Читать книгу Strategic Engagement - Catherine Mann - Страница 12

Mary Elise gathered her red hair in one hand and flung the rope over her shoulder. Amid a string of stilted houses, Daniel’s condo complex loomed ahead through the windshield of his truck. Their visit with the doc had been followed by a quick-mart trip and a refueling stop at McDonald’s, which stretched her never-ending day into late afternoon. Finally she could sleep.

In Daniel’s home. Uh-oh.

She eyed the singles-type setup, a sleek soft-gray cement three-story complex complete with a pool, hot tub, tennis courts, set on marshy beachfront property that guaranteed they couldn’t let Austin out of their sight for even a second.

At least Trey was healthy according to the flight surgeon, apparently an old classmate of Daniel’s, a married classmate with a baby. Mary Elise stifled the rogue twinge of relief. No, she didn’t need to confuse herself by combating strange twinges of jealousy over women like Kathleen Bennett or the copilot, Darcy Renshaw. Instead, she faced something far more unsettling. More proof of how Daniel had made a new life with new friends—friendship far more important than fleeting flings.

While she guided a bleary-eyed Trey toward the door, Daniel unbuckled the sleeping Austin and grabbed the shopping bag of pull-ups, silent. As he’d been for hours. Not that she intended to risk chitchat before a long sleep.

An hour later Mary Elise stood at the sliding balcony doors in Daniel’s bedroom, Austin snoozing in the queen-size bed behind her. She pressed a palm to the screen separating her from the glistening breakers crashing against the shoreline. Egrets bobbed on spindly legs, long beaks pecking the sand while gulls dipped and soared to find a late-afternoon snack.

A prickle of awareness tingled up her spine as she felt him, Daniel, enter the room, and she didn’t even have the energy to deny she felt him. He cruised to a stop just behind her, his heat warming her back in contrast with the gentle sea breeze caressing her front.

She glanced over her shoulder, the sleek silver and gray decor of his bedroom somehow matching the man’s precise mathematical mentality. “Trey’s asleep?”

Daniel definitely resembled the part of an overwhelmed father, hair askew, weariness stamping his handsome face. “Yeah, hopefully the dinner kept them up long enough to nudge them toward sacking out through the night. Trey didn’t even balk at the prospect of a sleeping bag on the computer room floor once I mentioned the alternative was bunking with Austin in pull-ups.”

Mary Elise offered him the obligatory chuckle he obviously expected and shifted her gaze to the artwork gracing his walls rather than the laugh lines crinkling the corners of Danny’s eyes. The framed Escher-style print of a winding staircase seemingly leading nowhere pretty much summed up her life.

Daniel leaned a broad shoulder against the molding framing the sliding doors. “You sure you don’t mind sharing a bed with the little guy tonight?”