The Captain's Baby Bargain. Merline Lovelace
version was that she’d gained the tag after one of her troops mired a Swiss-made bulldozer in mud. Suze reportedly climbed aboard, rocked the thirty-ton behemoth back and forth, and swished it out.
There was another version. One involving beer, a bet and a camel, although Suze always claimed the details were too hazy for her to remember.
Gabe knew his reluctance to use her call sign was only one small indicator of the rift that had gradually, inexorably widened to a chasm. He hadn’t resented sharing her with the Air Force or with the troops she worked with. Not at first. Not until they became her surrogate family. But she always was, always would be, Suze to him.
Or Susie Q. The pet name came wrapped in so many layers of memories. Some innocent, like the time he broke his collarbone and she’d perched on the side of his bed to feed him bits of her cream-filled chocolate treats. And some not so innocent. Like the time...
Without warning, Gabe went tight. And hard. And hungry. Smothering another curse, he shoved the image of his wife’s nipples smeared with whipped cream out of his head. But he had to drag in long, slow breaths before his blood started circulating above his waist again.
“I can’t tell if Dingo’s serious about Chelsea or not,” Suze was saying. “He hooks up with her whenever he’s in Vegas. And they spent a week together in Cabo a few months back. But neither of them seem to be talking about long term.” She cocked her head. “Gabe?”
“Sorry. I was thinking of something else.”
“Right.”
She fiddled with the tab on the lid of her cup. They’d covered every banal topic they could while dancing away from the only one that mattered. Silence stretched between them. Gabe was reluctant to break it, and even more reluctant to end this strange interlude. Suze finally took the lead.
“Well, if you’re going to make Albuquerque this evening, you probably should hit the road.”
“Probably should.”
“Unless...”
She flicked the tab. Up. Down. Didn’t quite meet his eyes.
“Unless?” he prompted.
“Unless you’d like to swing by my place for breakfast first. It’s out of your way but...” The barest hint of a smile flitted across her face. “I still can’t cook worth a damn but I have learned to concoct a relatively passable Mexican frittata.”
It was an olive branch. A tentative step toward putting the past behind them and becoming friends again. That’s all it was, Gabe told himself fiercely. All it could be. Yet he snatched it with both hands.
“You’re on.”
* * *
Even before he snapped his seat belt and keyed Ole Blue’s ignition, his thoughts had done a one-eighty. This was a mistake. Possibly one of epic proportions. There was no way in hell either of them could back to being just friends. But as Gabe trailed her maroon sports car through the now-bright Arizona morning, he came up with a dozen different explanations for his temporary insanity.
Neither of them had tried to deny that their frequent separations while they were both in uniform had created the first cracks in their marriage. The cracks had gotten wider every time Gabe suggested they choose different career paths, ones that wouldn’t put them on opposite sides of the globe so often. The fissures had become a yawning crevasse when he’d issued a flat ultimatum.
Looking back, he knew he shouldn’t have forced her to choose between him and the Air Force. Or hung up his uniform and headed for Oklahoma while they were still struggling to balance the deep, visceral satisfaction she got from her job with his gnawing need to get back to his roots.
And he sure as hell shouldn’t have let her admission that she’d turned to someone else for comfort eat like acid on his pride. They’d been separated for six months by then. Already talking around the edges of divorce, when they talked at all.
That was when he’d heard the rumor. Third hand, passed via a friend of a friend of a friend. It hadn’t meant anything, the well-meaning pal had assured him. Suzanne had already given the guy his marching orders.
Gabe knew then he should’ve swallowed his rage at the thought of Suzanne, his Suzanne, in another man’s arms, jumped on a plane and tried one last time to heal the breach.
Which is exactly what he would’ve done if she hadn’t called back while he was in the process of throwing a few things in an overnight bag. Every word icy and clipped, she’d told him she’d applied for two weeks’ leave. She needed to get away. Think things through. And, like a fool, he’d let her go. Didn’t ask where. Didn’t try to track her down. Just stubbornly, stupidly believed deep in his heart they’d find a way back to each other. He’d continued to believe it right up until she FedExed him the divorce papers.
As the memories flashed by with the same speed as the miles, his mind went to a place he knew it shouldn’t. Maybe Suze had offered more than an olive branch back there at McDonald’s. Maybe these past three years had been as lonely for her as they had for him. Maybe, just maybe, she was giving him the chance to correct the most colossal blunder of his life.
If she was, and if he did, all ten levels of hell would freeze over before he let her go again.
* * *
The fierce vow probably explained why she’d barely closed the door of her condo behind them before he made his move. That, and the fact that a swift glance around her airy living room revealed no reminders of their broken marriage. Even with the wood shutters tilted against the morning sun, enough light slanted in for Gabe to see the furniture was new. So was the triple panel of bold, slashing color mounted above the sofa. Even the oversize area rug that looked like it had been woven from fabric scraps in dozens of different colors and patterns.
She must have caught his frown as he studied the rug. Tossing her keys and small clutch purse on the tiled counter that separated the living room from the kitchen, she addressed the issue head on. “I’m only renting this place until I decide where to buy.”
He answered with a shrug that added an edge in her voice.
“It came furnished, so I put our Turkish...” She stopped, restarted. “So I put the Turkish carpets in storage with the rest of my things.”
For some reason that deliberate midcourse correction pissed Gabe off. She couldn’t admit they’d ever shared a home? Couldn’t cherish the small treasures they’d collected from all over the world?
Conveniently forgetting that he’d boxed up pretty much every item he’d carted back to Oklahoma and stashed them in the attic of his home, Gabe forced a grin. “Seems like I remember us rolling around naked on those Turkish carpets a few times.”
The surprise that flashed across her face gave him a dart of fierce satisfaction. It also provided a chance to dig the spur in a little deeper.
“More than a few times, now that I think about it. Often enough for one of us to get a little carpet burn on her ass, anyway.”
When he waggled his brows, she laughed and shook her head.
“That was you, big guy. After which, you threatened to tell folks you’d been wounded in the line of duty.”
“At which point you threatened to pin a purple heart on said wound.”
“Would’ve served you right if I had!”
They were both grinning now, and Gabe moved in for the kill. Lifting a hand, he brushed his knuckles down her cheek. “We had some good times, didn’t we?”
Her laughter faded. The twin emerald pools he’d seen himself in so many times stared up at him. Gabe waited, his heart slamming against his ribs, until her breath left on a whisper of a sigh.
“Yes, we did.”
He opened his palm