Something hit right where they’d been standing, the force of the explosion throwing them even farther back as flames erupted, igniting his towel and her sweats.
It was some kind of Molotov cocktail, tossed down from one of the windows in the building above them.
Alyssa Locke didn’t want to jump his bones. She just wanted to save his life. He almost wished she’d just let him die.
He rolled back with her, moving away from the flames and a second explosion. She dragged him back, too, behind a low concrete wall beneath the overhang, until they were sheltered from further attack.
Holy shit, that had been close.
Sam felt more than heard pounding feet as the Marines ran out from the lobby to investigate. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard an order to put out the fire, another sending squads of men up into each of the towers of the hotel to search for whoever might’ve thrown those makeshift bombs.
Good. Someone else was going to play Superman. He didn’t have to move. He could just lie here for a minute, waiting for his head to clear.
Alyssa made a sound that pretty much summed up the way he felt. “Sam. Sam!” She shook his shoulder. “Oh, God, please don’t be dead.”
Sam. Now he was Sam, not Roger. “I’m alive,” he managed.
“Thank God!”
He lifted his head and looked down at her, suddenly intensely aware that he was on top of her. Their bare legs were intertwined. His thigh was pressed tight between hers and her body was soft and warm beneath his.
Beneath his very, very undead body.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded as she looked up at him, something unreadable in her eyes. “Yes. Get off me.”
If she’d said please, he might’ve done it. But probably not. Her face was mere inches from his and he found himself staring at the softness of her mouth. All he’d have to do to kiss her was lean forward.
“I don’t know,” Sam said, trying to look as regretful and in pain as he possibly could. “I think I might have some kind of serious back injury and it’s probably imperative that I don’t move at all.”
“You are such an asshole,” she said, but she laughed as she said it, and something inside of him snapped.
“God, I missed you, Lys,” he breathed, and then, Jesus, he was kissing her.
He’d meant to kiss her sweetly. Gently. Carefully. But like every interaction with this woman, he couldn’t do it without completely combusting. And touching his lips with hers just wasn’t enough. He had to taste her, so he swept his tongue into her mouth.
And it was all over. Instant meltdown.
He couldn’t have stopped kissing her if someone had held a gun to his head. Her mouth was hot and sweetly spicy. She tasted faintly of cinnamon gum and the cola they’d all been practically shotgunning all day, both for the caffeine and to replenish fluids lost out in the hot sun.
She tasted like hope and laughter and a future in which he didn’t wake up from his dreams of her drenched with sweat—heart pounding and desperately alone.
Because she was kissing him back, just as fiercely as he was kissing her.
She. Was kissing. Him. Back.
Holy God.
Her hands were in his hair, her legs tight around his thigh as she kissed him as if she’d missed him as much as he’d missed her.
Jesus, he was a fool for having waited so long to see her again. He shouldn’t have listened to her when she’d told him they had to pretend that nothing had happened between them. He should have gone after her. He should have dogged her every hour of every day.
But that didn’t matter now. Because she was kissing him.
She was kissing him in the shadows of the overhang by the swimming pool in the hotel’s center courtyard—which was now crawling with Marines. It was only a matter of time before someone saw them. And he knew it mattered to her that she not be seen kissing him, at least not in public like this.
So he lifted his head. “Lys, please, let’s go to my room.”
She looked dazed—far more than she had right after that bomb had nearly killed them both. “I can’t.”
“We can go up separately if you want. I’m in 812 and—”
“No.” She struggled to get out from underneath him, pushing at him as if she were suddenly panicked, and he let her up.
She’d scraped her shoulder and one of her knees, and he couldn’t believe she was just going to kiss him like that and then run away. “Lys—”
But she was. She was backing away from him as if he were a dangerous rabid animal that she shouldn’t turn her back on.
“I can’t do this again,” she told him, and her voice actually shook. “I can’t. I don’t even like you. So just stay the hell away from me!” And with that, she turned and ran.
“Fuck!” If there were a wall nearby to punch, Sam would’ve put his fist through it. But there was only that low concrete divider that would’ve broken his foot if he tried to kick it.
And there was WildCard Karmody, too, standing silently about twelve feet away, even farther in the shadows, watching him. Jesus, how much of that had he seen?
“Lys as in Alyssa, huh?” WildCard said as Sam met his dark scowl. “As in Alyssa Locke.”
“Aw, fuck,” Sam said again, sitting down on the concrete divider, utterly defeated.
WildCard came closer. “So you were just never going to tell me that you scored with Alyssa Locke, were you, Lieutenant? When was it? In DC probably, right? That was six months ago.”
“Fuck,” Sam whispered. How could things have gone from so perfect to so completely fucked in a matter of minutes? Two minutes ago, he was euphoric. Two minutes ago, he’d been all but deciding who to invite to his wedding. Two minutes ago, he knew—knew—that he was going to spend the entire rest of the afternoon and evening making love to Alyssa, and that from now on, he was going to do it right. He was going to treat her so good, she was never going to leave him again.
But two minutes later, the truth emerged—kind of like the sewage that floated up and out into the streets of this stinking city whenever there was a heavy rain.
Alyssa didn’t even like him.
And to make things worse, WildCard had seen Sam kissing her. Within hours, the entire team would know. And when the news got back to her, Alyssa would never believe that Sam hadn’t been the one to tell.
“Six months,” WildCard said again, with that self-righteous indignation that only he could do so fucking well. “It’s eye-opening, sir, to realize that you thought so little of our friendship six months ago that you didn’t bother to tell me that you’d shagged the Ice Bitch.”
