The Right Stuff
The Right Stuff
Lori Wilde
Reigniting their spark!Heiress Taylor is a flamboyant risk taker, whilst air force doctor Daniel is a cautious realist – it’s the reason their relationship came to a fiery end! Now Taylor has a business proposition that requires a research visit to Daniel’s air force base. And nothing has changed between the pair… including their combustible sexual chemistry!Tasked with being Taylor’s official escort, Daniel spends several wild nights keeping an intimate watch on her – yet will he really be able to say goodbye to her again when her research is over?
Available in April 2010 from Mills & Boon
Blaze
BLAZE 2-IN-1
Out of control by Julie Miller & Hot Under Pressure by Kathleen O’Reilly
The Right Stuff by Lori Wilde
Overnight Sensation by Karen Foley
The Right Stuff
by
Lori Wilde
MILLS & BOON
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Lori Wilde is the author of forty books. She’s been nominated for a RITA
Award and four romantic times BOOKreviews Reviewers’ Choice Awards. Lori teaches writing online through Ed2go. She’s a registered nurse trained in forensics and she volunteers at a battered women’s shelter.
To FPG. You know who you are.
1
Thirteen years earlier
NEWLY MINTED air force Second Lieutenant Daniel Corben fisted his hand around the black velvet ring box in the pocket of the dress blues he’d worn to his graduation ceremony at the University of Texas. All he could think about was ditching his adoring family so he could be alone with Taylor.
Taylor Milton, twenty, red-haired, a regal beauty. She stood near the end of the reception hall of the ROTC building in a white dress so thin he could see the shape of her thighs through the gauzy material. She gave him a come-hither smile, then coyly dipped her head, but she never took her eyes off him.
His throat constricted and his groin squeezed.
What a woman.
Just looking at her—tall, curvy, sassy and smart—caused his heart to chug as though he was running track. He couldn’t help noticing that every masculine gaze in the place landed on her. Taylor was the kind of woman who commanded attention.
And she belonged to him.
Smugness swelled his chest. He tightened his grip on the box containing the three-quarter-carat diamond solitaire set in platinum and gold that he’d bought that morning. In two weeks he would report to the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences at the Bethesda Medical Center near Washington, D.C., to start his medical school training.
But he wanted his ring on Taylor’s finger before he left. He wished he could afford something bigger. As it was, he’d drained his savings account to pay for it. He knew she could buy her own ring worth ten times as much as this one and he felt a little insecure about that. Still, he was giving her his all. The very best he could do. He was certain she’d appreciate that. He would promise her that after he was through medical school, he’d buy her a proper diamond.
Daniel’s mother reached up to brush a hand over his shoulder, her eyes misting with tears. “I’m so proud of you,” she murmured.
“Aw, Mom, don’t cry.”
His mother swiped at her face and smiled widely. “They’re happy tears.”
“Keeping up family tradition.” His father thumped him on the back with a hammy palm. “You’re a true Corben, son. Following in the footsteps of history.”
“All my friends think you’re hot.” His sixteen-year-old sister Jenna giggled. “An airman and a doctor. Oo-la-la.”
“I’m not a doctor yet,” Daniel reminded her. His family tended to get carried away with military medicine. “I’ve got four years of medical school, an internship and a residency ahead of me.”
“But you’re on your way,” said his grandfather, retired air force Colonel Dr. Daniel Walter Corben, Senior, who was also best friends with a former Surgeon General. “Just stay true to your objectives, hold the course. You’ll make it.”
“We’ve got dinner reservations at the Rivera,” his mother said. “We’d better get a move on. Are you riding with us or taking your car?”
“Um, Mom…” Daniel began, realizing that what he was about to say was going to go over like a cast-iron balloon. “I’m afraid I’ve got other plans.”
A frown creased his mother’s forehead as she tracked his gaze to Taylor. She pressed her lips into a tight line. “Of course you do. How presumptuous of me to assume you’d spend the evening of your college graduation with your family.”
“Pamela.” His father took his mother’s elbow. “Daniel is an adult. He has other plans. Let it go.”
No one suggested that Taylor join them. Daniel didn’t miss the slight. He knew what his family thought about his girlfriend, but for the first time in his life he didn’t let their opinion sway him. “We’ll go out tomorrow,” he promised. “My treat.”
His mother turned away, shoulders slumping, her feelings hurt. He took a deep breath.
They disliked Taylor because she was flamboyant, impulsive, opinionated and passionate about the things she believed in. They warned him that a woman like Taylor would be a liability for a career military officer who had to toe the line and be part of a team. He needed a wife who could do the same. Taylor spoke her mind when a proper military wife would find a discreet way to get her point across. She didn’t kowtow to everyone and the military was all about kowtowing.
During the short time he’d known her, Taylor had been arrested when a campus protest against the policies of the White House had gotten out of hand, ended up on probation for a streaking stunt gone awry and she’d written an inflammatory letter to the local newspaper espousing her liberal views—his parents were staunch conservatives—and she wasn’t about to back down.
But her passionate nature was one of the things he loved most about her. She had a mind of her own and she wasn’t afraid to use it and she really didn’t care what other people thought of her. He’d never expected to fall in love with someone his parents disapproved of, but it had happened and he wasn’t going to apologize.
His father shot him a look that said, Give your mother some time. She’ll come around, and then he escorted her from the reception hall.
After his family departed, Daniel turned to find Taylor standing in front of him, a naughty twinkle in her eye. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” She grinned.
For a moment they just stood there looking, lost in each other’s eyes.
“Come on,” she said, reaching out to take his hand. “I have a surprise.”
He sank his hand in hers and let her lead him through the crowd of military graduates and out the back exit. The woman was a force of nature, impossible to resist.
She took him up the back stairs of the ROTC building.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“No questions,” she said in a mysterious voice that sent anticipation jolting up his spine.
Daniel watched her butt sway as they climbed, past the second, the third, the fourth floors, the fifth, apparently headed for the roof. Her high heels tapped seductively against the cement. The sight of her firm fanny moving beneath the thin cotton material of her dress heated his dick as surely as the caress of her hand.
No way was he going off to D.C. leaving Taylor in Texas to finish up her odd double major in theatre and human biology without at least getting engaged. They belonged together and he wanted everyone to know it.
The stairwell was warm, airless, and so was Daniel’s brain.
Four months they’d known each other, having met at a campus mixer. Not long enough, most people might say. But in his heart, he knew she was the one. And it wasn’t just the sex, although the sex was spectacular. He’d never known anyone as uninhibited in bed—or out of it for that matter—as his Taylor. They’d made love in every position conceivable. She gave as good as she got. Hell, she gave better than she got.
He wanted her so badly his entire body ached. He wanted her naked.
Now.
Of course if it was up to him, he’d keep her naked 24-7. Taylor however, liked to role-play. She enjoyed props and costumes. He’d seen her in a French maid’s outfit and a nurse’s uniform and a belly dancer’s get up with tiny cymbals on her fingers. But what appealed to him most was her soft bare skin, porcelain white in its naked perfection.
She pushed through the door leading to the roof and stopped just long enough to toss him a seductive look over her shoulder. Her long red hair moved, tumbling around her shoulders like a fiery waterfall. She gave him a sly wink. “Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
“Do you know how hard it is to take my eyes off you?”
“I hope it’s hard,” she purred. “Close your eyes. Don’t worry, I won’t let you trip over anything. You do trust me, don’t you?”
Reluctantly, Daniel obeyed.
Taylor squeezed his hand and walked him forward. He heard the gritty material of the flat roof crunch beneath the soles of his polished black dress shoes, felt the balmy spring breeze on his cheeks.
He knew she had a seduction plan. Taylor loved seducing him and he loved being seduced by her scenarios. He wondered what she had up her sleeve tonight. What was going to take place on that rooftop? He licked his lips, anticipating.
Some might say he was sex-obsessed, but he’d never been that way before. Not even when he was a teenager. He’d always been so focused on his goal. The air force. Becoming a doctor. Following the family tradition of military M.D. set by his grandfather in the M.A.S.H. units of the Korean War and continued by his dad in Vietnam.
And then he’d met Taylor.
They’d made love the night they’d met in the coat closet at the mixer and he’d certainly never done anything like that before.
“I’m a bad girl,” she’d whispered in his ear, just before she’d nibbled it. “Are you sure a good soldier like you can handle someone like me?”
“Airman,” he’d corrected, and she’d just laughed.
Remembering hardened his dick. Daniel grinned. He’d done far more than handle her, and he wanted to do it again.
“Okay, you can open your eyes,” she said and let go of his hand. “Ta-da.”
Daniel blinked. There in the middle of the rooftop—in a circle of lighted candles scented with the smell of vanilla—sat a four-poster bed adorned with throw pillows.
“You’ve conquered ROTC,” she said and stepped toward him. “You’ve reached the top of this world. I’m going to give you the best send-off any second lieutenant heading for medical school at Bethesda ever got.”
He was stunned she’d gone to so much trouble for him. “Taylor, how did you—”
“Shh.” She laid an index finger against his lips. “No talking. The time for talking has passed.”
Daniel growled low in his throat, all primal man, wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her up tight against him. God, she was so wonderful and he loved her so much. He couldn’t begin to describe what he was feeling. He was just going to have to show her.
He kissed her. Hard and hot and frantic. She laughed and the sound shot electricity straight to his dick.
Heedlessly, he grabbed the hem of her dress and pulled the thing over her head.
Taylor gasped and her eyes lit up with delight. She wriggled in his arms, the lace of her pink bra scratching lightly across the muscles of his chest. The strip of her matching pink thong panties stretched against her pale, shaved skin resembled a sassy silk tongue.
She reached for his hat, whisking it from his head, her fingertips grazing his forehead in the process. She hooked the hat on one corner of the four-poster bed, and then she came back to undo the herringbone twill tie knotted at his throat. His pulse throbbed beneath the heat of her palm.
Daniel took a deep, steadying breath and placed his hand over hers. He wanted her. Damn, how he wanted her. But reason was telling him this wasn’t the time or the place. He was going to ask her to marry him tonight and he wanted to be in charge of the seduction.
“She’s a thunder stealer, that one,” his grandfather had said to him the first and only time Daniel had brought Taylor home for dinner. “Don’t get too attached. She’s too bold and impulsive to make a good military wife.”
Yes, she was bold and spontaneous and uninhibited, but those were the qualities he admired most in her. So how could he fault her for being herself?
Daniel could have his pick of women. He knew that. Women loved military men and doctors and he’d inherited the strong Corben jaw and his mother’s royal-blue eyes. He’d never had a bit of trouble getting dates. But this was the first time he’d ever been so consumed by a woman. None of them had turned him inside out the way Taylor did.
She was fire and passion and unpredictability and that was damned tempting to a man who lived a regimented life.
“What is it?” she whispered. Her lips were painted a stimulating shade of red.
“I’m taking it from here,” he told her, whipping off his jacket and tie and recklessly dropping them to the ground before bending to scoop her into his arms.
The moon was out, fat and round, framing the bed in a spotlight of white. Taylor smelled exotic—spicy, piquant, striking. There was nothing ordinary or demure about her.
“We don’t dislike Taylor,” his dad had told him earlier when they’d spied Taylor in the reception-hall crowd. “She’s just not the girl for you, son. You two come from completely different worlds.”
It was true. He came from a dedicated career military family. She hailed from privileged high society and yet, they fitted together. How could their pairing be a mistake when it felt so right?
Her head was thrown back, her smooth creamy neck exposed, her hair trailing down the side of his forearm as he carried her to the bed. Her body was both firm and soft and totally womanly. One of her breasts rested against his bicep as he arranged her gently on the bed.
He stepped back, his eyes drinking her in. She lowered her eyelids halfway and gave him her naughtiest expression. What the woman could do to him with a simple glance left him speechless.
And what he wouldn’t give to be able to capture this special moment. Lock it in a bottle. Seal it in a time capsule. Emotions twisted through him. Joy, pride, lust, excitement.
She positioned herself on her side, the pink thong riding high on her hip. Daniel’s gaze honed in on the sleek curve of her hip. She ran a hand through her hair, tousling the long, loose curls. One strand fell across her eye, adding to her sexual mystique.
He stared.
Taylor tucked the errant tendril behind one ear and batted her eyelashes. Her deep, chocolate-brown gaze snagged his, languid as syrup. “Are you going to stand there all night, doctor? Or are you going to quell my fever?”
Marry me, he should have said.
But the moment wasn’t right for the words and the ring was in the pocket of his jacket dropped on the ground several feet away.
He grinned instead. “You are so, so hot.”
That’s romantic, Corben. Way to set the mood.
This evening wasn’t going the way he’d planned. He’d meant to take her to their favorite sneak-away spot at the lake, open a bottle of chilled champagne, get down on one knee and ask her to be his wife for the rest of their lives. But he’d lost control of the situation and now they were up here on the roof of the ROTC building, everything on her terms.
She’s an heiress. She’s used to getting what she wants when she wants it.
Was that such a bad thing? According to his mother it was, but Daniel saw her daring self-confidence as a good thing. She was so alive, so free, so sure of herself. Being with her made him feel the same way about himself.
Taylor’s dark-eyed gaze misted with lust. She flicked out her tongue to lick her lips and Daniel forgot about everything except his driving need to sink deeply into her lush body.
She held out her arms. “Why are you standing way over there?”
Growling, he came toward her.
He had one knee on the bed when she reached up with the flat of her bare foot and pressed it against his chest, halting his progress. The sight of her toes, painted to match her bra and panties shot his desire into overload.
“I’m going to wear you out, lieutenant. The way you’ve never been worn out before. Are you prepared for that?” Her sultry laugh skipped across his eardrums. Helplessly his dick stiffened against the zipper of his uniform pants, anxious to escape confinement.
“Are you prepared for that?” He narrowed his eyes as she curled her toes into his muscles.
“Oh, yeah,” she murmured. “I’m making sure our last night is one to remember.”
“As if you could forget me,” he teased, his eyes locking on to hers, his hand going to his belt buckle as he toed off his shoes.
“What was your name again?” she teased right back.
Immediately he flashed to himself in Washington, D.C., and Taylor here on the UT campus. Surrounded by men. He gulped.
Ask her to marry you now.
She dropped her foot, curled up to a sitting position and reached for his zipper.
Daniel groaned.
“Yeah, baby,” she cooed as her fingers tugged down the zipper. “That’s my big man.”
His gaze slid straight through the cleavage of that pink lace bra. She had such gorgeous tits. Perfect size. Full and round and real, but not too big. Just right. Everything about her was just right. He couldn’t help reaching out to cup them at the same second as she jerked his pants down his legs.
Taylor was frantic. A wild thing. Going for his underwear next, ripping it off, and then pulling him down on top of her. He was equally hungry. His mouth seared hers as they dissolved into a tumble of arms and legs on the bed.
The atmosphere on the roof was turgid and ripe with the smell of their desire. He wanted Taylor and he wanted her now. Wanted her every way possible.
