"It beats flinging crew dog curses your way. And believe me, hon, I've got a few of those floating around in my head right now."

"When did this happen?"

He shrugged and resumed picking. "Sometime yesterday."

Ping. She winced. Her mouth burned with bile. She'd seen worse injuries just yesterday, tending the children, but somehow this sent her stomach hurtling in roller-coaster flips.

Her mind flashed back to the bandanna tied around his calf on the return flight. In the darkened c.o.c.kpit she'd seen only the bandanna and what she'd thought were mud stains. Guilt packed a heavy punch. "Why didn't you say something?"

"No need." Pick. Drop. Pick. Drop. "It didn't affect my ability to do my job. Plenty of time for Band-Aids later."

She watched with a mixture of awe and honor as he irrigated a deeper cut with a squirt bottle, pinched it closed and sealed it with a b.u.t.terfly bandage. "Shouldn't you be at the doctor's office?"

He paused digging long enough to quirk a brow. "I didn't get my degree over the Internet, hon."

"Don't be a smarta.s.s, Gray. Shouldn't you have a teta.n.u.s shot or something?"

"Soldiers get teta.n.u.s shots ten times the strength of a regular dose. Stands to reason, right?" He worked as he spoke, as if the words gave him focus. "Could be hours, even days, before treatment is available in a survival situation. Think what could happen from a simple bramble scratch, followed by wading through some unsanitary sludge pit."

She shuddered.

"We're pumped full of more immunizations than you can imagine." He manipulated the tweezers around the last piece, a heavily embedded square of metal. His words slid through gritted teeth. "Son of a-"

Ping.

Gray sighed, sagging back in his chair, eyes closed.

Lori stared at those angry, red patches on his leg and thought of their dash across the Sentavian tarmac. "You were hurt running after me, weren't you?"

His lack of response was answer enough.

He'd been injured and hadn't said a word while she let him take care of her. Guilt p.r.i.c.kled again like a mental shrapnel blast. "Could I at least finish up for you? I'm not a doctor, but I think I can handle antiseptic cream and a bandage."

His grin slid into place, a grin that stretched his too-pale face. "Sure. Who am I to turn down a little TLC?"

Lori walked to the sink and pumped antibacterial soap into her hands. Once she'd washed and dried them, along with steadying her stomach, she crossed to Gray.

He winked. "Be gentle with me."

His eyes touched on her mouth, her neck, her braless chest.

The small kitchen shrank as she realized they were inches apart, Gray in his underwear, Lori without underwear. "Can you be serious for once?"

"Nope."

The chalky pallor beneath his tanned face kept her from arguing. Of course Gray always covered his real feelings with a laugh, and right now he had to be hurting like h.e.l.l.

She squeezed the ointment in long streams over his leg. Gently she skimmed her fingers over the puckered cuts. His head fell to rest against the back of his chair.

Lori smoothed the cream, covering the area he'd shaved. While she'd been indulging in silly daydreams about him in the shower, he'd been shaving his leg around shrapnel wounds. "I'm so sorry for making you run after me."

"You saved a kid. This doesn't matter."

Her fingers detoured past the shaved area to the bruise on his shinbone where she'd kicked him. His leg muscles flexed. Crisp hair rasped under the tender pads of her fingers, kindling a fire within her hot enough to waft steam off her wet hair.

Lori circled the mottled bruise. Had she really kicked him that hard the night before? "I'm especially sorry for this."

"It's nothing."

She covered the bruise with her palm as if to sear it well. "What you did for me last night wasn't noth-"

"Lori." He jerked his leg away. "Stop. It was nothing."

"Okay. Fine." His words stung like antiseptic on her already-raw emotions.

She turned her attention to his leg. His bare leg.

How easy it would be to trail her hand up his calf. The familiarity of other mornings spent in the same kitchen lured her. Her body hungered for him, like an addictive habit.

A very dangerous habit she needed to break.

Lori unrolled a patch of gauze, procrastinating until her breathing regulated again. Gray ripped pieces of tape with his teeth and pa.s.sed them to her. Lori anch.o.r.ed the bandage, her damp hair fanning forward over his leg. His muscles flexed again.

He reached to tuck her hair behind her ear, slowly, deliberately. His eyes fell to her mouth and lingered, caressed, as powerfully as any kiss. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, aching and heavy with yearning, tightened beneath the gentle abrasion of her T-shirt.

