To . . . shoot?
He smiled at the look she knew was on her face.
“The bullets aren’t real. We use training gear. Computer controlled lasers. You’ll have a weapon, too. It’s fun—you get into the mock-up and wait for us to storm the plane, try to shoot us before we shoot you.”
“I’m not a very good shot,” she admitted. Sure, she’d had weapons training, but . . .
“You’ll have an assault weapon. Point and spray. I’ll remind you how to use it. It’ll come back to you.”
“Still, it’s hardly fair. Me against a team of SEALs?”
“It’s not going to be a fair fight against the real tangos,” Stan told her. “They’re amateurs, while we’ve been training for scenarios like this for years. Come on, at this point we really just need warm bodies.”
“Gee, when you put it that way, how can I say no?”
“Terrific.” He smiled again.
And she was lost.
Teri discharged her laser weapon gingerly. Stan knew that she’d had weapons training to be a helo pilot, but there was no doubt about it. Teri Howe was not a natural when it came to handling weapons.
But that was okay. To give her credit, she was up for the challenge. And he’d managed to live through reminding her how to hold the weapon. He’d had to touch her, move her arms and hands into a less awkward position. It had been a job and a half making sure his touch came across as impersonal, businesslike. But he’d done it.
“Any other questions?” Stan asked her now.
“When did your mother pass away?”
He stared at her.
“When you spoke of her, you said was,” she added.
Stan picked up one of the training weapons the team would be using in the next few minutes for this exercise. As he checked it, he sensed more than saw Teri start to back away.
“I’m sorry, it’s none of my business. It’s just . . . I got the feeling that you had been particularly close and . . . I apologize for overstepping—”
“Twenty-one years ago,” he told her quietly. “She died the summer after I graduated high school.”
He glanced at her, saw her doing the math. Yeah, that’s right. He was only thirty-nine years old. Just a little too young for the father figure she was searching for.
And that’s what this was all about—the dinner last night, the coffee today. All of the elements of a healthy dose of hero worship had fallen neatly into place.
Teri was looking for guidance and approval, but she also wanted more. She wanted more than for him to fill her former SEAL friend Lenny’s long-empty shoes.
It was the stupidest thing. Stan had given her Muldoon, in all of his shining, Boy Scout, good-looking glory. And she liked the kid—he knew she did. Stan had seen the two of them together, seen her holding the ensign’s hand. There was something between them—or at least there would be if only she’d let it develop.
But she’d been in Stan’s room last night, making sure he had something to eat. She’d brought him coffee today—and despite what she’d said about bringing some for everyone, he knew the truth. She’d brought it for him. She’d shaded him from the freaking sun, for Christ’s sake.
If that wasn’t hero worship, he didn’t know what was.
Maybe he could twist it to his advantage—this blatant admiration he could see in her eyes. He could touch her again, let his hands linger. Let her know that he’d welcome her showing up in his room again tonight.
And maybe she’d go to bed with him because her own sense of normal was so warped, because she’d been some kind of hideous victim as a child. And he still didn’t know of what. God, it was driving him crazy.
Yes sir, he could take advantage of her trust, and wouldn’t he be proud of himself then?
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Teri whispered, as if he’d said it had been only twenty-one weeks or even days instead of years since his mother had died. As if the wound were still raw and painful. Her eyes were so soft, he thought he might go blind if he looked directly at her, like looking into the sun.
He focused on the next weapon, its cold weight in his hands centering him. It, too, was in working order. He picked up the next.
“It was lung cancer,” he said, more comfortable with the facts. “She made me quit smoking.”
“You smoked?”
“In high school, yeah. Told you I’ve done some stupid things in my life. But both my parents smoked while I was growing up, so . . .” He shrugged. “When she was diagnosed—and it was stage four; there was not a lot of hope that she would survive—she made both me and Stan Senior quit. It was not a fun time to be living in our house, you better believe that, both of us going cold turkey, her so sick. But we did it, you know?”
For her.
“Do you really think of your father as Stan Senior?” Teri asked. “That’s the second time you called him that.”
“What is this? Interrogate the senior chief day?” he countered with a laugh.
“It’s just . . . you know so much about me,” she said. “And I know hardly anything about you.”
He turned to face her. It had taken him only five weapons—all checked and ready to go—before he’d regained his equilibrium enough to look her in the eye again. Shit, he was in trouble here.
“I grew up in Chicago. Enlisted in the Navy out of high school.” After his mother’s long illness, there hadn’t been enough money to send both him and his sister to college, so he’d gotten his education via the Navy. “It was supposed to be temporary, but I got into the BUD/S program—SEAL training, you know? And it turned into my entire life. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. What you see is what you get. There’s not a whole lot of mystery here, Lieutenant.”
“Except for the four nieces and restoring the bungalow and the antiques . . .”
“If you know all that, you know more than most people know about me,” he pointed out. He was glowering at her, but she didn’t back down. Not one inch. Amazing. Figures she’d choose now to finally start using her backbone.
“Did your father ever remarry?” she asked.
“No.”
“What are you going to do after you retire?”
Oh, Christ. “I don’t know! Sleep late in the mornings for about five years. Jesus, Teri . . .”
“Hi, Senior, we’re two more of your terrorists. Can you set us up?” Alyssa Locke and her FBI partner approached, saving Stan’s ass before he did something stupid like telling Teri about his idea to furnish his house with antiques that he’d then turn around and sell.