She reached around to unhook her bra and she tossed if off the bed before wrapping her long, sexy legs around his waist.
His cock throbbed. Blood galloped through his veins, engorging him hard and hot.
“Wait, wait,” she gasped. “Can’t forget protection.” Seemingly from out of nowhere, Taylor produced a condom and moved to roll it onto him. The entire time she was doing it all he could think was—gotta have her, gotta have her now.
When she’d finished, she fell spread-eagled onto the bed and he tumbled atop her, his big body pressing her into the mattress. He took command of her lips, but she was ready and waiting for him. She darted her sly sweet tongue into his mouth, rushing pell-mell past his teeth.
Each stroke drove the heat inside him higher and higher. Temperatures rising. Blood boiling. Brain blazing. And his cock—aw, hell, his cock was an inferno.
Taylor raked her fingers through his freshly clipped military haircut and arched her hips upward, driving him mad with the brush of her nipples beaded tight against his chest. And the sight of her flame-red hair curling down her creamy bare skin—have mercy.
He inhaled her womanly fragrance, feminine and enticing and the aroma jettisoned him to a whole new level of arousal. He had to taste her, inhale her, touch every inch of her.
Wetting his lips, he struggled to relish each second, mentally noting what was happening so that when he was in medical school cracking the textbooks, suturing wounds, doing scut work for the residents, he could trot out the memory of this night and replay it over and over. The night he graduated college. The same night that he asked the most exciting woman in the world to marry him.
But she was squeezing him so tightly his control just fried. Taylor’s lips parted, supple and impatient, mimicking his every move. She dug her fingertips into his spine, squashing his chest against her breasts.
They were nose to nose, Daniel anchoring her to the bed. He slipped one hand down her inner thigh, searching for her womanly heat, finding out how wet she was for him. Gently, he rubbed his index finger along her soft flesh.
Taylor gasped at his touch and her eyes rounded. “Oooh, Danny Boy,” she purred huskily.
He groaned in answer as he found his target and slipped a finger into her.
She shivered and her arousal caused a corresponding shudder inside him.
He inched in another finger. When he found her clit with the tip of his thumb, she moaned at the back of her throat, and pushed against his hand.
“Ah, yeah, that’s my Taylor,” he whispered. Her responsiveness drove him wild.
“I’m not doing this alone,” she managed to say as she nipped at his neck. “I want you to—” she quivered “—come along with me.”
“You know I can’t resist you,” he said, the air suddenly hot as blazes.
“Come,” she whispered.
He couldn’t hold out any longer. He pushed into her. The minute her hot, moist folds engulfed him he found total bliss.
Her fingers were in his hair and she was rocking against him, chanting his name like a mantra. “Daniel, Daniel, Daniel.”
She stopped breathing then. She always held her breath before she had an orgasm.
No, no, it was too fast. He wanted this to last. Daniel slowed down, pulled back. “Not yet, sweetheart.”
“Don’t be mean.” She pursed her bottom lip in a pout.
Grinning, he kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her nose, her cheeks, her chin as she wriggled impatiently beneath him. “You want it?”
“I want it now!”
“You got it.” He dropped his feet to the ground, pulled her buttocks to the edge of the mattress. His throbbing cock hovered just outside her moist sex. She spread her thighs apart and he nudged against her entrance.
He looked down at her. At her naked body in the moonlight. Her lips were wet and shiny, her hair tousled, her breasts round and luscious. Damn, but she was the sexiest woman he’d ever known.
Taylor writhed against him. “Get inside me now, lieutenant and that’s a direct order.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He sank into her. Taylor grabbed his ass and pulled him in deeper. They groaned in unison. The heat, the night, the moonlight, the flickering candles. The smell of their combined sex. The headiness of the day. Neither one of them lasted long. A few powerful thrusts and they were both over the edge.
Daniel exploded inside her at the same moment Taylor cried out a deep, throaty pleasure.
Minutes later they lay on the bed in a tangle of arms and legs, sticky with sweat. He was completely sated, totally happy.
A drifty, dozy moment passed, and then Taylor murmured, “Daniel.”
“Uh-huh?” He breathed lazily.
“We need to talk.” She sounded serious.
Daniel rose up on one elbow. The expression on her face was sad, wistful, troubled. It touched him because he’d never seen his high-spirited, fun-loving Taylor look melancholy. His gut clenched. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t begin to tell you how great the last four months have been,” she said.
“Same here,” he replied, his voice gruff with the emotions pushing at the seams of his heart.
“It’s been the best four months of my life.”
“Yeah, for me, too.”
“And now it’s coming to an end.”
It was almost impossible, but he tried to stay calm. “It doesn’t have to end, Taylor. I don’t want it to end and I don’t think you do, either.”
She laughed, but it was a dry, humorless sound that sliced him wide open. “Don’t be silly. It has to end.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Be realistic. You’re going away. I’m staying here. Besides, you’ll be in medical school. Studying, working eighty hours a week.”
“We can make it work.”
“Long-distance relationships aren’t practical.”
Since when was Taylor practical? “We’re different,” Daniel assured her. “You and I. We’re not like everyone else.”
A strange expression that he couldn’t quite read came over her face. Part longing, part regret, part determination, part something else.
Relief?
Could she actually be relieved he was going away? The thought stung like a slap.
“Face it, Daniel. We’re fire and ice. It makes for great sex…” She shook her head. “But it’s lousy for relationships.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re too different. You know that and I know it. Most of all, your family knows it. This has been fun. Great fun, in fact, but…”
She was breaking up with him.
It hit him then, a sledgehammer between the eyes. He had an engagement ring in his pocket to slip on her finger and she was breaking up with him.
“We need to get out of this now before either one of us gets hurt,” she said.
Too late, too late.
Thunderstruck, he sat up and just stared at her. What then was this sudden stabbing in the center of his chest? Was that the kind of hurt she was talking about?
“Taylor…” He started to say more, to plead his case, but he stopped himself. Dammit, he wasn’t going to beg. If she didn’t want him, she didn’t want him. He was an airman. A doctor in training. He came from a long line of strong, capable men. He wasn’t going to let a broken heart fell him. Hell, no.
“This is our last hurrah,” she said gently and reached out to lay a hand over his, but her eyes were too shiny, her smile forced. “After tonight, it’s over, Daniel. It’s for the best and we both know it.”
No, no, he didn’t know that at all. Yes, they came from different worlds. Yes, his parents disapproved. Probably so did her father.
He hardened his jaw, tightened his hands into fists. “That’s really the way you want it?”
Taylor nodded. She was checking her emotions, pulling back, detaching herself. He could see it in the murkiness descending over her intense brown eyes.
“I’ve got to confess, Daniel, this was never anything more than a good time for me.”
She couldn’t have hurt him more if she’d taken out a knife and driven it straight through his heart. His limbs felt wooden as he searched for his underwear and pants and somehow managed to jam his legs into them and then lace up his shoes.
“You don’t have to leave now,” she murmured. “The night is still young.”
Was it his imagination or did she sound a little panicky? He searched her face for a clue, but she gave away nothing. “Hoo-effing-rah,” he said through clenched teeth as he tightened his belt. “Been nice knowing you, Taylor.”
He snatched up his shirt, grabbed his jacket, and snagged his hat from the bed post. Had he not been so mad, so hurt, he might have heard her whisper, “I love you, Danny Boy, with all my heart, but this is the way it’s gotta be.”
2
Present day
“DOCTOR CORBEN?”
Daniel got to his feet in the waiting area of the Department of Defense Manned Space Flight Support Office at Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral and smiled at the attractive young staff sergeant sitting behind the reception desk. “Yes?”
She returned his smile with a flirtatious slant of her eyelashes. Had word already gotten out that he and Sandy had broken up? “Colonel Grayson is ready for you.”
This is it, the conversation leading to the promotion I’ve been shooting for my entire career.
From the time he was a kid in short pants listening to his father and grandfather talk about the exciting opportunities for air force doctors, he’d dreamed of going into space as a NASA physician. Making colonel before he was forty was a crucial step in that direction.
Daniel squared his shoulders, perfected his best military-officer stance and stalked into Grayson’s office, hoping that he struck the perfect balance between cocky and obedient. Assertive, but eager to follow orders. “You asked to see me, sir?”
“I did.” Colonel Cooper Grayson was standing. He pointed at the plain straight-backed chair positioned in front of his sturdy metal desk. “Have a seat, Daniel.”
He sat, but the expression on Grayson’s face troubled Daniel. It wasn’t a congratulations-you’re-in-the-running-to-make-colonel look.
“When are you going to ask Sandy to marry you?” the colonel asked.
The minute the words were out of his superior’s mouth, Daniel tensed. Was this a fishing expedition? Deeming his worthiness for promotion? It was the one question he dreaded. He knew well enough that in the military you were more likely to get promoted if you were married. The service viewed its airmen as more stable, mature and trustworthy if they had a wedding ring on their finger and a passel of kids to support.
He did not have that advantage going for him.
It wasn’t that Daniel didn’t want to get married or have children. He did. But becoming a doctor had taken all his focus in his younger years. Then later, once he’d completed his internship and residency and he’d met Sandy, well…
He’d thought about asking her to marry him. They’d been dating for four years. She was smart and pretty and safe and predictable. Her father was a career military man so she understood the life. In theory, she was perfect for him.
But she wasn’t Taylor.
The unwanted thought popped into his mind. What the hell was he doing thinking about Taylor Milton? He hadn’t seen or heard from her in thirteen years.
Still, that woman had excited him like no other, even though she’d been completely wrong for him. Sometimes, he wondered if she’d ruined him in regard to other women. But no one could measure up to her verve, her sheer enthusiasm, her exuberant life force.
It’s what Sandy had accused. He clenched his jaw, remembering their break up weeks earlier.
“Four years I’ve spent with you, Daniel. Four years of loving you and waiting for you to love me back.” Sandy had paused, taken a deep breath. “You were only with her for a few months and she put such a spell over you that you can’t forget her even after all this time. You’re in love with a woman who didn’t love you back. And I’ve been waiting with open arms, aching for you to love me.”
“You’re wrong. I’ m not still in love with Taylor. I haven’t even thought about her in years.”
“Maybe not consciously, Daniel, but sometimes you call out her name in your sleep.”
He’d blinked. “I do?”
Sandy had nodded, tears spilling from her eyes. “Not often, but you have.”
Daniel had felt as if he’d been poleaxed. Was it true? Did he still dream of Taylor? He didn’t remember that.
“The thing is, you’re holding on to the past, to the ghost of some long-lost love. You can’t let go of her and love the real flesh-and-blood woman standing in front of you.”
“I do love you, Sandy,” he’d said, but the words had sounded false. He did care about her, just not in the way she wanted and needed.
“Not in the way I deserve.”
“No,” he agreed.
“I know.” She’d exhaled audibly.
She’d been right. Damn him, he’d known she was right. “You’re breaking my heart here,” he’d said as she headed for the door, suitcase in hand.
She’d whirled on him, eyes flashing and dropped her suitcase. “No, Daniel, you’re breaking mine. Only love can break a heart and Taylor Milton broke yours years ago. You’re damaged goods.”
“I’m not,” he’d declared hotly. “I’ve long since moved on.”
“Maybe in your head you have.” She had stepped across the room toward him, hammered a small fist against the left side of his chest. “But not here, not where it counts, not in your heart.”
“Sandy…” Daniel had let his words trail off. What else had there been to say? It hurt to know that he was hurting her, but he couldn’t make himself love her, no matter how much he might want to. Was this how Taylor had felt toward him? Pity, guilt, embarrassment? “I’m so sorry for hurting you.”
“Physician, heal thyself,” Sandy had said, then turned and walked away.
“Well?” Colonel Grayson prompted bringing him back to the present.
“Sandy and I broke up,” he said.
“How come?”
“She was pressuring me to get married.”
“And you’re not ready for marriage?”
“I’m ready, sir,” he said, hating the thought that he might lose out on the promotion because he wasn’t yet hitched. “But I haven’t found the right woman.”
“So you’re free as a bird. Not dating anyone else?”
“That’s correct.”
“Hmm,” the colonel mused. Daniel had expected his boss to look disappointed, but he did not. “Interesting.”
Wariness settled over him. Something was up. “What’s this meeting about, sir?”
Grayson clasped his hands behind his back and paced like an agitated jungle cat. “A thorn in my side.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve got a thorn in my side and you’re the only one I trust to pull it out.”
Ah. The colonel had a problem and he perceived Daniel as the solution. That was good news. Solving his superior’s issue would go a long way toward proving his worthiness for the promotion.
“Sir.” Daniel stood at attention. “How may I be of service to you, sir?”
Grayson stopped pacing and looked over at him. “I like your gung-ho attitude, Corben. Exactly why you’re the man for this job.”
“What’s the assignment? I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and get started.”
“You say that now.” Grayson gave a rueful laugh. “Wait until you hear what it is.”
“Doesn’t matter, sir. I’m at your disposal.”
Grayson plunked down behind his desk and motioned for Daniel to sit. He did. The Colonel locked on him with a steady gaze. “General Charles Miller came to see me yesterday.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The general has political aspirations. He’s planning on running for public office when he retires at the end of next year. He’s eyeing the White House. Sees himself as the next Colin Powell.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can drop the ‘sir’ business, Daniel, it’s just you and me in here.”
Now Grayson was getting chummy. The thorn in his side must really be throbbing. His curiosity piqued, Daniel leaned forward. “Is this thorn medically related?”
Grayson made a face. “Not exactly.”
“Are we dealing under the table here?” Daniel bristled. He’d do anything for his superior as long as it wasn’t unethical or against regulations. He was strictly by the book, one of the reasons why he and Taylor had made for such a bad match. She’d been all about breaking the rules.
“No, not really, bending a few rules maybe, but nothing that crosses the line.”
“Tell me,” Daniel said bluntly.
“Let me just say up front that if you successfully pull off this assignment your promotion is practically a done deal. You’ll have my full recommendation to the committee.”
“And if I don’t?”
Grayson shrugged. “Only twenty-five percent of military officers ever achieve the rank of colonel.”
Daniel knew this. He also understood the implication. “I did two tours of duty in a field hospital in the Middle East. I earned a silver star in Afghanistan—”
“And that is the reason why you’ve made it up the ranks as quickly as you have.”
“What do I have to do to make colonel?”
Grayson leaned back in his chair and propped his booted feet on his desk. “One of General Miller’s wealthy VIPs has pledged big contribution money if he’ll grant a favor.”
“Which gets passed down to me.”
Grayson nodded. “That’s the thorn you’ll be pulling out of my side, doctor.”
“Lay it on me.”
“The general’s generous donor wants a backstage pass to our behind-the-scenes action for the next launch of the space shuttle,” he said.
“Meaning?”
“She’s doing research for—”
“She?”
“That’s why I asked you about Sandy. According to the general, his benefactor is young, single, attractive and very rich.”
“Ah.”
“Anyway, she runs some kind of sex fantasy resort thing and she’s in the research stages of planning a new one.”
