Page 39 of Operation Rescue
She stopped her pacing to look at him. “I…never thought about it like that. I always worried about the time you were active, under fire. Not the downtime in between.”
“The worst was waiting to find out if your buddy or copilot had been found dead. Or injured. Then it became waiting to see if he was going to live.”
She shook her head slowly. She’d never been able to wrap her mind around that part of what he did, and so tended to shy away from just the idea. But now she asked, “How do you deal with that?”
“You find a distraction. For me it was reading. For some guys it was drinking. For some it was working out, or running a ten-mile circuit around the base. Others found something else to work on.”
She turned to look out the window where another man with that kind of experience had his head under the hood of her car.
“Which is why I have a trophy-winning sniper working on my car?”
“Exactly.”
She walked back over to the couch and sat. She felt a sense of awkwardness she’d never felt around Blaine before. She’d been angry with him, worried about him, and above all she’d loved him with her whole being, but she’d never felt awkward. She never had to, because he always seemed to understand when something was gnawing at her. And usually, after some effort, had her laughing about it eventually. She missed that. More than she ever could have guessed she would.
She wondered if he ever missed that, too. Missed them. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer to that, so instead went with something she already knew the answer to.
“Do you really miss flying?”
He studied her for a moment, in that way she’d just been thinking about. Then with a half shrug, he said, “Flying itself, no. Because I still do it.”
A chill rocketed through her. She stared at him, feeling a rush of that old, horrible sensation. She’d thought it was over, that time of worrying about him. It was a moment before she could even speak.
“You’re still flying?”
“I just don’t get shot at anymore.” At her no doubt stunned expression he added, “I’m teaching now. The new kids, coming up.”
She swallowed, almost engulfed by a flood of relief that at least he wasn’t in combat any longer. She grabbed for the first thing she could find words for. “You say that like you don’t like it.”
Another shrug. “I kind of miss the high, the adrenaline rush when you’re under fire. It’s different, when you’re not in a combat situation.”
“Thank God,” she murmured under her breath. “How could you possibly want to go back to…that? Being shot at, people trying to kill you?”
For a long moment he just looked at her, with that thoughtful Blaine look she knew so well. When he finally spoke, what he asked seemed a total non sequitur to her.
“You want to go back to the accounting firm?”
She blinked. “What?”
“You know, go back to the steady, known paycheck, the income that doesn’t rely on your talent, your artistic eye, and whether you can convince a customer you’re the best one for the job.”
“No, of course not, but what does that—”
She cut herself off as she realized the analogy he was making.
“You want to do the work your heart’s in,” he said quietly. “And it took a lot of nerve to make the break to do it.”
She couldn’t deny that, although she was a little surprised he realized it. Which she shouldn’t have been. Apparently she had forgotten just how on the nose he could be when he put his mind to it.
“It’s not that much different,” he said.
“Except for the getting shot at part,” she couldn’t help pointing out.
“Point ceded,” he agreed. “But I always was more of an adrenaline junkie than you.”
“I got that the time you jumped off the garage roof onto that trampoline,” she said dryly.
“Hey, I was seven,” he said, suddenly grinning. It nearly took her breath away. As did the fact that they were actually managing to talk without sniping at each other.