She backed away. "How's that?"

Gray cleared his throat and swung his leg off the table. Standing, he said, "Couldn't have done it better myself."

He tugged his flight suit off the hanger and stepped into it, shrugging it over his shoulders. She watched him dress, caught in that time warp of familiarity. A quick whip of the zipper and the intimacy fell away.

She skirted past him. "Give me a second and I'll gather up my other clothes."

Gray s.n.a.t.c.hed the pad from the table and tore off the top sheet. He pa.s.sed it to her, fingers brushing, pausing, heating, before he sank back into a chair to pull on his flight boots.

Slumping against the door frame, Lori read the numbers jotted in Gray's nearly illegible scrawl. She flipped the paper over and found nothing else jotted. "What's this?"

"Phone number for the Medical University Hospital."

"Are you doing rounds there?" She'd forgotten flight surgeons wore their uniforms even when acting as a doctor. A startling thought stopped her short. She looked down at the phone number. Did he want her to contact him? "Am I, uh, supposed to call you for something?"

"Nope." He tucked his squadron scarf along the neck of his flight suit. "That's the direct number to the nurses' station on Magda's floor."

The blood drained right from Lori's head to her bare toes. A dull ache throbbed inside her as she thought of the scene on the flight line. "Magda?"

"I followed up with the medical corps on base who logged them in last night. Magda was transported to the Medical University. She has pneumonia. I thought you would want to know."

He'd checked on Magda. Warmth pooled low in Lori's stomach. He could be so sweet sometimes. Then his words filtered through and chilled her. "Pneumonia?"

Gray jerked the laces on his boot taut. "Yeah."

"Poor little thing." Lori crossed her feet at the ankles, as if that might somehow ease the urge to race to the hospital. Reason battled some odd instinct within her to bolt out the door, anyway. "At least she has her sponsor family with her. It wouldn't be fair for me to disrupt her bonding with them."

Yanking the laces on his other boot with a vicious tug, he grunted.

"Gray?"

He pulled the legs of his flight suit down over the boots. "Gray?" Lori shoved away from the door to stand beside him. "She does have her sponsor family with her, doesn't she?"

His elbows thunked on the table. "No."

"What do you mean, no?"

"According to the nurse, Magda's back in the system. The couple slated to take her had tried for years to have a kid of their own. And wouldn't you know, the rabbit died while we were in the air. So now they don't need Magda anymore."

"Oh, my-" Lori bit back the need to rage at people who weren't even present. She would have given her eyeteeth for one child, and this couple tossed away the double blessing of two. "How did you find all this out?"

"Side benefit of having privileges there, and my signature is on her chart."

Lori paced around the kitchen, unable to dodge images of Magda's crying face. "I need to check in with the office to step up the search for another family so she'll have somewhere to go when she's released. I can't afford any glitches in placing these children. Neither can Magda." A scary flutter started in Lori's stomach. This kid was wriggling a little too close. Keep perspective. Don't lose objectivity. Lori ignored the warning. "I've got to go up there and see her."

"Of course you do."

"What?"

He tipped his chair on two legs, defensiveness warring with the c.o.c.ky tilt of his beard-stubbled chin. "I can be through at the base and back here in a couple of hours, long enough for you to wash your other clothes, grab a nap, dry your hair, whatever. I can get you into her room. You'll learn a lot more with me along."

She stared across the kitchen into his eyes and found more of that defensiveness. She knew him too well.

Lori cupped his face in her hand. "Why can't you admit you want to see her, too?"

Defensiveness fled. A snap of anger replaced it, only to fade as quickly as it had fired. He grazed her shoulder with a knuckle, down her side, just beside her breast, bare and tight beneath her T-shirt. "And why can't you admit you still want me?"

His touch felt too good with only the thin barrier of well-washed cotton between them. His face felt too good in her hand, with barriers between them crumbling faster than she could rebuild.

She backed out of his reach. His hand dropped away as quickly as hers. She definitely knew him too well. "Still using s.e.x to dodge the tough questions, I see."

"What can I say? You know me." He shot to his feet and grabbed a travel mug steaming hints of chicory into the air. "I'll be back from debrief in two hours to pick you up."

The front door closed behind him before she realized she should have demanded he drop her off at her car on his way. Why hadn't she?

