“Quit changing the subject, Kris,” Jack snapped. “I’ve been biting my tongue and keeping my silence ever since we got ourselves stuck in a burning aircraft with a canopy that wouldn’t open.”
“Oh,” Kris whispered. “That time I almost got us both killed.”
“Yes, that time,” Jack said. “I woke up with the smell of smoke in my oxygen system and you not answering my calls and a canopy that wouldn’t budge. All I could think of was that you’d finally gone and done it, gotten yourself killed, and my heart was breaking.”
“Heart?” Kris whispered. Was Jack really talking about something intimate to the two of them, not just a day in, day out job?
“Don’t change the subject,” Jack growled. “You didn’t have to fly that mission. We could have given it to anyone. Hell, even a drone could have flown it.”
“A drone would not have dodged those missiles the way I did,” Kris said, jumping to her defense. “And besides, I saved your precious Marines when I saw what they were heading into. I saved most of your company.”
“There you go, changing the topic again.”
“Well, damn it, what is the topic, Jack!”
Jack took a deep breath before he went on. “I can’t stand to watch you going out day after day trying to get yourself killed.”
“I’m not trying to get myself killed.”
“Well, it sure looks that way from where I’m standing,” Jack snarled.
“I do what I have to do,” Kris shot back.
“You do not!” came right back at her. “Any reasonable person, with the sense God promised a billy goat, would find other ways to get what she wants done that didn’t involve her going out and sticking her head in every lion’s mouth that comes along.”
Jack paused long enough to slam his hand against one of the metal patches they’d help weld to the Wasp’s hide. At half a gee, his feet lifted off the deck, and he had to force himself back down.
“Kris, you do have choices. If I hear you say one more time that you don’t have any choice but to go out and nearly get yourself killed, I’m going to scream. You have choices. If you’d spend a few extra seconds thinking about what you’re about to do, you’d see those choices and maybe do something different.”
“Do them instead of trying my hand at flossing some passing lion’s teeth, you mean,” Kris said, giving him the kind of look through her eyelashes that some actresses used to good effect.
“Don’t you go trying to make me laugh,” Jack said, but a hint of a smile was creeping around the edges of his mouth.
“I like you when you smile,” Kris said.
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Okay, I’ll stay on your topic. What does it matter to you whether I’m one of those Longknifes that dies young and gloriously? From the look of Grampa Ray, I’m not sure that living a long life is all it’s cracked up to be. He’s getting way too good at dodging his problems and ignoring his conscience.”
“We are not talking about your relatives,” Jack said.
“Then answer my question. What does it matter whether I splatter myself over the next gas giant we come to, trying to get reaction mass for the Wasp? You won’t be in the launch with me. You won’t have to take my bullet. It will be just me and Nelly.”
“And I don’t get a vote on the matter, either,” Nelly pointed out.
“You stay out of this,” both Kris and Jack said.
“Fine. Okay. I’m just the computer, but when are you going to answer the girl’s question, Jack?” Nelly said.
Kris raised an eyebrow to add her own emphasis to Nelly’s question.
Jack scowled and looked at the hatch like he wanted to walk out on the both of them. Down in Engineering, they were having trouble maintaining the acceleration. They’d pop up to more than half a gee, then just as suddenly fall well below it. If it was the engines, they were in trouble. If it was the quality of the new reaction mass, they might survive it. Whatever it was, Jack risked falling flat on his face if he tried stomping out on her.
He must have realized it about the time Kris did, because that tiny hint of a smile was back. Then he sobered up.
“I’ve had to watch you die twice in the last couple of months. First when we peeled what that bomb left of you off the marble floor on Texarkana. I had to do it again when I woke up ahead of you after you crashed”—Kris started to object and Jack waved her back—“after you did that superb bit of flying that set us down so smoothly in the middle of a swamp. My heart won’t take much more of this.”
“I’m sorry I’ve stressed you,” Kris said curtly. “It wasn’t all that much fun for me. And if I may point out, it was me helping you limp away from that Greenfeld pile of junk before it blew. My heart got a bit of a workout, too.”
Jack shook his head ruefully. “Right. Heart. It pumps blood as Nelly would tell you. Kris, I don’t care what you do to my blood pressure or my pulse. That’s all part of the job.”
He paused and took a deep breath. “Kris, I’ve made the worst mistake a bodyguard can make. I’m supposed to care for your body, but it’s you I care about. And you keep right on breaking my heart.”
That wasn’t something Kris saw coming.
Now it was her turn to talk, and nothing came to mind.
Nothing at all.
What she wanted to do was launch herself across the room at Jack. She had never wanted to bury herself in anyone’s arms like she wanted his arms around her.
She didn’t, of course. Halfway across the room, Engineering was likely to hiccup and drop Kris on the deck. Hard. Probably put her back on crutches.
Now wouldn’t that be a fun one to explain to the Wasp’s medical team?
And even if she did get across the room with no harm done, it just wouldn’t do to have some sailor duck his head through the hatch to find the commodore and her Marine skipper locked in a romantic embrace.
Especially with her being one of those damn Longknifes.
Wouldn’t do at all.
Damn!
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” came out sounding so lame.
“No, that’s not what I mean,” Kris immediately countered her own words.
“Jack, did you have to pick now to drop this on me?” came across way too argumentative.
“You’ve been rather busy since you crashed into that mud bank, Kris. I haven’t been able to get a word in edgewise.”
Kris chuckled wryly. “Yeah, you’re right. Way too busy saving the world or destroying it.”
Jack shrugged.
“Jack, when we get back, do you think you and I could have a quiet dinner. Candlelit, maybe. Could we try to talk this out, because, you see, I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t in my life.”
“Oh,” sounded like Jack was as surprised to hear that as Kris was that it had slipped out.
That one word hung in the air between them for quite a long time.
Kris couldn’t tell if she was just starting to open her mouth, or Jack started first, but it didn’t matter.
The hatch opened, and Colonel Cortez ducked his head in. “Oh, that’s where you two are. We’ve been looking all over for you. Did you turn Nelly off?”
“No. I’m on. I’m just not taking messages,” Kris’s computer answered.
“Oh,” the colonel said, clearly not understanding what this was all about.
“Jack was just counseling me on my risk-taking,” Kris said. “As usual, he thinks I’m in way over my head. And, as usual, he’s right.”
“We can continue this later,” Jack said. “Like you said. When we get back to human space.”