Red, Hot & Blue 09 - A Prince Among Men (7 page)

She glanced around the dimly lit room again. Vicki felt suddenly very alone and out of her element. Ryan had dropped her off and told her to make herself comfortable. He had some meeting or something, but he said someone would be right back with a hot meal for her.

After the pee-in-this-PVC-pipe joke, God only knew what they would try to feed her. All she knew was that she was going to make one of them taste it before she did. She still wasn’t totally convinced the whole poop-in-a-baggie wasn’t just Ryan pulling her leg too.

She hated that he had teased her because, in spite of the pee-tube incident, he’d captured her attention like no man had in a long time. No live man, she amended. Groundpounder had caught her eye—online anyway. But unlike him, Ryan was actually here. She hadn’t seen eyes as blue as his in a long time. They set off rather nicely the reddish tint of what little hair he had left after the military cut. He was polite and sweet. She could tell just from the short time they’d been together that, although he was tough enough to be a soldier, there was a sensitive side in there she found extremely attractive.

Unlike Hawk. She had no doubt he was behind the teasing. He was probably laughing his head off right now, just like Ryan had when she was attacked by the giant leaping spider in the latrine. Sweet or not, Vicki was sure Ryan had told the story to Hawk the minute he left her. He had been too amused not to.

Then there was the matter of that little ill-advised bargain back at KAF that she’d struck with Hawk to convince him to bring her here. Vicki nervously looked again at the three beds squashed into the hut. Surely, if Hawk were going to try to collect his payment from her, he would have done so in Kandahar where they had some semblance of privacy, not to mention sanitation facilities and decent showers.

Maybe it was lack of sleep, or food, or the spider scare, but Vicki felt herself begin to shake. Instinctively, she knew she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t have sex with Hawk. Even though he had stuck to his end of the bargain and gotten her here, she’d been crazy to even offer.

It was a bit late for regrets, considering she was currently stashed in Hawk’s bedroom. What would he do when she told him she wasn’t going through with it? He was beyond a doubt the scariest man she’d ever laid eyes on, and she, for one, did not want to be the person to piss him off.

She would just have to talk to him, calmly and rationally. Strike a new bargain. Offer him cash. Something, anything, and if all that failed, she still had Mel’s card somewhere in her bag. With any luck, her satellite phone worked here and Mel could call in the Australian cavalry or something to come rescue her. When she did get out of this mess, she would never, ever let herself get into a situation like this again.

Vicki bent down and had just started to dig in her bag to find out if her phone did indeed work here when the door opened. Any light that might have entered the room from outside was blotted out by the bulk of the man standing in the doorway.

“Hi, honey. I’m home.” Hawk entered the room and closed the door behind him. “And look, I made dinner.”

Vicki’s throat constricted and she couldn’t breathe or swallow. Hawk had arrived and he was even scarier with his new, overly familiar, nice-guy act.

He put the tray down on the desk next to a closed laptop computer and then stood there, right next to her, much too close.

Swallowing past the lump in her throat, she gathered her courage. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“You are?” He raised a brow.

“Yes, I am. Sit down. I’d like to talk.”

Sit down way over there on the other side of this ridiculously small, bed-filled mud hut of yours.

“Sure, sweetheart. I’ll sit so we can talk.” With that, Hawk physically lifted her out of the chair, lowered himself into it and then sat her back down in his lap.

Vicki couldn’t have leapt off him faster if he’d been covered in a million hairy black spiders. “What are you doing?” Her voice came out sounding like a cartoon mouse.

“I’m sitting so we can talk.” He looked a bit too amused at her expense. “I’m assuming you want to talk about our deal, which is good, because I figure since we’ve got the place to ourselves for the moment, I might as well collect the first payment now for your transport here.”

First payment? Her heart began to pound.

“Unless of course you want to wait until Pettit and Wally get here. That would knock three payments off at once and would probably be a hell of a lot of fun too. It’s up to you, of course.” Hawk waited expectantly.

Vicki eyed him suspiciously. Hawk, who’d been like an unmoving stone, who’d uttered as few words as possible until now, was acting too weird for this all to be real. That last over-the-top line had clinched it. She was convinced Hawk was messing with her, and she didn’t like it one bit.

