“Really.” She took off her sunglasses, too. “I don’t even remotely want to—”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Jules. Hello. I am not going to get hurt. I am not going to ‘get with’ this man. I would never make that kind of mistake again.”
“Okay, good, because he’s coming over here right now—”
Oh, shit. He was. Alyssa hurriedly put her sunglasses back on.
“—with that kind of caveman walk,” Jules continued. “You know, the kind that announces he’s the alpha male around here, so if you don’t want him to grab you by the hair and pull you into his cave, you better run.”
Sam Starrett was at twelve o’clock, heading straight for the observers’tent, his boots scuffing up a small cloud of dust as he came. He was drinking a bottle of water, and try as she might to focus on the fact that, behind him, the rest of his team was taking a break, Senior Chief Wolchonok making sure everyone had water and PowerBars, her eyes were drawn back to Starrett.
With the sun slightly behind him, with the muscles in his arms and chest actually rippling enticingly as he moved—dammit!—he looked like some kind of action hero, despite the baseball cap on his head. Or maybe because of it, she wasn’t sure.
“Maybe I should disappear,” Jules murmured.
“Don’t you dare.” Alyssa stood up, unwilling to let Sam loom over her more than he had to.
And then he was there. Standing directly in front of her.
There was sex in his eyes as he gazed down at her. A silent reminder that they’d once shared bodily fluids, that he’d taken her places she hadn’t even dreamed possible. A reminder that, try as she might not to be, she was flesh and blood. Human—with human failings.
And human needs.
“You want to make yourselves useful?” Starrett asked in his infuriating Texas drawl, no greeting, no pretense of niceties. “Instead of sitting around wasting taxpayers’hard-earned dollars?”
“You bet we do,” Jules answered before she could spit out a scathing retort.
Starrett looked at her, one eyebrow slightly raised, and she knew that he expected her to protest. He wanted her to protest.
So she didn’t. “What would you like us to do, Lieutenant?” she asked as nicely as she could manage, trying to sound friendly. Friendly, yet still cool.
“I need more people to play the part of the terrorists,” he said. “I’ve got two SAS guys coming in, but I’m still three bodies short.” He gestured to Jules with his head. “Can he shoot?”
“He is an FBI agent,” Alyssa countered. She took a deep breath before calling him a less than flattering name. Don’t get mad. Stay cool. And friendly. She forced what she hoped was a friendly smile.
“Yeah, well, in my experience, that means shit,” Starrett said.
“Mine, too,” Jules said easily. “But, yeah, he can shoot. Is he as good as Alyssa Locke? No. Because no one, my friend, is as good as Alyssa Locke.”
Starrett looked at her again, and this time there was something different in his eyes. Something that looked an awful lot like . . . regret?
But then it was gone and he was walking away.
“In fifteen minutes, check in with the senior chief,” he tossed back over his shoulder. “He’ll get you the gear you need. Don’t bother him before then—he’s taking a nap. Hope you brought a hat—you’re going to need it. It’s fucking hot out here.”
Alyssa pulled her gaze away from Sam Starrett’s perfect rear end.
“This is going to be fun,” Jules said. “Watching you kick ass.”
Fun wasn’t quite the word she would have used.
Stan was asleep.
He’d found a narrow bit of shade behind the wooden mock-up of the plane and had curled up, right on the dusty ground.
Except the sun had moved and now half of his face was subject to its harsh rays.
He slept on his side, one arm under his head, the other hand open and resting on his chest. It was strange to see him so relaxed, without that high voltage current of electricity that seemed to surge through him at all times.
Teri sat down next to him as quietly as she could, letting her shadow cover his face.
God, it was hot. And dry as hell.
She set down the last of the bags she’d brought from the hotel. Taking a sip of lukewarm water from her bottle, she looked down to find Stan’s eyes open and watching her.
“God!” she said, startled. He hadn’t moved at all. He’d just opened his eyes and was instantly alert.
“Where’s your flack jacket?” he asked.
“In the helo.”
“Hell of a lot of good it’ll do you there.”
“It’s hot,” she tried to explain. “And I figured I was safe enough out here, surrounded by a SEAL team.”
He pushed himself up into a sitting position, brushing the dust from his arm and shirt.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she continued.
“It’s all right.” He checked his watch. “I got ten minutes. That’s better than some days.”
Ten minutes? Now she really felt awful. She’d heard through the grapevine that the senior chief hadn’t managed to make it back to his hotel room at all last night. He’d gone from his session with her in the stairwell to a meeting at the airport, to a meeting with Adm. Chip Crowley, who’d arrived in K-stan late last night.
And he’d been back here, with Sam Starrett’s team of SEALs, hard at work at 0400.
The lines of fatigue around his eyes and mouth were more pronounced than they’d been last night.
“I would’ve just left you to sleep,” she told him, “but the sun was right on your face. I was trying to, you know, pretend I was a tree or something.”
He stared at her as if she’d just spoken in Greek. “A tree?” He wasn’t quite glowering, but it was close.
“For shade,” she explained. “You know, from the sun?” Great, she was babbling. “I didn’t want you to get burned.”
Stan touched his peeling nose. “Too late.”
“You should really use sunblock.” What was she doing? She should really just stand up and walk away. He obviously didn’t want to deal with her right now.
“Why bother? With this face?” He pretended to laugh, but he was serious. And a little embarrassed by the topic. He actually thought he was . . .
“You have a wonderful face,” she said before she stopped to think. “When you smile . . . You should smile more.”
Great, now she’d completely embarrassed him. Or maybe she’d just totally embarrassed herself. Again. It was definitely time to run away. She shifted her weight, intending to push herself up and off the ground.