“Like fantasy baseball camp?”
Grayson cleared his throat. “Something like that, except it’s for adults. She wants details on test pilots, flight surgeons and astronauts. I don’t know the full parameters, I’m sure she’ll fill you in.”
An ugly tug pulled at the pit of his stomach. “You gotta be kidding me.”
His superior officer shrugged, gave him an apologetic look. “I wish I was.”
Daniel got to his feet again. “Let me get this straight. You want me to babysit some pampered rich woman who’s running around using our high-tech military space program to fuel her little X-rated sexual fantasies?”
“Believe me, Corben. I’m no happier about it than you are. But if we pull this off to her satisfaction, then she’ll bankroll Miller’s run for the senate. I’ll make brigadier general and my job will be open for you to step in.”
“How long will she be here?”
“Two weeks.”
“Two weeks!”
“A minor inconvenience.” Grayson waved a hand, dismissing his objections as if batting away a fly. “The main thing is to keep her out of trouble.”
“Trouble?”
His superior officer shifted, looked uncomfortable. “She’s got a flamboyant reputation.”
Daniel glowered. “How so?”
Grayson shrugged. “General Miller said something about media controversy involving her last project. Again, I don’t know the details. But we need to keep a tight lid on her visit.”
Daniel blew out his breath, shook his head. “I wish I could help you, sir, but if you recall I’ll be in Moron, Spain, next week on launch day running the TAL disaster drill.”
“I know. That’s the main reason I need you and not anyone else,” Grayson said, smiling for the first time since Daniel had come into the room. “First of all, you’re discreet. Second, it’s the perfect solution. Get her out of the country while seeming to give her what she wants.”
“She’s going to want to be at the Cape for the Atlantis launch, sir, not at some TAL site.”
“Then it’s up to you to convince her it’s better to be at Moron during the launch than here.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“You’re smart and you can be charming. You figure it out.”
“I don’t like this,” Daniel grumbled.
“But you’ll do it?” Grayson’s eyes drilled into him.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Depends on how badly you want my job.”
Daniel glared. “I’ve worked damned hard for this promotion. This isn’t fair.”
“No,” Grayson said glibly. “This is the Air Force.”
TAYLOR MILTON couldn’t stop grinning as she drove her rented silver convertible 911 Turbo Porsche toward Cape Canaveral. General Charles Miller, her late father’s best friend since high school, had come through for her in a big way.
Just thinking about how she was going to have access to top-gun pilots, shuttle astronauts and sexy Air Force flight surgeons sent a shiver of delight down her spine. This in-depth research was bound to make her planned fourth fantasy resort—Out of this World Lovemaking—a smashing success.
She turned on the radio, flipped through the stations, caught the refrain from a long-ago song and her fingers froze on the button.
“Unchained Melody.”
The song that had been playing at the sixties-themed campus mixer when she and Daniel had first laid eyes on each other.
Their song.
Not terribly original, she supposed. “Unchained Melody” was a lot of people’s song, but not among her peer group. The haunting tune jettisoned her back thirteen years.
In her mind’s eye, she saw Daniel the way he’d looked as a newly minted Air Force second lieutenant. Young, earnest and tender, but at the same time, he’d possessed a powerful, commanding presence. Daniel had been tall, muscular, built like a firefighter. Dark hair, startlingly blue eyes, broad shoulders, washboard abs. She wondered if he was still as fit and trim.
He hadn’t been at all like any of the other young men she’d dated: reckless, randy, cavorting, out for nothing but a good time. He’d been serious, dedicated, focused and principled. Little had she guessed that the qualities in him she admired the most would spell the end of their love affair.
When she was dreaming up ideas for her new resort, she’d asked herself what it was that she personally found sexy, and a full-on visual of Daniel—and the way he’d looked coming out of his military uniform—had gobsmacked her.
Military men were sexy. Doctors were sexy. Astronauts were sexy. Why not combine all three? Feature military doctors and the test pilots and the astronauts they cared for. Once that idea hit, she knew she had to do her research at Patrick Air Force base and the Kennedy Space Station at Cape Canaveral. Hence the call to her godfather, General Charles Miller, known to her as Uncle Chuck.
Taylor pushed a hand through her wind-tousled hair and took the freeway off ramp. She couldn’t stop herself from wondering about Daniel. Had he achieved his dream of becoming a doctor? Was he still in the military? Knowing his family and Daniel’s desire to follow in their traditional footsteps, she imagined that was the case.
The memories came flooding back and for a quick second her throat tightened as she thought of how she’d once loved him so desperately. She tasted the memory of their courtship, sweet and rich and intense. A vision of their second date flashed through her mind. He’d taken her to an upscale restaurant he could ill afford simply because he wanted to impress her.
Even now, the endearing gesture made her throat tighten.
The waiter had stashed them into a corner of the candlelit French restaurant. She’d found a small bouquet of red-and-white spider lilies on the linen-draped table, sweetening the air with an anise-scented prickle. He’d ordered for them both, choosing fennel-scented crab cake appetizers and filet mignon with duchess potatoes for the main meal.
Funny, she could still remember that meal and she couldn’t remember what she’d had for dinner the night before.
Their hands had brushed as they’d both reached for the bread basket filled with yeasty multi-grain rolls. He’d stared into her eyes, filling her with molten heat. That look had cinched the deal. She was hungry and for far more than food.
For dessert, they’d shared an oozy chocolate soufflé with Obuse wine, a wickedly delicious dessert port recommended by the wine steward. It was only then that she learned he rarely drank alcohol and he’d quickly gotten tipsy on chocolate and Obuse. She’d taken his keys, driven him back to his apartment and stayed the night.
Quickly, she batted the thoughts away. Not love, no. Just the ridiculous infatuation of a college girl.
She remembered how he’d kissed her that evening. Hard and passionate, full of yearning and desire. Daniel had kissed the way heroes kissed in the old movies her father loved. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh. Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr.
Movies from a bygone era had been her main connection to her father. At least in the early years, before his commuter airline—Milton Air—had grown to consume all his time. “I work so much because I love you so much,” he’d told her. “It’s all for you.” She supposed it was where she’d gotten her flair for the dramatic, her love of daydreams and fantasies.
“This was the golden age of filmmaking,” her father would tell her, when she was a little girl in pigtails. She’d snuggle up in his lap in the private screening room he’d built in their home back before such things were popular among people who could afford them. Her father’s valet, Mr. McGulicutty would thread the film projector, and Agnes, the cook would make buttered popcorn. “Casablanca was your mother’s favorite movie.”
Her mother had died giving birth to her at age fortytwo. Her father had been just shy of fifty. Bringing Taylor into the world had cost Lily Milton her life. But her father had never once made her feel as if she was to blame. Taylor, however, couldn’t escape the knowledge that by being born she’d caused her mother’s death.
“Why couldn’t Rick and Elsa be together, Daddy?” she always asked at the end of Casablanca. “They loved each other so much.”
“That’s exactly why they couldn’t be together,” he’d say. Then he would kiss the top of her head and get a faraway look in his eyes. “When you love that deeply, you’ll sacrifice for the other person’s happiness. Even if it means that you have to be unhappy. That’s real love, when you can let go of your loved ones so they can be what they need to be.”
It was only years later, after her father had died, that Taylor found her mother’s journal in his safedeposit box and learned that her father had never wanted her mother to get pregnant. Lillian Milton been a brittle diabetic and doctors had warned she might not survive a pregnancy. But her mother had wanted a baby so badly and her father had loved her mother so much, he’d agreed to let her try. And in the process of letting her be what she needed to be, he’d lost her forever.
“You always lose the one you love, Taylor,” her father used to say. “Never forget that. You lose them. One way or another. Always.”
Silly. Fanciful. Thinking about the past. Taylor blinked back the tears that had formed along her eyelashes.
Thankfully, she heard her cell phone ring, distracting her from the sad memories. She flipped it open. “Speak to me,” she said to her executive assistant Heather Rheiss.
“The Italian resort had another incident.”
“What now?” Her third destination fantasy resort in Venice, featuring “Make Love Like a Courtesan” and its masculine counterpart, “Make Love Like Casanova” had been the target of several disturbing occurrences.
First off, malfunctioning smoke alarms had allowed a fire in the laundry room to go undetected until it had done several thousand dollars’ worth of damage. It was suspicious, because the smoke alarms had just passed inspection the week before.
Then, after one of the scheduled banquet feasts, several resort guests contracted food poisoning and had to be sent to the hospital for treatment.
And finally, the thing that had drawn her to Venice to check things out for herself; a Renoir was stolen from the resort because the security system had been turned off. The police suspected an inside job. She’d fired the manager, hired someone new and stayed a week to show them the ropes. The police had no leads in the theft and she’d filed an insurance claim.
Taken one by one, all the incidents seemed unconnected, but together, Taylor was starting to see a pattern. Was someone trying to undermine her resorts? She was no stranger to controversy. Outspoken religious fundamentalists denigrated her resorts and condemned them as hedonistic and wicked. Kinky customers threatened to sue because they thought Eros Air should fulfill their illegal fantasies. Competitors were jealous of the way she’d taken stodgy Milton Airlines and given it a stunning new makeover in the form of Eros Air. It was all part of doing business in the tourism industry.
“The new manager you hired caught an undercover exposé reporter posing as a guest.”
Taylor groaned. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Don’t worry, it’s been handled. The manager confiscated the photos he’d taken and threw the reporter out on his ear. I just thought you should know.”
“Thanks, Heather. I appreciate the heads up.”
“No problem. Where are you now?”
“I’m almost at the air base. I’ll check in with you later.”
“I’ll be holding down the fort.”
Taylor closed her phone and followed the signs to the main entrance of the air base and stopped at the front gate.
“Name?” asked the security officer.
Pushing her designer sunglasses up higher on her nose with a freshly manicured fingernail, she gave him her most winsome smile. “Taylor Milton,” she said. “Colonel Grayson is expecting me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded. “General Miller ordered an escort to be waiting for you.”
“How kind of him,” she said.
“Just follow that jeep.” The security officer nodded at the vehicle that waited on the other side of the gate with the engine chugging. “He’ll take you where you need to be.”
“Thank you so much.” She wriggled her fingers goodbye as the airman raised the gate arm to let her pass.
The jeep led her through the Air Force base, past rows of tidy, spick-and-span, no-frills structures. The military had been a perfect fit for Daniel. His personality matched service life—straightforward, precise, no tolerance for anything or anyone who did not toe the organizational line. No wonder their relationship had crashed and burned. She was complicated, freewheeling, a true maverick. It was those traits that had made her such a success in the cutthroat airline industry. She did not play follow the leader very well.
In fact, when she saw the lettering on the building where she knew she was expected, she blew around the jeep with a wave of her hand and a brilliant smile for the startled young staff sergeant behind the wheel.
“Ciao,” she called out to the solider on her way past, still in Venice mode. “I can find my way from here, thanks.”
“Ma’am, ma’am, you need an escort!” he hollered, but she kept right on going. Rules were for military personnel. Not her.
She zoomed ahead, pulling into Colonel Grayson’s parking space in front of the administration building.
The young sergeant stopped his jeep behind her and came running over to her convertible. His face was flushed and he looked flustered. “Ma’am, this is a military base.”
“I’m aware of that.” She grabbed her purse, got out and gave him a dazzling smile.
“You can’t park here,” he said weakly. “It’s reserved for Colonel Grayson.”
“I’m sure he won’t mind. Where is he, by the way? I’m supposed to have a meeting with him.”
“N-n-no, ma’am,” the poor sergeant stammered.
“No?”
He shook his head and his face paled. Instantly, she felt sorry for him. Poor guy was probably terrified he’d have to pay the price because she didn’t follow the rules. She’d make sure to mention to the colonel that any violations were completely her responsibility. The young man shouldn’t be held accountable for her actions.
“Colonel Grayson’s not on the base this morning, ma’am. You’ve been reassigned to our second-in-command.”
“He’s passing me off?” she said it lightly, but she was irritated. Uncle Chuck had assured her she would have an audience with the base commander.
“I…he’s…”
“I’m the one who’s stuck babysitting the spoiled princess,” growled an arrogant voice from behind her.
Taylor spun around, ready to deliver a tonguelashing to the insolent man who’d interrupted her, but the second she laid eyes on him all the air left her body.
Daniel Corben.
Looking just as disturbed to see her as she was to see him.
3
RECOGNITION knifed Daniel in the chest.
It couldn’t be, but the hell if it wasn’t.
The very woman who’d sledgehammered his heart thirteen years ago which had led to his break-up with Sandy now.
“Daniel,” Taylor said, her voice low, husky. She cleared her throat, slipped off her sunglasses and took him in. He spied the nervousness in her eyes as she inspected the insignias on the collar of his uniform shirt before lifting her defiant chin. “Lieutenant-Colonel Dr. Daniel Corben, I see.”
His heart thumped and his palms slicked as he peered into those familiar brown eyes. Taylor Milton in the flesh and looking far more beautiful than any woman had the right to look.
Twin dots of color pinked her cheeks and he felt a corresponding heat rise inside him. Slowly, he raked his gaze over her, starting with her gorgeous red hair, now stylishly streaked with blond threads. He couldn’t help but lust after her swan-like throat and then the swell of her breasts, before rolling right on down to those long, shapely legs. He remembered exactly what it felt like to have those legs wrapped tightly around him in the throes of passion.
Something ripped loose inside his chest, a tearingaway sensation. God, she was gorgeous. The years had been generous to her. In fact, she’d grown even lovelier with the passing of time. He shook his head, tried to shake off the attraction. But it was useless.
“I should have known,” Daniel said, dragging his gaze back to her face.
“Known?” she echoed, seeming confused.
“You’re the one who wrapped General Miller around your little finger. Bravo, Taylor. You’ve always had a knack for bringing men to their knees.” His tone came out harsher than he had intended.
Her eyes widened as if he’d slapped her, and he immediately felt like a jerk. She moistened her lips, swallowed. “You’re upset with me.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I am.”
She shifted her weight, but held his gaze. “Why?”
“Because you’re intent on making a mockery of the thing I love most.”
Her eyes darkened. “The Air Force.”
“I want you to know I’m adamantly opposed to the reason you’re here.”
“Duly noted,” she said coolly.
As coolly as when she’d told him that their love affair had been nothing more than a fun fling. It had been thirteen years. The memory shouldn’t still sting.
But it did.
“I tried to tell her, sir,” the anxious young staff sergeant was saying, “that she couldn’t just barge in. There’s protocol. This is a military base. But she wouldn’t listen to me. I—”
Daniel held up a hand to silence the kid, who was about the same age Daniel had been when he’d graduated college. Not once did he take his eyes off Taylor. “I’ve got it from here, Staff Sergeant. You’re dismissed.”
“Thank you, sir.” The young man snapped off a salute.
“Impressive.” Taylor lifted an eyebrow. Mocking him?
