of metal and agonizing screams, he found himself following Sabrina, reaching out for her. He grabbed onto her arm, stopping her before she could disappear again. “Have dinner with me.”

Chase fought the urge to pull her closer into his space. Something in the tilt of her head told him that would not be wise.

“I don’t date pilots.”

Unable to stop himself, he moved nearer, pulling in a breath of her. The fresh strawberry scent of some female bath product washed over him. It was sweet and innocent, feminine and pretty. It didn’t match the passionate woman of his memories. Somehow it didn’t match the polished exterior before him either.

“Who said anything about a date? I believe we have some unfinished business to discuss.”

The alarm that widened her eyes surprised him. He hadn’t expected that strong a response from her. Maybe he’d assumed the wrong thing when she’d snuck away from him in the middle of the night.

“Wh…what do we have to discuss?”

“Why you disappeared, for one. The picture you left was a nice touch.” He moved into her space, letting his fingers brush lightly against the cotton sleeve of her shirt. He couldn’t touch her more, even if she’d have let him, without drawing attention. “Did you know I took it with me? To Iraq?”

She shook her head, her eyes swimming with emotions too tangled for him to pull apart and name.

She moved away from him, leaving him with a cold and clammy feeling he wasn’t used to and didn’t like.

“There are things we need to talk about. Dinner tonight would be fine. After that, it’s strictly business, though.”

He laughed silently as she spun on her heel and walked away.

Yeah, right. There was nothing just business about the energy humming between them. It had been there from the moment he’d met her seven years ago and it wasn’t going anywhere just because Sabrina no longer wished it to exist.

She might have run away from him before. But this time she had nowhere to go.

SHE’D GONE HOME, looked in the mirror and decided to leave her uniform on. It was a layer. A wall between the competent, military woman she was and the whimsical, reckless side of her personality that only seemed to break free around Chase.

Did barriers work if the person you were trying to keep out—or rather in—was yourself?

Rina didn’t know, but she was damn sure going to try.

She looked across the small bar table at Chase.

He was different. She’d been too preoccupied to notice this afternoon, but now that she had nothing to distract her…There was still plenty of his normal swagger and charm to go around, but underneath there was a sadness she hadn’t seen before.

Something made her want to soothe it away. But she couldn’t. Not and keep herself whole. If she let Chase Carden in he had the ability to obliterate everything she’d built—her life, her career, everything that mattered.

Looking at him, she knew any woman in this bar—hell, the city—would jump at the chance to be Chase Carden’s wife. And a small part of her thought maybe she would, too.

If he had wanted a wife, a relationship. If being a daredevil hero, an aerial jockey hadn’t been the single-minded goal of his life.

If it were real.

But it wasn’t.

Besides, if they started anything that remotely resembled a relationship their chances for an annulment would disappear like a puff of smoke. And an annulment was the only way for them to keep this whole thing a secret. And keeping this whole thing a secret was the only way they were both going to prevent the possibility of being court-martialed for fraud.

With the simple act of not reporting their marriage they’d both broken several major air force rules. And the air force tended to frown on that.

Chase had broken more by not completing all the required paperwork for entry into the Thunderbirds. There was no way he could have gotten her consent to the assignment…not when he didn’t even know she was his wife. Would the air force consider it fraud if he hadn’t known about the marriage? Possibly not. But it wasn’t worth the risk for either of them.

A simple, quiet, quick annulment and their marriage never happened. If she could just figure out how to tell him they were married in the first place.

“Would you like a drink?”

“No!”

Chase and their waiter both turned startled eyes to stare at her. Rina dropped her gaze back down to the menu in front of her, concentrating on the words, and tried to ignore the blush she knew was creeping up her face.

She didn’t want to let him unsettle her. Unfortunately, he did. No man had ever had the ability to set her on edge with a single look the way Chase Carden seemed to do.

He made her feel things she didn’t want to feel. Want things she knew she couldn’t have. And question the course of her life that had been set since she was five.

Without even trying. That’s probably what upset her the most. He had no idea he knocked her off balance. From the moment he’d walked in today she’d felt a little off center, like a ball spinning five degrees off axis—not enough to see, just enough to feel.

“I’m still paying for the last time I overindulged.” She gave a halfhearted smile and ordered a Diet Coke. Taking a deep breath, she let oxygen flood her body, bringing with it a familiar sense of equilibrium.

“Better?”

Maybe he had noticed his effect on her. She wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

“Maybe.” She let her lips twist into a self-deprecating smile.

