The Captain's Baby Bargain

by Merline Lovelace

  But when she spotted a sign indicating a McDonald’s at the next exit, she gave up the struggle. Flipping on the directional signal, she took the ramp for Exit 134. The iconic golden arches gleamed a little more than a block from where she got off.

  Unfortunately, a red light separated her from imminent relief. She braked to a stop and drummed her fingers on the wheel. She might’ve been tempted to run the light if not for the vehicle stopped across the deserted intersection. It was a pickup. One of those muscled-up jobbies favored by farmers and ranchers. Older than most, though. And vaguely familiar. Narrowing her eyes, she squinted and tried to see past the headlights spearing toward her in the slowly brightening dawn.

  Suddenly, her heart lurched. Stopped dead. Kicked back to life with a painful jolt.

  Locking her fists on the wheel, Swish gaped at the cartoon depicted on the pickup’s sloping hood. She recognized the needle-nosed insect dive-bombing an imaginary target. She should; she’d painted it herself.

  Her gaze jerked from the hood to the cab. The headlights’ glare blurred the driver’s features. Not enough to completely obscure them, however.

  Oh, God! That was Gabe. Her Gabe.

  Fragments of the conversation with Cowboy rifled through her shock. California. A funeral. Gabe driving home. Visiting with Cowboy and his wife in Albuquerque.

  Her precise, analytical engineer’s mind made the instant connection. Phoenix sat halfway between San Diego and Albuquerque. A logical place to stop for the night, grab some sleep, break up the long drive. The not-as-precise section of her brain remained so numb with surprise that she didn’t react when the light turned green. Her knuckles white, she gripped the wheel and kept her foot planted solidly on the brake.

  The pickup didn’t move, either. With no other traffic transiting the isolated intersection, the two vehicles sat facing each other as the light turned yellow, then red again. The next time it once again showed green, the pickup crossed the short stretch of pavement and pulled up alongside her convertible.

  The driver’s side window whirred down. A tanned elbow hooked on the sill. The deep baritone that used to belt out the hokiest ’50s-era honky-tonk tear-jerkers rumbled across the morning quiet.

  “Hey, Suze.”

  He’d never used her call sign in nonoperational situations. The military had consumed so much of their lives that Gabe wouldn’t let it take their names, too. That attitude, Swish reflected, was only one of the many reasons he’d left the Air Force and she hadn’t.

  She craned her neck, squinting up from her low-slung sports car. “Hey yourself, Gabe.”

  “I thought I was hallucinating there for a minute. What’re you doing in Phoenix?”

  “I live here. I’m stationed at Luke.”

  “Oh, yeah? Since when?”

  The fact that he didn’t even know where she lived hurt. More than she would ever admit.

  Swish, on the other hand, had subtly encouraged her mother to share bits of news about her former son-in-law’s life since he’d moved back to Oklahoma. Mary Jackson had passed on the news that the high school tennis team Gabe coached had won state honors. And she gushed over the fact that the voters of their small hometown elected him mayor by a landslide. Somehow, though, her mom had neglected to mention the fact that Cedar Creek’s mayor was getting married again.

  “I’ve been at Luke a little over four months,” Swish answered with as much nonchalance as she could muster, then let her gaze roam the dusty, dented pickup. “I see you’re still driving Ole Blue.”

  He unbent his elbow and patted the outside of his door. “I rebuilt the engine a last year. Spins like a top.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  The memories didn’t creep in this time. They hit like a sledgehammer.

  Swish had surrendered her virginity in Ole Blue’s cab. Impatiently. Hungrily. Almost angrily. She’d teased and tormented Gabe until he finally toppled her backward on the cracked leather seat and yanked down her panties. Even then, as wild with hunger as they both were, he’d been gentle. For the first few thrusts. Once past the initial startled adjustment, Swish had picked up the rhythm and climaxed mere moments later, as though she’d only been waiting for his touch to ignite those white-hot sensations.

