Tall, Dark and Devastating: Harvard's Education
Suzanne Brockmann
Harvard's Education Senior Chief "Harvard" Becker believes that there's no room for women in a combat zone. It's too dangerous, too tough…and with P.J. involved, too distracting.He might respect her intellect and shooting abilities, but he doesn't want the responsibility of making sure she stays alive. But P.J. isn't a woman who backs down easily, and to her mind, Harvard has a lot to learn. She just doesn't expect him to be so eager to instruct her on other subjects…like trust, desire and maybe even love.Hawken's Heart Navy SEAL Crash Hawken awakens in a Washington, D.C., hospital to learn he's the prime suspect in the assassination attempt on a commanding officer. Charged with treason, he is alone - except for Nell Burns. Nell and Crash have a history - as friends, as lovers. She knows he couldn't have committed these crimes. Soon they're on the run, determined to uncover what really happened. But first they have to survive another day.
Dear Reader,
Once upon a time, back when I was a fledgling romance author, I wanted to write a miniseries of connected books, and I did some brainstorming with my good friend Eric, searching for a unique hook to tie these books together.
In Eric’s travels, he happened across a Newsweek article about the Navy SEAL BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition SEALs) “Hell Week” of training. He immediately called me and announced, “I have found your miniseries hook!”
I remember running to the library (this was pre-internet), reading that article and getting goosebumps because I knew Eric was right. Navy SEALs make great romance heroes. And with my lifelong admiration for the men and women of the U.S. Military, I knew I would be able to do them justice. (And I’d love doing the research, along the way….)
And so my Tall, Dark & Dangerous series about U.S. Navy SEAL Team Ten came to be. The book you’re holding includes two installments—Harvard’s Education and Hawken’s Heart (originally published with the holiday title It Came Upon A Midnight Clear)—first published by Silhouette Books.
Don’t miss the recently reissued Tall, Dark and Dangerous (Prince Joe and Forever Blue), and Tall, Dark and Fearless (Frisco’s Kid and Everyday, Average Jones). And visit www.eHarlequin.com or my website, www.SuzanneBrockmann.com, for more information about upcoming releases and reissues!
Happy reading,
Suz Brockmann
Praise for the novels of New York Times bestselling author SUZANNE BROCKMANN
“Zingy dialogue, a great sense of drama, and a pair of lovers who generate enough steam heat to power a whole city.”
—RT Book Reviews on Hero Under Cover
“Brockmann deftly delivers another testosterone-drenched, adrenaline-fueled tale of danger and desire that brilliantly combines superbly crafted, realistically complex characters with white-knuckle plotting.”
—Booklist on Force of Nature
“Readers will be on the edge of their seats.”
—Library Journal on Breaking Point
“Another excellently paced, action-filled read. Brockmann delivers yet again!”
—RT Book Reviews on Into the Storm
“Funny, sexy, suspenseful, and superb.”
—Booklist on Hot Target
“Sizzling with military intrigue and sexual tension, with characters so vivid they leap right off the page, Gone Too Far is a bold, brassy read with momentum that just doesn’t quit.”
—New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen
“An unusual and compelling romance.”
—Affaire de Coeur on No Ordinary Man
“Sensational sizzle, powerful emotion and sheer fun.”
—RT Book Reviews on Body Language
Suzanne Brockmann
Tall, Dark and Devastating
CONTENTS
HARVARD’S EDUCATION
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
EPILOGUE
HAWKEN’S HEART
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
HARVARD’S EDUCATION
For my fearless pointman, Ed.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Candace Irvin—friend, fellow writer and unlimited source of U.S. Navy information.
Thanks also to the helpful staff at the UDT SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce, Florida, and to Vicki Debock, who told me about it.
Thanks to my swim buddy Eric Ruben for suggesting I write a book with a Navy SEAL hero! (I owe it all to you, baby!)
Thanks to the Harvard Project volunteers from the Team Ten list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/teamten/) for their proofreading skills: Group Captain Rebecca Chappell, Vi Dao, Kellie Jones, Amy Madden, Claire Madden, Lynn McCrea, Heather McCormack-McHugh, Debbie Meiers and Kelly Shand. Hooyah, gang! Thanks for helping to make the TDD world as typo-free as possible.
Thanks to the real teams of SEALs, and to all the courageous men and women in the U.S. military (especially the Marines! Forgive me for including the banana joke as an example of the healthy rivalry between the Navy and the Marines!), who sacrifice so much to keep America the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Last but not least, a heartfelt thank-you to the wives, husbands, children and families of these real-life military heroes and heroines. Your sacrifice is deeply appreciated.
Any mistakes I’ve made or liberties I’ve taken in writing this book are completely my own.
CHAPTER ONE
THIS WAS WRONG. It was all wrong. Another few minutes, and this entire combined team of FInCOM agents and Navy SEALs was going to be torn to bits.
There was a small army of terrorists out there in the steamy July night. The Ts—or tangos, as the SEALs were fond of calling them—were waiting on their arrival with assault rifles that were as powerful as the weapon P. J. Richards clutched in her sweating hands.
P.J. tried to slow her pounding heart, tried to make the adrenaline that was streaming through her system work for her rather than against her as she crept through the darkness.
FInCOM Agent Tim Farber was calling the shots, but Farber was a city boy—and a fool, to boot. He didn’t know squat about moving through the heavy underbrush of this kind of junglelike terrain. Of course, P.J. was a fine one to be calling names. Born in D.C., she’d been raised on concrete and crumbling blacktop—a different kind of jungle altogether.
Still, she knew enough to realize that Farber had to move more slowly to listen to the sounds of the night around him. And as long as she was criticizing, the fact that four FInCOM agents and three SEALs were occupying close to the same amount of real estate along this narrow trail made her feel as if she were part of some great big Christmas package, all wrapped up with a ribbon on top, waiting under some terrorist’s tree.
“Tim.” P.J. spoke almost silently into the wireless radio headset she and the rest of the CSF team—the Combined SEAL/FInCOM Antiterrorist team—had been outfitted with. “Spread us out and slow it down.”
“Feel free to hang back if we’re moving too fast for you.” Farber intentionally misunderstood, and P.J. felt a flash of frustration. As the only woman in the group, she was at the receiving end of more than her share of condescending remarks.
But while P.J. stood only five feet two inches and weighed in at barely one hundred and fifteen pounds, she could run circles around any one of these men—including most of the big, bad Navy SEALs. She could outshoot nearly all of them, too. When it came to sheer, brute force, yes, she’d admit she was at a disadvantage. But that didn’t matter. Even though she couldn’t pick them up and throw them any farther than she could spit, she could outthink damn near anyone, no sweat.
She sensed more than heard movement to her right and raised her weapon.
But it was only the SEAL called Harvard. The brother. His name was Daryl Becker and he was a senior chief—the naval equivalent of an army sergeant. He cut an imposing enough figure in his street clothes, but dressed in camouflage gear and protective goggles, he looked more dangerous than any man she’d ever met. He’d covered his face and the top of his shaved head with streaks of green and brown greasepaint that blended eerily with his black skin.
He was older than many of the other SEALs in the illustrious Alpha Squad. P.J. was willing to bet he had a solid ten years on her at least, making him thirty-five—or maybe even older. This was no green boy. This one was one-hundred-percent-pure grown man—every hard, muscled inch of him. Rumor had it he’d actually attended Harvard University and graduated cum laude before enlisting in Uncle Sam’s Navy.
He hand-signaled a question. “Are you all right?” He mouthed the words as well—as if he thought she’d already forgotten the array of gestures that allowed them to communicate silently. Maybe Greg Greene or Charles Schneider had forgotten, but she remembered every single one.
“I’m okay,” she signaled to him as tersely as she could, frowning to emphasize her disapproval.
Damn, Harvard had been babying her from the word go. Ever since the FInCOM agents had first met the SEALs from Alpha Squad, this man in particular had been watching her closely, no doubt ready to catch her when she finally succumbed to the female vapors and fainted.
P.J. used hand signals to tell him what Tim Farber had ignored. Stop. Listen. Silent. Something’s wrong.
The woods around them were oddly quiet. All the chirping and squeaking and rustling of God only knows what kinds of creepy crawly insect life had stopped. Someone else was out there, or they themselves were making too much racket. Either possibility was bad news.
Tim Farber’s voice sounded over the headphones. “Raheem says the campsite is only a quarter mile ahead. Split up into groups.”
About time. If she were the AIC—the agent in charge—of the operation, she would have broken the group into pairs right from the start. Not only that, but she would have taken what the informant, Raheem Al Hadi, said with a very large grain of salt instead of hurtling in, ill-informed and half-cocked.
“Belay that.” Tim’s voice was too loud in her ears. “Raheem advises the best route in is on this path. These woods are booby-trapped. Stay together.”
P.J. felt like one of the redcoats, marching along the trail from Lexington to Concord—the perfect target for the rebel guerrillas.
She had discussed Raheem with Tim Farber before they’d left on this mission. Or rather, she’d posed some thought-provoking questions to which he’d responded with off-the-cuff reassurances. Raheem had given information to the SEALs before. His record had proven him to be reliable. Tim had reassured her, all right—he’d reassured her that he was, indeed, a total fool.
She’d found out from the other two FInCOM agents that Farber believed the SEALs were testing him to see if he trusted them. He was intending to prove he did.
Stay close to me, Harvard said with his hands.
P.J. pretended not to see him as she checked her weapon. She didn’t need to be babysat. Annoyance flooded through her, masking the adrenaline surges and making her feel almost calm.
He got right in her face. Buddy up, he signaled. Follow me.
No. You follow me. She shot the signal back at him. She, for one, was tired of blindly following just anyone. She’d come out here in these wretched, bug-infested, swampy woods to neutralize terrorists. And that was exactly what she was going to do. If G.I. Joe here wanted to tag along, that was fine by her.
He caught her wrist in his hand—Lord, he had big hands—and shook his head in warning.
He was standing so close she could feel body heat radiating from him. He was much taller than she was, more than twelve inches, and she had to crane her neck to glare at him properly.
He smiled suddenly, as if he found the evil eye she was giving him behind her goggles amusing. He clicked off his lip mike, pushing it slightly aside so that he could lean down to whisper in her ear, “I knew you’d be trouble, first time I saw you.”
It was remarkable, really, the way this man’s smile transformed his face, changing him from stern, savage warrior to intensely interested and slightly amused potential lover. Or maybe he was just mildly interested and highly amused, and her too vivid imagination had made up the other parts.
P.J. pulled her hand away, and as she did, the world exploded around her, and Harvard fell to the ground.
He’d been shot.
Her mind froze, but her body reacted swiftly as a projectile whistled past her head.
She brought her weapon up as she hit the ground, using her peripheral vision to mark the positions of the tangos who had crept up behind them. She fired in double bursts, hitting one, then two, then three of them in rapid succession.
All around her, weapons were being fired and men were shouting in outrage and in pain. From what she could see, the entire CSF team was completely surrounded—except for the little hole she’d made in the terrorists’ line of attack.
“Man down,” P.J. rasped, following FInCOM procedure as she crawled on knees and elbows toward Harvard’s body. But he’d taken a direct hit. She knew from one glance there was no use pulling him with her as she moved outside the kill zone.
“Backup—we need backup!” She could hear Tim Farber’s voice, pitched up an octave, as she moved as silently as possible toward the prone bodies of the terrorists she’d brought down.
“By the time help arrives—” Chuck Schneider’s voice was also very squeaky “—there’ll be nothing left here to back up!”
Yeah? Not if she could help it.
