“Okay,” Stan said, somehow managing to keep a completely straight face. “All right. Just relax. So you don’t have much experience pursuing women. That’s okay. I think most men would kill to be in your shoes, if you want to know the truth. But for right now, you just need . . . Okay. You need an operational plan. That’s all you need. First thing you’re going to do is find her and ask her to have lunch with you, provided, of course, that we’re not called out between now and then.”
Muldoon wasn’t convinced, his handsome face dubious. “Senior, I don’t—”
“Then,” Stan bulldozed over him, “after lunch, you walk her back to her room. All the way, Muldoon. Right to her door. You don’t give her a choice about it.”
“But—”
“And you get inside her room by telling her that you’re concerned for her safety, what with the explosions by the swimming pool and all. You just want to check to make sure everything’s all right. That’s how you get your ass in there.”
Muldoon laughed in disbelief. “Does that really work?”
Stan’s hair was matted with sweat and dust. Muldoon’s was charmingly tousled. It would work for him.
“If she’s interested, she’ll let you in, yes. You’ve just got to remember—if she says no at any point, you turn around and you leave. You understand?”
“Well, yeah,” Muldoon said, all injured blue eyes. “You don’t think I’d . . . I mean, God, Senior Chief, it’s not like I’d ever force myself on a woman. What kind of jerk do you think I am?”
“The kind of jerk who has no experience in inviting himself into a woman’s room,” Stan replied.
Muldoon laughed, but it was definitely halfhearted. “I’m not sure I can do this,” he said. “I mean, Teri Howe? She’s . . .”
“Great?” Stan volunteered.
“Yeah, but . . . I don’t know, Senior. She’s not a particularly good kisser so . . .”
They were talking about her.
She was the not a particularly good kisser that they were talking about.
At first Teri had refused to believe they were talking about her, when she’d started to go up the stairs that led from the restaurant to the lobby, cup of coffee and some kind of local Danish-type thing in hand. She’d thought she’d heard Stan and Mike Muldoon’s voices.
She didn’t really mean to eavesdrop.
Okay, that was a lie. She did mean to eavesdrop. She’d heard Stan asking, “How’d it go last night?” and she’d stopped walking.
O’Leary and Nilsson had gone past her, and she’d pretended to tie her boot laces. And then she’d stood there and eavesdropped shamelessly.
And she was so a great kisser. Muldoon was the one who needed work.
“What do you mean, she’s not a great—?” Stan laughed. “How the fuck do you know, Muldoon? I saw you kiss her last night, and it was definitely uninspired on your end.”
Stan had seen her last night. Kissing Mike Muldoon. Oh, God. But of course. He’d been in the lobby. He’d fallen asleep there.
“And if you tell me, jeez,” Stan continued, imitating the younger man’s voice, “you don’t have much experience kissing women because all you have to do is lean toward them and they’re the ones jamming their tongues down your throat . . . Holy Christ!”
“It’s true!” Muldoon laughed, but it sounded defensive. “I can’t help it if it’s true! When I’m with a woman, I let her set the pace, the mood—it’s all up to her. Is that so wrong?”
“No,” Stan said. “No, it’s great. It’s . . . actually exactly what Teri needs right now.”
What Teri needs . . . ? To use what appeared to be one of Stan’s favorite expressions, how the fuck did Stan know what Teri needed?
“It’s just, some women need . . . a little encouragement,” Stan continued. “A little obvious pursuit. They need . . . Look, don’t you ever picture her naked?”
Teri nearly spilled her coffee down the front of her shirt. What?
“I don’t know,” Muldoon said.
“How could you not know?” Stan countered with a laugh. “I mean, either you picture her naked or you don’t, Mike. That’s not a real tough question.”
Teri couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“I do, but I don’t want to admit it,” Muldoon admitted. “It’s not very nice to—”
“Are you a man?” Stan asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you straight?”
“Well, yeah. Jeez—”
“Don’t you find her attractive?”
“Of course. She’s beautiful. And she’s nice—”
“Fuck nice,” Stan said. “The woman is fucking hot, Muldoon. There’s not a single heterosexual man in the Troubleshooters Squad who hasn’t pictured her naked. Well, okay, maybe Nilsson because he’s a newlywed. But everyone else . . . And I’m not saying anyone should tell her this. She doesn’t need to know. Because it’s not a disrespectful thing. No one’s undressing her with their eyes. At least they better not be. It’s just, you know, you’re a guy, you’re daydreaming, and whoops, there she is. Naked.”
“Senior, I think I’m too tired for this conversation right now.”
“Give me just a few more minutes, Muldoon. Please.”
Teri held her breath, about to bolt for the door.
Mike sighed. “All right.”
“Look, sometimes that’s what a woman needs,” Stan said. “She needs to know that the guy she’s attracted to is out there picturing her naked—you know, that he wants her, too. So that’s what you do.”
“You want me to picture her naked.”
“For a genius, you’re one hell of an idiot.”
“Yeah, I’m kidding. I’m following you, Senior. I need to let her know that I want her. I got it. Except . . . I mean, I like her and all. I like her an awful lot. It’s just . . .”
“It’s just what?” Stan was completely exasperated. “How could you not be head over heels in love with this woman? She’s incredible, Muldoon. She’s got a body to die for, a face like an angel. Her eyes are . . . Have you even looked into her eyes? She has eyes that make you just want to, I don’t know, Christ, die for her if she asked you to.”
Teri’s heart was in her throat. The way Stan was talking, it sounded as if . . .