  She’d still been floating back to earth when he pulled out of her and started swearing. At himself. At her. At the incredible stupidity of what they’d just done. What if her parents found out he’d violated their trust as well as their daughter? What if he’d let himself come and gotten her pregnant! What about her scholarship to OU? The bridges she wanted to build. The exotic lands they both wanted to travel to!

  Still soaring on that sexual high, Swish had kissed and stroked and nipped the cords in his neck until he cursed again, shoved the key in the ignition and drove her home.

  Other, less sensual memories involving Ole Blue swirled like a colorful kaleidoscope. The night they spread an air mattress in the truck bed and stretched out to watch a gazillion stars light up the sky. The times they’d pulled into a space at the only still-operating drive-in movie in the area to munch popcorn and watch the latest action flick. The load of manure they’d loaded and hauled to fertilize the garden belonging to a friend of his mother.

  A flash of headlights in the rearview mirror yanked her from the past to the present. They were still blocking the intersection, with Ole Blue hunched like an oversize panther beside Swish’s red mouse of a car.

  She glanced in the mirror, back at Gabe. “Well, I guess...”

  “Why don’t we get a cup of coffee?” He hooked his thumb at the golden arches behind him. “I obviously need to catch up on your career moves.”

  She opened her mouth to refuse. The memories she’d just flashed through were too raw, too painful. She’d be a fool to resurrect any more. Then again, she did have to make a pit stop. Like reeeeally bad now.

  “Okay,” she heard herself say. “I’ll meet you inside...after I hit the head.”

  She cornered into the parking lot, killed the engine and was out of the T-bird before Ole Blue had made a U-turn at the intersection. This early in the morning the ladies’ room was empty and clean as a whistle, with the pungent tang of disinfectant taking precedence over the scent of deep-fried hash browns and sausage coming from the kitchen.

  When she emerged, she found Gabe lounging against a booth with a coffee cup in either hand. A smile crinkled the squint lines at the corners of his hazel eyes as he tipped his chin toward the restroom she’d just vacated.

  “You must’ve been on the road for a while if your iron-bladder exercises failed you.”

  “Hey! I made it, didn’t I?”

  Anyone overhearing the exchange would’ve wondered at the subject matter. Or assumed she and Gabe shared a history that included an intimate knowledge of each other’s bodily functions. Which they did.

  Feeling like a total idiot for mourning the loss of that particular history, Swish reached out a hand. “Which coffee is mine?”

  “Take your pick.” He held out both cups. “They’re the same.”

  She blinked, startled. Her husband had always been a two-sugars-one-cream kind of guy. “When did you start drinking undoctored coffee?”

  “When I added too many extra inches to my waistline.”

  Her gaze made a quick up and down. If Gabe had put on extra inches, she sure as hell couldn’t see them. The chest covered by his stretchy black T-shirt tapered to a still-trim waist. The snug jeans emphasized his flat belly. His lean hips. The hard, muscled thighs she’d traced so often with her hands and her mouth and her...

  “You sure you don’t want more than coffee?” he asked, gesturing to the illuminated menu. “I’ll be happy to stand you to a Number 3.”

  The fact that he remembered her preference for a Big Breakfast with Hotcakes made her throat ache. “This is good,” she murmured, sliding into the booth he’d staked out.

  The silence that followed was short but awkward. And obviously painful, as they both rushed to break it.<
br />
  “What are you...?”

  “So sorry about...”

  They both broke off, and he gestured for her to go on.

  “So sorry to hear about Aunt Pat. What happened?”

  “An aortic aneurism. She died in her sleep. One of her spin-class buddies found her the next morning.”

  Swish wasn’t surprised that the feisty seventy-six-year-old had been into spinning along with all her other fitness pursuits. She and Pat had once run side by side in a 5k Race for the Cure with the older woman decked out in flashing sneakers, cotton-candy-pink leggings and a cropped tank that announced she was One Fast Oldie.

  “How’s your mom taking her sister’s death?”

  “Hard. She flew out for the funeral but couldn’t stay to help settle the estate. Her hip’s been giving her trouble.”