There was a tree with low branches just beyond the terrorists’ ambush point. If she could get there and somehow climb up it…
She was a city girl, an urban-street agent, and she’d never climbed a tree in her life. She absolutely hated heights, but she knew if she could fire from the vantage point of those branches, the tangos wouldn’t know what hit them.
P.J. moved up and onto her feet in a crouching run and headed for the tree. She saw the tango rising out of the bushes at the last possible second and she fired twice, hitting him squarely in the chest. He fell, and only then did she see the man behind him.
She was dead. She knew in that instant that she was dead. She fired anyway, but her aim was off. His wasn’t.
The force of the double impact pushed her back, and she tripped and went down. She felt her head crack against something, a rock, the trunk of a tree—she wasn’t sure what, but it was granite hard. Pain exploded, stars sparking behind her tightly closed eyes.
“Code eighty-six! Eighty-six! Cease and desist!”
Just like that, the gunfire stopped. Just like that, this particular training exercise was over.
P.J. felt bright lights going on all over the area, and she struggled to open her eyes, to sit up. The movement made the world lurch unappealingly, and she desperately fought the urge to retch, curling instead into a tight little ball. She prayed she’d somehow find her missing sense of equilibrium before anyone noticed she was temporarily out for the count.
“We need a hospital corpsman,” the voice over her headset continued. “We’ve got an agent down, possible head injury.”
P.J. felt hands touching her shoulder, her face, unfastening her goggles. So much for no one noticing.
“Richards, yo. You still with me, girl?” It was Harvard, and his voice got harsher, louder as he turned away from her. “Where the hell is that corpsman?” Softer again, and sweeter, like honey now. “Richards, can you open your eyes?”
She opened one eye and saw Harvard’s camouflaged face gazing at her. His chin and cheeks were splattered with yellow from the paint ball that had hit him in the center of his chest.
“I’m fine,” she whispered. She still hadn’t quite regained her breath from the paint ball that had caught her directly in the midsection.
“Like hell you’re fine,” he countered. “And I should know. I saw you doing that George of the Jungle imitation. Right into that tree, headfirst…”
One Harvard became two—and Lord knows one was more than enough to deal with. P.J. had to close her eyes again. “Just give me another minute….”
“Corpsman’s on the way, Senior Chief.”
“How bad’s she hurt, H.?” P.J. recognized that voice as belonging to Alpha Squad’s commanding officer, Captain Joe Catalanotto—Joe Cat, as his men irreverently called him.
“I don’t know, sir. I don’t want to move her, in case she’s got a neck injury. Why the hell didn’t one of us think about the danger of firing a paint ball at someone this girl’s size? What is she? A hundred, hundred and five pounds at the most? How the hell did this get past us?”
The breathlessness and dizziness were finally fading, leaving a lingering nausea and a throbbing ache in her head. P.J. would have liked a few more minutes to gather her senses, but Harvard had just gone and called her a girl.
“This is no big deal,” P.J. said, forcing her eyes open and struggling to sit up. “I was moving when the projectile hit me—the force caught me off balance and I tripped. There’s no need to turn this into some kind of a national incident. Besides, I weigh one-fifteen.” On a good day. “I’ve played paint-ball games before with no problem.”
Harvard was kneeling next to her. He reached out, caught her face between his hands and lightly touched the back of her head with the tips of his fingers. He skimmed an incredibly sore spot, and she couldn’t help but wince.
He swore softly, as if it hurt him, as well. “Hurts, huh?”
“I’m—”
“Fine,” he finished for her. “Yes, ma’am, you’ve made that clear. You’ve also got a bump the size of Mount Saint Helens on the back of your head. Odds are, you’ve got a concussion to go along with that bump.”
P.J. could see Tim Farber standing in the background, all but taking notes for the report she knew he was going to file with Kevin Laughton. I recommend from now on that Agent Richards’s role in this antiterrorist unit be limited to dealing with administrative issues…. Some men couldn’t abide working in the field alongside a woman. She glanced at Harvard. No doubt he’d be first in line to put his initials right next to Farber’s recommendation.
She silently composed her own note. Hey, Kev, I fell and I landed wrong—so sue me. And before you pull me off this team, prove that no male FInCOM agent ever made a similar mistake and… Oh, wait, what’s that I’m remembering? A certain high-level AIC who shall remain nameless but whose initials are K.L. doing a rather un-graceful nosedive from a second-story window during a training op back about a year and a half ago?
P.J. focused on the mental image of Laughton grinning ruefully as he rubbed the newly healed collarbone that still gave him twinges of pain whenever it rained. That picture made Farber’s lofty smirk easier to bear.
No way was Kevin Laughton pulling her from this assignment. He had been her boss for two years, and he knew she deserved to be right here, right through to the end, come hell or high water or Tim Farber’s male chauvinist whining.
The corpsman arrived, and after he flashed a light into P.J.’s eyes, he examined the bump on the back of her head a whole lot less gently than Harvard had.
“I want to take you over to the hospital,” the corpsman told her. “I think you’re probably fine, but I’d feel better if we got an X-ray or two. You’ve got a lot of swelling back there. Any nausea?”
“I had the wind knocked out of me, so it’s hard to tell,” P.J. said, sidestepping the question. Harvard was shaking his head, watching her closely, and she carefully made a point not to meet his gaze.
“Can you walk or should we get a stretcher?”
P.J. was damned if she was going to be carried out of these woods, but truth was, her legs felt like rubber. “I can walk.” Her voice rang with false confidence as she tried to convince herself as well as everyone else.
She could feel Harvard watching as she pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. He moved closer, still looking to catch her if she fell. It was remarkable, really. Every other woman she knew would’ve been dying for a good-looking man like Senior Chief Daryl Becker to play hero for them.
But she wasn’t every other woman.
She’d come this far on her own two feet and she wasn’t about to let some silly bump on the head undermine her tough-as-nails reputation.
It was hard enough working at FInCOM, where the boys only grudgingly let the girls play, too. But for eight weeks, she was being allowed access to the absolutely-no-women-allowed world of the U.S. Navy SEALs.
For the next eight weeks, the members of SEAL Team Ten’s invincible Alpha Squad were going to be watching her, waiting for her to screw up so they could say to each other, See, this is precisely why we don’t let women in.
The SEALs were the U.S. Navy’s special operations units. They were highly trained warriors with well-earned reputations for being the closest things to superheroes this side of a comic book.
The acronym came from sea, air and land, and SEALs were equally comfortable—and adept—at operating in all of those environments.
They were smart, they were brave and they were more than a little crazy—they had to be to make it through the grueling sessions known as BUD/S training, which included the legendary Hell Week. From what P.J. had heard, a man who was still in the SEAL program after completing Hell Week had every right to be cocky and arrogant.
And the men of Alpha Squad at times could be both.
As P.J. forced herself to walk slowly but steadily away, she could feel all of Alpha Squad’s eyes on her back.
Especially Senior Chief Harvard Becker’s.
CHAPTER TWO
HARVARD DIDN’T KNOW what the hell he was doing here.
It was nearly 0100. He should have gone back to his apartment outside the base. He should be sitting on his couch in his boxers, chillin’ and having a cold beer and skimming through the past five days’ videotapes of The Young and the Restless instead of making a soap opera out of his own life.
Instead, he was here in this allegedly upscale hotel bar with the rest of the unmarried guys from Alpha Squad, making a sorry-assed attempt to bond with FInCOM’s wunderkinder.
Steel guitars were wailing from the jukebox—some dreadful song about Papa going after Mama and doing her in because of her cheatin’ heart. And the SEALs—Wes and Bobby were the only ones Harvard could see from his quick scan of the late-night crowd—were sitting on one side of the room, and the three male FInCOM agents were on the other. Not much bonding going down here tonight.
Harvard didn’t blame Wes and Bob one bit. FInCOM’s fab four didn’t have much in common with the Alpha Squad.
It was amazing, really. There were something like seventy-three-hundred agents in the Federal Intelligence Commission. He’d have thought the Chosen Four would have come equipped with superhero capes and a giant S emblazoned on the fronts of their shirts at the very least.
Timothy Farber was FInCOM’s alleged golden boy. He was a fresh-faced, college-boy type, several years shy of thirty, with a humorless earnestness that was annoying as hell. He was a solid subscriber to the FInCOM my-way-or-the-highway way of thinking. This no doubt worked when directing traffic to allow clear passage for the President’s convoy, but it wouldn’t do him quite as well when dealing with unpredictable, suicidal, religious zealots.
No, in Harvard’s experience, a leader of a counterterrorist team needed constantly to adjust his plan of attack, altering and revising as unknown variables become known. A team leader needed to know how to listen to others’ opinions and to know that sometimes the other guy’s idea might be the best idea.
Joe Cat had consulted with Alan “Frisco” Francisco—one of the best BUD/S training instructors in Coronado—and had purposely put blustery Tim Farber in command of the very first training scenario in an attempt to knock him off his high horse. A former member of the Alpha Squad who was off the active duty list because of a permanent injury to his knee, Frisco had duties that kept him in California, but he was in constant contact with both Alpha Squad’s captain and Harvard.
Still, judging from the way Farber was holding court at the bar, surrounded by his two fellow agents, it was obvious to Harvard that Frisco’s ploy hadn’t worked. Farber was totally unperturbed by his failure.
Maybe tomorrow, when Alpha Squad reviewed the exercise, the fact would finally sink in that Farber had personally created this snafu, this grand-scale Charlie Foxtrot.
But somehow Harvard doubted it.
As Harvard watched, Farber drew something on a napkin, and the two other FInCOM agents nodded seriously.
Greg Greene and Charles Schneider were around Harvard’s age, thirty-five, thirty-six, maybe even older. They’d spent most of the preliminary classroom sessions looking bored, their body language broadcasting “been there, done that.” But in the field, during the evening’s exercise, they’d shown little imagination. They were standard issue FInCOM agents—finks, as the SEALs were fond of calling them. They didn’t make waves, they followed the rule book to the last letter, they waited for someone else to take the lead and they looked good in dark suits and sunglasses.
They’d looked good smeared with yellow paint from the terrorists’ weapons, too. They’d followed Tim Farber’s command without question, and in the mock ambush that had resulted, they’d been rather messily mock killed.
Still, they hadn’t seemed to learn that following Farber unquestioningly might’ve been a mistake, because here they were, following Farber still. No doubt because someone higher up in FInCOM had told them to follow him.
Only one of the four superfinks out there tonight had openly questioned Farber’s command decisions.
P. J. Richards.
Harvard glanced around the bar again, but he didn’t see her anywhere. She was probably in her room, having a soak in the tub, icing the bruise on the back of her head.
Damn, he could still see her, flung backward like some rag doll when that paint ball hit her. He hadn’t gone to church in a long time, but he’d silently checked in with God as he’d called for the training session to halt, asking for divine intervention, praying that P.J. hadn’t hit that tree with enough force to break her pretty neck.
Men died during training. The risk was part of being a SEAL. But P. J. Richards was neither man nor SEAL, and the thought of her out there with them, facing the dangers they so casually faced, made Harvard’s skin crawl.
“Hey, Senior Chief. I didn’t expect to see you here.” Lucky O’Donlon was carrying a pitcher of beer from the bar.
“I didn’t expect to see you here, either, O’Donlon. I was sure you’d be heading out to see that girlfriend of yours at warp speed.”