Eyes narrowed, Vicki crossed her arms. “Why are you doing this?”

He sobered and stood to physically dwarf her, which she was sure was his intention.

“Why? Because I want you to realize you made a huge mistake, first when you made that ridiculous offer to me and second, by coming here at all. I want you to go home, and I don’t mean Kandahar, where you’ll just offer another Joe your body to get your damn story. I mean I want you to go home home. All the way back to Idaho or Minnesota or wherever the hell naïve women like you who don’t belong in Afghanistan come from. That way I won’t have to worry about you anymore, and I can go back to concentrating on keeping my men from getting killed. You got it?”

Braver now, Vicki shook her head stubbornly. “I’m not going.”

“No? Fine. Then I’m afraid you’re going to have to stick to your end of the deal. Take off your pants and get on the bed.” He flung off his bulletproof vest and then paused with his hand on his belt as he stared at her defiantly.

Maybe she should have been frightened, but something about him—maybe his concern for her well-being, maybe the way he acted more like a father than a letch—struck her. Vicki remained unmoving, arms still crossed. “You’re not fooling anyone, Hawk. You would never do it.”

“The hell I wouldn’t.” He watched her closely while he undid his belt and started to unbutton the fly to his cammies.

For one brief moment, Vicki feared she might have made a mistake, but still she held firm. When she continued to boldly stare right back at him, his hands halted their task and flew up in the air. “Damn it, woman. Why are you so stubborn?”

Vicki smiled. She knew it. Scary or not, Hawk was a good guy deep down.

With a huge sigh, he dropped down and sat on his bed, burying his face in his hands. Finally, he raised his head to look at her. “Just because I was bluffing doesn’t mean the next guy will be. You’re going to get yourself into big trouble playing this game.”

She decided to play to his nice side. “You’re probably right. In fact, I think the only way you can make sure I’m safe is to let me stay here until I get my story. If you do that, then I promise I’ll go back to the States, or at least to London, and never bother you again.”

“More blackmail?”

“No. Not blackmail. Think of it as a bargain and a promise.

”

Hawk shook his head as nearly visible waves of frustration radiated off him. He was the kind of man whose every feeling and emotion showed clearly in his body language. Poor guy. No wonder he couldn’t bluff for shit.

“Do I have a choice?” he asked.

She almost pitied him. The caveman had caved before her very eyes. She stood firm. “Not really, no.”

He huffed out a sigh. “All right. Fine. But don’t expect me to babysit you. You’re on your own. And don’t expect my guys to hold your hand either. Pettit and Wally and the rest of the squad have too much to do already, and not enough hours in the day to do it.”

She nodded. “Okay. But I want to go out with them into the countryside.”

Hawk’s jaw tensed again. “Not on missions and not on patrol.”

“But I need to meet the locals.”

Head shaking, Hawk stood firm. “No missions or patrols. It’s too dangerous.”

“Then when?” Vicki realized that last question sounded suspiciously like a whine. She hoped Hawk hadn’t noticed.

“You can go with us on humanitarian trips only. That’s when we go into the villages, eat and drink with the locals, sit down and talk to them through our interpreter, give the kids chocolate and toys, stuff like that. It’s still too frigging dangerous for you to be out there, but I guess if we stay close to the firebase you might not get killed.”

Vicki ignored that last comment as her eyes opened wide with excitement. Going out to meet the local families was exactly what she needed for her story. “Okay. When can we do that?”

Hawk shook his head. “With the waxing of the new moon and the poppy harvest finished, contact has picked back up again.”

Vicki sat and stared at Hawk as he talked in poetic riddles about moons and flowers. Not quite sure if he was speaking in some sort of military code or pulling her leg, she asked again, “So when?”

He rose, refastening his buttons and belt. “I’ll let you know. Until then, try to keep out of our way and out of trouble. These men haven’t seen an American woman in a very, very long time. I’d stay out of sight if I were you.”

“Okay.” After that less-than-encouraging revelation, Vicki watched as Hawk grabbed his vest and prepared to leave her again—a lone woman in the middle of a camp full of strange and foreign men who hadn’t seen a woman in a very, very long time. She swallowed. “Um, Hawk?”