This was too much. She was wound tighter than a top, while he was sprawled in his chair, one hand resting comfortably around the ice-cold beer, the other slung over the back.

She should tell him.

“How’s the General?”

Rina cocked her head to the side, wondering where this was going, and answered slowly, “Great.”

He leaned forward, playing with the curling edge of the beer bottle label, his eyes staring straight and true into her own. Blue, deep, dark and dangerous.

“He still pulling your strings?”

The familiar anger welled up inside. She should be used to it by now, the automatic assumption that she’d gotten something—everything—simply because of who her father was.

She’d had to deal with it when she entered the academy, taking more shit than any of the other cadets just because of who she was. They’d wanted to break her. To have her go crying home to daddy. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. With each assignment, including the one to the Thunderbirds, she’d heard the whispers behind her back. “Oh, she’s the General’s daughter.”

Years of experience had hardened her to the reaction but, for some reason, coming from Chase…it hurt. But why should she expect more from him than everyone else? She could count the things she knew about him on one hand. His middle name was Edward and he could make her body hum with desire faster than should be legal.

“No one pulls my strings, least of all my father.”

“I think we both know that isn’t true. If it were we’d have had this conversation about seven years ago.”

Why was he baiting her? Why was he doing this? Pushing her chair back from the table, Rina grabbed her purse. “This was a mistake.”

“Sabrina.”

“Don’t call me that.” She bit the words out as she stalked from the bar.

His voice followed her from the restaurant, through the ever-present casino and into the falling darkness—or as dark as it could get with megawatt bulbs blaring from every direction.

She ignored him, melting into the crowd of people on the sidewalk, blending in to the ebb and flow around her.

That had not gone well. She walked through the throng for several moments, pushing unseeingly against the people and things in her way. After a couple minutes the anger finally peaked inside her and her steps slowed to something resembling normal. Then came the disappointment at losing control of her temper. She didn’t do it often, for not much pushed her to the edge, but Chase seemed to have a knack for stirring her emotions.

Of course, if she was honest with herself she’d admit that she’d used the anger as an escape. She wasn’t ready to tell him. Didn’t know how to tell him.

“Sabrina.” His voice was soft. And close. It touched her moments before his arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her out of the flowing crowd.

One minute she’d been walking down the sidewalk, the next she was pressed against a cool stone building. How had that happened?

“I’m sorry.”

The heat of his hand seeped into the skin where it rested at her hip. “No, I,” she said, and swallowed hard, trying to tamp down the firestorm building inside her. “I’m touchy when it comes to my career and my father. I’m sorry.”

“I’ve been on edge lately, but that’s no excuse for purposely baiting you.” A sad smile pulled at the corners of his lips. His bright blue eyes flashed, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the lights around them or from some internal source she couldn’t understand. It only lasted for a moment before it was gone, and his normal cocky facade replaced the surprisingly unsettled expression.

“If I promise never to mention the General again, will you come back inside with me?”

Chase looked down into her eyes, his body holding her hostage against the unforgiving side of the building. She’d never known anyone else who, with a single look, could convince the people around him that he was all innocence and sincerity—all while hiding pure devilment underneath.

Normally she was immune to macho charisma and oozing flyboy sexuality. But she couldn’t seem to remain unaffected by Chase. Her nose wrinkled. No matter how much she wanted to.

His finger slid from the center of her forehead down between her eyes to the tip of her nose, smoothing the peaks and valleys as he went.

“That’s kinda cute. I don’t remember that from a year ago.”

“I don’t remember much reason to frown.”

“But you do remember.” He leaned closer into her space, his teasing smile fading away, along with the sounds of a city that never slept.

She could only nod, his eyes holding her hostage.

His hand lifted to her face again, only this time his touch was far from playful. The pad of his finger, ridged and rough, brushed the corner of her lips. He smoothed a path from edge to edge across the closed seam of her mouth. In the center he pushed gently against it, the tip of his finger slipping barely inside.

That simple sensation shouldn’t have mattered, sure as hell shouldn’t have sent her brain into overload. But Rina could feel her body responding in a way she hadn’t felt in eleven long months. The center of her sex grew damp and tingled. Her stomach turned over, wanting more. She pressed the tiny tip of her tongue against his finger and lost herself in a groan of pure pleasure.

His eyes darkened as he reached for her, crushing her between the weight of his body and the merciless wall at her back.

She could feel him, every breath, every muscle, every bone, every vibration. Her head dropped back, too heavy to hold up anymore. But she didn’t have to. He did it for her, snugging one palm to her nape, the other to the curve of her throat.