Daniel narrowed his gaze, his world condensing to her. Just Taylor and no one else. He could no longer see the staff sergeant hustling around to his jeep, although he could hear the young man’s shoes slapping quickly against the asphalt.
She boldly held his stare, but Daniel could see past the bravado in the way she slipped her fingers through her hair, trying to tame the windblown strands. He remembered she had a habit of running her hand through her hair when she was nervous. Nice to see that some things didn’t change.
Her chest moved with each breath of air. Her magnificent breasts strained the buttons of the expensive yellow silk blouse she wore. He thought of her nipples, recalled how sweet they’d tasted. With her sun-streaked red hair, Taylor looked damned delicious in yellow. Like marigolds in a wheat field.
Her fingers dropped from her hair in one long graceful movement and fell to the pocket of her sleek charcoal-gray slacks. Her fingernails, he noted, sported a flawless French manicure.
Daniel wondered, not for the first time, how he’d ever ended up with a woman like her even for a little while. She was pure class from the top of her head to the tips of her pedicured toes peeping from golden high-heeled sandals. She came from money, privilege. He was military all the way. An officer first, a doctor second.
His eyes latched on to her lips. Full, lavish, painted the color of the pink Gerbera daisies he’d given his mom the other day. He held his breath.
Waiting.
What was he waiting for?
Taylor took a thick tortoise-shell hairclip from the gold pocketbook that matched her designer sandals, pulled back several long strands of hair with one hand and anchored them in place with the clip. The remaining hair, not caught up in the barrette, fell in soft, sexy waves about her face.
Her languid movements stirred up her scent, bringing her perfume to him. Honeysuckle. The sweet farm-girl scent was in total opposition to the sleek reality. Urban, hip, on-top-of-the world. Creator of sexual-fantasy resorts.
The morning sun peeped behind a cloud, cloaking her face one half in shadow, the other in light, illuminating the dichotomy that was Taylor Milton. On the one hand constant, on the other enigmatic and changeable. Daniel peered into her eyes, glimpsing something melancholy lurking there.
Old memories, heartfelt feelings—both happy and sorrowful—shimmered between them like heat waves off asphalt, thin, fragile, elusive as snow in the desert.
A chord was struck, only for a whisper of a second. But it was enough to pull the breath from their lungs in a synchronized exhale.
He focused on her mouth. A mouth he yearned to kiss. A mouth that still called to him in the dark recesses of dreams he hadn’t known he’d dreamed. He moved toward her. Not thinking, just longing, craving, wanting.
She didn’t step back.
Daniel never took his eyes off her face. It felt so natural for him to kiss her. To pull her into his arms, rekindle their past, fan the sparks, make a new one.
He stepped forward, closing the small gap. All at once, he realized their lips were almost touching. She didn’t flinch. She seemed as mesmerized as he.
Knock it off, Corben, this is completely unprofessional.
And yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself. He didn’t want to stop himself. What was he trying to prove? That he could intimidate her?
Not cool.
Daniel thought he’d grown beyond his resentment over the way Taylor had broken things off with him. He was disturbed to discover he had not. He thought of himself as a rational man, but around her, he felt…what did he feel? Irrational? Fevered? Out of control?
A miserable combination of all three, he concluded.
For the first time, he fully understood why his parents hadn’t liked her. Taylor didn’t play by the rules and both medicine and the military were all about rules. She was rebellious and opinionated and imaginative and creative. She blazed her path and didn’t care what anyone thought.
And the hell of it was Daniel had loved her for all those things.
The heat of her skin radiated outward, zapped into him. It was all he could do not to act on his impulses and take her right there in the parking lot.
She flicked out her tongue, tracing the pink tip over her moist lips. He knew it was an innocent gesture born of nervousness, but it had the same effect as if it had been carefully calculated. His gut squeezed and his cock hardened. The unexpectedness of his desires scared the hell out of him. Like it or not, he still cared for her.
Dammit. He did not want to care for her. He could not. Should not. Would not.
Her eyes widened again and she tucked her elbows close to her sides. Suddenly, she looked utterly vulnerable. As if she would shatter like fragile glass if he were to touch her. Daniel could read his own fears reflected in her eyes. They were both unsettled by a chemistry that time had not erased.
They stared into each other with a mix of stunned surprise, affection and stark sexual need.
It was still there. The old flare. The embers just waiting to be stoked. All this time and he still burned for her in a way that shook him to his core.
Fate had brought them back together again.
Reunited them.
Reunited.
The idea felt both wonderful and treacherous. Wonderful because there was the hint of hope, treacherous because it was all an illusion. A pang of longing pierced him.
That’s when Daniel knew that his promotion was in serious jeopardy.
“SO YOU’RE my escort,” Taylor said with all the cool aplomb and calm control she could muster, hiding the fact that inside she was a quivering mass of nerves and anxiety.
“Feels like old times, huh?” Daniel said, his voice loaded with sarcasm.
One look at him and she was jettisoned back thirteen years. With the passing of time, she’d told herself she’d embellished their attraction. That it was nothing more than the fuzzy sweet memory of a love that used to be. But here, now, feeling the raw, aching chemistry again, she realized she’d actually downplayed it.
What was she going to do?
She’d never bargained on running across him, on feeling like this; for a split second she thought perhaps Uncle Chuck was playing matchmaker, hooking her up with her old college sweetheart. Then she remembered that General Miller knew nothing about her youthful affair with Daniel. She’d never even told her father of their liaison because it had been too new, too romantic to share with a man who viewed love as something that had to be sacrificed. This hook-up was sheer, miserable bad luck.
Or destiny, whispered a voice in the back of her mind.
“It’s my duty to show you around,” he replied.
She could tell from the sharp-edged light in his eyes and his pointed tone of voice that duty was not the word he really wanted to use. The military had disciplined him to hold his tongue. Not that he’d ever been great at expressing his feelings. Typical strong, silent type.
But Taylor was a Milton born and bred. She could hide her real emotions just as well as he could. It was the one thing they had in common.
But hiding her feelings took a toll.
What she yearned to do was fling herself into his arms, tell him just how stupid she’d been to send him away all those years ago. Of course, she didn’t do that, instead, she called him on it. “You disapprove of my being here.”
“Patrick is a restricted military base.”
“Aren’t all military bases restricted?”
“Civilians shouldn’t be allowed to go running around unchecked.” His chin hardened.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m checked. You’re here to check me.”
“You’re here because you’re throwing money at General Miller’s political campaign, that’s it.”
“And that’s bad because…?”
“Not everyone has your wealth and privilege. Not everyone has pockets big enough to support their whims.”
That irritated her. “My business is not a whim.”
He said nothing, just scrutinized her with those stalwart blue eyes that shook her up.
Taylor forced a smile. She refused to let him rattle her. “So, tell me all about Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Daniel Corben. I’m assuming you’re married. Got a big brood of kids.”
“No wife, no children.” Daniel shook his head and her foolish, foolish heart soared.
“Oh,” she said, struggling to sound neutral, as if she didn’t care. But damn if she didn’t sound hopeful to her own ears. She felt hopeful, too. Why should she be hopeful when he’d made it clear he didn’t want her here?
Stop it. There’s a good reason you broke up with him.
But for the life of her—in that moment as her eyes drank him in—she couldn’t remember what it was, why she’d lied to him and told him their love affair had been nothing more than a fling. Why she’d walked away from the best thing that had ever happened to her.
Pulse pounding, she searched his face. The years had been lavishly generous. Maturity had deepened his good looks, ripening his masculine appeal. He was bigger than she remembered. Taller, harder. He’d been handsome before, but now…?
Now, he was extraordinary.
His shoulders had broadened and so had his muscular thighs and biceps. His posture was ramrodstraight, his presence commanding. He wore a white lab jacket over his basic uniform. His face was attractively fuller, less rangy than it had been, but his waist was just as narrow. His hair was a bit longer than the buzz cut he’d had for military induction, but it was still quite short and tidy. She couldn’t spy even a hint of gray.
And his eyes. His devastatingly gorgeous eyes were as impossibly blue as ever.
“How about you?” he asked.
“What?” She blinked.
“Is there a Mr. Milton? Any little Taylors running around?”
“Me?” Taylor laughed, desperate to appear casual and unaffected by this strange turn of events. How could she still be affected by him after all these years? “Not hardly.”
“It’s a fair question. You’re thirty-three now. No ticking biological clock?”
“That’s not any of your business.” The answer was yes. She did think about kids. Especially since her father had died, since she was all alone in the world, but she didn’t have to tell him that.
“So you’ve never been married?”
“No.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Not currently. You know me.” She laughed again, trying to sound carefree. “I’m not the kind to settle down.”
“Still all about fun, fun, fun, huh?” He said fun as though it was a dirty word.
“I do enjoy a good time.” She battered her eyelashes in a facetious gesture.
He frowned. “I know.”
Her pulse quickened. “I never made a secret of it.”
“I never said you did.”
If you only knew how much it hurt me to have to hurt you…
She stifled the urge to jump into her Porsche and zoom away from the intensity of those snapping blue eyes. Eyes that seemed to possess a hidden meaning all their own. At the same time an equally compelling impulse had her wanting to kiss him with a fervency born of urgent familiarity.
But she did neither.
Thirty-three years as the only child of a billionaire airline executive had honed her ability to cloak her true feelings behind a happy-go-lucky facade. The skill had given her the strength to send Daniel away on the night of his graduation. From the looks of him now—disciplined, a doctor, a lieutenant colonel involved with the aerospace program—it had been the right decision. He had achieved all his dreams because she’d let him go.
Taylor took a deep breath, steeling herself. She could handle this.
And yet, the intensity of those blue eyes unsettled her in a way nothing else could.
“I remember a lot of things about you,” he added.
The criticism in his voice grabbed her in a stranglehold. She knew she’d hurt him, yes, but she’d been hurt, too. That part he didn’t understand. He stood looking at her, his expression a combination of judgment and annoyance.
“You haven’t changed a bit, Taylor,” Daniel said. “Still beautiful and as inaccessible as ever.”
“I…I’ve changed,” she said, denying his accusation.
“Yeah?” He arched an eyebrow. “How’s that?”
I learned how to live without you.
Taylor drew herself up tall. “I’m running my father’s airline now,” she answered. “I’ve overhauled it completely and we’re more successful than ever.”
“How is your father?”
“Dad passed away four years ago.”
“Taylor, I…I’m so sorry.” He reached out a hand, but seemed to think better of it, and let his arm fall to his side. “I know he was your only family. That must have been so hard on you.”
His sympathy pushed a lump of unshed tears into her throat. “I managed.”
Casually, she slipped her sunglasses on, trying her best not to let him see that her hands were trembling, hiding her eyes behind the barrier of UV lenses. Perspiration dewed her upper lip. Not so much from the warm morning sun as from his unwavering gaze.
At that moment, a young airman came running up to them. “Doctor Corben, Doctor Corben!”
“What is it, airman?” Daniel’s voice was authoritative, commanding. A shiver tripped down Taylor’s spine at the sound of it.
“We’ve got…there’s been…” The young man was hyperventilating.
Daniel rested a hand on his shoulder. “Slow down. Take a deep breath.”
“I…it’s an emergency, hurry, hurry.”
Alarm lifted the hairs on Taylor’s arm. She’d never been any good during emergencies.
“Where?” Daniel’s expression was calm and assertive.
“Motor pool…” the guy wheezed out. “My buddy Mac. Vehicle jack collapsed. Got him pinned underneath a Jeep. He can’t breathe. There’s blood.”
“Let’s go.” Daniel and the airman took off at a sprint.
“What do I do?” Taylor called.
“You wanted in on the action,” Daniel barked over his shoulder. “Come on.”
Taylor followed them, but had trouble keeping up in her high-heeled sandals. Finally, she stopped, peeled them off and ran after them, the straps of her shoes looped around her fingers.
Daniel and the airman entered the hanger building housing military vehicles out of service for repairs. The smell of oil and diesel fuel burned her nose. Vehicle parts were strewn around, as well as various tools that looked as if they’d been dropped in a hurry. A stack of tires initially blocked her view, but as she rounded the corner she saw a cluster of airmen hovered around a Jeep.
The minute they saw Daniel, the airmen immediately parted as if he was Moses and they were the Red Sea.
“Thank God, you’re here, Doc,” said a senior airman with relief in his voice. “We knew better than to try to get the Jeep off him, even though he was begging us.”
“Good job.” Swiftly, Daniel knelt beside a pair of uniformed legs protruding from underneath the vehicle. As the men related what had happened, Taylor could hear the victim moaning softly.
Daniel issued orders and the airmen leapt into action. They scrambled here and there; one airman going for a first aid kit, a second one bringing in a hydraulic lift, another rushing out to wait for the medics to arrive.
The coppery taste of adrenaline spilled into her mouth as she watched the scenario unfold. In a matter of minutes, they had the vehicle off the victim. Daniel sprang into action with skills that took her breath away. His assured self-confidence was amazing.
Taylor watched, agog. Sure, she knew he was a doctor, but knowing it intellectually and seeing him in action as a strong, decisive leader whose actions saved lives, were two different things. The boy she’d once known had become a powerful, influential man.
Ambulance sirens screamed to a halt outside the hangar door and two medics hustled in to load the victim onto the gurney. They’d brought a portable cardiac monitor with them and Daniel slapped the leads onto the man’s chest, busily barking out instructions about IV solutions and pain medication and other medical stuff Taylor didn’t understand.
The medics carried out his orders, seemingly doing a dozen things at once at the same time they were wheeling the victim toward the ambulance.
“You riding with us, Doc?” one of the medics asked.
Daniel’s head came up then, his eyes meeting Taylor’s and she realized he’d completely forgotten about her until that moment. She stood there barefooted, holding her five-hundred-dollar sandals, as a gaggle of airmen ogled her. She felt distinctly out of place.
“We’ll meet you there.”
We. He was taking her with him.
The ambulance raced off and Daniel commandeered a Jeep that was parked outside the hangar. “Get in,” he said.
She climbed in beside him, slipping on her shoes as he drove. Her pulse pounded in her temples, her head spun, overwhelmed by what she’d just witnessed.
“I thought you were a flight surgeon to the astronauts,” she said.
“I am, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respond to emergencies.”
“I didn’t mean that,” she corrected. “Of course you’d respond to any emergency. I did some research before coming here and I was surprised to learn a flight surgeon isn’t really a surgeon. It’s just what they call the doctors who take care of the flight team.”
“I’m an actual surgeon as well. Trained in a field hospital in Iraq.”
“Oh, I didn’t know.”
“Why would you?”
“So you won’t be following this airman’s case?”
“No, I’m just going along to make sure everyone is okay and to brief the physician who’ll be taking over his care.”
“I see. How severe are the man’s injuries?”
“When the jack collapsed, the Jeep fell on his chest.”
Taylor hissed in a breath.