“I don’t understand why the hell you are hesitating here,” he continued. “Why are you not with her right now? What are you doing standing here talking to me? You should be outside her room right this very instant, knocking on her door, asking if she needs help scrubbing her back while she’s in the shower.”
Silence.
“Is it okay if I get some coffee first?” Muldoon asked.
Stan said a string of words Teri had never heard quite in that order before.
And then he completely killed any hope that had started growing inside of her with his poetic description of her eyes. Then he delivered the final death blow to her already tattered pride.
“Mike. Please,” he said. “I’m asking you to do me this favor. This girl—”
Girl. Oh, God, he called her a girl, and he was asking Muldoon to do him a favor.
“—needs someone like you in her life, someone willing to spend the extra effort both physically and emotionally to—”
Teri couldn’t stand to listen to another second of this. Stan—the senior chief—was virtually begging Muldoon to be with Teri. To be with Teri. He was trying to talk Muldoon into being her boyfriend, into sleeping with her. As a favor to him.
God, did he really think she was that completely desperate?
How hideously mortifying.
“Just ask her to lunch,” Stan was saying. “Just start there and see where it goes. Okay?”
Teri ducked out the door and into the lower lobby, just outside the restaurant doors. She could hear Stan and Mike coming down the stairs.
Shit. She had to hide.
One look at her and Stan would know that she’d overheard all of that. And the only thing more mortifying than overhearing that conversation would be having Stan know that she’d overheard.
There was a ladies’room across the faded red carpeting, and Teri ran for it, bursting through the door.
It was like the rest of the hotel. Tacky and faded, with broken tile and stalls that had out-of-order signs taped to the them. The single fluorescent bulb that still worked flickered.
She counted to a hundred. Splashed water on her face. Counted to a hundred again.
She tried to drink her coffee, but her hands were shaking too badly.
Stan asked Mike Muldoon to do him a favor, no doubt to get her off his back. Except what had all that been last night before they’d flown out to the airfield? Night or day, he’d told her. She should come to him night or day—if she wanted to talk.
Apparently if she wanted anything else, she should go to Mike Muldoon, who would take care of her as a favor for the senior chief.
God damn it.
Teri stared at her face flickering palely in the cracked bathroom mirror, willing herself not to cry.
At least she wasn’t throwing up.
Alyssa looked at herself in the mirror of Sam’s bathroom. She actually had tears brimming in her eyes, caught on her eyelashes, ready to spill over the edge and down her cheeks.
How pathetic was that? How pathetic was she?
She wiped them away with the heel of her hand.
Look on the bright side. At least she wasn’t throwing up and handcuffed—naked—to the asshole, the way she’d been the last time she’d spent the night with him.
This time, she was barely even hungover. Her head ached, but that was it.
Because, despite what Sam thought, she’d barely even been drunk last night.
Oh, she’d had a buzz on, that was for sure. She never would have had the courage—or the foolishness—to come to his room if she hadn’t.
Alyssa hung her towel on the rack and put on her clothes, cursing herself out soundly all the while.
What was wrong with her? Why on God’s green earth did she find herself so attracted to a man who didn’t give a damn about her? Sam Starrett was selfish and rude—shockingly so at times. The mouth on that man should have been—alone—enough to keep her far away from him. Forget about the fact that he was infuriating and egotistical and overbearing.
He was also the best lover she’d ever had.
He was funny and capable of being incredibly, impossibly tender.
And the way he’d kissed her good-bye this morning, as if he loved her with all his heart and soul, still took her breath away.
But it didn’t serve her well to remember that. What she should remember was the look on his face as he sat on his bed, taking off his boots. It’s my fucking room. Like he was an eight-year-old with a trash mouth—yeah, he was about as attractive as that. That’s what she should remember.
The heartless son of a bitch.
She opened the bathroom door, and Sam was standing there, holding her sandals. As if he wanted her to leave, fast. As if, now that it was morning, now that they were no longer going at it, he didn’t want anything more to do with her.
Anger burned her throat, her eyes, her chest, but she said nothing. Anger was better than the hurt, than the self-disgust. She took her sandals from him silently and slipped them onto her feet.
He stood there watching her, big and grimy, his face smudged with the remains of camouflage paint, most of it sweated into a grayish mud. As she straightened back up, he cleared his throat. “So. If you ever want to do this again—”
Yeah, right. “I don’t,” she said coldly. “Trust me, I won’t be back.”
“Well, that’s kind of what I thought last time, sweet thing, but—”
Sweet thing. He was purposely trying to get her angry. Purposely baiting her, the asshole. She kept her voice cool and controlled. “Believe me, next time I’ll save myself the aggravation. I’ll just hook up with Rob Pierce.”
He took a step back as if she’d punched him in the stomach. Good. She was glad.
“Jesus,” he said. “That’s just great, Locke. That’s just . . . fucking perfect. You do that, babe. A married man is just your speed.” He turned and walked toward the window, standing there with his back to her, looking down through a crack in the curtains at the swimming pool below.
Rob Pierce was married? And what about “Don’t do it, Alyssa. You’ll feel awful in the morning”? Sam had sure changed his tune now that it was the morning.
Some of the hurt and misery leaked through Alyssa’s anger.
He’d been right. She did feel awful.
She should have taken his advice and applied it to all of the men she knew, Sam Starrett included. Sam Starrett especially. She should have gone back to her room alone last night.
Because lonely and restless was a hell of a lot better than this empty hurt she was feeling right now.
She went out the door without another word, closing it gently and permanently behind her, not even giving the bastard the satisfaction of hearing her slam it shut.