Sam exploded. He launched up off the concrete wall and hit WildCard at a dead run. He pushed him back, slamming him against the bricks of the hotel.
“Don’t you fucking talk about her like that! Don’t you fucking dare! I’ll fucking kill you!” He was ready to pound the shit out of the asshole, ready to make someone bleed.
“Whoa,” WildCard said, holding his hands in front of him in a gesture of surrender. “Whoa, whoa, Starrett. I didn’t know! Time-out here! Time-out! You used to talk about her like that yourself.”
He was seconds from throttling Karmody. “You breathe a word of what you saw to anyone and I will fucking kill you! Do you understand me?”
WildCard stared at Sam, realization and a deep perception in his dark eyes. “Jesus, man, I had no idea you’re in love with her! This is what’s been making you act like a lunatic, isn’t it? You’re freaking out because she’s here, but she doesn’t want you. And the shit I’ve been giving you—that’s just making it worse. God, I’m sorry, buddy. Where you’re at right now, I’ve been there, done that, and it wasn’t fun, that’s for damn sure.”
Sam stared back at his friend. You’re in love with her. Oh, Holy Christ, WildCard was right. He was completely in love with Alyssa Locke. That’s what these feelings were, this achingly awful sense of misery. The nearly bipolar mood swings to joy when Alyssa so much as smiled at him.
“What do I do?” he asked, barely able to believe he was asking WildCard Karmody for romantic advice. “Do I follow her? Should I—”
“Shit, no, Sammy,” WildCard told him, the afternoon’s altercation by the plane totally forgiven and forgotten. “You stay the hell away from her before she completely breaks your heart.”
Helga made it into the hotel dining room just in time to hear the tail end of Stanley’s song.
He actually did it. He got up on the makeshift stage, took the microphone in hand, and sang.
His voice was better than merely good, his intonation uncommonly accurate, but it was his choice of song that made Helga laugh aloud. “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.”
He sang the words with a completely straight face, really delivering the soulful melody and tender words. Your love’s the key to my peace of mind . . .
The pretty helo pilot was there, sitting at a table, but she wasn’t alone. She was with a glaringly handsome young officer. What was that about? The young man was grinning, as were most of the other SEALs—and the room was packed with them. They’d turned out en masse to see their senior chief make good on the bet he’d made.
The bet Helga had made a note of on the pad that she’d glanced at as she approached the restaurant. She was having a Swiss cheese night. Lots of holes, lots of confusion. She’d be lost without her notepad.
Across the room, the helo pilot looked exhausted. Still, she sat watching Stanley, completely transfixed. What was she doing, sitting with that young officer as if they were out on a dinner date?
The song ended, and the room erupted into a roar even louder than the poolside explosions that had woken her from an afternoon nap. Helga clapped and whistled, too, as Stanley executed a very dignified bow.
“Hey, Senior!” one of the men from the back of the room yelled. “Is there anything you can’t do?”
“If there is,” he said into the microphone, “I’m not telling.”
There was more laughter. As he put the microphone back into its stand, his eyes caught those of the helo pilot, who was still watching him from across the room. He gave her a look just a little bit longer than a typical casual glance. No one else in the room probably noticed it.
But Helga did. And when Stanley purposely moved away from the pilot and the handsome officer, heading instead toward the bar, Helga cut him off at the pass.
“Very nice,” she said to him. “You have your mother’s gift of music.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“Do you dance as well? She loved to dance.”
“I’m afraid I inherited my father’s two left feet.”
“Oh dear, your father didn’t dance?”
He smiled at her dismay. “I didn’t say he didn’t, ma’am. He just wasn’t very graceful. But if you knew my mother at all, then you know he danced. She had the master chief doing the polka with her in the kitchen every night he was home.”
Helga laughed. “That sounds like the Marte I knew.”
“He would do anything for her. Except . . .”
“Except stay home from Vietnam?” she asked gently. “I’d bet she didn’t ask him to do that, though.”
Stanley looked at her closely. “No,” he said. “She didn’t.”
“Do you have a few minutes?” she asked him. “Can you sit?”
He glanced over at the helo pilot. She and the handsome officer had just been brought their dinners. She wasn’t going anywhere for a while.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’d like that. Grab a table. Can I get you something from the bar?”
“What are you having?” she asked.
“Just a can of soda.”
“Not beer?”
“I’m operational. But I’d be glad to get you a brew, if you like.”
“Operational?”
“Lieutenant Paoletti and Max Bhagat could give the order to take down the plane at any moment,” he explained. “Until that happens, until those passengers are safe, no one on my team will have so much as a sip of beer.”
There was a burst of laughter from a table in the corner of the room. A waiter carried a tray of nearly overflowing beer mugs in its direction.
“They’re not operational?” Helga asked.
Stanley glanced at them. “No, ma’am. They’re the SAS, SIS, and FBI observers.” He smiled. “They’re allowed to have a hangover in the morning.”
Ah, yes. She recognized the tall man at the table. It was that James Bond wannabe from the UK. And the female FBI agent sat next to him. Someone Locke—and Helga was lucky she remembered that much.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Stanley asked her again.
“Just a bottle of water,” she told him. “Thanks.”
As he headed to the bar, she turned to look around the room.
There weren’t any open tables. But at the sound of more gales of laughter from the table in the corner, the SEAL she recognized as being the cowboy in charge of the takedown of the plane threw his napkin onto his half-finished dinner in disgust. He pushed his chair back from his table so forcefully, it nearly toppled over. With another grim look at the revelers, he strode out of the hotel restaurant.