“I don’t want to see him again,” Alyssa admitted. “Ever.”
“It shouldn’t be too bad if we keep our distance,” Jules told her. “He’s going to be pretty busy getting his team ready to go into the plane. Just keep it cool. Don’t let him get to you.”
Alyssa nodded. “Yeah.” Cool. She was good at cool.
She’d be fine. As long as Starrett didn’t touch her. Or talk to her. Or look at her.
If he came too close, she just might go up in flames.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Five
“So.” Stan sat down next to Teri, fitting himself carefully into the less than spacious airline seat. “Two more hours, and we’ll be in Kazbekistan. Did you know that it’s called the Pit?”
She’d put down the novel she’d been reading and turned slightly in her seat to face him, all big brown eyes framed by short dark hair, small nose, delicately shaped lips, slightly pointed chin.
“Yeah,” she said. “Are you all right?”
The question caught him by surprise. Of course he was—he was always all right. But on the other hand . . .
“I know how I get when my expectations aren’t met,” she told him. “I mean, you deal with it, sure, but . . . You were expecting something easy. The Azores. And you got K-stan. And a lot more work and worry. Something tells me this is the last time you’re going to be sitting down all week.”
He smiled at that. “I think you’re probably right.”
She smiled back at him. Christ, she was pretty. She twisted in her seat, trying to get more comfortable, and Stan looked down at his boots rather than at the way her body filled her shirt.
“I’m sorry this had to happen,” she said.
“Me, too. But not because I mind the hard work.” It was the fact that they were going to the Pit that pissed him off—no, it was the fact that he’d unwittingly dragged Teri Howe along with them that really rankled. “Kazbekistan’s a dangerous place.”
She nodded, her eyes serious now. “I know. Under normal circumstances, I doubt I’d get an opportunity like this. To be part of something where I could really make a difference . . .”
Damn. She wanted to make a difference, and Stan didn’t want her to get off the plane. If something happened to her while she was in K-stan, he’d never forgive himself.
But he wasn’t going to attempt to do what he thought was best for her simply because he was scared. He respected her far too much to do that.
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay. Because that’s what I wanted to ask you—what you want to do about this mess.”
“Really? Ask?” Her eyes lit up. “I thought you were here to break the news that I would only be in K-stan for all of two minutes—while I switched to a flight that would take me back to London.”
“In all honesty, that’s what I’d like you to do,” he admitted. “And if I made enough noise about you being only Reserve . . . But you really want to stay, huh?”
“I really do, Senior Chief.”
She was looking at him now as if he held her life in his hands, and he shook his head.
“Teri, the choice here is yours, okay? You want to stay, I won’t be the one who makes you leave. But if you want to go back to the States, I’ll make damn sure you go. Just do me a favor and really think it through.”
“I have,” she said.
“Think harder.”
“I will.”
“Good. See me before you get off the plane. I’ve got an extra flack jacket that I want you to wear. You leave your room, you put it on. Is that clear?”
Teri nodded. “Absolutely.”
“Okay.” He started to stand up, but she put her hand on his arm.
She took it away really fast as if she’d surprised herself by touching him. Or as if she’d been startled by how hot his skin felt compared to the coolness of her fingers.
He’d sure as hell been startled by her touch.
“Can’t you sit for a minute or two?” she asked, startling him even more.
Holy God, was she hitting on him?
But then sanity returned and Stan had to laugh at himself for even daring to think the thought. Teri Howe. Hitting on him.
Right.
It was a typical male response. She was just being friendly, and he’d instantly jumped to the conclusion that sex was involved.
He’d thought he was better than that. But apparently not.
“You look a little tired,” she said. And no, there was no promise of hot sex in her eyes, only warmth of a completely different kind.
She was being nice, and he . . . Damn, he must look worse than he usually did. But how did one politely mention that? No thanks, Lieutenant, I’m not tired, just butt ugly.
Except he was tired, and once this transport touched ground, he was going to be running nonstop. Lieutenant Paoletti and the team’s language specialist, Johnny Nilsson, were a few hours behind them—not that they’d wait for L.T. and Nils to get started. In a situation like this, you just never knew when getting a few hours ahead of the game could save lives.
“Maybe you should try to catch a nap,” Teri suggested. “I had a . . . good friend who was a SEAL. He served in Vietnam, and he used to talk about how part of the training included learning to take something he called combat naps. He told me if he could shut his eyes, even for ten minutes, it could make a big difference.”
A good friend, huh?
The way she’d said it implied that whoever this guy was, he’d been far more than just a friend. But someone who did time in ’Nam had to be in their fifties. Or older.
“ ‘Nam, huh?” Stan said, wanting to know more, hating the idea of her hooked up with someone that old, someone who wasn’t her equal in every way. “My father served three tours over there. Regular Navy.”
“Career?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. Master Chief Stanley Wolchonok Senior. He retired just a few years ago.”
“He must be proud of you.” She said it so wistfully.
“He is. We’re not, you know, particularly close, but he was the one who urged me to join the SEAL Teams.” His father had told him how hard it would be to get in—and oh, by the way, he was convinced Stan Junior had what it took to make it. Coming from the old bastard, that had meant a hell of a lot, particularly in those dark years right after his mother had died.
“How about you? Your father still alive?” he asked Teri, watching her eyes, wanting to know about her father, dreading to hear what she might tell him.