Buttoned up and fully armored again, Hawk had one hand on the doorknob about to leave when he glanced back at her. “Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“Eat your dinner, Vicki, before it gets cold.” And with a frustrated sigh, he was gone and she was alone in the mud hut once again.

Vicki had a feeling that was as close to polite as Hawk got, but since he was going to help get her story, she’d gladly take it and be grateful. Besides, Ryan, who seemed to be Hawk’s right-hand man and her assigned babysitter while she was here, was polite enough for both of them, and he was a hottie.

She could handle this. She would handle this and come out of it with one hell of a story and maybe even a few hot memories to tide her over in the dark days of sexual drought ahead.

“What’s up with the little filly Hawk flew in? Who is she?” Wally asked.

Ryan smiled again as he’d done often since he’d left her. Pretty much every time Vicki came to mind. It wasn’t just his remembering the spider incident either. The woman just made him smile like a schoolboy; he couldn’t explain why. “Get this. She’s a reporter.”

“Shit.” Wally’s southern drawl drew the one-syllable word out to be at least three by the time he was done. “Hawk hates reporters.”

Ryan grinned broader. “Yeah, I know.”

“You ain’t shitting? She’s really a reporter?”

Ryan nodded.

Wally let out a long, slow whistle. “A female reporter, right here, smack in the middle of our humble base. Damn. But I guess I can see why Hawk agreed to her coming here. She’s enough to make a man squirrelly in the drawers.”

Ryan agreed. Although he wouldn’t have put it in those exact words, Vicki had managed to make him a bit squirrelly in his drawers. “She’s cute, but that’s not why Hawk brought her here. And believe me, he regrets it now. He’s trying to convince her to go home.”

Well, not so much convince as scare away.

Wally scowled. “It figures he’d go and ruin it for the rest of us by sending her back. What does he care? He’s got that sweet blonde of his waiting for him back in the States. What about the rest of us single guys here? Don’t we deserve a little romance too?”

Romance. Right. What Wally was interested in was definitely not romance.

“It doesn’t matter whether she stays or goes, Wally, because she’s off-limits. You got it?” Ryan’s voice held an unmistakable warning.

The irony wasn’t lost on him that, although Wally might be known as the squad’s ladies’ man, Ryan couldn’t wait to get back to the hut where he’d left Vicki. In fact, why the hell was he sitting here talking to Wally when he could be with her instead?

“I’m outta here. See you later, Wally.”

Still looking a bit too interested in the woman Ryan was already beginning to think of as his, as least to protect, Wally nodded a goodbye. Outside, Ryan decided he’d keep a close watch on Wally while Vicki was here.

A few minutes later, he reached his quarters and realized that for the first time in a long time, he’d crossed the base without thinking about baddies, snipers, RPGs, vipers, wild jackals or any of the other assorted dangers that normally occupied his mind the moment he was out in the open. That probably wasn’t a good thing, but right now he didn’t care. For once there was something awaiting him in the hut worth looking forward to.

He opened the door to find Vicki sitting at the room’s only desk, which was really just an old piece of plywood Ryan had supported with two makeshift sawhorses. She had her laptop out, set up right where he usually used his.

The scene was extremely surreal, kind of a warped glimpse at normalcy. It could be happening in any town back home in the States. Ryan, coming home from work to find Vicki busy on the computer, except that they both wore body armor and he was about to go out on a mission that had the potential to result in multiple deaths, hopefully not his own or any of his men.

When he’d opened the door, a startled Vicki had spun around in the chair. There was fright in her eyes until she saw it was him, then she looked relieved. Ryan wondered if he should start to knock on his own door before entering, at least while they had company.

He pulled the wooden door of the quarters closed behind him, beyond happy that she’d seemed to relax the moment she saw him. “Hey, Vicki. What have you been up to?”

“Ryan. Hi. I was going to type up some of my notes to kill some time, and when I booted up I found there was a wireless connection. Here, in a mud hut in Afghanistan. Isn’t that funny?”

Amused by Vicki’s nervous babbling, Ryan stripped off his helmet and vest and reached to hang both on a nail stuck in the wall. “Yeah. All the comforts of home. And keep the connection on the down-low if you don’t mind. I kinda hijacked the signal from the operations center.”