Harvard followed Lucky to the table where Bobby and Wes were sitting. He nodded a greeting to them—the inseparable twins of Alpha Squad. Unidentical twins. Bobby Taylor came close to Harvard’s six foot five, and he gave the impression of being nearly as wide around as he was tall. If he hadn’t wanted to become a SEAL, he would have had a serious future as a professional football linebacker. And Wes Skelly was Alpha Squad’s version of Popeye the sailor man, short and wiry and liberally tattooed. What he lacked in height and weight, he more than made up for with his extremely big mouth.
“Renee had a meeting tonight for the state pageant.” Lucky sat down at the table and then kicked out a chair for Harvard to join them. He filled first Bobby’s mug from the pitcher, then poured some beer for Wes. “You want me to get you a glass?” he asked Harvard.
“No, thanks.” Harvard shook his head as he sat down. “What’s that title Renee just won? Miss Virginia Beach?”
“Miss East Coast Virginia,” Lucky told him.
“Pretty girl. Young girl.”
Lucky flashed his movie-star-perfect grin as if the fact that his girlfriend probably hadn’t yet celebrated her nineteenth birthday was something to be proud of. “Don’t I know it.”
Harvard had to smile. To each his own. Personally, he liked women with a little more life experience.
“Hey, Crash,” Wes called in his megaphone voice. “Pull up a chair.”
William Hawken, Alpha Squad’s newest temporary member, sat across from Harvard, meeting his eyes and nodding briefly. Hawken was one spooky individual, dark and almost unnaturally quiet, seemingly capable of becoming invisible upon demand. At first glance, he was not particularly tall, not particularly well-built, not particularly handsome.
But Harvard knew better than to go by a first glance. The man had been nicknamed Crash for his ability to move soundlessly in any circumstance, under any condition. Crash was anything but average. On closer examination, his eyes were a steely shade of blue with a sharpness to them that seemed almost to cut. Crash didn’t so much look around a room—he absorbed it, memorized it, recorded it, probably permanently. And beneath his purposely loose-fitting clothes, his body was that of a long-distance runner—lean and muscular, without an extra ounce of fat anywhere.
“Grab a glass and have a beer,” Lucky told Crash.
He shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said in his deceptively quiet voice. “Beer’s not my drink. I’ll wait for the waitress.”
Harvard knew that Crash was part of this FInCOM project at Captain Catalanotto’s special request. He was in charge of organizing all the “terrorist” activities the Combined SEAL/FInCOM team would be running into over the next eight weeks. He’d been the strategical force behind tonight’s paint-ball slaughter. The score so far was Crash—one, CSF team—zero.
Harvard didn’t know him very well, but Hawken’s reputation was close to legendary. He’d been part of the SEALs’ mysterious Gray Group for years. And apparently he’d been involved in countless black operations—highly covert, hush-hush missions that were as controversial as they were dangerous. SEALs were allegedly sent into other countries to perform tasks that even the U.S. Government claimed to know nothing about—neutralization of drug lords, permanent removal of political and military leaders preaching genocide and so on. The SEALs were forced to play God, or at least take on the roles of judge, jury and hangman combined. It was not a job Harvard would have relished doing.
If the SEALs on a black op succeeded at their mission, they’d get little or no recognition. And if they failed, they were on their own, possibly facing espionage charges, with no chance of the government stepping forward and accepting the responsibility.
No wonder Crash didn’t drink beer. He probably had an ulcer the size of an aircraft carrier from the stress.
He’d no doubt come here tonight in an attempt to better get to know the SEALs who made up Alpha Squad—the men he’d be working with for the next eight weeks.
Which reminded Harvard of why he’d come here. He glanced at the three FInCOM agents sitting at the bar. Still no sign of P.J. “Has anyone tried to make friends with the finks tonight?”
“Besides you trying to get close to P. J. Richards, you mean? Trying to hold her hand out in the woods?” Wes Skelly laughed at his miserable joke. “Jeez, Senior Chief, only time in my memory that you were the first man down in a paint-ball fight.”
“That was my paint ball that hit you, H.,” Lucky drawled. “I hope it didn’t hurt too badly.”
“Hey, it’s about time he found out what it feels like just being hit,” Bobby countered in his sub-bass-woofer voice.
“I couldn’t resist,” Lucky continued. “You were such a great, big, perfect target, standing there like that.”
“I think Harvard let you shoot him. I think he was just trying to score some sympathy from P.J.,” Wes said. “Is she hot or is she hot?”
“She’s a colleague,” Harvard said. “Show a little respect.”
“I am,” Wes said. “In fact, there are few things I respect more than an incredibly hot woman. Look me in the eye, H., and tell me that you honestly don’t think this lady is a total babe.”
Harvard had to laugh. Wes could be like a pit bull when he got hold of an idea like this. He knew if he didn’t admit it now, Wes would be on him all night until he finally caved in. He met Crash’s amused gaze and rolled his eyes in exasperation. “All right. You’re right, Skelly. She’s hot.”
“See? Harvard was distracted,” Bobby told Lucky. “That’s the only reason you were able to hit him.”
“Yeah, his focus was definitely not where it should have been,” Lucky agreed. “It was on the lovely Ms. Richards instead.” He grinned at Harvard. “Not that I blame you, Senior Chief. She is a killer.”
“Are you gonna go for her?” Wes asked. “Inquiring minds want to know. You know, she’s short, but she’s got really great legs.”
“And a terrific butt.”
Wes smiled blissfully, closing his eyes. “And an incredible set of—”
“Well, this is really fun.” Harvard looked up to see P. J. Richards standing directly behind him. “But aren’t we going to talk about Tim and Charlie and Greg’s legs and butts, too?” Her big brown eyes were open extra wide in mock innocence.
Silence. Dead, total silence.
Harvard was the first to move, pushing back his chair and standing up. “I have to apologize, ma’am—”
The feigned curiosity in her eyes shifted to blazing hot anger as she glared at him from her barely five-foot-two-inch height.
“No,” she said sharply. “You don’t have to apologize, Senior Chief Becker. What you have to do is learn not to make the same disrespectful mistakes over and over and over again. What you as men have to do is learn to stop dissing women by turning them into nothing more than sex objects. Great legs, a terrific butt and an incredible set of what, Mr. Skelly?” She turned her glare to Wesley. “I have to assume you weren’t about to compliment me on my choice of encyclopedias, but were instead commenting on my breasts?”
Wes actually looked sheepish. “Yeah. Sorry, ma’am.”
“Well, you get points for honesty, but that’s all you get points for,” P.J. continued tartly. She looked from Wes to Bobby to Lucky. “You were the first three tangos I shot out there tonight, weren’t you?” She turned to Crash. “Exactly how many members of your team were hit tonight, Mr. Hawken?”
“Six.” He smiled slightly. “Four of whom you were responsible for.”
“Four out of six.” She shook her head, exhaling in a short burst of disbelief as she glared at the SEALs. “I beat you at your own game, and yet you’re not talking about my skills as a shooter. You’re discussing my butt. Don’t you think there’s something really wrong with this picture?”
Lucky looked at Bobby, and Bobby glanced at Wes.
Bobby seemed to think a response was needed, but didn’t know quite what to say. “Um…”
P.J. still had her hands on the hips in question, and she wasn’t finished yet. “Unless, of course, you think maybe my ability to hit a target was just dumb luck. Or maybe you think I wouldn’t have been able to hit you if I had been a man. Maybe it was my very femaleness that distracted and stupefied you, hmm? Maybe you were stunned by the sight of my female breasts—which, incidentally, boys, are a meager size thirty-two B and can barely be noticed when I’m wearing my combat vest. We’re not talking heavy cleavage here, gang.”
Harvard couldn’t hide his smile.
She turned her glare to him. “Am I amusing you, Senior Chief?”
Damn, this woman was mad. She was funny as hell, too, but he wasn’t going to make things any better by laughing. Harvard wiped the smile off his face. “Again, I’d like to apologize to you, Ms. Richards. I assure you, no disrespect was intended.”
“Maybe not,” she told him, her voice suddenly quiet, “but disrespect was given.”
As he looked into her eyes, Harvard could see weariness and resignation, as if this had happened to her far too many times. He saw physical fatigue and pain, too, and he knew that her head was probably still throbbing from the blow she’d received earlier that evening.
Still, he couldn’t help thinking that despite everything she’d said, Wesley was right. This girl was smoking hot. Even the loose-fitting T-shirt and baggy fatigues she wore couldn’t disguise the lithe, athletic and very female body underneath. Her skin was smooth and clear, like a four-year-old’s, and a deep, rich shade of chocolate. He could imagine how soft it would feel to his fingers, how delicious she would taste beneath his lips. Her face was long and narrow, her chin strong and proud, her profile that of African royalty, her eyes so brown the color merged with her pupils, becoming huge dark liquid pools he could drown in. She wore her hair pulled austerely from her face in a ponytail.
Yeah, she was beautiful. Beautiful and very, very hot.
She stepped around him, heading toward the bar. Harvard caught up with her before she was halfway across the room.
“Look,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the cowboy music blaring from the jukebox. “I don’t know how much of that conversation you overheard—”
“Enough. Believe me.”
“The truth is, you were a distraction out there tonight. To me. Having you there was extremely disconcerting.”
She had her arms folded across her chest, one eyebrow raised in an expression of half-disdain, half-disgust. “And the point of your telling me this is…?”
He let his eyelids drop halfway. “Oh, it’s not a come-on line. You’d know for sure if I were giving you one of those.”
Her gaze faltered, and she was the first to look away. What do you know? She wasn’t as tough as she was playing.
Harvard pressed his advantage. “I think it’s probably a good idea for you to know that I believe there’s no room in this kind of high-risk joint FInCOM/military endeavor for women.”
P.J. gave him another one of those you’ve-lost-your-mind laughs. “It’s a good thing you weren’t on the FInCOM candidate selection committee, then, isn’t it?”
“I have no problem at all with women holding jobs in both FInCOM and in the U.S. military,” he continued. “But I believe that they—that you—should have low-risk supporting roles, doing administrative work instead of taking part in combat.”
“I see.” P.J. was nodding. “So what you’re telling me is that despite the fact that I’m the best shooter in nearly all of FInCOM, you think the best place for me is in the typing pool?”
Her eyes were shooting flames.
Harvard stood his ground. “You did prove yourself an expert shooter tonight. You’re very good, I’ll grant you that. But the fact is, you’re a woman. Having you on my team, out in the field, in a combat situation, would be a serious distraction.”
“That’s your problem,” she said, blazing. “If you can’t keep your pants zipped—”
“It has nothing to do with that, and you know it. It’s a protectiveness issue. How can my men and I do our jobs when we’re distracted by worrying about you?”
P.J. couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’re telling me that because you’re working with a Stone Age mentality, because you’re the one with the problem, I should be the one to adapt? I don’t think so, Jack. You’re just going to have to stop thinking of me as a woman, and then we’ll get along just fine.”
It was his turn to laugh in disbelief. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Try counseling, Senior Chief, because I’m here to stay.”
His smile was nowhere to be seen, and without it, he looked hard and uncompromising. “You know, it’s likely that the only reason you’re here is to fill a quota. To help someone with lots of gold on their sleeves be PC.”
P.J. refused to react. “I could fire those exact same words right back at you—the only black man in Alpha Squad.”
He didn’t blink. He just stood there, looking at her.
Lord, he was big. He’d changed into a clean T-shirt, but he still wore the camouflage fatigue pants he’d been wearing earlier tonight. With his shirt pulled tight across his mile-wide shoulders and broad chest, with his shaved head gleaming in the dim barroom light, he looked impossibly dangerous. And incredibly handsome in a harshly masculine way.