Maybe he was wrong, but he’d gotten the sense that somewhere, sometime, someone had really damaged her. He’d learned through his experiences as a senior chief, dealing in particular with the younger enlisted men, that more often than not if there was emotional damage, there was a father or mother lurking in the past who’d failed the first commandment of parenting—thou shalt not take thine own bad shit out on thy defenseless and trusting child.
“You mentioned your mother was living back east,” he continued.
“Yeah, she’s in Massachusetts—Cambridge. A literature professor at Harvard. As far as my dad . . .” The plane lurched and she looked away from him, out the window, assessing the cloud coverage below and the potential for turbulence with the calmly practiced glance of an experienced pilot.
She turned back to him and forced a smile. “This sounds awful, but I don’t know if George Howe’s still alive. He left before I turned two, and the few times I tried to get in touch with him starting when I was in middle school, he was so uninterested, I . . .” She laughed, embarrassed. “I kind of came to the conclusion that he was merely the guy my mother was married to when I was born. A handy name to put on the birth certificate. She was . . . adventurous, and it was the early ’70s, and . . .” She shrugged. “I’ve asked her, and she insisted George was my father, but still . . . I don’t believe her.”
She was trying so hard to sound as if it didn’t really matter to her, one way or another.
Stan wanted to hold her hand. Just like this morning, when she’d confessed her transgressions on his back porch, he wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her that from now on he’d make everything all right.
But was that comfort really just an excuse to touch her, to get her into his arms again?
Probably.
He remembered how soft she’d felt when she’d hugged him last week—how good her hair had smelled. He sat back slightly, instead of leaning forward to see if her hair still smelled that delicious.
“Let me guess—when you joined the Navy, your mother wasn’t exactly thrilled,” he said.
That got him a real smile, although it was a wan one. “Good guess. Although horrified is the more appropriate word.”
“Any brothers or sisters?” he asked. Surely there was somebody in Teri’s life who was proud of all she’d accomplished.
“None. You?”
Damn. “I have a sister,” he told her, “who joined the Navy through marriage. She and Bob—my brother-in-law—are about to have their fifth kid, if you can believe that.”
“Oh, my God, Uncle Stan! You and the other kids must be so excited,” she said with another flash of her perfect teeth.
He laughed at that, gesturing for her to keep it down. “Shhh. Yes, I’ve got four nieces who can wrap me around their little fingers, but don’t spread it around—my reputation as a tough assed senior chief will be completely shot.”
“So did you always want to be a tough assed senior chief?” she asked, her smile still lighting her eyes.
If he were thinking with his dick, he might think she liked making him laugh—that she was actually flirting with him.
“Did you always want to be the best helo pilot in the Navy?” he countered, because what did it hurt to pretend that she was flirting, to flirt back a little bit, too, and let her know he thought she was first-rate, all at the same time.
“Yes.” She blushed then, and he wasn’t sure if it was the compliment in his question or her too-hasty response that implied that she was, indeed, the best, that made her cheeks turn pink. “Well, I mean, I’ve always wanted to be a pilot, you know, to fly. . . .”
“It’s okay to be the best,” he told her, suddenly wishing desperately that he looked like Mel Gibson.
And as long as he was wishing for things that he couldn’t have, he wished that they weren’t going to K-stan but instead were still headed to the Azores islands, where there would be enough down time to take Teri Howe away from the air base, away from anyone who knew them both, to spread a picnic blanket out on the sand of some deserted beach and really make her blush by taking off her clothes and . . .
Easy there, Mr. Wonderful. Thinking about fucking this girl blind while he sat here trying to be her friend was pretty goddamn rude. And where did he get off thinking she’d be even remotely interested in recreational sex, even if he did look like Mel Gibson?
She’d had sex with a good-looking stranger in the backseat of a car in a bar parking lot.
Once. Only once.
In her entire life.
And it still made her feel like crap, still cut a giant hole into her self-esteem.
Dear sweet Jesus, he’d sat there this morning, listening to her tell him about it, forcing himself not to react in any visible way at all. He hadn’t burst out laughing, or burst into tears, or just plain burst from wishing it had been him with her in that car.
God damn, she’d been so embarrassed about it, all he could think about were the dozens upon dozens of far more stupid mistakes he’d made when he was nineteen.
She was so sweetly young and freshly untarnished despite her confession, he wanted to protect her from the world.
And he’d wanted to kill Joel Hogan, that was damn sure. He wanted to rip out his heart for using Teri that way all those years ago. He wanted to rip out the asshole’s lungs for daring to take advantage of her one mistake all these years later. And he wanted to rip off his head for showing up at her house last night, for making her afraid to go home.
He was determined to protect her from Hogan.
And he knew that he would protect her from himself as well.
Stan knew how to deal with inappropriate feelings of lust. He knew what was and wasn’t right between a man and a woman, between officer and enlisted, between himself and sweet Teri Howe.
Teri was a fantasy. Plain and simple. He could be honest and mature enough with himself to admit that. He was a big enough boy to know the difference between fantasy and reality.
And he could sit here with her, absolutely and truly being her friend, and still have moments of intense lust. He was human, he was male, she was amazing in every possible way.
She was smart, funny, and impossibly soft beneath that tough, efficient exterior. She had a face like an angel, a body to die for.
And yes, it was okay that he wanted her. But it wouldn’t be okay to let her know it. And it sure as hell wouldn’t be okay to act on it. So he wouldn’t. Period. The end.