“Well.” He forced a deep, steadying breath. He’d started this; he needed to be the one to restore the status quo. “I guess that was probably inevitable.”

She tucked her chin to her chest, slowly removed her hands. “Yeah,” she agreed, sounding breathless. “I guess it was.”

She backed away then, crossed her arms beneath her breasts, and shook her head. “Doesn’t mean—”

“Anything,” he cut in, so she’d think he was on the same page. “I know.”

She smiled ruefully. “I was going to say, it doesn’t mean it was smart.”

“Oh. Right.” So it had meant something to her, too?

“But you’re right about the other, too. It didn’t mean anything. We… we’re both processing a lot of information right now. We’re both running on empty.”

He should have felt relieved. Instead, he felt unreasonably deflated.

“And you’re right on another count,” she said on a bracing breath. “I need sleep. I’m going to turn in.”

“Good night,” he said and waited for her to leave him so he could figure out what had just happened, and why it took everything in him to let her walk away.

When she stopped and turned back, his heart slammed into his ribs. And when she slowly walked back to him, and reached for his hand, his mouth went bone dry.

“I came out here to give you this.” She pressed a folded paper into his hand. “Call him.”

This time she left him there, closing the terrace door behind her.

For someone who prided himself on his reaction time, he stood like a freaking lump, in a lust-induced stupor, staring at the space she’d just occupied. And yeah, it was lust. No way in hell could he have feelings for that woman. Not this fast. Not… not Ramon’s widow.

He shook his head. Shook it off. And finally looked down and unfolded the paper.

It was a phone number he recognized. He’d committed it to memory long ago, but had never dialed.

“Call him.”

He stood there for a long time, staring blankly at the night.

Finally he walked over to a deck chair and sat down heavily. His heart beat like crazy. He could feel it in his throat… right there with the knot that damn near choked him.

His hand wasn’t exactly steady when he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. It took a full minute to work up the nerve to dial. Took more nerve to keep from hanging up as he waited for the connection to Sydney, Australia.

Finally it started ringing.

He propped an elbow on his thigh, dropped his head into his hand, and pinched the bridge of his nose. And waited, a split second away from hanging on or hanging up.

Hanging up had about won out when he heard a pick-up on the other end of the line.

“Cooper. Leave a message.”

• • •

Jamie Cooper lay utterly still in bed, fingers clutched around his phone. The message light had been blinking when he woke up. He’d listened to it four times now. And he still felt dead inside.

Finally, he rolled to a sitting position; his feet hit the cold wood floor beside the bed and he shivered. It felt like a ghost had just drifted over his shadow.

Brown. Eight years ago, all he’d thought about was what he wanted to do to the man he had once called friend. Then he hadn’t thought of him at all—except when he thought of home and all the reasons he couldn’t go back there.

“Come back to bed, babe.”

Lonnie. He’d forgotten she was here. Why was she here? He dragged a weary hand through his hair. Oh, yeah. The party had run late, he’d drunk too much, and she’d convinced him it was a good night for a sleepover. Since it was pushing four in the morning by the time they hit the sheets, he’d been too wasted to argue. But he didn’t do sleepovers. Not with women who would read way too much into a “good night” followed directly by a “good morning.”

He squinted at the bedside clock. Two p.m. Okay. Not morning.

“Babe?” she repeated, raising up on an elbow behind him and touching a warm hand to his bare back.

“You probably need to get going,” he said, to keep from telling her to mind her own business. He was not her “babe” and this entire setup reeked of manipulation and expectation on her part. “Help yourself to a shower before you go,” he said, standing. “I’m going for a run. You want me to call you a cab before I head out?”

Yeah, it was cold but he’d been straight with her from day one. He had nothing to give a woman beyond a good time and a fast good-bye.

“No. I’m fine,” she said in a small voice and he knew he had hurt her.

He should be more sorry about that. His mother would not be proud. “Take care, then.” He pulled on a pair of running shorts and jerked a sweatshirt over his head. He grabbed a pair of socks and his running shoes before he left the room, closing the door behind him.

Then he headed out into the cold damp afternoon and ran as if he could outdistance his past.