No, Harvard Becker was no pretty boy, that was for sure. But he was quite possibly the most handsome man P.J. had ever met. His face was angular, with high cheekbones and a strong jaw. His nose was big, but it was the right length and width for his face. Any smaller, and he would have looked odd. And he had just about the most perfect ears she’d ever seen—just the right size, perfectly rounded and streamlined. Before the war game, he’d taken off the diamond stud he always wore in his left ear, but he’d since put it back in, and it glistened colorfully, catching snatches of the neon light.
But it was Harvard’s eyes that P.J. had been aware of right from the start. A rich, dark golden-brown, they were the focal point of his entire face, of his entire being. If it were true that the eyes were the window to the soul, this man had one powerfully intense soul.
Yeah, he was the real thing.
As a matter of fact, more than one or two of the other patrons in the bar, both men and women, were sneaking looks at the man. Some were wary, some were nervous, and some were flat-out chock-full of pheromones.
Without even turning around, Harvard could have snapped his fingers and three or four women—both black and white—would’ve been pushing their way to his side.
Well, maybe she was exaggerating a little bit. But only a little bit.
This man could have any woman he wanted—and he knew it. And even though P.J. could still hear an echo of his rich voice saying yes, he thought she was hot, she knew the last thing he needed was any kind of involvement with her.
Hell, he’d made it more than clear he didn’t even want to be friends.
P.J. refused to feel regret, pushing the twinges of emotion far away from her, ignoring them as surely as she ignored the dull throb of her still-aching head. Because the last thing she needed was any kind of involvement with him—or with anyone, for that matter. She’d avoided it successfully for most of her twenty-five years. There was no reason to think she couldn’t continue to avoid it.
He was studying her as intently as she was looking at him. And when he spoke, P.J. knew he hadn’t missed the fatigue and pain she was trying so hard to keep from showing in her face. His voice was surprisingly gentle. “You should call it a night—get some rest.”
P.J. glanced toward the bar, toward Tim Farber and the other FInCOM agents. “I just thought I’d grab a nightcap before I headed upstairs.” Truth was, she’d wanted nothing more than to drag herself to her room and throw herself into a warm tub. But she felt she had to come into the bar, put in an appearance, prove to the other agents and to any of the SEALs who might be hanging around that she was as tough as they were. Tougher. She could go from a hospital X-ray table directly to the bar. See? She wasn’t really hurt.
See? She could take damn near anything and come back ready for more.
Harvard followed her as she slid onto a bar stool several seats away from the other agents. “It wasn’t even a concussion,” she said. She didn’t bother to raise her voice—she knew Farber was listening.
Harvard glanced at the FInCOM agents. “I know,” he said, leaning against the stool next to her. “I stopped in at the hospital before heading over here. The doctor said you’d already been checked over and released.”
“Like I said before, I’m fine.”
“Whoops, I’m getting paged.” Harvard took his pager from his belt and glanced at the number. As the bartender approached, he greeted the man by name. “Hey, Tom. Get me my usual. And whatever the lady here wants.”
“I’m paying for my own,” P.J. protested, checking her own pager out of habit. It was silent and still.
“She’s paying for her own,” Harvard told Tom with a smile. “Mind if I use the phone to make a local call?”
“Anytime, Senior Chief.” The bartender plopped a telephone in front of Harvard before looking at P.J. “What can I get you, ma’am?”
Iced tea. She truly wanted nothing more than a tall, cool glass of iced tea. But big, tough men didn’t drink iced tea, so she couldn’t, either. “Give me a draft, please, Tom.”
Beside her, Harvard was silent, listening intently to whoever was on the other end of that telephone. He’d pulled a small notebook from one of his pockets and was using the stub of a pencil to write something down. His smile was long gone—in fact, his mouth was a grim line, his face intensely serious.
“Thanks, Joe,” he said, then he hung up the phone. Joe. He’d been talking to Joe Catalanotto, Alpha Squad’s CO. He stood up, took out his wallet and threw several dollar bills onto the bar. “I’m sorry, I can’t stay.”
“Problem at the base?” P.J. asked, watching him in the mirror on the wall behind the bar. For some reason, it was easier than looking directly at him.
He met her eyes in the mirror. “No, it’s personal,” he said, slipping his wallet into his pants.
She instantly backed down. “I’m sorry—”
“My father’s had a heart attack,” Harvard told her quietly. “He’s in the hospital. I’ve got to go to Boston right away.”
“I’m sorry,” P.J. said again, turning to look directly at him. His father. Harvard actually had a father. Somehow she’d imagined him spawned—an instant six-and-a-half-foot-tall adult male. “I hope he’s all right….”
But Harvard was already halfway across the room.
She watched him until he turned the corner into the hotel lobby and disappeared from view.
The bartender had set a frosty mug of beer on a coaster in front of her. And in front of the bar stool that Harvard had been occupying was a tall glass of iced tea. His usual.
P.J. had to smile. So much for her theory about big, tough men.
She pushed the beer aside and drank the iced tea, wondering what other surprises Harvard Becker had in store for her.
CHAPTER THREE
“HE LOOKS AWFUL.”
“He looks a great deal better than he did last night in that ambulance.” His mother lowered herself carefully onto the deck chair, and Harvard was aware once again of all the things he’d noticed for the first time in the hospital. The gray in her hair. The deepening lines of character on her slightly round, still pretty face. The fact that her hip was bothering her yet again—that she moved stiffly, more slowly each time he saw her.
Harvard’s father had looked awful—a shriveled and shrunken version of himself, lying in that hospital bed, hooked up to all those monitors and tubes. His eyes had been closed when Harvard had come in, but the old man had roused himself enough to make a bad joke. Something about how he’d gone to awfully extreme lengths this time just to make their wayward son come to visit.
The old man. Harvard had called his father that since he was twelve. But now it was true.
His parents were getting old.
The heart attack had been relatively mild, but from now on Dr. Medgar Becker was going to have to stop joking about how he was on a two-slices-of-cheesecake-per-day diet and really stick to the low-fat, high-exercise regimen his doctor had ordered. He was going to have to work to cut some of the stress out of his life, as well. But God knows, as the head of the English department at one of New England’s most reputable universities, that wasn’t going to be an easy thing to do.
“We’re selling the house, Daryl,” his mother told him quietly.
Harvard nearly dropped the can of soda he’d taken from the refrigerator on his way through the kitchen. “You’re what?”
His mother lifted her face to the warmth of the late afternoon sunshine, breathing in the fresh, salty air. “Your father was offered a part-time teaching position at a small college in Phoenix. It’ll be fewer than a third of the hours he currently has, and far less responsibility. I think we’ve been given a sign from the Almighty that it’s time for him to cut back a bit.”
He took a deep breath, and when he spoke, his voice was just as calm as hers had been. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”
“Medgar wasn’t sure he was ready to make such a big change,” his mother told him. “We didn’t want to worry you until we knew for sure we were going to make the move.”
“To Phoenix. In Arizona.”
His mother smiled at the skepticism in his voice. “We’ll be near Kendra and Robby and the kids. And Jonelle and her bunch won’t be too far away in Santa Fe. And we’ll be closer to you, too, when you’re in California. It’ll be much easier for you to come and visit. There’s a fine community theater there—something I’m truly looking forward to. And last time we were out there, we found the perfect little house within walking distance of the campus.”
Harvard leaned against the railing on the deck, looking out over the grayish-green water of Boston Harbor. His parents had lived in Hingham, Massachusetts, in this house near the ocean, for nearly thirty years. This had been his home from the time he was six years old.
“I’ve read that the housing market is really soft right now,” he said. “It might be a while before you find a buyer willing to meet your asking price.”
“We’ve already got a buyer—paying cash, no less. I called this morning from the hospital, accepted his offer. Closing date’s scheduled for two weeks from Thursday.”
He turned to face her. “That soon?”
His mother smiled sadly. “I knew that out of all the children, you would be the one to take this the hardest. Five children—you and four girls—and you’re the sentimental one. I know you always loved this house, Daryl, but we really don’t have a choice.”
He shook his head as he sat next to her. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I haven’t had any time to get used to the idea.”
“We’re tired of shoveling snow. We don’t want to fight our way through another relentless New England winter. Out in Arizona, your father can play golf all year long. And this house is so big and empty now that Lena’s gone off to school. The list of pros is a mile long. The list of cons has only one item—my Daryl will be sad.”
Harvard took his mother’s hand. “I get back here twice a year, at best. You’ve got to do what’s right for you and Daddy. Just as long as you’re sure it’s really what you want.”
“Oh, we’re sure.” Conviction rang in his mother’s voice. “After last night, we’re very sure.” She squeezed his fingers. “We’ve been so busy talking about Medgar and me, I haven’t had the chance to ask about you. How are you?”
Harvard nodded. “I’m well, thanks.”
“I was afraid when I called last night you’d be off in some foreign country saving the world or whatever it is that you Navy SEAL types do.”
He forced a smile. His parents were moving from this house in just a few weeks. This was probably going to be the very last time he sat on this deck. “Saving the world just about sums it up.”
“Have you told that captain of yours it ticks your mother off that you can’t freely talk about all these awful, dangerous assignments you get sent on?”
Harvard laughed. “Right now we’re temporarily stationed in Virginia. We’re helping train some FInCOM agents in counterterrorist techniques.”
“That sounds relatively safe.”
P. J. Richards and her blazing eyes came to mind. “Relatively,” he agreed. “But it’s going to keep me tied up over the next seven and a half weeks. I won’t be around to help you pack or move or anything. Are you sure you’re going to be able to handle that—especially with Daddy laid up?”
“Lena’s home for the summer, and Jonelle’s volunteered to help out, too.”
Harvard nodded. “Good.”
“How’s that young friend of yours—the one that just got married and had himself a son, although not quite in that order?”
“Harlan Jones.” Harvard identified the friend in question.
His mother frowned. “No, that’s not what you usually call him.”
“His nickname’s Cowboy.”
“That’s right. Cowboy. How could I forget? How’s that working out for him? He had to grow up really fast, didn’t he?”
“It’s only been a few months, but so far so good. He’s on temporary assignment with SEAL Team Two out in California. He had the chance to be part of a project he couldn’t turn down.”
“A project you can’t tell me anything about, no doubt.”
Harvard had to smile. “Sorry. You’ll like this irony, though. Cowboy’s swim buddy from BUD/S training—a guy named William Hawken—is temporarily working with Alpha Squad.”
“That’s that small world factor again,” his mother proclaimed. “Everyone’s connected in some way—some more obviously than others.” She leaned forward. “Speaking of connections—what’s the chance you’ll bring a girlfriend with you when you come to the new house for Thanksgiving?”
He snorted. “We’re talking negative numbers—no chance at all. I’m not seeing anyone in particular right now.”
“Still tomcatting around, huh? Gettin’ it on without getting involved?”
Harvard closed his eyes. “Mom.”
“Did you really think your mother didn’t know? I know you’re a smart man, so I won’t give you my safe-sex speech—although in my opinion, the only sex that’s truly safe is between a man and his wife.” She pushed herself out of her chair. “Okay, I’m done embarrassing you. I’m going to go see about getting lunch on the table.”
“Why don’t you let me take you out somewhere?”
“And miss the chance to make sure you get at least one home-cooked meal this month? No way.”
“I’ll be in in a sec to help.”
She kissed the top of his head. “You know, you were born with hair. You have exceptionally nice hair. I don’t see why you insist on shaving it all off that way.”
Harvard laughed as she headed inside. “I’ll try to grow it in for Thanksgiving.”
He’d already reserved a few days of leave to spend the holiday at home with his parents.
