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tonight.”
     
    “Yes, what are you doing here? I assumed you lived off-base like Staff Sergeant Stark?” Lelia stood up and walked over to a table where more towels were stacked. She picked one up and began wiping her sweaty limbs.
     
    Patrick stood up as well and watched her for a moment, helplessly admiring the way the damp gym clothes clung to every curve. The frisson of jealousy that he felt at her mention of Stark caught him by surprise. “How do you know where Stark lives?” He could've kicked himself before the words left his mouth.
     
    Lelia shrugged, giving him a puzzled look, and he realized that his tone was too sharp and had probably revealed the emotion behind it. “What? Are his whereabouts top secret? If they are, then someone should tell him to stop discussing it with everybody. He's invited the entire Amazonian Guard back to his place at one time or another. You know what a flirt he is.”
     
    Patrick decided it would be wiser to simply respond to her initial comment. Asking her if Stark ever flirted with her would be like dropping a live grenade down his pants. “I let my apartment go the last time I was deployed. So I'm staying in the barracks for the next few weeks while I'm aboard Camp Lejeune.”
     
    Lelia took a long drink of water from the bottle that sat beside the towels. She turned back toward him with a brow cocked at a querying angle. “Aboard Camp Lejeune? Perhaps I missed something, but don't you think this base is a bit large to be a ship? I could be wrong, but I doubt it would float.”
     
    Patrick smiled. “It's a navy thing, and since we're part of the navy, it's a Marine Corps thing as well. Marines are always on board a ship, whether it's land, a building, a helicopter, or an actual ship.” He moved to where she was, and stood looking down at her. The water had left a tempting bead trembling on her lower lip, and he found himself unable to resist the lure.
     
    As though sensing his intentions, Lelia moved her head back. “So where were you deployed, Patrick?” she asked, apparently forgetting her reluctance to use his first name.
     
    He responded, his mind still distracted by the full curve of her lower lip. “Iraq.” He could have immediately kicked himself in the ass as he saw her face batten down with the speed of a cutter in a nor'easter.
     
    “I've got to get back to the barracks,” Lelia said as she scurried out the door.
     
    Patrick stood beside the table, struggling with the impulse to knock the neatly folded, pristine white towels to the floor. He should've known mentioning Iraq would set her off. He avoided politics whenever possible, but he knew that for many Arabs, American involvement in that region was interpreted as an attack on them all.
     
    What the hell was wrong with him anyway? He should be thanking God that he'd had such a lucky escape. Instead, all he could think about was his next opportunity to kiss her. He shook his head as though he were the one covered in sweat. He had to get his head together before he wound up in a shitload of trouble. Losing his rank was a real possibility. He knew Colonel Brown wouldn't hesitate to can his career on the spot if he screwed the pooch on this one. She'd made it clear that this was a priority assignment, and she didn't tolerate fuckups. He rubbed his hands over his closely cropped hair, trying to gather his thoughts. After contemplating for a while, he picked up the bottle of water Lelia had left on the table. He raised it to his lips and was convinced that her taste lingered on the cold plastic. He strolled slowly over to the exit door, still shaking his head. Only one thing was certain at this point: this had the potential to be a cluster fuck of mammoth proportions.
     
    But damned if he knew how to contain it.
    * * *
     
    Lelia looked up, irritated by the incessant giggling from the other side of the room. She'd appropriated a small desk to process the endless paperwork her position required, and was