His mouth claimed her with a passion she’d convinced herself had been part of a fuzzy dream. It couldn’t have been real. The way she’d felt couldn’t be real. The woman she’d been with him couldn’t be real. Couldn’t be her.

Her back arched into him, seeking more, giving him everything he asked for without hesitation or thought. His tongue thrust inside, filling her up before his mouth moved lower.

Her eyes wanted to close, wanted to surrender to anything and everything Chase wanted to give her. But she wouldn’t let them, couldn’t, although for the life of her she could not remember why. She focused on the skyline above her and he nibbled at the delicate center of her throat.

A light revolved against the darkness, coming and going in a throbbing pulse that was echoed deep at her core.

No. No, this wasn’t right.

“Stop.” The word popped out of her mouth on a sigh that held not a wisp of conviction. But Chase immediately took a step away, opening a space between them that she desperately needed.

Rina looked up into his face, ruggedly handsome and stamped with an unmistakable hunger she recognized as the twin to the beast roaring inside her.

He wasn’t calm. He wasn’t collected. And he sure as hell wasn’t charming as his chest rose and fell with the same labored pattern as her own. Wild was what she’d have called him, if she’d had brain power enough to think of a label.

“Too fast.” The words whispered up from somewhere deep inside her.

“Not fast enough.”

“Slow down, cowboy. I have no intention of sleeping with you.”

“You may not intend to but you’re going to anyway.”

Now that was the cocky pilot she knew.

“I don’t think so. Unlike men, we women tend to think with our brains instead of our anatomy. I won’t deny that I’m still sexually attracted to you, flyboy, but trust me, I can resist.”

His eyelids lowered to half-mast, covering glittering sapphire eyes. His lips turned up at the corners in a mocking imitation of his full-blown smile.

“We’ll see about that.”

Rina watched as he turned and walked back out to the crowded sidewalk.

She let the wall take the weight of her body from her shaking, saggy knees. Her head hit the veined marble as she realized she’d just made a tactical error with one of America’s best aerial dogfighters. A tactical error that could mean the next few weeks of her life were going to be hell.

She’d just issued him a challenge.

4

“HOW’D IT GO?”

Rina looked across the tiny table in the back of the casino restaurant at her best friend.

“You really want to know?”

It was late. Later than she normally stayed out on a work night, but she’d needed time to decompress before going home and Sadie was the only person she knew in the city who’d be up and awake. Sadie enjoyed her job as night bar manager on the strip. She was tall enough, blond enough and certainly stacked enough to have a more high-paying job as a showgirl, but that wasn’t what she wanted—not that she hadn’t been asked by quite a few of the casting directors.

Rina had no idea how they’d become friends. Maybe it was because they were complete opposites in just about every way.

Not that it mattered. The moment she’d met Sadie her sophomore year of high school they’d clicked.

“Yes, I want to know. How did he take the news?”

Rina dropped her head onto crossed arms atop the corner table, the polished wood and cotton eating her muffled words. “I didn’t tell him.”

“What?”

She lifted her head but only far enough to see her friend over the safety of her arms. “I chickened out.”

“Rina.” The single word reminded her more of her father than she’d like to admit.

That man knew how to fill one word with more disappointment and censure than anyone she’d ever met. She’d spent her entire life trying to avoid provoking that tone of voice. Trying to be different from her mother, the woman he was constantly telling her she was the spitting image of. The woman who’d deserted them both before managing to kill herself and injure a father and his son while driving drunk.

The woman she never wanted to be. The woman she saw in the mirror every time she looked.

If the General ever found out about this mess, he’d be so disappointed.

He’d run their house like he’d run his men. He’d always held high standards, for himself and everyone around him. Sometimes the pressure to live up to those expectations had been heavy to bear. But she had. Because she was a McAllister.

Not that any of that mattered anymore. What did matter was the mess she’d gotten herself into. Which she had made infinitely worse by letting Chase kiss her. Where was her damn self-control when she needed it?

“You’re right. I wouldn’t have told him anyway. I was too busy letting him suck the skin off my neck.” She let out a groan and dropped her head back onto her arms. She really didn’t want to see the look on Sadie’s face.

“Sabrina McAllister.”

The shock in Sadie’s voice was exactly what she’d expected.

“It’s about time you had some fun. And I say who better to give you a little sexual satisfaction than your husband?”