Lori crossed her arms over her aching b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Apparently, she didn't know herself nearly as well as she thought she knew Gray.

*** Two bowls of frosted flakes later, Lori decided she needed to leave. Her clothes should be finished in the dryer soon. She sat cross-legged on Gray's blue-plaid couch and checked her watch for the fifth time in ten minutes. She'd spent most of the past hour working Magda's case from the phone.

Now she should call a cab, leave Gray a note and cut out. Her own work credentials would gain her entrance to see Magda.

And if Gray showed up at the hospital, too? They would behave like adults. She wasn't some high-schooler ducking behind the lockers to avoid a boy.

Lori swung her feet off the sofa and searched the apartment for the phone book. She roamed from the living room, through the kitchen. G.o.d, the man loved Air Force blue. His whole place was blue, wood and white. Of course he'd once told her buying a single color scheme meant he didn't have to waste time matching.

And he hadn't. No knickknacks warmed the decor. Just precoordinated furniture. Even his bedroom linens fit the bed-in-a-bag category. Only a smattering of framed airplane prints gave hints about the man who lived there.

A home, but not quite, like the motels and transitory apartments her parents had always chosen.

Lori found the phone book in his computer room and plopped in the office chair to call the cab company. While she waited on hold, she spun in the chair. Pictures of the C-17 littered the white wall, no surprise. His degrees must be in his office on base.

Twirling another half turn revealed a dry erase board, and his first homey touch. Notes scrawled along corners around the childish artwork dominating the s.p.a.ce. Someone had drawn a purple outline of an airplane in the middle and labeled it for "Uncle Gray."

How long had it been there? And how sweet he hadn't erased it.

Images bombarded her. Ladislov's giggle when Gray had tickled his side to get him to cough. Magda's smile because of a simple do-rag.

Lori eyed the phone. Maybe she could wait for Gray a little longer. She reached to hang up. A bra.s.s picture frame glinted in the overhead light, halting her. She snagged the photo from the desk, the phone still cradled in her other hand.

Gray's family of five clumped together on a flight line. He must have been about nine or ten, his brother and sister younger.

Lori had met his parents. They only lived an hour away and had joined Gray and her for dinner twice. There hadn't been time to get to know the couple who'd brought up Gray, but she'd liked what little she'd found.

She had to face it. He'd had a happy home life, didn't have hang-ups about kids. Gray simply didn't want home and hearth for himself. He preferred the bachelor life.

So what was she doing waiting around for him? As if to confirm her decision, the canned music on the phone ended and the cab dispatcher's voice asked for her information.

Lori replaced the frame and gave the woman Gray's address, an address still memorized even after a year apart.

*** Fifteen minutes late, Gray pulled into the apartment's parking lot. Debriefs couldn't be rushed, although he'd tried. Throughout the whole meeting, he'd worked to puzzle through a way to resolve things between Lori and him.

If he had the chance.

He couldn't shake the feeling she would leave before he returned. Maybe she'd called a friend to give her a ride.

Not that it should matter. He could track her down at her place or the hospital, and they could still see Magda together.

G.o.d knows Lori had left him flat before. Why should one more time matter? But it did. He wanted her to be waiting inside for him, like the old days.

She'd stayed over more than once. Near the end, she had almost lived there as well. He'd certainly thought asking her to move in officially would be no big deal. Wrong. It had sparked another argument, one that hadn't ended with mind-blowing make-up s.e.x.

Stuffing the past away, he whipped the keys from his car just as another car slid into place beside him-a white Chevy Cavalier just like his mother's. He wasn't a believer in coincidence or fate, but he had the sinking feeling one of the two was about to have its way with him. Gray strapped on some much-needed bravado and opened his door.

His mother's silver-blond head soon appeared over the roof. "h.e.l.lo, sugar."

Dread turned his blood to sludge. His perfectly coifed mother, a woman with inbred grace, gentility and rose-colored gla.s.ses, wouldn't be able to appreciate the nuances of his current awkward-as-h.e.l.l situation with Lori.

"Hi, Mom." He circled to his mother.

Gray skated a quick look at his apartment door. Was Lori still inside? His mother would leap straight to a wealth of conclusions he didn't even want to consider, much less ex-plain. Not that she would even believe him, anyway.

"I was on my way to the commissary to stock up and thought I'd drop in to see you."