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Lori Wilde
Reigniting their spark!Heiress Taylor is a flamboyant risk taker, whilst air force doctor Daniel is a cautious realist – it’s the reason their relationship came to a fiery end! Now Taylor has a business proposition that requires a research visit to Daniel’s air force base. And nothing has changed between the pair… including their combustible sexual chemistry!Tasked with being Taylor’s official escort, Daniel spends several wild nights keeping an intimate watch on her – yet will he really be able to say goodbye to her again when her research is over?
Available in April 2010 from Mills & Boon
Blaze
BLAZE 2-IN-1
Out of control by Julie Miller & Hot Under Pressure by Kathleen O’Reilly
The Right Stuff by Lori Wilde
Overnight Sensation by Karen Foley
The Right Stuff
by
Lori Wilde
MILLS & BOON
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Lori Wilde is the author of forty books. She’s been nominated for a RITA
Award and four romantic times BOOKreviews Reviewers’ Choice Awards. Lori teaches writing online through Ed2go. She’s a registered nurse trained in forensics and she volunteers at a battered women’s shelter.
To FPG. You know who you are.
1
Thirteen years earlier
NEWLY MINTED air force Second Lieutenant Daniel Corben fisted his hand around the black velvet ring box in the pocket of the dress blues he’d worn to his graduation ceremony at the University of Texas. All he could think about was ditching his adoring family so he could be alone with Taylor.
Taylor Milton, twenty, red-haired, a regal beauty. She stood near the end of the reception hall of the ROTC building in a white dress so thin he could see the shape of her thighs through the gauzy material. She gave him a come-hither smile, then coyly dipped her head, but she never took her eyes off him.
His throat constricted and his groin squeezed.
What a woman.
Just looking at her—tall, curvy, sassy and smart—caused his heart to chug as though he was running track. He couldn’t help noticing that every masculine gaze in the place landed on her. Taylor was the kind of woman who commanded attention.
And she belonged to him.
Smugness swelled his chest. He tightened his grip on the box containing the three-quarter-carat diamond solitaire set in platinum and gold that he’d bought that morning. In two weeks he would report to the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences at the Bethesda Medical Center near Washington, D.C., to start his medical school training.
But he wanted his ring on Taylor’s finger before he left. He wished he could afford something bigger. As it was, he’d drained his savings account to pay for it. He knew she could buy her own ring worth ten times as much as this one and he felt a little insecure about that. Still, he was giving her his all. The very best he could do. He was certain she’d appreciate that. He would promise her that after he was through medical school, he’d buy her a proper diamond.
Daniel’s mother reached up to brush a hand over his shoulder, her eyes misting with tears. “I’m so proud of you,” she murmured.
“Aw, Mom, don’t cry.”
His mother swiped at her face and smiled widely. “They’re happy tears.”
“Keeping up family tradition.” His father thumped him on the back with a hammy palm. “You’re a true Corben, son. Following in the footsteps of history.”
“All my friends think you’re hot.” His sixteen-year-old sister Jenna giggled. “An airman and a doctor. Oo-la-la.”
“I’m not a doctor yet,” Daniel reminded her. His family tended to get carried away with military medicine. “I’ve got four years of medical school, an internship and a residency ahead of me.”
“But you’re on your way,” said his grandfather, retired air force Colonel Dr. Daniel Walter Corben, Senior, who was also best friends with a former Surgeon General. “Just stay true to your objectives, hold the course. You’ll make it.”
“We’ve got dinner reservations at the Rivera,” his mother said. “We’d better get a move on. Are you riding with us or taking your car?”
“Um, Mom…” Daniel began, realizing that what he was about to say was going to go over like a cast-iron balloon. “I’m afraid I’ve got other plans.”
A frown creased his mother’s forehead as she tracked his gaze to Taylor. She pressed her lips into a tight line. “Of course you do. How presumptuous of me to assume you’d spend the evening of your college graduation with your family.”
“Pamela.” His father took his mother’s elbow. “Daniel is an adult. He has other plans. Let it go.”
No one suggested that Taylor join them. Daniel didn’t miss the slight. He knew what his family thought about his girlfriend, but for the first time in his life he didn’t let their opinion sway him. “We’ll go out tomorrow,” he promised. “My treat.”
His mother turned away, shoulders slumping, her feelings hurt. He took a deep breath.
They disliked Taylor because she was flamboyant, impulsive, opinionated and passionate about the things she believed in. They warned him that a woman like Taylor would be a liability for a career military officer who had to toe the line and be part of a team. He needed a wife who could do the same. Taylor spoke her mind when a proper military wife would find a discreet way to get her point across. She didn’t kowtow to everyone and the military was all about kowtowing.
During the short time he’d known her, Taylor had been arrested when a campus protest against the policies of the White House had gotten out of hand, ended up on probation for a streaking stunt gone awry and she’d written an inflammatory letter to the local newspaper espousing her liberal views—his parents were staunch conservatives—and she wasn’t about to back down.
But her passionate nature was one of the things he loved most about her. She had a mind of her own and she wasn’t afraid to use it and she really didn’t care what other people thought of her. He’d never expected to fall in love with someone his parents disapproved of, but it had happened and he wasn’t going to apologize.
His father shot him a look that said, Give your mother some time. She’ll come around, and then he escorted her from the reception hall.
After his family departed, Daniel turned to find Taylor standing in front of him, a naughty twinkle in her eye. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” She grinned.
For a moment they just stood there looking, lost in each other’s eyes.
“Come on,” she said, reaching out to take his hand. “I have a surprise.”
He sank his hand in hers and let her lead him through the crowd of military graduates and out the back exit. The woman was a force of nature, impossible to resist.
She took him up the back stairs of the ROTC building.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“No questions,” she said in a mysterious voice that sent anticipation jolting up his spine.
Daniel watched her butt sway as they climbed, past the second, the third, the fourth floors, the fifth, apparently headed for the roof. Her high heels tapped seductively against the cement. The sight of her firm fanny moving beneath the thin cotton material of her dress heated his dick as surely as the caress of her hand.
No way was he going off to D.C. leaving Taylor in Texas to finish up her odd double major in theatre and human biology without at least getting engaged. They belonged together and he wanted everyone to know it.
The stairwell was warm, airless, and so was Daniel’s brain.
Four months they’d known each other, having met at a campus mixer. Not long enough, most people might say. But in his heart, he knew she was the one. And it wasn’t just the sex, although the sex was spectacular. He’d never known anyone as uninhibited in bed—or out of it for that matter—as his Taylor. They’d made love in every position conceivable. She gave as good as she got. Hell, she gave better than she got.
He wanted her so badly his entire body ached. He wanted her naked.
Now.
Of course if it was up to him, he’d keep her naked 24-7. Taylor however, liked to role-play. She enjoyed props and costumes. He’d seen her in a French maid’s outfit and a nurse’s uniform and a belly dancer’s get up with tiny cymbals on her fingers. But what appealed to him most was her soft bare skin, porcelain white in its naked perfection.
She pushed through the door leading to the roof and stopped just long enough to toss him a seductive look over her shoulder. Her long red hair moved, tumbling around her shoulders like a fiery waterfall. She gave him a sly wink. “Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
“Do you know how hard it is to take my eyes off you?”
“I hope it’s hard,” she purred. “Close your eyes. Don’t worry, I won’t let you trip over anything. You do trust me, don’t you?”
Reluctantly, Daniel obeyed.
Taylor squeezed his hand and walked him forward. He heard the gritty material of the flat roof crunch beneath the soles of his polished black dress shoes, felt the balmy spring breeze on his cheeks.
He knew she had a seduction plan. Taylor loved seducing him and he loved being seduced by her scenarios. He wondered what she had up her sleeve tonight. What was going to take place on that rooftop? He licked his lips, anticipating.
Some might say he was sex-obsessed, but he’d never been that way before. Not even when he was a teenager. He’d always been so focused on his goal. The air force. Becoming a doctor. Following the family tradition of military M.D. set by his grandfather in the M.A.S.H. units of the Korean War and continued by his dad in Vietnam.
And then he’d met Taylor.
They’d made love the night they’d met in the coat closet at the mixer and he’d certainly never done anything like that before.
“I’m a bad girl,” she’d whispered in his ear, just before she’d nibbled it. “Are you sure a good soldier like you can handle someone like me?”
“Airman,” he’d corrected, and she’d just laughed.
Remembering hardened his dick. Daniel grinned. He’d done far more than handle her, and he wanted to do it again.
“Okay, you can open your eyes,” she said and let go of his hand. “Ta-da.”
Daniel blinked. There in the middle of the rooftop—in a circle of lighted candles scented with the smell of vanilla—sat a four-poster bed adorned with throw pillows.
“You’ve conquered ROTC,” she said and stepped toward him. “You’ve reached the top of this world. I’m going to give you the best send-off any second lieutenant heading for medical school at Bethesda ever got.”
He was stunned she’d gone to so much trouble for him. “Taylor, how did you—”
“Shh.” She laid an index finger against his lips. “No talking. The time for talking has passed.”
Daniel growled low in his throat, all primal man, wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her up tight against him. God, she was so wonderful and he loved her so much. He couldn’t begin to describe what he was feeling. He was just going to have to show her.
He kissed her. Hard and hot and frantic. She laughed and the sound shot electricity straight to his dick.
Heedlessly, he grabbed the hem of her dress and pulled the thing over her head.
Taylor gasped and her eyes lit up with delight. She wriggled in his arms, the lace of her pink bra scratching lightly across the muscles of his chest. The strip of her matching pink thong panties stretched against her pale, shaved skin resembled a sassy silk tongue.
She reached for his hat, whisking it from his head, her fingertips grazing his forehead in the process. She hooked the hat on one corner of the four-poster bed, and then she came back to undo the herringbone twill tie knotted at his throat. His pulse throbbed beneath the heat of her palm.
Daniel took a deep, steadying breath and placed his hand over hers. He wanted her. Damn, how he wanted her. But reason was telling him this wasn’t the time or the place. He was going to ask her to marry him tonight and he wanted to be in charge of the seduction.
“She’s a thunder stealer, that one,” his grandfather had said to him the first and only time Daniel had brought Taylor home for dinner. “Don’t get too attached. She’s too bold and impulsive to make a good military wife.”
Yes, she was bold and spontaneous and uninhibited, but those were the qualities he admired most in her. So how could he fault her for being herself?
Daniel could have his pick of women. He knew that. Women loved military men and doctors and he’d inherited the strong Corben jaw and his mother’s royal-blue eyes. He’d never had a bit of trouble getting dates. But this was the first time he’d ever been so consumed by a woman. None of them had turned him inside out the way Taylor did.
She was fire and passion and unpredictability and that was damned tempting to a man who lived a regimented life.
“What is it?” she whispered. Her lips were painted a stimulating shade of red.
“I’m taking it from here,” he told her, whipping off his jacket and tie and recklessly dropping them to the ground before bending to scoop her into his arms.
The moon was out, fat and round, framing the bed in a spotlight of white. Taylor smelled exotic—spicy, piquant, striking. There was nothing ordinary or demure about her.
“We don’t dislike Taylor,” his dad had told him earlier when they’d spied Taylor in the reception-hall crowd. “She’s just not the girl for you, son. You two come from completely different worlds.”
It was true. He came from a dedicated career military family. She hailed from privileged high society and yet, they fitted together. How could their pairing be a mistake when it felt so right?
Her head was thrown back, her smooth creamy neck exposed, her hair trailing down the side of his forearm as he carried her to the bed. Her body was both firm and soft and totally womanly. One of her breasts rested against his bicep as he arranged her gently on the bed.
He stepped back, his eyes drinking her in. She lowered her eyelids halfway and gave him her naughtiest expression. What the woman could do to him with a simple glance left him speechless.
And what he wouldn’t give to be able to capture this special moment. Lock it in a bottle. Seal it in a time capsule. Emotions twisted through him. Joy, pride, lust, excitement.
She positioned herself on her side, the pink thong riding high on her hip. Daniel’s gaze honed in on the sleek curve of her hip. She ran a hand through her hair, tousling the long, loose curls. One strand fell across her eye, adding to her sexual mystique.
He stared.
Taylor tucked the errant tendril behind one ear and batted her eyelashes. Her deep, chocolate-brown gaze snagged his, languid as syrup. “Are you going to stand there all night, doctor? Or are you going to quell my fever?”
Marry me, he should have said.
But the moment wasn’t right for the words and the ring was in the pocket of his jacket dropped on the ground several feet away.
He grinned instead. “You are so, so hot.”
That’s romantic, Corben. Way to set the mood.
This evening wasn’t going the way he’d planned. He’d meant to take her to their favorite sneak-away spot at the lake, open a bottle of chilled champagne, get down on one knee and ask her to be his wife for the rest of their lives. But he’d lost control of the situation and now they were up here on the roof of the ROTC building, everything on her terms.
She’s an heiress. She’s used to getting what she wants when she wants it.
Was that such a bad thing? According to his mother it was, but Daniel saw her daring self-confidence as a good thing. She was so alive, so free, so sure of herself. Being with her made him feel the same way about himself.
Taylor’s dark-eyed gaze misted with lust. She flicked out her tongue to lick her lips and Daniel forgot about everything except his driving need to sink deeply into her lush body.
She held out her arms. “Why are you standing way over there?”
Growling, he came toward her.
He had one knee on the bed when she reached up with the flat of her bare foot and pressed it against his chest, halting his progress. The sight of her toes, painted to match her bra and panties shot his desire into overload.
“I’m going to wear you out, lieutenant. The way you’ve never been worn out before. Are you prepared for that?” Her sultry laugh skipped across his eardrums. Helplessly his dick stiffened against the zipper of his uniform pants, anxious to escape confinement.
“Are you prepared for that?” He narrowed his eyes as she curled her toes into his muscles.
“Oh, yeah,” she murmured. “I’m making sure our last night is one to remember.”
“As if you could forget me,” he teased, his eyes locking on to hers, his hand going to his belt buckle as he toed off his shoes.
“What was your name again?” she teased right back.
Immediately he flashed to himself in Washington, D.C., and Taylor here on the UT campus. Surrounded by men. He gulped.
Ask her to marry you now.
She dropped her foot, curled up to a sitting position and reached for his zipper.
Daniel groaned.
“Yeah, baby,” she cooed as her fingers tugged down the zipper. “That’s my big man.”
His gaze slid straight through the cleavage of that pink lace bra. She had such gorgeous tits. Perfect size. Full and round and real, but not too big. Just right. Everything about her was just right. He couldn’t help reaching out to cup them at the same second as she jerked his pants down his legs.
Taylor was frantic. A wild thing. Going for his underwear next, ripping it off, and then pulling him down on top of her. He was equally hungry. His mouth seared hers as they dissolved into a tumble of arms and legs on the bed.
The atmosphere on the roof was turgid and ripe with the smell of their desire. He wanted Taylor and he wanted her now. Wanted her every way possible.
She reached around to unhook her bra and she tossed if off the bed before wrapping her long, sexy legs around his waist.
His cock throbbed. Blood galloped through his veins, engorging him hard and hot.
