The Right Stuff. Lori Wilde

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