  The reply plucked at Swish’s hurt again. She’d been so close to his family. His dad before he died, his mom, his sisters. To cover the ache, she switched subjects.

  “My mom told me about the election. Ninety-four percent of the vote. Pretty impressive for a high school history teacher-slash-tennis coach.”

  “Yeah, well...”

  The grin that had haunted her dreams for too many months slipped out. As self-deprecating and sexy as she remembered. She felt its all-too-familiar impact wrap around her heart.

  “Hard to bask in the glow of victory when my cousins constitute at least half the electorate.”

  Swish had to laugh. “I know most of those cousins. They’re as stubborn and hardheaded as you are, Mr. Mayor. They wouldn’t have voted for you unless they believed in you.”

  “Maybe. Or it might’ve been because I ran against Dave Forrester.”

  Her jaw dropped. “You’re kidding! Freckle-faced Forrester overcame his shyness enough to run for public office?”

  “Freckle-faced Forrester now owns the largest oil and gas franchise in the county,” Gabe returned drily. “Lucky for me—but not for my constituents—he’s been slapped with a half-dozen lawsuits for property damage due to fracking. He’s not the most popular guy around Cedar Creek these days.”

  Wow! The skinny, gap-toothed kid who’d traded spitballs with her? An oil and gas executive? She was still trying to get her head around that when Gabe broke into her thoughts.

  “What about you? What are you doing at Luke?”

  She shook off the tendrils of her past and leaped gratefully into the present. “I’m assigned to the 56th Fighter Wing. Would you believe I head up the Base Emergency Engineer Response team?”

  “Prime BEEF? Now I’m impressed.”

  The designation didn’t begin to describe the scope of her team’s duties. The mission of Luke AFB was to train the men and women who flew and maintained the F-16 Fighting Falcon and the F-35 Lightning, the world’s newest and most sophisticated fighter. The base population included more than ten thousand active duty, reserve and civilian personnel, plus their families. Another seventy thousand retirees lived in the local area. Swish’s job was to make sure the facilities were in place to support all these people in both peacetime and wartime.

  “That’s quite a responsibility,” Gabe commented. “It’s what you trained for. What you’ve worked so hard for. And why you were awarded that Bronze Star after your last deployment.”

  “You know about the Bronze Star?”

  She couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. He couldn’t keep the bite out of his.

  “Know that my wife...?” He stopped. Took a breath. Started again. “Know that my former wife and her team risked their lives to repair an abandoned runway outside Mosul? That they opened the airstrip despite heavy enemy fire so US aircraft could use it as a base to repel an ISIS attack? Yeah, I know about it.”

  Okay, that gave her a warm buzz. Almost warm enough to mitigate the fact that he hadn’t known she was now assigned to Luke. Not quite warm enough to erase the news Ben had imparted last night, though. She looked down at her now sludgy coffee. Looked up. Took her courage in both hands.

  “Cowboy told me you’re getting married again.”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  He hesitated, shrugged. “Alicia Johnson.”

  Dammit all to hell!

  Somehow, someway, she managed to keep from crushing her cup and slopping coffee over the table. A bitter realization stayed her hand. As much as she disliked the nauseatingly effervescent pixie, she had no right to castigate Gabe for his choice of partners. God knows, he hadn’t castigated her when she turned to someone else out of desperate loneliness.

  “Whatever you decide,” she got out, despite lungs squeezed so tight she could hardly breath, “I hope you find the ‘forever’ we were so sure we had.”

  He stretched out a hand, covered hers. “Same goes, Susie Q.”

  It was the silly nickname that did it. His pet name for her from the fifth grade on. Forever associated in both of their minds with the package of cream-filled chocolate cupcakes she’d brought to his bedroom when he fell out of a tree and broke his collarbone.

  She tried, she really tried, to keep her smile from wobbling. Twisting her hand, she gave his what she intended as a companionable squeeze. His fingers threaded through hers. So strong. So warm. So achingly familiar.

  He raised their joined hands. Brought the back of hers to his lips. Brushed a kiss across her knuckles. Once. Twice. Swish didn’t even try to pull away.