“Sure. If I wanted to stay married, which I don’t. The minute I sleep with him any hope of an annulment goes out the damn window. Before, we didn’t know we were married. Now we do.”

“So what if the judge doesn’t find out?”

Rina cut her eyes over the top of her arms.

“Have you seen my life lately? He’d find out.”

“So what? Then you get a divorce.”

“Then the General finds out, along with my commanding officer, and all hell breaks loose. We’re breaking about a million regs right now. Frankly, I’ve spent most of my life avoiding disappointing the General. Somehow, I think causing an air-force-wide scandal would crash that effort.”

Sadie rolled her eyes in a familiar gesture that did little to help Rina feel better. “You need to stop worrying about what your father thinks.”

“Yeah. Easier said than done.”

“No. No it isn’t.”

Rina sighed. Her friend simply didn’t understand. She had no idea how to turn off twenty-nine years of pleasing the man. It was a firmly entrenched habit.

For most of those years they’d only had each other to rely on. She’d watched him dedicate his life to a career that had often taken him away from her for long stretches at a time. His job was dangerous. Even at five she’d realized she could lose the only person in her life, the only parent she had left, at any moment. It had instilled in her a need to make him happy whenever he had been there. A need to be different from the woman who’d yelled, complained and made their lives miserable before deserting them both. A need to be dutiful and strong and perfect where her mother had been flighty and vain and selfish.

“What I need is to figure out how to tell my husband we’re married.”

CHASE HEARD the knock on his front door. For about five seconds he entertained the hope that Sabrina would be there on the other side. He knew it was futile but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. He hadn’t exactly handled things well tonight.

“There was a rumor you were back in town.” Nope, not Rina, but someone almost as good.

“Jackhammer.” Slapping his best friend on the back, Chase ushered the man into his new apartment. “You want a beer?”

“Hell, no. I’m not going to drink with you. I’m mad as hell at you.” Jackson stopped in the middle of Chase’s living room, arms crossed over his barrel of a chest, glaring across the space at him.

There was a reason he’d been chosen for the Basic Cadet Training Cadre as a second class during their years at the academy. The man could be damned intimidating.

“Mad? What the hell did I do?”

“You’re alive.”

“Of course I’m alive.”

“There’s no ‘of course’ about it. Almost a year in a combat zone and I didn’t hear from you more than two or three times. I had to learn that you were back in town from one of the newbies.”

Chase fought down a wave of guilt at that. It was true. He really hadn’t kept in touch with anyone back home while he was gone. He hadn’t wanted to. What could he tell them? How unbelievably appalling war conditions could be? How he’d made decisions that had cost men and women their lives?

He hadn’t written home because there was nothing worth telling.

“Don’t take it personally, man. I barely wrote to my mother and sister either.”

His mother and sister had e-mailed him on a regular basis but…it wasn’t like they’d exactly been a close-knit group before he’d left for Iraq. His mother and sister had always been close…closer still after his parents’ divorce. They’d had a mother-daughter bond he hadn’t ever been a part of. Chase had been left with no one when his father disappeared from their lives.

So, no, they weren’t close. They were simply family.

“Cut me some slack. I’m not even settled yet. I would have called you in a few days.”

“Yeah, right.”

Marching into his kitchen, Jackson pulled a beer out of the fridge, plopped down onto the sofa and dropped his feet onto the coffee table—the two lone pieces of furniture in the entire room.

“So, how was it?”

Hell. Chase stared across at the other man. “God, it’s good to see you.”

“Now you get all mushy. You aren’t gonna cry, are you?”

“No.” Grabbing a beer of his own, Chase sat down beside his buddy. “Look, I’m sorry. I really didn’t think it would matter. I never thought you’d expect weekly reports.”

“Yeah, I know.” Jackson pulled a face before brushing the subject aside. “It doesn’t matter. So, I hear you’re a war hero.”

“Not really.”

“The air force doesn’t award the Distinguished Flying Cross for nothing. I’m getting an invitation to the ceremony, right?”

Between coming home, joining the squadron and seeing Sabrina again, he’d almost forgotten about that mess. Or maybe it had been convenient selective memory.

He didn’t want the honor. He didn’t deserve the damn medal. Somewhere along the way the media had gotten and run with a skewed version of the events of that night that the world seemed to accept at face value. He had no idea where the misinformation had come from…not that it really mattered. People believed what they wanted to believe.

“Sure. The damn President’s coming. Why shouldn’t you?”

They should all have a huge party. Then maybe he could forget about the truth of what had really happened that night.