Home.
It was funny, but he still thought of this place as home. He hadn’t lived here in more than fifteen years, but he’d always considered this house his sanctuary. He could come here anytime he needed to, and he could center himself. It was the one place he could come back to that he’d foolishly thought would always remain the same.
The sweet smell of cookies baking in his mother’s kitchen. The scent of his father’s pipe. The fresh ocean air.
It was weird as hell to think that within less than two weeks his home would belong to strangers.
And he would be spending Thanksgiving far from the ocean at his parents’ new house in Arizona.
“Excuse me, Senior Chief Becker! I’ve been looking for you!”
Harvard turned to find P. J. Richards bearing down on him, eyes shooting fire.
He turned and kept walking. He didn’t need this right now. Damn it, he was tired, he was hungry, he was wearing the same clothes he’d had on when he’d left here close to forty-eight hours ago, he hadn’t been able to grab more than a combat nap on the flight from Boston to Virginia, and he’d had to stand on the crowded bus back to the base.
On top of the annoying physical inconveniences, there were seven different items that had crash-landed on his desk while he was gone that needed his—and only his—immediate and undivided attention.
It was going to be a solid two hours before he made his way home and reintroduced himself to his bed.
And that was if he was lucky.
P.J. ran to catch up with him. “Did you give the order to restrict my distance for this and yesterday morning’s run to only three miles?”
Harvard kept walking. “Yes, I did.”
She had to keep trotting to match the length of his stride. “Even though the rest of the team was required to go the full seven miles?”
“That’s right.”
“How dare you!”
She was nearly hopping up and down with anger, and Harvard swore and turned to face her. “I don’t have time for this.” He spoke more to himself than to her, but of course, she had no way of knowing that.
“Well, you’re going to have to make time for this.”
Damn, she was pretty. And so thoroughly passionate. But if his luck continued in its current downward spiral, he stood only a blind man’s chance in a firing range of ever getting a taste of that passion any way other than her hurling angry words—or maybe even knives—in his direction.
“I’m sorry if my very existence is an inconvenience,” she continued hotly, “but—”
“My order was standard procedure,” he told her tightly.
She wasn’t listening. “I will file a formal complaint if this coddling continues, if I am not treated completely the same as—”
“This coddling is by the book for any FInCOM agent who has received an injury sufficient to send him—or her—to the hospital.”
She blinked at him. “What did you say?”
Well, what do you know? She was listening. “According to the rule book set up for this training session, if a fink goes to the hospital, said fink gets lighter physical training until it’s determined that he—or she—is up to speed. Sorry to disappoint you, Ms. Richards, but you were treated no differently than anyone else would have been.”
The sun was setting, streaking the sky with red-orange clouds, giving the entire base a romantic, fairy-tale look. Everything was softer, warmer, bathed in diffused pink light. Back home in Hingham, it would have been the perfect kind of summer evening for a long, lazy walk to the local ice-cream stand, flirting all the way with his sister’s friends, strutting his seventeen-year-old stuff while they gazed at him adoringly.
The woman in front of him was gazing at him, but it sure as hell wasn’t adoringly. In fact, she was looking at him as if he were trying to sell her a dehumidifier in the desert. “Rule book?”
Harvard glanced in the direction of his office, wishing he was there so he could, in turn, soon go home. “No doubt one of your bosses was afraid that Alpha Squad was going to hurt you and keep on hurting you. There’s a list of ground rules for this training session.”
“I wasn’t shown any rule book.”
Harvard snorted, his patience flat-out gone. He started walking again, leaving her behind. “Yeah, you’re right, I’m making all this up.”
“You can’t blame me for being wary!” P.J. hurried to keep pace. “As far as I know, there’s never been this kind of a rule book before. Why should FInCOM start now?”
“No doubt someone heard about BUD/S Hell Week—about the sleep deprivation and strenuous endurance tests that SEALs undergo at the end of phase-one training. I bet they were afraid we’d do something similar to the finks with this counterterrorist deal. And they were right. We would have, if we could. Because in real life, terrorists don’t pay too much attention to time-out signals.”
P.J. was back to glaring at him, full power. “I’ll have you know that I find ‘fink’ to be an offensive term.”
“It’s a nickname. A single syllable versus four. Easier to say.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like it.”
“There’s not much you do like, is there?” Including him. Maybe especially him. Harvard pushed open the door to the Quonset hut that housed Alpha Squad’s temporary offices. “My father’s going to be fine. I’m sure you were dying to know.”
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry I didn’t ask!”
His mistake was turning to look at her.
She looked stricken. She looked completely, thoroughly horrified, all her anger instantly vanished. He almost felt bad for her—and he didn’t want to feel bad for her. He didn’t want to feel bad for anyone, especially not himself.
He’d been off balance since he’d gotten that phone call from Joe Cat telling him about his father’s heart attack. His entire personal life had been turned on its side. His parents were succumbing to age and his home was no longer going to be his home.
And then here came P. J. Richards, getting in his face, making all kinds of accusations, reminding him how much easier this entire assignment would be were it not for her female presence.
“Please forgive me—I didn’t mean to be insensitive. I was rude not to have asked earlier. Is he really going to be all right?”
As Harvard gazed into P.J.’s bottomless dark eyes, he knew he was fooling himself. He hadn’t been off balance since that phone call came in about his father. Damn, he’d been off balance from the moment this tiny little woman had stepped out of the FInCOM van and into his life. He’d liked her looks and her passion right from the start, and her ability to face up to her mistakes made him like her even more.
“Yeah,” he told her. “He should be just fine in a few weeks. And his long-term prognosis is just as good, provided he stays with his diet.” He nodded at her, hoping she’d consider herself dismissed, wishing he could pull her into his arms and kiss that too-vulnerable, still-mortified look off her face. Thank God he wasn’t insane enough to try that. “If you’ll excuse me, Ms. Richards, I have a great deal of work to do.”
Harvard went inside the Quonset hut, forcing himself to shut the door tightly behind him, knowing that starting something hot and heavy with this woman was the dead last thing he should do but wanting it just the same.
Damn, he wanted it, wanted her.
He wanted to lose this unpleasant sensation he had of being adrift, to temporarily ground himself in her sweetness.
He took a deep breath and got to work.
His father was going to be fine in a few weeks, but he suspected his own recovery was going to take quite a bit longer.
P.J. had never done so much shooting in her life. They were going on day fourteen of the training, and during every single one of those days she’d spent a serious chunk of time on the firing range.
Before she’d started, she could outshoot the three other FInCOM agents, as well as some of the SEALs in Alpha Squad. And after two weeks of perfecting her skill, she was at least as good as the quiet SEAL with the thick Southern accent, the XO or executive officer of Alpha Squad, the one everyone called Blue. And he was nearly as good as Alpha Squad’s CO, Joe Cat. But, of course, nobody even came close to Harvard.
Harvard. P.J. had managed successfully to avoid him since that day she’d been so mad she’d forgotten even the most basic social graces. She still couldn’t believe she hadn’t remembered to ask him about his father’s health. Her anger was a solid excuse, except for the fact that that degree of rudeness was inexcusable.
Lord, she’d made one hell of a fool out of herself that evening.
But as much as she told herself she was avoiding any contact with Harvard out of embarrassment, that wasn’t the only reason she was avoiding him.
The man was too good at what he did. How could she not respect and admire a man like that? And added onto those heaping double scoops of respect and admiration was a heady whipped topping of powerful physical attraction. It was a recipe for total disaster, complete with a cherry on top.
She’d learned early in life that her own personal success and freedom hinged on her ability to turn away from such emotions as lust and desire. And so she was turning away. She’d done it before. She could do it again.
P.J. went into the mess hall and grabbed a tray and a turkey sandwich. It turned out the food they’d been eating right from the start wasn’t standard Uncle Sam fare. This meal had been catered by an upscale deli downtown, as per the FInCOM rule book. Such a list of rules did exist. Harvard had been right about that.
She felt his eyes following her as she stopped to pour herself a glass of iced tea.
As usual, she’d been aware of him from the moment she’d walked in. He was sitting clear across the room, his back against the far wall. He had two plates piled on his tray, both empty. He was across from the quiet SEAL called Crash, his feet on a chair, nursing a mug of coffee, watching her.
Harvard watched her all the time. He watched her during physical training. He watched her during the classroom sessions. He watched her on the firing range.
You’d think the man didn’t have anything better to do with his time.
When he wasn’t watching her, he was nearby, always ready to offer a hand up or a boost out of the water. It was driving her insane. He didn’t offer Greg Greene a boost. Or Charlie Schneider.
Obviously, he didn’t think Greg or Charlie needed one.
P.J. was more than tempted to carry her tray over to Harvard, to sit herself down at his table and to ask him how well she was doing.
Except right now, she knew exactly how well she was doing.
The focus of this morning’s classroom session had been on working as a team. And she and Tim Farber and Charlie and Greg had totally flunked Teamwork 101. P.J. had read the personnel files of the other three agents, so when asked, she’d at least been able to come up with such basic facts as where they were from. But she hadn’t been able to answer other, more personal questions about her team members. She didn’t know such things as what they perceived to be their own strengths and weaknesses. And in return, none of them knew the first little teeny thing about her. None of them were even aware that she hailed from Washington, D.C.—which, apparently, was as much her fault as it was theirs.
And it was true. She hadn’t made any attempts to get to know Tim or Charlie or Greg. She’d stopped hanging out in the hotel bar after hours, choosing instead to read over her notes and try to prepare for the coming day’s assignments. It had seemed a more efficient use of her time, especially since it included avoiding Harvard’s watching eyes, but now she knew she’d been wrong.
P.J. headed for the other FInCOM agents, forcing her mouth into what she hoped was a friendly smile. “Hey, guys. Mind if I join you?”
Farber blinked up at her. “Sorry, we were just leaving. I’ve got some paperwork to do before the next classroom session.”
“I’m due at the range.” Charlie gave her an insincere smile as he stood.
Greg didn’t say anything. He just gathered his trash and left with Charlie.
Just like that, they were gone, leaving P.J. standing there, holding her tray like an idiot. It wasn’t personal. She knew it wasn’t personal. She’d arrived late, they had already eaten, and they all had things that needed to get done.
Still, something about it felt like a seventh-grade shunning all over again. She glanced around the room, and this time Harvard wasn’t the only one watching her. Alpha Squad’s captain, Joe Catalanotto, was watching her, too.
She sat and unwrapped her sandwich, praying that both men would leave her be. She took a bite, hoping her body language successfully broadcast, “I want to be alone.”
“How you doing, Richards?” Joe pulled out the chair next to hers, straddled it and leaned his elbows on the backrest.
So much for body language. Her mouth was full, so she nodded a greeting.
“You know, one of my biggest beefs with FInCOM has to do with their refusing to acknowledge that teams just can’t be thrown together,” he said in his husky New York accent. “You can’t just count down a line, picking, say, every fourth guy—or woman—and automatically make an effective team.”
P.J. swallowed. “How do the SEALs do it?”
“I handpicked Alpha Squad,” Joe told her, his smile making his dark brown eyes sparkle. It was funny. With his long, shaggy, dark hair, ruggedly handsome face and muscle-man body, this man could pull off sitting in a chair in that ridiculously macho way. He made it look both comfortable and natural. “I’ve been with Blue McCoy, my XO, for close to forever. Since BUD/S—basic training, you know?”
She nodded, her mouth full again.
“And I’ve known Harvard just as long, too. The rest of the guys, well, they’d developed reputations, and when I was looking for men with certain skills… It was really just a matter of meeting and making sure personalities meshed before I tapped ’em to join the squad.” He paused. “Something tells me that FInCOM wasn’t as careful about compatible personalities when they made the selections for this program.”