Or his equally stupid-ass idea to sell the house to some bungalow lover who wanted the charm without the restoration work. With the money from the sale, he’d buy a sailboat and live like Jimmy Buffett for a year or two, floating around the Caribbean, at one with the ocean. Then he’d find another bungalow in need of serious repair, get a mortgage, and start all over again. Fix it and sell it. Sail around for a while. Again and again.
He could live all over the country, because the Arts and Crafts revival had spread like a weed from California at the turn of the century. He could find a bungalow in virtually any town in any state and restore it to its original simple charm. He could spend some time in Chicago, near his sister and his golden-haired nieces—enough time to finally learn to tell the four little girls apart.
Of course, they’d be in high school before he’d be ready to retire.
But he didn’t have to tell her any of that, thank you, Jesus and Alyssa Locke.
Locke and her partner didn’t really need more than a hand pointing in the right direction, but Stan stayed with them, scared to death of what Teri Howe’s next question for him might be, terrified of turning this game she was playing back around on her and asking her the too-intimate questions he was both dying and dreading to know the answers to.
When she was a child, did someone she trusted—her father, or a teacher or someone in a position of authority—take advantage of the adoration and hero worship they saw in those big brown eyes?
What had happened all those years ago to make her still so afraid?
Stan briefly closed his eyes, remembering the look on her face as she’d given him the coffee. Accept me. Encourage me.
He’d seen that look before—usually on the faces of young enlisted men who were just starting to discover themselves as SEAL candidates in the BUD/S training program. The men who’d been told too many times that they’d never amount to much. The ones who’d been nearly completely brainwashed into believing that was true.
Nearly completely. There was still a spark left, though. The spark that made them push to get into BUD/S even though everyone told them they’d be the first to ring out. A spark of life. A spark of hope.
Love me unconditionally, so I can start learning to love myself, Senior Chief.
Expect only the best from me, and I’ll give it to you, Senior Chief.
Give me shit when I slip and deserve shit because that’s further proof that I matter to you, Senior Chief.
Be my hero, Senior Chief, and never let me down.
In the past, it had been a burden at times—his role of the infallible hero, the mighty senior chief—but it had never been so heavy as it was right now.
Because he’d seen something else in Teri Howe’s eyes, something different, something he’d never seen in all of the hopeful young faces that had come before.
Kiss me, Senior Chief.
So, Stan, are you seeing anyone back in San Diego?
Teri silently cursed herself for not being fast enough, for letting the moment escape without asking the senior chief the question she really wanted answered.
Although that one would’ve certainly tipped him off as to her feelings, wouldn’t it have?
God, she was such a coward. She was actually relieved that she hadn’t managed to ask him that.
Teri smiled automatically as Stan introduced her to the two FBI agents and the two SAS men who, with her, would be playing the terrorists while the SEALs ran their drill.
And then he was gone, leaving her holding the unwieldy weapon, wishing she were brave enough to be waiting in Stan’s room again tonight.
Naked and lying on his bed.
Yeah, like she’d ever have the guts to do that in a million years.
She could just imagine him gently covering her up with a blanket, gathering up her clothes, and leading her to the bathroom, so she could get dressed in private.
And that would be the likeliest outcome of that scenario. Stan would surely do his best to make sure she wasn’t too embarrassed as he kicked her out of his room. And he would kick her out instead of flinging off his own clothes as he rushed to join her on the bed. Instead of kissing her mouth, her neck, her breasts, his mouth hot and wet and impossibly sweet, the heavy weight of his body pressing against her as he pushed himself between her thighs, as she lifted her hips to meet him and—
Boom!
Teri was pushed back on her rear end against the wooden deck of the mock-up, more from surprise rather than the force of any explosion. She felt her head smack the wall with a brain-jarring thwack.
Stan had told her there would be something called a flash bang when they entered, but she’d had no idea it would be so loud, that the sudden flash of light would make it nearly impossible to see as the SEALs rushed into the mock-up of the plane.
Point and spray, he’d told her, but she’d bobbled the assault weapon when she fell. It took her several long seconds to find both the gun and the trigger with her vision still filled with the aftereffects of a brightness akin to the surface of the sun.
And then someone was alongside her, appearing in her peripheral vision. She didn’t see more than a shadowy shape of a man and a gun, and she turned just as she found the trigger. Point and spray.
She saw through the spots of light still floating across her line of sight that it was Mike Muldoon, and he looked surprised. No, he looked flat-out shocked.
She’d killed him.
Well, mock killed him.
But then her weapon stopped working, and Lieutenant Starrett was striding toward them, and just like that—it couldn’t have lasted more than thirty seconds—it was over.
“What the fuck were you waiting for?” Starrett lit into Muldoon.
“Teri was down, Lieutenant. I thought she was hurt. I thought—” Muldoon shook his head.
“She’s not Teri, she’s a terrorist. You hesitate and you’re the one we take out of there in a body bag. She fucking killed you!”
“I’m sorry, sir—”
“You okay?” It was Stan’s voice.
Teri turned to see him crouching on the other side of her, sweat dripping down the side of his face, looking sexy as hell. He touched her, his fingers gentle as he explored the back of her head, where she’d connected with the wall.
“I’m fine.” What he was doing felt very nice, but it wasn’t necessary. She hadn’t been hurt. No more than a slight bruise, anyway.
“I saw you go down.” He checked her again, more slowly this time. “You bounced your head off that bulkhead pretty hard.”