Cover Me - By Catherine Mann Page 0,28

last name.

Marcus set aside his Sudoku book. “Maybe you should give that last girl you dated a call, the one who worked at that diner across from your place. What was her name… Katie… Kimmy…”

“Kammi,” Jose sighed reverently, hitching a Nike running bag over his shoulder. “That was one smokin’ hot babe. Still don’t understand why you let her get away.”

Wade smiled tightly. “Feel free to ask her out anytime. I hear she’s working the lunch shift now.”

Not that he was keeping tabs on her or any of his other exes. He just wasn’t the get-serious kind. Most women he’d gone out with over the years didn’t have the patience for his kind of workaholic devotion to the job.

A door across the room creaked open, and he welcomed the distraction from discussion of his dating history. A fresh recruit airman stopped just inside. “Sergeant Rocha?”

Wade pushed to his feet, buttoning the cuffs on his uniform. “That would be me.”

“The lady from the mountain, Sunny Foster, she’s asking for you.”

Whistles and wolf calls came from his buds, but he didn’t even rise to the bait. He was too focused on what the airman had said.

Foster.

Funny how one word could change everything. Her name was Sunny Foster. Apparently the pimply faced airman had better luck getting her to talk than he had.

Of course now that the authorities were involved, her secretiveness would have to come to an end. A good thing. Except he could only think of the flash of terror in her eyes he’d seen, once she was inside the helicopter. Only a quick moment of vulnerability, but he hadn’t doubted what he saw. He didn’t know why, but he knew he couldn’t leave her alone and defenseless.

The urge to protect powered his feet double time across the tiled floor.

***

As Sunny waited in the small conference room, walls lined with framed lithographs of military aircraft throughout the years, the full impact of her situation washed over her.

She was at least six hundred miles from home. She had no clothes. No money. No way to contact her family, other than the Internet. And she couldn’t leave without Chewie, who was currently being looked over by the base vet who took care of military dogs.

Even her clothes were borrowed, jeans and a sweater loaned to her by a female clerk in the squadron who was close to the same size. The jeans fit, although the sweater was snugger than she was accustomed to. Homesickness enveloped her like the track suits she wore to work. She missed her home, her job, her routine. Most of all she missed her family.

They must be freaking-out worried by now, especially Misty. And there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

Sunny tugged the lip balm from her pocket—yet another thing she’d had to accept for free—and slicked it across her cracked, dry lips. God, it sucked to be so at the mercy of others. She was an independent businesswoman in her community. None of which apparently meant a thing outside her boundaries. Now she had to figure out how to get back, a logistical conundrum.

It wasn’t as if she could say, “Hey, could I hitch a helicopter ride back home?”

Round and round she turned her Styrofoam cup of coffee on the table in front of her. A dozen black office chairs—the kind that spun—were placed around the table, all empty except for the one she sat in. Waiting.

A computer sat on a lectern and a telecon screen hung from the ceiling, but they weren’t any good to her with their blank screens, certain to have security codes.

The door clicked, giving a second’s warning someone was about to enter. Spinning her chair toward the entrance, she held her breath, not sure what to expect from this evening. She’d asked to see Wade…

And there he was, filling the doorway with his familiar broad shoulders and indomitable will. But Wade also looked different, more unreachable. It had to be the uniform, because his eyes were the same.

He wore camouflage pants tucked into combat boots, a maroon beret tucked in his thigh pocket. His hair was shorter than she’d realized before, but then he’d worn his hood most of the time. And he was clean shaven now. He’d been magnetic, virile, commanding during their survival trek, but now she saw—holy crap—he was poster boy handsome.

A lean face with strong cheekbones, perfectly sculpted like some hard-as-stone statue. Yet his perfection was offset with just the right masculine rough edges, his windburned skin,