P.J. snorted. “That’s the understatement of the year.”
Joe absentmindedly twisted the thick gold wedding band he wore on his left hand. P.J. tried to imagine the kind of woman who’d managed to squeeze vows of fidelity from this charismatic, larger-than-life man. Someone unique. Someone very, very special. Probably someone with the brains of a computer and the body of a super model. “What FInCOM should have done,” he told her, “if they wanted a four-man team, was select a leader, have that leader choose team members they’ve worked with before—people they trust.”
“But if they’d done that, there’s no way I would be on this team,” she pointed out.
“What makes you so sure about that?”
P.J. laughed.
Joe laughed along with her. He had gorgeous teeth. “No, I’m serious,” he said.
P.J. put down her sandwich. “Captain, excuse me for calling you crazy, but you’re crazy. Do you really think Tim Farber would have handpicked me for his team?”
“Call me Joe,” he said. “And no, of course Farber wouldn’t have picked you. He’s not smart enough. From what I’ve seen, out of the four of you, he’s not the natural leader, either. He’s fooled a lot of people, but he doesn’t have what it takes. And the other two…” He shrugged. “I’m not particularly impressed. No, out of the four of you, this assignment should’ve been yours.”
P.J. couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. She wasn’t sure what to say, what to do, but she did know that knocking over her iced tea was not the correct response. She held tightly onto the glass. “Thank you…Joe,” she somehow managed to murmur. “I appreciate your confidence.”
“You’re doing all right, P.J.,” he said, standing in one graceful movement. “Keep it up.”
As he walked away, P.J. closed her eyes. God, it had been so long since she’d been given any words of encouragement, she’d almost forgotten how important it was to hear praise. Someone else—in this case, the commanding officer of Alpha Squad—recognized that she was doing her job well. He thought she was the one who should lead the team.
Out of the four FInCOM agents…
P.J. opened her eyes, realizing with a flash of clarity that the captain’s compliment hadn’t been quite as flattering as she’d first believed. She was the best candidate for team leader—compared to Farber, Schneider and Greene.
Still, it was better than being told that women had no place on a team like this one.
She wrapped her half-eaten sandwich and threw it in the trash on her way out of the mess hall, aware of Harvard glancing up to watch her go.
CHAPTER FOUR
“BLUE CALLED TO SAY HE’S RUNNING LATE. He’ll be here in about a half hour.” Joe Catalanotto closed the door behind Harvard, leading him through the little rented house.
“He went home first, didn’t he?” Harvard shook his head in amused disgust. “I told the fool not to stop at home.” Blue McCoy’s wife, Lucy, had come into town two days ago. After spending a month and a half apart, Harvard had no doubt exactly what was causing Blue’s current lateness.
And now Blue was going to show up for this meeting at Joe Cat’s house grinning like the Cheshire cat, looking relaxed and happy, looking exactly like what he was—a man who just got some.
Damn, it seemed everyone in Alpha Squad had that little extra swing in their steps these days. Everyone but Harvard.
Joe’s wife was with him in Virginia, too. Lucky O’Donlon was living up to his nickname, romancing Miss East Coast Virginia. Even Bobby and Wes had hooked up with a pair of local women who were serving up more than home-cooked meals.
Harvard tried to remember the last time he’d gone one on one with a member of the opposite sex. June, May, April, March… Damn, it had been February. He’d been seeing a woman named Ellen off and on for a few months. It was nothing serious—she’d call him, they’d go out and wind up at her place. But he hadn’t noticed when she’d stopped phoning. He couldn’t call up a clear picture of her face.
Every time he tried, he kept seeing P. J. Richards’s big brown eyes.
“Hello, Harvard.” Joe’s wife, Veronica, was in the kitchen. As usual, she was doing three different things at once. A pile of vegetables was next to a cutting board, and a pot of something unidentifiable was bubbling on the stove. She had paperwork from her latest consulting assignment spread out across the kitchen table and one-and-a-half-year-old Frankie in his high chair, where he was attempting rather clumsily to feed himself his dinner.
“Hey, Ron,” Harvard said as Joe stopped to pull several bottles of beer from the refrigerator. “What’s up?”
“I’m teaching myself to cook,” she told him in her crisp British accent. Her red hair was loose around her shoulders, and she was casually dressed in shorts and a halter top. But she was the kind of super classy woman who, no matter what she wore, always looked ready to attend some kind of state function. Just throw on a string of pearls, and she’d be ready to go. “How’s your father?”
“Much better, thanks. Almost back to one hundred percent.”
“I’m so glad.”
“Moving day’s coming. My mother keeps threatening to pack him in a box if he doesn’t quit trying to lift things she perceives as being too heavy for him.”
Joe looked up from his search for a bottle opener. “You didn’t tell me your parents were moving.”
“No?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“My father’s taking a position at a school out in Arizona. In Phoenix. Some little low-key private college.”
“It sounds perfect,” Veronica said. “Just what he needs—a slower pace. A change of climate.”
“Yeah, it’s great,” Harvard said, trying to mean it. “And they found a buyer for the house, so…”
Joe found the bottle opener and closed the drawer with his hip, still gazing at Harvard. “You okay about that?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Harvard said, shrugging it off.
Veronica turned to the baby. “Now, Frank, really. You’re supposed to use the other end of the spoon.”
Frankie grinned at her as he continued to chew on the spoon’s handle.
“He inherited that smile from his father,” Veronica told Harvard, sending a special smile of her own in Joe Cat’s direction. “And he knows when he uses it, he can get away with anything. I swear, I’m doomed. I’m destined to spend the rest of my life completely manipulated by these two men.”
“That’s right,” Joe said, stopping to kiss his wife’s bare shoulder before he handed Harvard an opened bottle of beer. “I manipulated her into allowing me to refinish the back deck two weeks ago. We don’t even own this place, and yet I managed to talk her into letting me work out there in the hot sun, sanding it down, applying all those coats of waterproofing….”
“It was fun. Frank and I helped,” Veronica said.
Joe just laughed.
“Can I convince you to stay for dinner?” she asked Harvard. “I’m making a stew. I hope.”
“Oh, no, Ron, I’m sorry,” Harvard said, trying hard to sound as if he meant it. “I have other plans.” Plans such as eating digestible food. Veronica may have been one of the sweetest and most beautiful women in the world, but her cooking skills were nonexistent.
“Really? Do you have a date?” Her eyes lit up. “With what’s her name? The FInCOM agent? P.J. something?”
Harvard nearly choked on his beer. “No,” he said. “No, I’m not seeing her socially.” He shot a look at Joe Cat. “Who told you that I was?”
Joe was shaking his head, shrugging and making not-me faces.
“Just a guess. I saw her the other day.” Veronica stirred the alleged stew. “While I was dropping something off at the base. She’s very attractive.”
No kidding.
“So what’s the deal?” Veronica asked, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Has Lucky O’Donlon already staked his claim three feet in every direction around her?”
Lucky and P.J.? Of course, now that Harvard was thinking about it, Lucky had been circling P.J.—albeit somewhat warily—for the past few days. No doubt Miss East Coast Virginia was starting to cling. Harvard knew of nothing else that would send Lucky so quickly into jettison mode—and put him back on the prowl again. He had to smile, thinking of the way P.J. would react to Lucky’s less-than-subtle advances.
His smile faded. Unless it was only Harvard she was determined to keep her distance from.
“P.J.’s not seeing anyone, Ron,” Joe told his wife as he slid open the door to the back deck. “She’s working overtime trying to be one of the guys. She’s not going to blow that just because Lucky gives her a healthy dose of the O’Donlon charm.”
“Some women find heart-stoppingly handsome blond men like Lucky irresistible,” Veronica teased. “Particularly heart-stoppingly handsome blond men who look as if they’ve stepped off the set of Baywatch.”
“There’s no rule against a SEAL getting together with a FInCOM agent.” Harvard managed to keep his voice calm. “I have no problem with it, either. As long as the two of them are discreet.” The minute he got back to base, he was going to track down O’Donlon and… What? Beat him up? Warn him off? He shook his head. He had no claim on the girl.
“Ronnie, would you please send Blue out here after he gets here?” Joe asked his wife as he led Harvard onto the deck.
As Harvard closed the door behind him, he looked closely at his longtime friend. The captain of Alpha Squad looked relaxed and happy. The undercurrent of tension that seemed to surround the man like an aura was down to a low glow. And that was amazing, since the meeting tonight was to discuss the fact that the frustration levels regarding this FInCOM training mission were about to go off the chart.
At least Harvard’s were.
“You’re not really that bothered by all the interference we’re getting from FInCOM and Admiral Stonegate, are you?” Harvard asked.
Joe shrugged and leaned both elbows on the deck railing. “You know, H., I knew this program was a lost cause the day I met FInCOM’s choices for the team. To be honest, I don’t think there’s anything we can do to get those four working effectively together. So we do what we do, and then we recommend—emphatically—that FInCOM stay the hell out of counterterrorist operations. We suggest—strongly—that they leave that to the SEALs.”
“If you’re quitting, man, why not just detonate the entire program right now? Why keep on wasting our time with—”
“Because I’m being selfish.” Joe turned to look at him, his dark eyes serious. “Because Alpha Squad runs at two-hundred-and-fifty percent energy and efficiency one hundred percent of the time, and the guys need this down time. I need this down time. I’m telling you, H., it’s tough on Ronnie with me always leaving. She never knows when we sit down to dinner at night if that’s the last time I’m going to be around for a week or for a month or—God forbid—forever. She doesn’t say anything, but I see it in her eyes. And that look’s not there right now because she knows I’m leading this training drill for the next six weeks. She’s got another six weeks of reprieve, and I’m not taking that away from her. Or from any of the other wives, either.”
“I hear you,” Harvard said. “But it rubs the wrong way. Doing all this for nothing.”
“It’s not for nothing.” Joe finished his beer. “We’ve just got to revise this mission’s goal. Instead of creating a Combined SEAL/FInCOM counterterrorist team, we’re creating a FInCOM counterterrorist expert. We’re giving this expert all of the information she can possibly carry, and you know what she’s gonna do?”
“She?”
“She’s gonna take that expertise back to Kevin Laughton, and she’s gonna tell him and all of the FInCOM leaders that the best thing they can do in a terrorist situation is to step back and let SEAL Team Ten do the job.” Harvard swore. “She?”
“Yes, I’m referring to P. J. Richards.” Joe grinned. “You know, you should try talking to her sometime. She doesn’t bite.”
Harvard scowled. “Yes, she does. And I have the teeth marks to prove it.”
Joe’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, really?”
Harvard shook his head. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I almost forgot—you have no problem with her hooking up with Lucky O’Donlon as long as the two of them are discreet.” Joe snorted. “Why do I foresee a temporary transfer for O’Donlon crossing my desk in the near future?”
“You know I wouldn’t do that.”
“Well, maybe you should.”
Harvard clenched his teeth and set his barely touched bottle of beer on the deck railing. “Cat, I’m trying to be professional here.”
“What happened, she turn you down?”
Harvard pushed himself off the rail and walked toward the sliding doors, then stopped and walked toward the captain. “What exactly do you envision her role at FInCOM to be?”
“You’re purposely changing the subject.”
“Yes, I am.”
“I can’t believe you haven’t at least tried to get friendly with this woman. If I weren’t a happily married man, I’d be pulling some discreet moves myself. I mean, she’s smart, she’s beautiful, she’s—”
“What exactly do you envision her role at FInCOM to be?” Harvard enunciated very clearly.