DONALD BLANKENSHIP STARED down at the piece of white card paper in his hand. Simple, plain, with stark black lettering and crisp precise words. He’d typed out the envelope, stamped it; now all he had to do was slide the note inside and mail it.

His eyes strayed to the picture sitting beside his desk. The picture of his little girl. Only she wasn’t little anymore. Hadn’t been for a very long time.

The pigtails and tap shoes had long been replaced by an army dress uniform and ACUs. The young woman stared back, unsmiling, serious. So grown-up.

His Amy had been so excited to join the army. To serve her country just like her father had for twenty-five years in the air force. He’d been so scared to watch her go, not sure when she’d come back.

She had, finally. In a flag-covered box.

It had been easy to risk his own life in service to his country. It had been difficult to watch his only child do the same. And it had been hell when she’d come home in a casket.

His vision wavered. He fought against the weakness of tears. Amy wouldn’t want him to cry, to be sad. But he couldn’t help it. His world wasn’t right without her in it.

His attention landed back on the card in his hand. His daughter might have died serving her country, but her death wasn’t the result of enemy fire. No. They hadn’t told him his Amy had died needlessly. He’d learned that on his own. Asking the right people the right questions. She’d been alive on the battlefield. She could have—would have—survived if she’d gotten medical attention.

A soldier—an airman—was responsible for her death. Someone who’d placed their own life and the life of a senator—someone who shouldn’t have been in the middle of a damn war zone in the first place—above his daughter’s. Above everyone else’s.

And now they were giving him a medal.

The man didn’t deserve a medal. He deserved to suffer.

Just like he did every day without his Amy.

“HELLO, BEAUTIFUL.”

“Chase.” Sabrina jerked guiltily at the sound of his voice, surprise widening her eyes behind the magnifying lenses of her glasses. She’d been staring, unseeing, at her computer screen for God only knows how long. “What are you doing here?”

And apparently, from his negligent stance against the side of her open office door, it looked like he’d probably been there long enough to realize she was daydreaming. Luckily, he had no idea her thoughts had centered on the kiss they’d shared last night.

Uncrossing his arms, Chase walked further into her office, circling around to stand behind her chair. He didn’t lay a hand on her body. Evidently, that wasn’t necessary in order to send a shock of awareness shooting through her. Her muscles pulled tight, as if anticipating a blow…or caress.

His breath brushed against the nape of her neck where she’d pulled the hair up and off as per regulations. For once she wished she could have left the mess down. Her heart sped up. She wanted nothing more than to get away from him before he could do more damage to her resolve.

She swiveled her chair as far out of his atmosphere as she could get without actually getting up. That would be a sign of weakness. She wasn’t about to let him know just how much he could affect her without even trying.

Rina eyed Chase over the black rim of her glasses. She only wore them when she planned to be parked in front of her computer for several hours. At the moment, she was thankful for the barrier they put between them.

In one swift motion Chase took that from her, too. With a brush of his thumb up the line of her jaw, he swiped them from her face.

“Much better.”

“I hope you didn’t come in here to flirt, Chase. I have work to do and this is going nowhere.”

Straightening away from her, he folded the earpieces into a neat pretzel and laid the glasses on the corner of her desk.

A half-formed smile played at his lips as he walked away, across her office to the bookshelf she had stowed against a wall. She had no idea why, but that look made her neck twitch and her lip want to curl into a snarl.

“No. Flirting implies fun and games. And I’m not playing with you, Sabrina.”

The intensity in his eyes made her breath stutter in her throat. She missed a necessary inhalation of oxygen, and her brain and body both seemed to falter.

There was something unsettling about having his focus centered solely on her. Chase Carden was a strong man. He attacked everything, including his flying, with a single-minded sense of confidence and control.

She suddenly felt a little hunted…and hot.

He smiled at her, a real full smile that actually touched his eyes and the uncomfortable moment was gone. “Vince said you might have some questions for me.”

“Oh.” She stared at him for several seconds. Somehow she didn’t believe the smile. It only made her more concerned.

Turning to her computer, she tapped on a few keys and pulled up the file she’d begun compiling on Chase when she’d been told she would handle the ceremony. It was sad that most everything she knew about her husband had come from the few sketchy paragraphs.

“I have the bio information you supplied with your Thunderbird application, plus some information that was forwarded from your files. I’ll print you off a copy of what I have. Feel free to fill in any gaps or make any corrections. We’ll be using the information in the program for the ceremony so let me know if there’s anything you don’t want included.”