  Until he gently, slowly, lowered his hand and eased it out of hers.

  Chapter Two

  “I...uh...”

  Gabe smothered a curse as his wife—his former wife!—stammered and tried to shrug off the impact of their brief contact.

  One touch. One friggin’ touch, and she looked ready to bolt. He should let her. God knew it wouldn’t be the first time. Instead, he soothed her obvious nervousness with a safe, neutral topic.

  “I didn’t get to talk to Cowboy much over the phone. It sounded like he’s enjoying his foray into fatherhood, though.”

  “He is.”

  She relaxed, bit by almost imperceptible bit, and Gabe refused to analyze the relief that ripped through him. He’d think about it later. Along with the ache in his gut just sharing a booth with her generated.

  “Did you know his wife, Alex, designs glitzy tops and accessories for high-end boutiques?”

  “No.” He gestured toward the tiger draped over her shoulder. “Did she design that?”

  “She did.”

  “Nice.”

  Very nice. Although...

  Now that he’d recovered from the shock of their unexpected meeting, Gabe wasn’t sure he liked the changes he saw in the woman sitting opposite him. She was older. That went without saying. But she’d lost weight in the three years since they’d said their final goodbye. Too much weight. She’d always been slim. With a waist he could span with his hands and small, high breasts that never required a bra when she wasn’t in uniform. Now her cheekbones slashed like blades across her face and that sparkly, stretchy black tank showed hollows where her neck joined her shoulders.

  And those lines at the corners of her eyes. Gabe knew most of them came from the sun. And from squinting through everything from high-tech surveying equipment to night-vision goggles. But the lines had deepened, adding both maturity and a vulnerability that tugged at protective instincts he’d thought long buried.

  The eyes themselves hadn’t changed, though. Still a deep, mossy green. And still framed by lashes so thick and dark she’d never bothered with mascara. The hair was the same, too. God, how he loved that silvery, ash-blond mane. She’d worn it in a dozen different styles during all their years together. The feathery cut that made her look like a sexy Tinker Bell. The chin-sweeping bob she’d favored in high school. The yard-long spill she’d sported in college. How many times had he tunneled his fingers through that satin-smooth waterfall? A hundred? Two?

  He liked the way she wore it now, though. Long enough to pull through the opening
at the back of her ball cap, just long enough for the ends to cascade over her right shoulder. Gabe had to curl his hands into fists to keep from reaching across the table and fingering those silky strands.

  He sipped his coffee, instead, and tried his damnedest to maintain an expression of friendly interest as she brought him up to date on other mutual friends. Pink, getting ready to ship across the pond again. Dingo and the showgirl he’d been seeing off and on for over a year now. A real wowzer, if even half of the adjectives Suze used to describe the buxom brunette were true. Cowboy’s wife, Alex, expanding her clothing design business even faster than they were expanding their family.

  Strange, Gabe thought. He always associated their friends with their call signs. Yet he never thought of Suze as Swish. There were several different explanations of how she’d acquired that tag. One version held it resulted from the detailed analysis she’d sketched on a scrap of paper during a fierce, intrasquadron basketball game. In swift, decisive strokes she’d demonstrated the correct amount of thrust and proper parabolic arc to swish in a basket.

  Another version was that she’d gained the tag after one of her troops mired a Swiss-made bulldozer in mud. Suze reportedly climbed aboard, rocked the thirty-ton behemoth back and forth, and swished it out.

  There was another version. One involving beer, a bet and a camel, although Suze always claimed the details were too hazy for her to remember.

  Gabe knew his reluctance to use her call sign was only one small indicator of the rift that had gradually, inexorably widened to a chasm. He hadn’t resented sharing her with the Air Force or with the troops she worked with. Not at first. Not until they became her surrogate family. But she always was, always would be, Suze to him.

  Or Susie Q. The pet name came wrapped in so many layers of memories. Some innocent, like the time he broke his collarbone and she’d perched on the side of his bed to feed him bits of her cream-filled chocolate treats. And some not so innocent. Like the time...