“All right,” Joe said with a shrug. “Be that way.” He drew in a deep breath, taking the time to put his thoughts into words. “Okay, I see her continuing to climb FInCOM’s career ladder and moving into an upper-level position—probably onto Kevin Laughton’s staff. She’s worked with him before. He was the one who insisted she be part of this program in the first place.”
Kevin Laughton and P.J. Now Harvard had to wonder about that relationship. Inwardly, he rolled his eyes in disgust. Everything became more complicated when women were thrown into the equation. Suddenly sex became an issue, a motivation, a factor.
A possibility.
Damn, why couldn’t P.J. just stay in the FInCOM office, safe and sound and out of sight—a distraction for after hours?
“I see her as being the voice of reason and being right there, on hand, so that when a terrorist situation like that incident at the Athens airport comes up again, she can tell Laughton to get the SEALs involved right from the start instead of waiting a week and a half and getting five agents and ten civilians killed.
“The U.S. has a no-negotiation policy with terrorists,” Joe Cat went on. “We need to go one step further and consistently deliver an immediate and deadly show of force. Tangos take over another airport? FInCOM snaps to it, and boom, SEAL Team Ten is there within hours. The first CNN report doesn’t bring attention to the bastards’ cause—instead it’s an account of how quickly the Ts were crushed. It’s a report on the number of body bags needed to take the scum out of there. Tangos snatch hostages? Same thing. Boom. We go in, we get them out. No standing around wringing our hands. And eventually the terrorists will realize that their violent action causes a swift and deadly reaction from the United States every single time.”
“And you think P. J. Richards will really reach a point in FInCOM where her opinion is that important?” Harvard let his skepticism ring in his voice. “Where she can say, ‘Call in the SEALs,’ and have anyone listen to her?”
“On her own? Probably not,” Joe said baldly. “She’s a woman and she’s black. But I do think Kevin Laughton’s going all the way to the top. And I think P. J. Richards will be close by when he gets there. And I’m betting when she says, ‘Call in the SEALs,’ he’s going to listen.”
Harvard was silent. Damn, but he hated politics. And he hated the image of Laughton with P.J. by his side.
“So since our goal has changed,” Harvard asked, crossing his arms and trying to stay focused, “do we still try to convince FInCOM to let us run training ops that extend past their current ten-hour limit? And what about our request to go out of the country with the finks? If you’d prefer to just stay here in Virginia—”
“No,” Joe said. “I think it would create more of an impression on P.J. if we put on a real show—you know, let her feel the impact of being in a strange country for these longer exercises.”
“But you just said Veronica—”
“Ronnie will be fine if I go out of town for a few days for something as safe as a FInCOM training exercise. And I can’t stress enough the importance of convincing P.J. that the creation of a CSF team is not the way to go,” Joe told him. “And the way I think we can do that is to set up and run two different forty-eight-hour exercises either in the Middle East or somewhere in Southeast Asia. We’d let the finks take part in the first operation. And then, after they fail miserably again, I’d like to set P.J. up as an observer as Alpha Squad does a similar training op—and succeeds. I want her to see exactly how successfully a SEAL team like Alpha Squad can operate, but I want her to get a taste of just how hard it is first.”
“We’ll need to make a formal request to Admiral Stonegate’s office.”
“It’s already sent. They’re pretty negative. I think they’re afraid we’re somehow going to hurt the finks.”
Harvard smiled. “They’re probably right. God only knows what will happen if the finks don’t get their beauty sleep.”
“I’ve also put in a call to Laughton’s office,” Joe told him. “But I’m having trouble reaching the man. So far, his staff has been adamant that the rules stand as is.”
The door slid open and Blue stepped onto the deck. “Sorry I’m late.”
Harvard looked at Joe. “He look sorry to you?”
“He’s trying.”
“He’s not succeeding. Look at that smile he can’t keep off his face.”
Blue sat down. “Okay, okay, I’m not sorry. I admit it. So what are we talking about? P. J. Richards? Her test scores are off the scale. And I assume you’re both aware she’s an expert-level sharpshooter?”
“Yeah, we’ve already voted her in as Wonder Woman,” Harvard told him.
“What we’ve got to do now,” Joe said, “is make sure she’s got the same warm fuzzy feelings about us that we have about her. We want her going back to Laughton and telling him, ‘These guys are the best,’ not ‘Whatever you do, stay away from those nasty SEALs.’ She’s been kind of aloof, but then again, we haven’t exactly welcomed her with open arms.”
“Consider that about to change,” Blue said. “I heard Lucky talking before I left the base. P.J.’s having dinner with him—the Alpha Squad’s ambassador of open arms—right this very moment.”
Joe swore. “That’s not what I had in mind. You’d better go and intercept that,” he said, turning toward Harvard.
But Harvard was already running for his car.
P.J. punched her floor number into the hotel elevator.
Well, that had been a joke.
She’d finally decided to take some action. Over the past few days, she’d come to the conclusion that she had to attempt to make friends with one of the SEALs. She needed an ally—because it was more than obvious that these big, strong men were scared to death of her.
She needed just one of them to start looking at her as if she were an equal. All it would take was one, and that one would, by example, teach the others it could be done. She could be accepted as a person first, a woman second.
But that special chosen one wasn’t going to be the SEAL nicknamed Lucky, that was for sure.
He had a nice smile and an even nicer motorcycle, but his intentions when he’d asked her to join him for dinner hadn’t been to strike up a friendship. On the contrary, he’d been looking for some action.
A different kind of action than the kind she was looking for.
He’d fooled her at first. They had a common interest in motorcycles, and he let her drive his from the base to the restaurant. But when he rode behind her, he’d held her much too tightly for the tame speeds they were going.
And so she’d told him bluntly between the salad and the main course that she wasn’t interested in anything other than a completely nonsexual friendship. By the time coffee arrived, she’d managed to convince him. And although he wasn’t as forthright as she had been, from the way he kept glancing at his watch she knew that he wasn’t interested in anything other than a sexual relationship.
Which left her back at square one.
The doors opened, and P.J. stepped into the small sitting area by the elevators. She searched through her belt pack for her key card. She almost didn’t see Harvard Becker sitting in the shadows.
And when she did see him, she almost kept going. If she’d had any working brains in her head, she should have kept going. But in her surprise, she stopped short, gaping at him like an idiot. He was the dead last person she’d expected to see sitting in the hallway on the soft leather of the sofa, waiting for her.
Harvard nodded a greeting. “Ms. Richards.”
She had to clear her throat so her voice wouldn’t come out in an undignified squeak. “Were you looking for me? Am I needed on base? You could have paged me.”
“No.” He stood up—Lord, he was tall. “Actually, I was looking for Luke O’Donlon.”
“He’s not here.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
P.J. started for her room, afraid if she didn’t move, her anger would show. Who was he checking up on and trying to protect? Her or Lucky? Either way, it was damned insulting. She unlocked her door with a vicious swipe of the key card.
“Do you happen to know where he was headed?”
“Back to the base,” she said shortly. She wanted to slam the door behind her, but she forced herself to turn and face him.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” he said quietly.
“Was there anything else you wanted?” She knew as soon as the sarcastic words were out of her mouth it was the wrong thing to say.
Undisguised heat flared in his eyes, heat tinged with an awareness that told her he knew quite well his attraction was extremely mutual. He wanted her. The message was right there in his gorgeous brown eyes. But all he did was laugh, a soft chuckle that made her heart nearly stop beating and the hair stand up on the back of her neck.
All she had to do was step into her room and hold open that door, and he would come inside and…
And what? Mess up her life beyond repair, no doubt.
He was not on her side. He’d flatly admitted that he didn’t like working with her, he didn’t want to work with her.
P.J. moistened her dry lips, holding her head high and trying to look as if she were totally unaffected by the picture he made standing there. “Good night, Senior Chief.”
She closed the door tightly behind her and drew in a deep breath.
Dear God, how on earth was she going to make it through another six weeks? She needed an ally, and she needed one bad.
CHAPTER FIVE
HARVARD KNEW THE MOMENT P.J. walked into the bar. He turned and sure enough, there she was, looking everywhere but at him, pretending he didn’t exist.
Today had been a classroom day for the finks, and Harvard had had other business to take care of. He’d gone to the mess hall at lunchtime, hoping for…what? He wasn’t sure. But when he got there, Wes told him P.J. had gone to the firing range.
The afternoon had passed interminably slowly, the biggest excitement being when he spoke to Kevin Laughton’s assistant’s assistant, who had told him there was no way the FInCOM rule book was going to be altered to allow for two- or three-day-long exercises. And hadn’t they already compromised on this issue? And no, Mr. Laughton couldn’t come to the phone, he was far too busy with important matters.
Harvard had wheedled and cajoled, reasoned and explained, but he’d hung up the phone without any real hope that Laughton would call him or Joe Cat. He’d cheered himself up some by calling the friend of a friend of a friend who worked at the Pentagon and who faxed him the layout of FInCOM headquarters, where Kevin Laughton’s office was housed. He’d spent his coffee break pinpointing the areas of FInCOM HQ that would be most vulnerable to a direct assault by a small, covert group of SEALs. He’d managed to put a smile on his face by imagining the look on Laughton’s face when he walked into his high-level security office and found Harvard and Joe Cat sitting there, feet up on his desk, waiting to talk to him.
Harvard headed for an empty table in the bar, keeping P.J. securely in his peripheral vision, trying to figure out the best strategy for approaching her.
It was funny. He’d never had to work at approaching a woman before. Usually women fell right in his lap. But P.J. wasn’t falling anywhere. She was running—hard—in the opposite direction.
The only other woman he’d ever pursued was Rachel.
Damn, he hadn’t thought about Rachel in years. He’d met her during a training op in Guam. She was a marine biologist, part of a U.S. Government survey team housed in the military facilities. She was beautiful—part African American, part Asian and part Hawaiian—and shyly sweet.
For a week or two, Rachel had had Harvard thinking in terms of forever. It was the only time in his life he’d been on the verge of crossing that fine line that separated sex from love. But then he’d been sent to Desert Shield, and while he was gone, Rachel had reconciled with her ex-husband.
He could still remember how that news had sliced like a hot knife into his quick. He could still remember that crazily out-of-control feeling of hurt and frustration—that sense of being on the verge of despair. He hadn’t liked it one bit, and he’d worked hard since then to make sure he’d never repeat it.
He glanced at P.J. and met her eyes. She quickly looked away, as if the spark that had instantly ignited had been too hot for her to handle.
Hot was definitely the key word here.
Yes, he was the pursuer, but he wasn’t in any real danger of going the Rachel route with this girl.
She was nothing like Rachel, for one thing.
For another, this thing, this current between him and P.J. came from total, mindless, screaming animal attraction. Lust. Pure, sizzling sex. Two bodies joined in a quest for heart-stopping pleasure.
That wasn’t what his relationship with Rachel had been about. He’d been so careful with her. He’d held back so much.
But when he looked into P.J.’s eyes, he saw them joined in a dance of passion that had no civilities. He saw her legs locked around him as he drove himself into her, hard and fast, her back against the wall, right inside the doorway of her hotel room.
Oh, yeah. It was going to be amazingly good, but no one was going to cry when it was over.
Harvard smiled at himself, at his presumption that such a collaboration was, indeed, going to happen.
First thing he had to do was figure out how to get this girl to quit running away for long enough to talk to her. Only then could he start to convince her they’d gotten off to a bad start.
He should have been cooler last night.