“Wait, wait,” she gasped. “Can’t forget protection.” Seemingly from out of nowhere, Taylor produced a condom and moved to roll it onto him. The entire time she was doing it all he could think was—gotta have her, gotta have her now.
When she’d finished, she fell spread-eagled onto the bed and he tumbled atop her, his big body pressing her into the mattress. He took command of her lips, but she was ready and waiting for him. She darted her sly sweet tongue into his mouth, rushing pell-mell past his teeth.
Each stroke drove the heat inside him higher and higher. Temperatures rising. Blood boiling. Brain blazing. And his cock—aw, hell, his cock was an inferno.
Taylor raked her fingers through his freshly clipped military haircut and arched her hips upward, driving him mad with the brush of her nipples beaded tight against his chest. And the sight of her flame-red hair curling down her creamy bare skin—have mercy.
He inhaled her womanly fragrance, feminine and enticing and the aroma jettisoned him to a whole new level of arousal. He had to taste her, inhale her, touch every inch of her.
Wetting his lips, he struggled to relish each second, mentally noting what was happening so that when he was in medical school cracking the textbooks, suturing wounds, doing scut work for the residents, he could trot out the memory of this night and replay it over and over. The night he graduated college. The same night that he asked the most exciting woman in the world to marry him.
But she was squeezing him so tightly his control just fried. Taylor’s lips parted, supple and impatient, mimicking his every move. She dug her fingertips into his spine, squashing his chest against her breasts.
They were nose to nose, Daniel anchoring her to the bed. He slipped one hand down her inner thigh, searching for her womanly heat, finding out how wet she was for him. Gently, he rubbed his index finger along her soft flesh.
Taylor gasped at his touch and her eyes rounded. “Oooh, Danny Boy,” she purred huskily.
He groaned in answer as he found his target and slipped a finger into her.
She shivered and her arousal caused a corresponding shudder inside him.
He inched in another finger. When he found her clit with the tip of his thumb, she moaned at the back of her throat, and pushed against his hand.
“Ah, yeah, that’s my Taylor,” he whispered. Her responsiveness drove him wild.
“I’m not doing this alone,” she managed to say as she nipped at his neck. “I want you to—” she quivered “—come along with me.”
“You know I can’t resist you,” he said, the air suddenly hot as blazes.
“Come,” she whispered.
He couldn’t hold out any longer. He pushed into her. The minute her hot, moist folds engulfed him he found total bliss.
Her fingers were in his hair and she was rocking against him, chanting his name like a mantra. “Daniel, Daniel, Daniel.”
She stopped breathing then. She always held her breath before she had an orgasm.
No, no, it was too fast. He wanted this to last. Daniel slowed down, pulled back. “Not yet, sweetheart.”
“Don’t be mean.” She pursed her bottom lip in a pout.
Grinning, he kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her nose, her cheeks, her chin as she wriggled impatiently beneath him. “You want it?”
“I want it now!”
“You got it.” He dropped his feet to the ground, pulled her buttocks to the edge of the mattress. His throbbing cock hovered just outside her moist sex. She spread her thighs apart and he nudged against her entrance.
He looked down at her. At her naked body in the moonlight. Her lips were wet and shiny, her hair tousled, her breasts round and luscious. Damn, but she was the sexiest woman he’d ever known.
Taylor writhed against him. “Get inside me now, lieutenant and that’s a direct order.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He sank into her. Taylor grabbed his ass and pulled him in deeper. They groaned in unison. The heat, the night, the moonlight, the flickering candles. The smell of their combined sex. The headiness of the day. Neither one of them lasted long. A few powerful thrusts and they were both over the edge.
Daniel exploded inside her at the same moment Taylor cried out a deep, throaty pleasure.
Minutes later they lay on the bed in a tangle of arms and legs, sticky with sweat. He was completely sated, totally happy.
A drifty, dozy moment passed, and then Taylor murmured, “Daniel.”
“Uh-huh?” He breathed lazily.
“We need to talk.” She sounded serious.
Daniel rose up on one elbow. The expression on her face was sad, wistful, troubled. It touched him because he’d never seen his high-spirited, fun-loving Taylor look melancholy. His gut clenched. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t begin to tell you how great the last four months have been,” she said.
“Same here,” he replied, his voice gruff with the emotions pushing at the seams of his heart.
“It’s been the best four months of my life.”
“Yeah, for me, too.”
“And now it’s coming to an end.”
It was almost impossible, but he tried to stay calm. “It doesn’t have to end, Taylor. I don’t want it to end and I don’t think you do, either.”
She laughed, but it was a dry, humorless sound that sliced him wide open. “Don’t be silly. It has to end.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Be realistic. You’re going away. I’m staying here. Besides, you’ll be in medical school. Studying, working eighty hours a week.”
“We can make it work.”
“Long-distance relationships aren’t practical.”
Since when was Taylor practical? “We’re different,” Daniel assured her. “You and I. We’re not like everyone else.”
A strange expression that he couldn’t quite read came over her face. Part longing, part regret, part determination, part something else.
Relief?
Could she actually be relieved he was going away? The thought stung like a slap.
“Face it, Daniel. We’re fire and ice. It makes for great sex…” She shook her head. “But it’s lousy for relationships.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re too different. You know that and I know it. Most of all, your family knows it. This has been fun. Great fun, in fact, but…”
She was breaking up with him.
It hit him then, a sledgehammer between the eyes. He had an engagement ring in his pocket to slip on her finger and she was breaking up with him.
“We need to get out of this now before either one of us gets hurt,” she said.
Too late, too late.
Thunderstruck, he sat up and just stared at her. What then was this sudden stabbing in the center of his chest? Was that the kind of hurt she was talking about?
“Taylor…” He started to say more, to plead his case, but he stopped himself. Dammit, he wasn’t going to beg. If she didn’t want him, she didn’t want him. He was an airman. A doctor in training. He came from a long line of strong, capable men. He wasn’t going to let a broken heart fell him. Hell, no.
“This is our last hurrah,” she said gently and reached out to lay a hand over his, but her eyes were too shiny, her smile forced. “After tonight, it’s over, Daniel. It’s for the best and we both know it.”
No, no, he didn’t know that at all. Yes, they came from different worlds. Yes, his parents disapproved. Probably so did her father.
He hardened his jaw, tightened his hands into fists. “That’s really the way you want it?”
Taylor nodded. She was checking her emotions, pulling back, detaching herself. He could see it in the murkiness descending over her intense brown eyes.
“I’ve got to confess, Daniel, this was never anything more than a good time for me.”
She couldn’t have hurt him more if she’d taken out a knife and driven it straight through his heart. His limbs felt wooden as he searched for his underwear and pants and somehow managed to jam his legs into them and then lace up his shoes.
“You don’t have to leave now,” she murmured. “The night is still young.”
Was it his imagination or did she sound a little panicky? He searched her face for a clue, but she gave away nothing. “Hoo-effing-rah,” he said through clenched teeth as he tightened his belt. “Been nice knowing you, Taylor.”
He snatched up his shirt, grabbed his jacket, and snagged his hat from the bed post. Had he not been so mad, so hurt, he might have heard her whisper, “I love you, Danny Boy, with all my heart, but this is the way it’s gotta be.”
2
Present day
“DOCTOR CORBEN?”
Daniel got to his feet in the waiting area of the Department of Defense Manned Space Flight Support Office at Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral and smiled at the attractive young staff sergeant sitting behind the reception desk. “Yes?”
She returned his smile with a flirtatious slant of her eyelashes. Had word already gotten out that he and Sandy had broken up? “Colonel Grayson is ready for you.”
This is it, the conversation leading to the promotion I’ve been shooting for my entire career.
From the time he was a kid in short pants listening to his father and grandfather talk about the exciting opportunities for air force doctors, he’d dreamed of going into space as a NASA physician. Making colonel before he was forty was a crucial step in that direction.
Daniel squared his shoulders, perfected his best military-officer stance and stalked into Grayson’s office, hoping that he struck the perfect balance between cocky and obedient. Assertive, but eager to follow orders. “You asked to see me, sir?”
“I did.” Colonel Cooper Grayson was standing. He pointed at the plain straight-backed chair positioned in front of his sturdy metal desk. “Have a seat, Daniel.”
He sat, but the expression on Grayson’s face troubled Daniel. It wasn’t a congratulations-you’re-in-the-running-to-make-colonel look.
“When are you going to ask Sandy to marry you?” the colonel asked.
The minute the words were out of his superior’s mouth, Daniel tensed. Was this a fishing expedition? Deeming his worthiness for promotion? It was the one question he dreaded. He knew well enough that in the military you were more likely to get promoted if you were married. The service viewed its airmen as more stable, mature and trustworthy if they had a wedding ring on their finger and a passel of kids to support.
He did not have that advantage going for him.
It wasn’t that Daniel didn’t want to get married or have children. He did. But becoming a doctor had taken all his focus in his younger years. Then later, once he’d completed his internship and residency and he’d met Sandy, well…
He’d thought about asking her to marry him. They’d been dating for four years. She was smart and pretty and safe and predictable. Her father was a career military man so she understood the life. In theory, she was perfect for him.
But she wasn’t Taylor.
The unwanted thought popped into his mind. What the hell was he doing thinking about Taylor Milton? He hadn’t seen or heard from her in thirteen years.
Still, that woman had excited him like no other, even though she’d been completely wrong for him. Sometimes, he wondered if she’d ruined him in regard to other women. But no one could measure up to her verve, her sheer enthusiasm, her exuberant life force.
It’s what Sandy had accused. He clenched his jaw, remembering their break up weeks earlier.
“Four years I’ve spent with you, Daniel. Four years of loving you and waiting for you to love me back.” Sandy had paused, taken a deep breath. “You were only with her for a few months and she put such a spell over you that you can’t forget her even after all this time. You’re in love with a woman who didn’t love you back. And I’ve been waiting with open arms, aching for you to love me.”
“You’re wrong. I’ m not still in love with Taylor. I haven’t even thought about her in years.”
“Maybe not consciously, Daniel, but sometimes you call out her name in your sleep.”
He’d blinked. “I do?”
Sandy had nodded, tears spilling from her eyes. “Not often, but you have.”
Daniel had felt as if he’d been poleaxed. Was it true? Did he still dream of Taylor? He didn’t remember that.
“The thing is, you’re holding on to the past, to the ghost of some long-lost love. You can’t let go of her and love the real flesh-and-blood woman standing in front of you.”
“I do love you, Sandy,” he’d said, but the words had sounded false. He did care about her, just not in the way she wanted and needed.
“Not in the way I deserve.”
“No,” he agreed.
“I know.” She’d exhaled audibly.
She’d been right. Damn him, he’d known she was right. “You’re breaking my heart here,” he’d said as she headed for the door, suitcase in hand.
She’d whirled on him, eyes flashing and dropped her suitcase. “No, Daniel, you’re breaking mine. Only love can break a heart and Taylor Milton broke yours years ago. You’re damaged goods.”
“I’m not,” he’d declared hotly. “I’ve long since moved on.”
“Maybe in your head you have.” She had stepped across the room toward him, hammered a small fist against the left side of his chest. “But not here, not where it counts, not in your heart.”
“Sandy…” Daniel had let his words trail off. What else had there been to say? It hurt to know that he was hurting her, but he couldn’t make himself love her, no matter how much he might want to. Was this how Taylor had felt toward him? Pity, guilt, embarrassment? “I’m so sorry for hurting you.”
“Physician, heal thyself,” Sandy had said, then turned and walked away.
“Well?” Colonel Grayson prompted bringing him back to the present.
“Sandy and I broke up,” he said.
“How come?”
“She was pressuring me to get married.”
“And you’re not ready for marriage?”
“I’m ready, sir,” he said, hating the thought that he might lose out on the promotion because he wasn’t yet hitched. “But I haven’t found the right woman.”
“So you’re free as a bird. Not dating anyone else?”
“That’s correct.”
“Hmm,” the colonel mused. Daniel had expected his boss to look disappointed, but he did not. “Interesting.”
Wariness settled over him. Something was up. “What’s this meeting about, sir?”
Grayson clasped his hands behind his back and paced like an agitated jungle cat. “A thorn in my side.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve got a thorn in my side and you’re the only one I trust to pull it out.”
Ah. The colonel had a problem and he perceived Daniel as the solution. That was good news. Solving his superior’s issue would go a long way toward proving his worthiness for the promotion.
“Sir.” Daniel stood at attention. “How may I be of service to you, sir?”
Grayson stopped pacing and looked over at him. “I like your gung-ho attitude, Corben. Exactly why you’re the man for this job.”
“What’s the assignment? I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and get started.”
“You say that now.” Grayson gave a rueful laugh. “Wait until you hear what it is.”
“Doesn’t matter, sir. I’m at your disposal.”
Grayson plunked down behind his desk and motioned for Daniel to sit. He did. The Colonel locked on him with a steady gaze. “General Charles Miller came to see me yesterday.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The general has political aspirations. He’s planning on running for public office when he retires at the end of next year. He’s eyeing the White House. Sees himself as the next Colin Powell.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can drop the ‘sir’ business, Daniel, it’s just you and me in here.”
Now Grayson was getting chummy. The thorn in his side must really be throbbing. His curiosity piqued, Daniel leaned forward. “Is this thorn medically related?”
Grayson made a face. “Not exactly.”
“Are we dealing under the table here?” Daniel bristled. He’d do anything for his superior as long as it wasn’t unethical or against regulations. He was strictly by the book, one of the reasons why he and Taylor had made for such a bad match. She’d been all about breaking the rules.
“No, not really, bending a few rules maybe, but nothing that crosses the line.”
“Tell me,” Daniel said bluntly.
“Let me just say up front that if you successfully pull off this assignment your promotion is practically a done deal. You’ll have my full recommendation to the committee.”
“And if I don’t?”
Grayson shrugged. “Only twenty-five percent of military officers ever achieve the rank of colonel.”
Daniel knew this. He also understood the implication. “I did two tours of duty in a field hospital in the Middle East. I earned a silver star in Afghanistan—”
“And that is the reason why you’ve made it up the ranks as quickly as you have.”
“What do I have to do to make colonel?”
Grayson leaned back in his chair and propped his booted feet on his desk. “One of General Miller’s wealthy VIPs has pledged big contribution money if he’ll grant a favor.”
“Which gets passed down to me.”
Grayson nodded. “That’s the thorn you’ll be pulling out of my side, doctor.”
“Lay it on me.”
“The general’s generous donor wants a backstage pass to our behind-the-scenes action for the next launch of the space shuttle,” he said.
“Meaning?”
“She’s doing research for—”
“She?”
“That’s why I asked you about Sandy. According to the general, his benefactor is young, single, attractive and very rich.”
“Ah.”
“Anyway, she runs some kind of sex fantasy resort thing and she’s in the research stages of planning a new one.”
“Like fantasy baseball camp?”
Grayson cleared his throat. “Something like that, except it’s for adults. She wants details on test pilots, flight surgeons and astronauts. I don’t know the full parameters, I’m sure she’ll fill you in.”