“My father looks like Marlon Brando,” Stan told her. He didn’t sound at all embarrassed. He sounded like Stan. “You know, before he got fat. Brando, I mean. Not Stan Senior. He’s not fat. He can still run an eight-minute mile.”
Despite being tired, despite wanting her gone, he was talking her down from the ledge again in that easygoing way he had.
“And no, I don’t look anything like him,” Stan continued, as if he knew that she’d glanced at him to try to see if there was any resemblance. “Aside from basic body type—height and weight, you know, standard gorilla build. Lots of upper body strength with twigs for legs. I got that direct from Stan Senior.”
Twigs for legs. He actually thought . . . Teri kept her mouth tightly shut, afraid to tell him that she thought his legs were as perfect as the rest of him.
“As far as looks go, though, I don’t take after my mother either—except for the fair skin. And I certainly didn’t inherit her patience, that’s for damn sure.” Something in his voice had changed. It was almost imperceptible, but Teri heard it. He was telling her things he didn’t usually tell people. Or maybe she just wished he was.
“She was really something,” Stan said, with that same little trace of . . . wistfulness? Yes, wistfulness in his voice. Teri wasn’t imagining it. Big, bad Senior Chief Wolchonok had loved his mother deeply. “She was from Denmark—she lived there as a kid, came over after the war with her older sister. Do you know, the envoy from Israel—Helga Shuler—she knew my mother in Denmark. It’s the weirdest thing—she has the same accent when she speaks English that my mother did. It’s nice, you know? After this is over, I’m going to sit down with her and talk.”
This man wanted to be friends with her, Teri realized. Nothing more than friends. Stan couldn’t have been more clear about that if he’d taken out a full page ad in the New York Times to accompany his body language. But he didn’t have to. She could take a hint.
Stan liked her. He’d said so. But when he’d said it, he was using the adult definition of the word liked, not the seventh grade definition. In fact, he probably thought of her the same way he thought of Mike Muldoon—she was just another young clueless kid to watch out for, to take under his badass protective wing. And Stan had one hell of a protective wing, there was no doubt about that.
He’d continuously gone way out of his way to be kind to her. Helping her get away from San Diego and Joel Hogan. His attempts last night to start desensitizing her to confrontations.
He’d spent over an hour and a half with her last night—time he could have been sleeping. He’d made sure she wasn’t alone by sitting with her on the airplane, and then arranging for her to have dinner with Mike Muldoon.
Teri owed him, big time. And since he’d made it rather clear that his interest in her was nothing more than that of mentor or some variation of Sea Daddy, he certainly wouldn’t appreciate the complications of a full body massage leading to a night of blazing hot sex. Which would lead to shared quarters for the rest of this operation, which would lead to her moving into his charming little bungalow back in San Diego . . .
Yeah, dream on, Teresa.
What are your goals for your personal life? She hadn’t answered Stan’s question last night because in truth, she didn’t know the answer.
She knew she wanted to spend more time laughing. She wanted to feel more relaxed and at peace. She wanted to be happy. She wanted to stop being afraid. But what kind of a goal was that?
Stan had stopped talking about his mother. They were sitting there, Teri realized, in silence. But it was a companionable silence. His glower was gone. He was just looking at her, and as she met his eyes, he smiled that smile that made the world seem to shift beneath her feet.
The smile that made her want to kiss him.
Instead she held out the last of the freezer bags she’d brought with her. “I made some iced coffee. I figured you could probably use both the caffeine and something cold to drink.”
He had the funniest look in his eyes as he opened the bag.
“There’s not really ice in it,” she quickly explained. “I put the coffee in the hotel freezer for most of the morning. And I made sure it was brewed with bottled water, so it’s definitely safe to drink. You don’t have to worry.”
He took off the lid, took a sip. “Holy God. It’s—”
“More like a Slusheee than an iced coffee, I know. I got lucky—the power didn’t go off while it was in the freezer.”
“This is . . . I’m . . . Thank you, Lieutenant. Very much.”
Oh, my God, the funny look in his eye wasn’t because he’d been afraid she’d unknowingly made the iced coffee with tainted hotel ice. It was because he thought she was hitting on him, like this was some kind of Starbucks-style come on—drink my coffee now, hot stud, and do me later.
His response was to call her by her rank, to retreat from their still shaky, newly formed friendship. God, was the thought of a more intimate relationship with her really that repulsive?
“It’s good, isn’t it?” she said as brightly as she could manage. “The other guys—Mike and WildCard in particular—really liked it, too. I brought, you know, some for everyone.” Thank God that she had. Teri stood up, not wanting to see his relief. “Well, I better let you get back to—”
“Did you just finish a shift?”
She’d spent the morning ferrying SEALs and other U.S. personnel back and forth from the airport, to the airfield, to the hotel. The trip from the hotel to this airfield took about fifteen minutes each way. But she could make it from the hotel to the Kazabek airport in about three minutes flat.
“I’m not exactly finished. I’m on standby. I’m here in case you or Lieutenant Starrett need a helo on short order.”
“You know, if you don’t sit down, I’m going to have to stand, too,” he told her. “It’s one of those crazy lieutenantsenior chief things. Do you mind? I mean, as long as you’re not going anywhere in a hurry . . . ?”
Teri sat down, both glad and resentful as hell that he’d gone back to talking to her as if they were friends. Unless . . .
Maybe he was seeing someone. Maybe he had a girlfriend back in San Diego. Maybe he was attracted to Teri, but he was too honest and loyal, too upstanding and decent even to think about being unfaithful.
“You wanna help?” he asked her. “As long as you’re not needed to fly anywhere, we need a few more terrorists to shoot.”