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heartbeat.”
    “Yeah, he said I was emasculating.”
    Hugh was thinking maybe he might like to look this guy up, use him for a refresher course on martial arts skills. After missions like this one, he needed to blow off steam.
    She sighed. “The rat bastard was good in bed though. I do miss that.”
    What the—?
    Shock zipped through him, along with an adrenaline surge and a passel of distracting images of this take-no-prisoners woman putting her everything into all-night, sweaty sex.
    Not professional thoughts.
    He cleared his throat. “You know you’re going to live, right? And you’re going to be sorry you told me so much.”
    She stayed quiet so long, he thought for a minute she wouldn’t answer. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll never see you again, so it doesn’t matter. Although I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”
    “Surprised, maybe.”
    For a few seconds there, he’d even managed to stop thinking about Marissa stuck in the wreckage of a plane, stop wondering how long she’d lived, knowing that their child had died instantly. Had anyone else on the craft been alive in her final seconds to offer a distraction from the fear, to give her comfort?
    Although one thing was damn certain. Marissa wouldn’t have been talking like this. She’d been shy and fragile, and it killed him five times over every single day that he couldn’t have been on that airplane instead of her and their daughter.
    Amelia kept drawing circles in the sand with a ragged nail, her swirls growing like one of Tilly’s scribble-art pieces he still kept on his refrigerator even though the paper had long ago yellowed with age.
    “Hugh, it’s tough not to think about regrets right now. Especially the huge one. Like thinking about never seeing Alaska or having sex again… Never becoming a mother.”
    He looked from the ground to her face sharply. “You want kids?”
    “Joshua just wriggled his fingers.” She smiled softly. “He’s really alive.”
    He didn’t want her thinking about the child.
    Hell, he didn’t want to think about the toddler a few feet away who was likely dead, and if the kid lived in some kind of coma state, not being able to do a damn thing for him… Yeah, that dropped Dante’s inferno to a new rock-bottom level.
    Time to discuss something else. “I’ve lived in Alaska. It’s incredible. You should take a cruise up there when you get out of here, give yourself a chance to decompress.”
    She laughed hoarsely. “Maybe you could join me, and we’ll have lots of great sex in our stateroom so I can erase both of my regrets at once.”
    Again, he chuckled along with her and even wondered what it would be like to “decompress” with her. He hadn’t lived like a monk since his wife died. The thought of getting married again made him sick to his stomach. So he’d settled into a life of one-night hookups and casual relationships. Some called him a serial dater.
    His only commitment? Throwing himself into high-risk rescues while crossing days off the calendar until he could see his wife and kid again in the afterlife.
    Right now, though, the thought of marking time with Amelia Bailey sounded… intriguing. “I may not be able to live up to the rat bastard’s tantric reputation.”
    “He wasn’t that good in bed.” She rolled her pretty blue eyes.
    “Glad to know you’re willing to lower the bar for regular saps like me.” He smiled, really smiled.
    And she grinned back, the kind of grin that lit up a person’s face, the last sort of reaction he expected to get from her here, today. Maybe she was getting punch-drunk on insanity and exhaustion. Could be that he was too. Regardless, right now he could envision one mind-blowing decompression session with this woman he’d barely met. Hell, he didn’t even really know what she looked like under all the grime, just that she had piercingly blue eyes, an upturned nose, and a hundred-watt smile.
    A smile that faded.
    “Hugh, this is all too silly. I’m not