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cooled off. “Nope, just had to say thank you for saving my life and covering me up before everyone in the plane saw my rack.”
    A tic twitched in the corner of his eye. Because she’d said rack ? “Ah, come on. You have to admit it was a serious tension buster after what we’d been through.”
    “What you’ve been through.” He nodded his head slowly, his features tightening. “Right. You’ll have to pardon me if I’m not finding the whole peep show quite so mood-lifting.”
    Okay then. Way to go throwing a wet blanket over the rest of the day. “Well, uh, fair enough. I have to hit the stage now. Gotta warm up my background singer doowops.”
    She started to turn when an even heavier wet blanket—metaphorically speaking—hit her. How could she have forgotten such an all-important detail? Just because some flyboy crossed her path?
    Chloe faced him again, wind tangling curls she still hadn’t figured out how to tame. “I really”— really —“hate to ask this. But after the show, could you help me navigate this place and find the ship’s doctor?”
    His irritability morphed to alert attention. “Why didn’t you tell us straight up you’d been hurt during the explosion? We’ll find the ship’s doc right now. The show can do without you.”
    “No, no, really. I’m not hurt. I, uh . . .” God, it was hard enough talking to a new doctor about something as personal, as intrinsically private, as her organ transplant surgery. She definitely couldn’t share it with this standoffish stranger, even if he’d saved her life. “I have bad allergies, and if I don’t take care of them by tonight, I won’t be able to sing tomorrow. I packed plenty of medication,” antirejection drugs and an assortment of others, “in my luggage, which has all been sent to our lodgings onshore. I had enough for a couple of days stashed in my purse, but my bag is now either ashes or at the bottom of the sea.”
    “You have allergies?” He peered at her over the top of his shades, irritation returning clear as day.
    She liked the sunglasses in place better than his unshaded eyes, after all. “Never mind. If you’re too busy to help me, I’ll ask someone else.”
    “Not a problem.” He held up a hand with a beleaguered sigh. “I’ll be waiting for you after the show.”
    It felt disloyal to be torqued off at the guy who’d just saved her life, but Jimmy Gage was one uptight dude.
    She couldn’t have stopped the words bubbling out if she’d tried. She didn’t try. “Well, who shot your cat?”
    “Shot my cat?”
    “Who pissed you off? I’m really sorry to be such a bother.”
    “A bother? A bother ?” He stepped closer, his scowling eyebrows sinking below the top of his sunglasses.
    Silently, she held her ground, refusing to be afraid.
    Besides, it wasn’t like he could hurt her with so many witnesses around.
    “Listen, Shirley Temple,” he batted aside a blond curl snaking on the wind toward his face, “my crew and I are a little short on time right now because you and your show people just had to have a fancy escort and fanfare. You couldn’t simply arrive covertly and do your performance.” He was practically nose to nose with her, the scent of aftershave, salty water, and something unmistakably masculine teasing her nose. “We’re in the Middle East. It’s dangerous. People could have died out there today because you and your group put yourselves—and thereby us—in unnecessary danger.”
    She started to shoot right back at him that how they arrived wasn’t her decision. And she’d given up a prime performance in Atlanta to be here on this boat, entertaining troops like him who put their lives on the line for their country. She deserved thanks, not—
    Except she wasn’t here for gratitude. She’d traveled across the globe to repay a debt to another soldier who’d saved her life with a donor card. In honor of that dead servicewoman’s sacrifice, Chloe would keep her angry words to