An ugly tug pulled at the pit of his stomach. “You gotta be kidding me.”
His superior officer shrugged, gave him an apologetic look. “I wish I was.”
Daniel got to his feet again. “Let me get this straight. You want me to babysit some pampered rich woman who’s running around using our high-tech military space program to fuel her little X-rated sexual fantasies?”
“Believe me, Corben. I’m no happier about it than you are. But if we pull this off to her satisfaction, then she’ll bankroll Miller’s run for the senate. I’ll make brigadier general and my job will be open for you to step in.”
“How long will she be here?”
“Two weeks.”
“Two weeks!”
“A minor inconvenience.” Grayson waved a hand, dismissing his objections as if batting away a fly. “The main thing is to keep her out of trouble.”
“Trouble?”
His superior officer shifted, looked uncomfortable. “She’s got a flamboyant reputation.”
Daniel glowered. “How so?”
Grayson shrugged. “General Miller said something about media controversy involving her last project. Again, I don’t know the details. But we need to keep a tight lid on her visit.”
Daniel blew out his breath, shook his head. “I wish I could help you, sir, but if you recall I’ll be in Moron, Spain, next week on launch day running the TAL disaster drill.”
“I know. That’s the main reason I need you and not anyone else,” Grayson said, smiling for the first time since Daniel had come into the room. “First of all, you’re discreet. Second, it’s the perfect solution. Get her out of the country while seeming to give her what she wants.”
“She’s going to want to be at the Cape for the Atlantis launch, sir, not at some TAL site.”
“Then it’s up to you to convince her it’s better to be at Moron during the launch than here.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“You’re smart and you can be charming. You figure it out.”
“I don’t like this,” Daniel grumbled.
“But you’ll do it?” Grayson’s eyes drilled into him.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Depends on how badly you want my job.”
Daniel glared. “I’ve worked damned hard for this promotion. This isn’t fair.”
“No,” Grayson said glibly. “This is the Air Force.”
TAYLOR MILTON couldn’t stop grinning as she drove her rented silver convertible 911 Turbo Porsche toward Cape Canaveral. General Charles Miller, her late father’s best friend since high school, had come through for her in a big way.
Just thinking about how she was going to have access to top-gun pilots, shuttle astronauts and sexy Air Force flight surgeons sent a shiver of delight down her spine. This in-depth research was bound to make her planned fourth fantasy resort—Out of this World Lovemaking—a smashing success.
She turned on the radio, flipped through the stations, caught the refrain from a long-ago song and her fingers froze on the button.
“Unchained Melody.”
The song that had been playing at the sixties-themed campus mixer when she and Daniel had first laid eyes on each other.
Their song.
Not terribly original, she supposed. “Unchained Melody” was a lot of people’s song, but not among her peer group. The haunting tune jettisoned her back thirteen years.
In her mind’s eye, she saw Daniel the way he’d looked as a newly minted Air Force second lieutenant. Young, earnest and tender, but at the same time, he’d possessed a powerful, commanding presence. Daniel had been tall, muscular, built like a firefighter. Dark hair, startlingly blue eyes, broad shoulders, washboard abs. She wondered if he was still as fit and trim.
He hadn’t been at all like any of the other young men she’d dated: reckless, randy, cavorting, out for nothing but a good time. He’d been serious, dedicated, focused and principled. Little had she guessed that the qualities in him she admired the most would spell the end of their love affair.
When she was dreaming up ideas for her new resort, she’d asked herself what it was that she personally found sexy, and a full-on visual of Daniel—and the way he’d looked coming out of his military uniform—had gobsmacked her.
Military men were sexy. Doctors were sexy. Astronauts were sexy. Why not combine all three? Feature military doctors and the test pilots and the astronauts they cared for. Once that idea hit, she knew she had to do her research at Patrick Air Force base and the Kennedy Space Station at Cape Canaveral. Hence the call to her godfather, General Charles Miller, known to her as Uncle Chuck.
Taylor pushed a hand through her wind-tousled hair and took the freeway off ramp. She couldn’t stop herself from wondering about Daniel. Had he achieved his dream of becoming a doctor? Was he still in the military? Knowing his family and Daniel’s desire to follow in their traditional footsteps, she imagined that was the case.
The memories came flooding back and for a quick second her throat tightened as she thought of how she’d once loved him so desperately. She tasted the memory of their courtship, sweet and rich and intense. A vision of their second date flashed through her mind. He’d taken her to an upscale restaurant he could ill afford simply because he wanted to impress her.
Even now, the endearing gesture made her throat tighten.
The waiter had stashed them into a corner of the candlelit French restaurant. She’d found a small bouquet of red-and-white spider lilies on the linen-draped table, sweetening the air with an anise-scented prickle. He’d ordered for them both, choosing fennel-scented crab cake appetizers and filet mignon with duchess potatoes for the main meal.
Funny, she could still remember that meal and she couldn’t remember what she’d had for dinner the night before.
Their hands had brushed as they’d both reached for the bread basket filled with yeasty multi-grain rolls. He’d stared into her eyes, filling her with molten heat. That look had cinched the deal. She was hungry and for far more than food.
For dessert, they’d shared an oozy chocolate soufflé with Obuse wine, a wickedly delicious dessert port recommended by the wine steward. It was only then that she learned he rarely drank alcohol and he’d quickly gotten tipsy on chocolate and Obuse. She’d taken his keys, driven him back to his apartment and stayed the night.
Quickly, she batted the thoughts away. Not love, no. Just the ridiculous infatuation of a college girl.
She remembered how he’d kissed her that evening. Hard and passionate, full of yearning and desire. Daniel had kissed the way heroes kissed in the old movies her father loved. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh. Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr.
Movies from a bygone era had been her main connection to her father. At least in the early years, before his commuter airline—Milton Air—had grown to consume all his time. “I work so much because I love you so much,” he’d told her. “It’s all for you.” She supposed it was where she’d gotten her flair for the dramatic, her love of daydreams and fantasies.
“This was the golden age of filmmaking,” her father would tell her, when she was a little girl in pigtails. She’d snuggle up in his lap in the private screening room he’d built in their home back before such things were popular among people who could afford them. Her father’s valet, Mr. McGulicutty would thread the film projector, and Agnes, the cook would make buttered popcorn. “Casablanca was your mother’s favorite movie.”
Her mother had died giving birth to her at age fortytwo. Her father had been just shy of fifty. Bringing Taylor into the world had cost Lily Milton her life. But her father had never once made her feel as if she was to blame. Taylor, however, couldn’t escape the knowledge that by being born she’d caused her mother’s death.
“Why couldn’t Rick and Elsa be together, Daddy?” she always asked at the end of Casablanca. “They loved each other so much.”
“That’s exactly why they couldn’t be together,” he’d say. Then he would kiss the top of her head and get a faraway look in his eyes. “When you love that deeply, you’ll sacrifice for the other person’s happiness. Even if it means that you have to be unhappy. That’s real love, when you can let go of your loved ones so they can be what they need to be.”
It was only years later, after her father had died, that Taylor found her mother’s journal in his safedeposit box and learned that her father had never wanted her mother to get pregnant. Lillian Milton been a brittle diabetic and doctors had warned she might not survive a pregnancy. But her mother had wanted a baby so badly and her father had loved her mother so much, he’d agreed to let her try. And in the process of letting her be what she needed to be, he’d lost her forever.
“You always lose the one you love, Taylor,” her father used to say. “Never forget that. You lose them. One way or another. Always.”
Silly. Fanciful. Thinking about the past. Taylor blinked back the tears that had formed along her eyelashes.
Thankfully, she heard her cell phone ring, distracting her from the sad memories. She flipped it open. “Speak to me,” she said to her executive assistant Heather Rheiss.
“The Italian resort had another incident.”
“What now?” Her third destination fantasy resort in Venice, featuring “Make Love Like a Courtesan” and its masculine counterpart, “Make Love Like Casanova” had been the target of several disturbing occurrences.
First off, malfunctioning smoke alarms had allowed a fire in the laundry room to go undetected until it had done several thousand dollars’ worth of damage. It was suspicious, because the smoke alarms had just passed inspection the week before.
Then, after one of the scheduled banquet feasts, several resort guests contracted food poisoning and had to be sent to the hospital for treatment.
And finally, the thing that had drawn her to Venice to check things out for herself; a Renoir was stolen from the resort because the security system had been turned off. The police suspected an inside job. She’d fired the manager, hired someone new and stayed a week to show them the ropes. The police had no leads in the theft and she’d filed an insurance claim.
Taken one by one, all the incidents seemed unconnected, but together, Taylor was starting to see a pattern. Was someone trying to undermine her resorts? She was no stranger to controversy. Outspoken religious fundamentalists denigrated her resorts and condemned them as hedonistic and wicked. Kinky customers threatened to sue because they thought Eros Air should fulfill their illegal fantasies. Competitors were jealous of the way she’d taken stodgy Milton Airlines and given it a stunning new makeover in the form of Eros Air. It was all part of doing business in the tourism industry.
“The new manager you hired caught an undercover exposé reporter posing as a guest.”
Taylor groaned. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Don’t worry, it’s been handled. The manager confiscated the photos he’d taken and threw the reporter out on his ear. I just thought you should know.”
“Thanks, Heather. I appreciate the heads up.”
“No problem. Where are you now?”
“I’m almost at the air base. I’ll check in with you later.”
“I’ll be holding down the fort.”
Taylor closed her phone and followed the signs to the main entrance of the air base and stopped at the front gate.
“Name?” asked the security officer.
Pushing her designer sunglasses up higher on her nose with a freshly manicured fingernail, she gave him her most winsome smile. “Taylor Milton,” she said. “Colonel Grayson is expecting me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded. “General Miller ordered an escort to be waiting for you.”
“How kind of him,” she said.
“Just follow that jeep.” The security officer nodded at the vehicle that waited on the other side of the gate with the engine chugging. “He’ll take you where you need to be.”
“Thank you so much.” She wriggled her fingers goodbye as the airman raised the gate arm to let her pass.
The jeep led her through the Air Force base, past rows of tidy, spick-and-span, no-frills structures. The military had been a perfect fit for Daniel. His personality matched service life—straightforward, precise, no tolerance for anything or anyone who did not toe the organizational line. No wonder their relationship had crashed and burned. She was complicated, freewheeling, a true maverick. It was those traits that had made her such a success in the cutthroat airline industry. She did not play follow the leader very well.
In fact, when she saw the lettering on the building where she knew she was expected, she blew around the jeep with a wave of her hand and a brilliant smile for the startled young staff sergeant behind the wheel.
“Ciao,” she called out to the solider on her way past, still in Venice mode. “I can find my way from here, thanks.”
“Ma’am, ma’am, you need an escort!” he hollered, but she kept right on going. Rules were for military personnel. Not her.
She zoomed ahead, pulling into Colonel Grayson’s parking space in front of the administration building.
The young sergeant stopped his jeep behind her and came running over to her convertible. His face was flushed and he looked flustered. “Ma’am, this is a military base.”
“I’m aware of that.” She grabbed her purse, got out and gave him a dazzling smile.
“You can’t park here,” he said weakly. “It’s reserved for Colonel Grayson.”
“I’m sure he won’t mind. Where is he, by the way? I’m supposed to have a meeting with him.”
“N-n-no, ma’am,” the poor sergeant stammered.
“No?”
He shook his head and his face paled. Instantly, she felt sorry for him. Poor guy was probably terrified he’d have to pay the price because she didn’t follow the rules. She’d make sure to mention to the colonel that any violations were completely her responsibility. The young man shouldn’t be held accountable for her actions.
“Colonel Grayson’s not on the base this morning, ma’am. You’ve been reassigned to our second-in-command.”
“He’s passing me off?” she said it lightly, but she was irritated. Uncle Chuck had assured her she would have an audience with the base commander.
“I…he’s…”
“I’m the one who’s stuck babysitting the spoiled princess,” growled an arrogant voice from behind her.
Taylor spun around, ready to deliver a tonguelashing to the insolent man who’d interrupted her, but the second she laid eyes on him all the air left her body.
Daniel Corben.
Looking just as disturbed to see her as she was to see him.
3
RECOGNITION knifed Daniel in the chest.
It couldn’t be, but the hell if it wasn’t.
The very woman who’d sledgehammered his heart thirteen years ago which had led to his break-up with Sandy now.
“Daniel,” Taylor said, her voice low, husky. She cleared her throat, slipped off her sunglasses and took him in. He spied the nervousness in her eyes as she inspected the insignias on the collar of his uniform shirt before lifting her defiant chin. “Lieutenant-Colonel Dr. Daniel Corben, I see.”
His heart thumped and his palms slicked as he peered into those familiar brown eyes. Taylor Milton in the flesh and looking far more beautiful than any woman had the right to look.
Twin dots of color pinked her cheeks and he felt a corresponding heat rise inside him. Slowly, he raked his gaze over her, starting with her gorgeous red hair, now stylishly streaked with blond threads. He couldn’t help but lust after her swan-like throat and then the swell of her breasts, before rolling right on down to those long, shapely legs. He remembered exactly what it felt like to have those legs wrapped tightly around him in the throes of passion.
Something ripped loose inside his chest, a tearingaway sensation. God, she was gorgeous. The years had been generous to her. In fact, she’d grown even lovelier with the passing of time. He shook his head, tried to shake off the attraction. But it was useless.
“I should have known,” Daniel said, dragging his gaze back to her face.
“Known?” she echoed, seeming confused.
“You’re the one who wrapped General Miller around your little finger. Bravo, Taylor. You’ve always had a knack for bringing men to their knees.” His tone came out harsher than he had intended.
Her eyes widened as if he’d slapped her, and he immediately felt like a jerk. She moistened her lips, swallowed. “You’re upset with me.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I am.”
She shifted her weight, but held his gaze. “Why?”
“Because you’re intent on making a mockery of the thing I love most.”
Her eyes darkened. “The Air Force.”
“I want you to know I’m adamantly opposed to the reason you’re here.”
“Duly noted,” she said coolly.
As coolly as when she’d told him that their love affair had been nothing more than a fun fling. It had been thirteen years. The memory shouldn’t still sting.
But it did.
“I tried to tell her, sir,” the anxious young staff sergeant was saying, “that she couldn’t just barge in. There’s protocol. This is a military base. But she wouldn’t listen to me. I—”
Daniel held up a hand to silence the kid, who was about the same age Daniel had been when he’d graduated college. Not once did he take his eyes off Taylor. “I’ve got it from here, Staff Sergeant. You’re dismissed.”
“Thank you, sir.” The young man snapped off a salute.
“Impressive.” Taylor lifted an eyebrow. Mocking him?
Daniel narrowed his gaze, his world condensing to her. Just Taylor and no one else. He could no longer see the staff sergeant hustling around to his jeep, although he could hear the young man’s shoes slapping quickly against the asphalt.
She boldly held his stare, but Daniel could see past the bravado in the way she slipped her fingers through her hair, trying to tame the windblown strands. He remembered she had a habit of running her hand through her hair when she was nervous. Nice to see that some things didn’t change.