A past that Primetime Brown had dusted off, shaken out, and aired like a bag full of dirty laundry and bad memories. Hard feelings. Big regrets.

None of which he was able to outrun in nine miles, so he pushed it to twelve. When he returned to his cottage he was soaked with sweat, breathing hard, muscles quivering. And Brown’s call was still on his mind.

“Please call,” he’d said just before ringing off and leaving two different numbers for him to call.

Fat fucking chance.

Thankfully, Lonnie was gone. All he felt was relief as he put on a pot of coffee, stripped, then hit the shower. Where he stood beneath the steaming spray and told himself to forget about the call. Forget about the lump that had lodged in his throat the moment he’d recognized Brown’s voice. Forget that they’d once been as close as brothers.

He wasn’t the one who had betrayed that bond. Brown was.

“Urgent, my ass,” he muttered under his breath.

Fuck him and his eight-years-too-late explanation and appeal for help in setting the record straight. What was the point?

There wasn’t any.

In a foul, crappy mood, he finally got dressed and poured himself some coffee. For a long time he stared broodingly out his kitchen window at the thick clouds rolling in from the west. Finally, he booted up his laptop and checked his e-mail. A note from his agent. A message from Lonnie—already? He didn’t bother to open either.

Instead, he clicked on Create Mail. Let his fingers hover over the keys for a long moment before finally typing Bobby Taggart’s address. He debated even longer over the subject line, almost hit Delete a dozen times. In the end, he finally hammered it all out—everything Brown had said, what had supposedly happened, what he was planning, the name and phone number of some Jones person if he couldn’t reach Brown—and hit Send. It wasn’t as if he and Taggart were pen pals—he had Brown to thank for that split, too. He kept track of him was all. Last he knew—over nine months ago—Bobby was back in Afghanistan. Still in the thick of it, working for a private contractor, still taking fire. Still as pissed as Jamie was that Mike Brown had sold them down the river.

Only now he claimed he hadn’t.

He should go hit the weights. He had a big shoot scheduled in two weeks at Bondi Beach. Swimwear. Hot models. Big money.

Instead, he walked back to the bedroom, opened his bureau drawer, and dug until he found it. His one-eyed jack. The card—a jack of hearts—was timeworn, yellowed, and burned around the edges. He rubbed his thumb over the faded surface, thinking of what it had once meant to him. What it still meant to him.

Several long moments later, he tucked it back in the drawer where it belonged, packed a bag, and headed for the gym.

• • •

Bobby Taggart lay on his narrow cot, trying not to think about how fucking hot he was as the Afghan sun baked down on his tent like a blowtorch.

Outside, engines gunned and revved; the scent of diesel and gunpowder drifted inside on the ever-present dust that seeped into every nook, cranny, and crevice known to man and machine.

He’d returned to base after a sixteen-hour patrol. Exhausted, bone dry, and so hot he thought his head would explode, he’d stripped down to the bare essentials—boxers, T-shirt, and his AR-15—and collapsed. He was about to let sleep take him when Arnold poked his head inside.

“There’s a computer open,” his battle buddy said, standing in the open tent flap.

That snapped his eyes open. “Appreciate it.”

“No prob.” Then Arnold was gone.

Their civilian commo setup was primitive at best. Five computers shared by upwards of two hundred men did not make for easy access.

He forced himself up off the cot and walked barefoot across the thirty yards of dirt to the commo tent at the center of the base. The free computer had already been taken, but since there was only one other guy ahead of him in one of the lines, he decided he’d stick it out. Such was life on this all-expenses-paid getaway to beautiful bombed-out Afghanistan.

Twenty minutes later, he sat down in front of a screen and keyed in his ID and password. It had been two weeks since he’d checked his mail, and while the sad lack of people reaching out to touch him was no surprise, the fact that there was a message from Hondo Cooper was.

The subject line read: Primetime.

Bobby’s knee-jerk reaction was rage. A thick, bone-deep rage that he’d buried deep and only let out when he was drunk or certain he was going to die.

Why the hell was Cooper e-mailing him about that bastard? Maybe Brown was dead? Cause for celebration.

Or not.

Maybe he didn’t want to know.