“You can call me Burke if you want.” He held out the offer like a tentative olive branch. Perhaps the fact that he had Choctaw blood in him would help her open up more to him. He saw her sit back on her heels, studying him with her intense brown eyes, her lips compressed as she considered his request.
“Yeah…well, okay…but continue to call me Paredes or Sergeant.”
“Great. How about a coffee break? Or do you get those around here?” he asked wryly. “I’m about twenty-four hours without sleep and I want to keep going today and crash tonight.”
“Oh…” Angel felt foolish. She was being very self-centered right now. Overly so. Why hadn’t she considered that the sergeant—Burke—had had a long, hard flight and was probably sleep-deprived? If he’d been a woman, Angel would have instantly considered that possibility. Angry with herself, she realized she was being prejudiced toward him because he was a man. Well, men weren’t exactly stellar in her universe, anyway—and it had taken five long years for her to get over the last man she’d allowed herself to love. At that time, Angel had sworn she’d never tangle with another one. The pain of lost love was too much to ever bear twice.
“Er, sure. We can take a break. Let’s go.” She quickly scrambled to her feet, her right hand beneath her left elbow to stabilize her shoulder.
“Music to my ears,” Burke said to her, slowly unwinding in turn. Dusting off his knees and the seat of his pants, he followed Angel to the door. He didn’t make the mistake of trying to open it this time, letting her do it, instead.
Angel gave the gaping hole in the door a sad look. “I gotta get someone over here to fix that,” she muttered, more to herself than to him. At the front of the dispensary, she saw the doctor still working on paperwork at her desk.
“We’re gonna take a break, Liz.”
“Fine. You okay, Angel? Is the pain in your arm still bad?”
“No, I’m okay. I just made too quick a movement. I’m still learning how to cope with this.” She grinned apologetically at the doctor.
Elizabeth chuckled. “Give yourself some latitude, Angel. It’s gonna take forty-eight hours for most of the pain to dissipate after that shot I gave you the other day, okay? Let Sergeant Gifford help you.”
“I am,” she said grimly, opening the outer door.
Burke walked at Angel’s shoulder as they headed back to the mess hall. It was noon, and there was a lot more activity around the Quonset hut. The ring of female laughter and chatter was everywhere.
“This sounds like a pretty happy place,” he murmured. Unable to help himself, Burke slanted a glance down at Angel’s profile. Her lips had been pursed. When he’d made the comment, they softened. She had a beautiful mouth. Gorgeous. Too gorgeous, as far as he was concerned.
“Major Stevenson is a wild woman in disguise. She runs BJS the way she thinks it should be run.” Angel opened her hand and looked up at Burke. His eyes were darker and there was a smoldering quality to them that took her off guard. It was a look a man gave a woman he was interested in. Instantly, Angel’s heart pounded—with dread, with euphoria. Confused, she asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Burke slowed to a halt, as did Angel, leaving a few feet between them. He’d been caught red-handed. But then, no woman had ever challenged him on his desires. Honesty was the best policy. “I saw your mouth relax, instead of being bunched in a thin line.” He hesitated. “I think you have a beautiful mouth when you’re not uptight.” Ouch, he thought as Angel’s eyes narrowed speculatively.
“That didn’t exactly come out right, did it?” he offered apologetically.
“No…it didn’t.”
“Are you upset about me thinking you have a beautiful mouth or for thinking that you’re uptight?” He saw her eyes widen, and then her mouth curved into a devilish grin. Relief swept through Burke.
“How about I let you sweat this one out and figure it out for yourself, Sergeant?”
Burke had no one to blame but himself. “Looks like I need more sensitivity-training classes.”
“Looks like. Come on, I’m hungry.” Angel turned and strode quickly toward the mess. Her heart was pounding and she felt shaky. She had a beautiful mouth! At least Burke thought so. No man had ever said that about her. The compliment had been real; she’d seen the sincerity in Burke’s stormy-looking eyes and in the way he’d opened his hands toward her while trying to explain himself. Shaking her head, she decided the man had more foot-in-mouth disease than most males had.
Put in his place, Burke stood in the chow line with about ten other women, Angel in front of him. He noticed a lot of glances, sizing him up. Some seemed admiring, others, like Angel’s, guarded and circumspect. The noise level in the hall was high, with laughter, teasing and joking going on constantly as the female personnel ate lunch at their respective tables.
The fried chicken, dumplings and salad looked surprisingly good. Burke thanked the two women cooks, who both blushed furiously at his sincere compliments. Following Angel to a table that had just been vacated by four women pilots in black flight uniforms, he sat down opposite her and said, “Coffee?”
“Er, yeah…” Angel had forgotten to get it.
“Stay there,” Burke said, holding out his hand. “I’ll fetch you a cup.” And then he hesitated. “Unless I’m out of line?”
Grinning, Angel shook her head. “Naw, go ahead.”
As he walked away, she tried to ignore how tall, strong and confident he was. Just as she was going to bite into a drumstick, Snow Queen, one of the pilots, came over and bent down near her ear.
“Where did you get that hunk, Angel? Me and the girls at the other table are salivating over him. Is he married? Got a million kids? Divorced? What? We wanna know.”
Glancing up at the red-haired pilot, whose green eyes were filled with humor, Angel frowned. “Gimme a break, will you? He just got here a couple of hours ago.”
“We noticed you didn’t seem too taken with him. Is it open season?”
Angel knew what that comment meant. If she wasn’t interested personally in Burke, provided all signals were “go” and he wasn’t married, another one of the enlisted women had her eye on him—already.
“What is this? A man-hungry squadron?”
Snow Queen chortled and squeezed her right arm gently. “Listen, three and a half years without hardly a man around here have left all of us like horny, slavering wolves. Anything on two legs that’s male gets our attention. There’s still not enough guys in the squadron as far as we’re concerned.”
Giving her a sour grin, Angel said, “Gimme some time, will you? We’re not exactly getting along. So far, the situation’s touchy.”
“Umm, okay. Well, just to let you know, my crew chief, Tess Fairbanks, has her eye on him.”
Groaning, Angel twisted to look at the table behind here, where Tess sat eating with the rest of Snow Queen’s ground crew. Tess was a tall, lanky Kentucky gal with light brown hair, aqua-blue eyes and a wide, easy grin. She lifted her hand and did a thumbs-up in Angel’s direction. Angel gave her a thumbs-down.
“Okay,” Snow Queen said, straightening. “Your guy is comin’ back so I’m skedaddling. Just keep us updated on this situation, huh?” She grinned and left.
Burke saw the woman pilot leave Angel’s side as he approached. Angel was scowling again, biting into a drumstick like a wolf biting the hand that fed it. “Here you go.”
Wiping her mouth with a paper napkin, Angel muttered, “Thanks…”
Getting