Her chest moved with each breath of air. Her magnificent breasts strained the buttons of the expensive yellow silk blouse she wore. He thought of her nipples, recalled how sweet they’d tasted. With her sun-streaked red hair, Taylor looked damned delicious in yellow. Like marigolds in a wheat field.
Her fingers dropped from her hair in one long graceful movement and fell to the pocket of her sleek charcoal-gray slacks. Her fingernails, he noted, sported a flawless French manicure.
Daniel wondered, not for the first time, how he’d ever ended up with a woman like her even for a little while. She was pure class from the top of her head to the tips of her pedicured toes peeping from golden high-heeled sandals. She came from money, privilege. He was military all the way. An officer first, a doctor second.
His eyes latched on to her lips. Full, lavish, painted the color of the pink Gerbera daisies he’d given his mom the other day. He held his breath.
Waiting.
What was he waiting for?
Taylor took a thick tortoise-shell hairclip from the gold pocketbook that matched her designer sandals, pulled back several long strands of hair with one hand and anchored them in place with the clip. The remaining hair, not caught up in the barrette, fell in soft, sexy waves about her face.
Her languid movements stirred up her scent, bringing her perfume to him. Honeysuckle. The sweet farm-girl scent was in total opposition to the sleek reality. Urban, hip, on-top-of-the world. Creator of sexual-fantasy resorts.
The morning sun peeped behind a cloud, cloaking her face one half in shadow, the other in light, illuminating the dichotomy that was Taylor Milton. On the one hand constant, on the other enigmatic and changeable. Daniel peered into her eyes, glimpsing something melancholy lurking there.
Old memories, heartfelt feelings—both happy and sorrowful—shimmered between them like heat waves off asphalt, thin, fragile, elusive as snow in the desert.
A chord was struck, only for a whisper of a second. But it was enough to pull the breath from their lungs in a synchronized exhale.
He focused on her mouth. A mouth he yearned to kiss. A mouth that still called to him in the dark recesses of dreams he hadn’t known he’d dreamed. He moved toward her. Not thinking, just longing, craving, wanting.
She didn’t step back.
Daniel never took his eyes off her face. It felt so natural for him to kiss her. To pull her into his arms, rekindle their past, fan the sparks, make a new one.
He stepped forward, closing the small gap. All at once, he realized their lips were almost touching. She didn’t flinch. She seemed as mesmerized as he.
Knock it off, Corben, this is completely unprofessional.
And yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself. He didn’t want to stop himself. What was he trying to prove? That he could intimidate her?
Not cool.
Daniel thought he’d grown beyond his resentment over the way Taylor had broken things off with him. He was disturbed to discover he had not. He thought of himself as a rational man, but around her, he felt…what did he feel? Irrational? Fevered? Out of control?
A miserable combination of all three, he concluded.
For the first time, he fully understood why his parents hadn’t liked her. Taylor didn’t play by the rules and both medicine and the military were all about rules. She was rebellious and opinionated and imaginative and creative. She blazed her path and didn’t care what anyone thought.
And the hell of it was Daniel had loved her for all those things.
The heat of her skin radiated outward, zapped into him. It was all he could do not to act on his impulses and take her right there in the parking lot.
She flicked out her tongue, tracing the pink tip over her moist lips. He knew it was an innocent gesture born of nervousness, but it had the same effect as if it had been carefully calculated. His gut squeezed and his cock hardened. The unexpectedness of his desires scared the hell out of him. Like it or not, he still cared for her.
Dammit. He did not want to care for her. He could not. Should not. Would not.
Her eyes widened again and she tucked her elbows close to her sides. Suddenly, she looked utterly vulnerable. As if she would shatter like fragile glass if he were to touch her. Daniel could read his own fears reflected in her eyes. They were both unsettled by a chemistry that time had not erased.
They stared into each other with a mix of stunned surprise, affection and stark sexual need.
It was still there. The old flare. The embers just waiting to be stoked. All this time and he still burned for her in a way that shook him to his core.
Fate had brought them back together again.
Reunited them.
Reunited.
The idea felt both wonderful and treacherous. Wonderful because there was the hint of hope, treacherous because it was all an illusion. A pang of longing pierced him.
That’s when Daniel knew that his promotion was in serious jeopardy.
“SO YOU’RE my escort,” Taylor said with all the cool aplomb and calm control she could muster, hiding the fact that inside she was a quivering mass of nerves and anxiety.
“Feels like old times, huh?” Daniel said, his voice loaded with sarcasm.
One look at him and she was jettisoned back thirteen years. With the passing of time, she’d told herself she’d embellished their attraction. That it was nothing more than the fuzzy sweet memory of a love that used to be. But here, now, feeling the raw, aching chemistry again, she realized she’d actually downplayed it.
What was she going to do?
She’d never bargained on running across him, on feeling like this; for a split second she thought perhaps Uncle Chuck was playing matchmaker, hooking her up with her old college sweetheart. Then she remembered that General Miller knew nothing about her youthful affair with Daniel. She’d never even told her father of their liaison because it had been too new, too romantic to share with a man who viewed love as something that had to be sacrificed. This hook-up was sheer, miserable bad luck.
Or destiny, whispered a voice in the back of her mind.
“It’s my duty to show you around,” he replied.
She could tell from the sharp-edged light in his eyes and his pointed tone of voice that duty was not the word he really wanted to use. The military had disciplined him to hold his tongue. Not that he’d ever been great at expressing his feelings. Typical strong, silent type.
But Taylor was a Milton born and bred. She could hide her real emotions just as well as he could. It was the one thing they had in common.
But hiding her feelings took a toll.
What she yearned to do was fling herself into his arms, tell him just how stupid she’d been to send him away all those years ago. Of course, she didn’t do that, instead, she called him on it. “You disapprove of my being here.”
“Patrick is a restricted military base.”
“Aren’t all military bases restricted?”
“Civilians shouldn’t be allowed to go running around unchecked.” His chin hardened.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m checked. You’re here to check me.”
“You’re here because you’re throwing money at General Miller’s political campaign, that’s it.”
“And that’s bad because…?”
“Not everyone has your wealth and privilege. Not everyone has pockets big enough to support their whims.”
That irritated her. “My business is not a whim.”
He said nothing, just scrutinized her with those stalwart blue eyes that shook her up.
Taylor forced a smile. She refused to let him rattle her. “So, tell me all about Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Daniel Corben. I’m assuming you’re married. Got a big brood of kids.”
“No wife, no children.” Daniel shook his head and her foolish, foolish heart soared.
“Oh,” she said, struggling to sound neutral, as if she didn’t care. But damn if she didn’t sound hopeful to her own ears. She felt hopeful, too. Why should she be hopeful when he’d made it clear he didn’t want her here?
Stop it. There’s a good reason you broke up with him.
But for the life of her—in that moment as her eyes drank him in—she couldn’t remember what it was, why she’d lied to him and told him their love affair had been nothing more than a fling. Why she’d walked away from the best thing that had ever happened to her.
Pulse pounding, she searched his face. The years had been lavishly generous. Maturity had deepened his good looks, ripening his masculine appeal. He was bigger than she remembered. Taller, harder. He’d been handsome before, but now…?
Now, he was extraordinary.
His shoulders had broadened and so had his muscular thighs and biceps. His posture was ramrodstraight, his presence commanding. He wore a white lab jacket over his basic uniform. His face was attractively fuller, less rangy than it had been, but his waist was just as narrow. His hair was a bit longer than the buzz cut he’d had for military induction, but it was still quite short and tidy. She couldn’t spy even a hint of gray.
And his eyes. His devastatingly gorgeous eyes were as impossibly blue as ever.
“How about you?” he asked.
“What?” She blinked.
“Is there a Mr. Milton? Any little Taylors running around?”
“Me?” Taylor laughed, desperate to appear casual and unaffected by this strange turn of events. How could she still be affected by him after all these years? “Not hardly.”
“It’s a fair question. You’re thirty-three now. No ticking biological clock?”
“That’s not any of your business.” The answer was yes. She did think about kids. Especially since her father had died, since she was all alone in the world, but she didn’t have to tell him that.
“So you’ve never been married?”
“No.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Not currently. You know me.” She laughed again, trying to sound carefree. “I’m not the kind to settle down.”
“Still all about fun, fun, fun, huh?” He said fun as though it was a dirty word.
“I do enjoy a good time.” She battered her eyelashes in a facetious gesture.
He frowned. “I know.”
Her pulse quickened. “I never made a secret of it.”
“I never said you did.”
If you only knew how much it hurt me to have to hurt you…
She stifled the urge to jump into her Porsche and zoom away from the intensity of those snapping blue eyes. Eyes that seemed to possess a hidden meaning all their own. At the same time an equally compelling impulse had her wanting to kiss him with a fervency born of urgent familiarity.
But she did neither.
Thirty-three years as the only child of a billionaire airline executive had honed her ability to cloak her true feelings behind a happy-go-lucky facade. The skill had given her the strength to send Daniel away on the night of his graduation. From the looks of him now—disciplined, a doctor, a lieutenant colonel involved with the aerospace program—it had been the right decision. He had achieved all his dreams because she’d let him go.
Taylor took a deep breath, steeling herself. She could handle this.
And yet, the intensity of those blue eyes unsettled her in a way nothing else could.
“I remember a lot of things about you,” he added.
The criticism in his voice grabbed her in a stranglehold. She knew she’d hurt him, yes, but she’d been hurt, too. That part he didn’t understand. He stood looking at her, his expression a combination of judgment and annoyance.
“You haven’t changed a bit, Taylor,” Daniel said. “Still beautiful and as inaccessible as ever.”
“I…I’ve changed,” she said, denying his accusation.
“Yeah?” He arched an eyebrow. “How’s that?”
I learned how to live without you.
Taylor drew herself up tall. “I’m running my father’s airline now,” she answered. “I’ve overhauled it completely and we’re more successful than ever.”
“How is your father?”
“Dad passed away four years ago.”
“Taylor, I…I’m so sorry.” He reached out a hand, but seemed to think better of it, and let his arm fall to his side. “I know he was your only family. That must have been so hard on you.”
His sympathy pushed a lump of unshed tears into her throat. “I managed.”
Casually, she slipped her sunglasses on, trying her best not to let him see that her hands were trembling, hiding her eyes behind the barrier of UV lenses. Perspiration dewed her upper lip. Not so much from the warm morning sun as from his unwavering gaze.
At that moment, a young airman came running up to them. “Doctor Corben, Doctor Corben!”
“What is it, airman?” Daniel’s voice was authoritative, commanding. A shiver tripped down Taylor’s spine at the sound of it.
“We’ve got…there’s been…” The young man was hyperventilating.
Daniel rested a hand on his shoulder. “Slow down. Take a deep breath.”
“I…it’s an emergency, hurry, hurry.”
Alarm lifted the hairs on Taylor’s arm. She’d never been any good during emergencies.
“Where?” Daniel’s expression was calm and assertive.
“Motor pool…” the guy wheezed out. “My buddy Mac. Vehicle jack collapsed. Got him pinned underneath a Jeep. He can’t breathe. There’s blood.”
“Let’s go.” Daniel and the airman took off at a sprint.
“What do I do?” Taylor called.
“You wanted in on the action,” Daniel barked over his shoulder. “Come on.”
Taylor followed them, but had trouble keeping up in her high-heeled sandals. Finally, she stopped, peeled them off and ran after them, the straps of her shoes looped around her fingers.
Daniel and the airman entered the hanger building housing military vehicles out of service for repairs. The smell of oil and diesel fuel burned her nose. Vehicle parts were strewn around, as well as various tools that looked as if they’d been dropped in a hurry. A stack of tires initially blocked her view, but as she rounded the corner she saw a cluster of airmen hovered around a Jeep.
The minute they saw Daniel, the airmen immediately parted as if he was Moses and they were the Red Sea.
“Thank God, you’re here, Doc,” said a senior airman with relief in his voice. “We knew better than to try to get the Jeep off him, even though he was begging us.”
“Good job.” Swiftly, Daniel knelt beside a pair of uniformed legs protruding from underneath the vehicle. As the men related what had happened, Taylor could hear the victim moaning softly.
Daniel issued orders and the airmen leapt into action. They scrambled here and there; one airman going for a first aid kit, a second one bringing in a hydraulic lift, another rushing out to wait for the medics to arrive.
The coppery taste of adrenaline spilled into her mouth as she watched the scenario unfold. In a matter of minutes, they had the vehicle off the victim. Daniel sprang into action with skills that took her breath away. His assured self-confidence was amazing.
Taylor watched, agog. Sure, she knew he was a doctor, but knowing it intellectually and seeing him in action as a strong, decisive leader whose actions saved lives, were two different things. The boy she’d once known had become a powerful, influential man.
Ambulance sirens screamed to a halt outside the hangar door and two medics hustled in to load the victim onto the gurney. They’d brought a portable cardiac monitor with them and Daniel slapped the leads onto the man’s chest, busily barking out instructions about IV solutions and pain medication and other medical stuff Taylor didn’t understand.
The medics carried out his orders, seemingly doing a dozen things at once at the same time they were wheeling the victim toward the ambulance.
“You riding with us, Doc?” one of the medics asked.
Daniel’s head came up then, his eyes meeting Taylor’s and she realized he’d completely forgotten about her until that moment. She stood there barefooted, holding her five-hundred-dollar sandals, as a gaggle of airmen ogled her. She felt distinctly out of place.
“We’ll meet you there.”
We. He was taking her with him.
The ambulance raced off and Daniel commandeered a Jeep that was parked outside the hangar. “Get in,” he said.
She climbed in beside him, slipping on her shoes as he drove. Her pulse pounded in her temples, her head spun, overwhelmed by what she’d just witnessed.
“I thought you were a flight surgeon to the astronauts,” she said.
“I am, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respond to emergencies.”
“I didn’t mean that,” she corrected. “Of course you’d respond to any emergency. I did some research before coming here and I was surprised to learn a flight surgeon isn’t really a surgeon. It’s just what they call the doctors who take care of the flight team.”
“I’m an actual surgeon as well. Trained in a field hospital in Iraq.”
“Oh, I didn’t know.”
“Why would you?”
“So you won’t be following this airman’s case?”
“No, I’m just going along to make sure everyone is okay and to brief the physician who’ll be taking over his care.”
“I see. How severe are the man’s injuries?”
“When the jack collapsed, the Jeep fell on his chest.”
Taylor hissed in a breath.
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Lori Wilde
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Reigniting their spark!Heiress Taylor is a flamboyant risk taker, whilst air force doctor Daniel is a cautious realist – it’s the reason their relationship came to a fiery end! Now Taylor has a business proposition that requires a research visit to Daniel’s air force base. And nothing has changed between the pair… including their combustible sexual chemistry!Tasked with being Taylor’s official escort, Daniel spends several wild nights keeping an intimate watch on her – yet will he really be able to say goodbye to her again when her research is over?