He’d stood there outside her hotel room and he hadn’t been able to think of anything besides how good she looked and how badly he wanted her and how damn glad he was that she hadn’t been bringing Lucky back to her room with her.
He wasn’t sure he would have been able to make small talk even if he’d tried. But he hadn’t tried. He’d just stood there, looking at her as if she were the gingerbread girl and he was the hungry fox.
At least he hadn’t drooled.
He caught the waitress’s eye as he sat down. “Iced tea, no sugar,” he ordered, then glanced again at P.J.
This time, she was looking straight at him and smiling. Damn, she had an incredible smile. On a scale from one to ten, it was an even hundred. He felt his mouth curve into an answering smile. He couldn’t explain what caused her sudden change of heart, but he wasn’t going to complain.
“Hey,” she said, walking toward him. “What are you doing here?”
As she moved closer, Harvard realized she wasn’t looking at him at all. Her focus was behind him. He turned and saw that Joe Cat had come into the bar through the back door.
“I thought I’d stop in tonight before going home,” the captain said to P.J. “What’s shaking?”
“Not much,” Harvard heard P.J. say as she gave Joe Cat another of those killer smiles. “Everyone’s glued to the TV, watching baseball.” She rolled her eyes in mock disgust.
Excuse me, Harvard felt like standing up and saying, but everyone isn’t watching baseball. The waitress put his drink on the table in front of him, and P.J. still didn’t glance in his direction.
Joe shrugged out of his jacket. “You’re not a baseball fan?”
“Nuh-uh. Too slow for me. The batter wiggles around, getting all ready for the pitch, and the pitcher does his thing, getting ready for the pitch, and I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Just throw the ball!’” She laughed. She had musical-sounding laughter. “And then the ball is fired over the plate so fast that they’ve got to play it back in slo-mo just so I can see it.”
“You’re probably not into football, either, then. Too many breaks in the play.”
“You got that right,” P.J. said. “Do you have time to sit down? Can I buy you a beer?”
“I’d love it,” Joe said.
“Then grab us a table. I’ll be right back.”
P.J. headed toward the bar.
“If you don’t sit with me, sir, I may have to seriously damage you,” Harvard said to his friend.
Joe Cat laughed and pulled out a chair at Harvard’s table. “You didn’t think I couldn’t see you lurking here, eavesdropping, did you?”
“Of course, she may not want to chill with you after she comes back and sees the excess company,” Harvard pointed out. “She’s been running from me all day—she’s bound to keep it up.”
“Nah, she’s tougher than that.”
Harvard gave a short laugh of disbelief as he squeezed the lemon into his iced tea. “Wait a minute. Suddenly you’re the authority on this girl?”
“I’m trying to be,” Joe said. “I spent about two hours with her today at the range. She just happened to show up while I was there. You know, H., she’s really good. She’s got a real shooter’s instinct. And a natural ability to aim.”
Harvard didn’t know what to say. P.J. had just happened to show up…. He took a sip of his drink.
“She’s funny, too,” Joe added. “She has a solid sense of humor. She’s one very sharp, very smart lady.”
Harvard found his voice. “Oh, yeah? What’s Veronica think about that?” He was kidding, but only half kidding.
Joe didn’t miss that. And even though P.J. was coming toward them carrying two mugs filled with frothy beer, he leaned closer to Harvard. “It’s not about sex,” he said, talking fast. “Yes, P.J.’s a woman, and yes, she’s attractive, but come on, H., you know me well enough to know I’m not going to go in that direction. Ever. I love Ronnie more than you will ever know. But I’m married, I’m not dead. I can still appreciate an attractive woman when I see one. And being friendly to this particular attractive woman is going to get us further than shutting her out. She approached me. She’s clearly trying to make friends. This is exactly what we wanted.”
Harvard saw P.J. glance over and see him sitting with Joe. He saw her falter, then square her shoulders and keep coming.
She nodded at him as she set the mugs on the table. “Senior Chief Becker,” she said coolly, managing not to meet his eyes. “If I’d known you’d be joining us, I’d have offered to get you a drink, as well.”
He wasn’t aware they sold hemlock in this bar. “You can catch me on the next round,” he said.
“I’ve got a lot of reading to do. I may not be able to stay for a next round. It might have to be some other time.” She sat as far from him as possible and took a sip of her beer.
The temperature in that corner of the room had definitely dropped about twenty degrees.
“Basketball,” Joe said to P.J. “I bet you like basketball.”
She smiled, and the temperature went up a bit. “Good guess.”
“Do you play?”
“I’m a frustrated player,” she admitted. “I have certain…height issues. I never really spent enough time on the court to get any good.”
“Have you had a chance to check out that new women’s professional basketball league?” Harvard asked, attempting to be part of the conversation.
P.J. turned to him, her eyes reminiscent of the frozen tundra. “I’ve watched a few games.” She turned to Joe Cat. “I don’t spend much time watching sports—I prefer to be out there playing. Which reminds me, Tim Farber mentioned that you’re something of a wizard on the handball court. I was wondering if you play racquetball. There’s a court here in the hotel, and I’m looking for an opponent.”
Harvard shifted in his seat, clenching his teeth to keep from speaking.
“I’ve played some,” Joe told her.
“Hmm. Now, in my experience, when people say they’ve played some, that really means they’re too humble to admit that if you venture onto the court with them, they’re going to thoroughly whip your butt.”
Joe laughed. “I guess that probably depends on how long you’ve been playing.”
P.J.’s smile returned. “I’ve played some.”
She was flirting with Joe. P.J. was sitting right there, directly in front of him, flirting with the captain. What was this girl up to? What was she trying to pull?
Joe’s pager went off. He looked at Harvard. “You getting anything?”
Harvard’s pager was silent and still. “No, sir.”
“That’s a good sign. I’ll be right back.”
As Joe headed toward the bar and a telephone, P.J. pretended to be fascinated by the architectural structure of the building.
Harvard knocked on the table. Startled, she looked at him.
“I don’t know what your deal is,” he said bluntly. “I don’t know what you stand to gain by getting tight with the captain—whether it’s some career thing or just some personal power trip—but I’m here to tell you right now, missy, hands off. Didn’t your research on the man include the fact that he’s got a wife and kid? Or maybe you’re the kind that gets off on things like that.”
As Harvard watched, the permafrost in P.J.’s eyes morphed into volcanic anger. “How dare you?” she whispered.
The question was rhetorical, but Harvard answered it anyway. “I dare because Cat is my friend—and because you, little Miss Fink, are temptation incarnate. So back off.”
She was looking at him as if he were something awful she’d stepped in, something disgusting that had stuck onto the bottom of her shoe. “You’re such a…man,” she said, as if that were the worst possible name she could call him. “The captain is the only person in this entire program who’s even bothered to sit down and talk to me. But if you’re telling me that all he’s doing is dogging me, despite having a wife and kid at home—”
“He’s not dogging you, baby, you’re dogging him.”
“I am not.”
“You just happen to head over to the firing range while Cat’s scheduled to be there. He walks into this bar, and you all but launch yourself at him.”
She flushed, unable to deny his accusations. “You really have no idea what it’s like, do you?”
“Poor baby, all alone, far away from home. Is this where the violins start to play? Tell me, do you go for the married men because there’s less of a chance of actually becoming involved?”
She was seething, her eyes all but shooting sparks. “I was only trying to be friends!”
“Friends?”
“You know, people who hang out together, share meals occasionally, sometimes get together for a game of cards or Scrabble?”
“Friends.”
Harvard let skepticism drip from his voice. “You want to be Cat’s friend.”
P.J. stood. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. You’ve probably never had a friend who was a woman in your entire life.”
“I’m ready to learn—a willing and able volunteer with the added bonus of being unattached. I’m wicked good at Scrabble. Among other things.”
She snorted. “Sorry. From where I stand, you’re the enemy.”
“I’m what?”
“You heard me. You want me gone from this training op on pure principle. You think women have no place out in the field, in the line of fire. You’re judging me not as an individual, but based only on the fact that I don’t have a penis. What’s the deal with that? Do you use your penis to aim your rifle better? Does it help you dodge bullets or run faster?”
This woman could really piss him off, but at the same time, she could really make him laugh. “Not that I know of.”
“Not that I know of, either. You’re a bigot, Senior Chief, and I have no desire to spend even a minute more in your company.”
Harvard stopped laughing. A bigot? “Hey,” he said.
But P.J. was already walking away, her beer barely touched.
Harvard had never been called a bigot before. A bigot was someone narrow-minded who believed unswervingly that he and his opinions were inarguably right. But the fact is, he was right. Women did not belong on combat missions, carrying—and firing—weapons and being shot at. It was not easy to stare down the sight of a rifle at a human being and pull the trigger. And countless psych reports stated that women, God bless ’em, had a higher choke factor. When the time came to pull that trigger, after all those tax dollars had been spent on thousands of hours of training, most women couldn’t get the job done.
God knows that certainly was the truth when it came to women like his mother and sisters and Rachel. He couldn’t picture Rachel holding an MP5 automatic weapon. And his sisters… All four of them were card-carrying pacifists who spouted make-love-not-war-type clichés whenever he was around.
Still, after his sister Kendra had gotten married and started a family, she’d attached an addendum to her non-violent beliefs. “Except if you threaten or hurt my kids.” Harvard could still see the light of murder in his sister’s eyes as the former president of Students Against Violence proclaimed that if anyone, anyone threatened her precious children, she would rip out their lungs with her bare hands.
Put an MP5 in that girl’s hands and tell her her children were in danger, and she’d be using up her ammo faster than any man.
But on the other hand, you’d never be able even to get a weapon into his father’s hands. The old man would gently push the barrel toward the floor and start lecturing on the theme of war in modern American literature.
Harvard could imagine what P.J. would say about that. He could hear her husky voice as clearly as if she were standing right behind him. Just because your father and men like him don’t make good soldiers doesn’t mean that all men shouldn’t be soldiers. And in the same way, women like me shouldn’t be lumped together with softer women like Rachel or your mother.
Damn, maybe he was a bigot.
Joe returned to the table. “I don’t suppose P.J.’s in the ladies’ room?”
Harvard shook his head. “No, I, uh…let’s see.” He counted on his fingers. “I totally alienated her, I incensed her, and last but not least, I made her walk away in sheer disgust.”
Joe pursed his lips, nodding slowly. “All that in only six minutes. Very impressive.”
“She called me,” Harvard said, “a bigot.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got to admit, you’ve been pretty narrow-minded when it comes to P.J.’s part in this exercise.”
Damn, Joe Cat thought he was a bigot, too.
Joe finished his beer. “I’ve got to go. That was Ronnie who paged me. Frankie’s had an ear infection over the past few days, and now he’s throwing up the antibiotic. I’m meeting them at the hospital in fifteen minutes.”
“Is it serious?”
“Nah, the kid’s fine. I keep telling Ronnie, babies barf. It’s what they do. She’s just not going to sleep tonight until she hears a doctor say it, too.” Joe rolled his eyes. “Of course, she probably won’t even sleep then. I keep telling her it’s the baby who’s supposed to wake the mother up at night, not the other way around. But she has a friend who lost a kid to SIDS. I’m hoping by the time Frank turns two, Veronica will finally sleep through the night.” Joe picked up his jacket from the back of the chair he’d thrown it over.
“You sure there’s nothing I can do to help?”
The captain turned to look at him. “Yeah,” he said. “There is something you can do. You can stay away from P. J. Richards after hours. It’s clear you two aren’t ever going to be best friends.”
There was that word again. Friends.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a commander,” Joe continued, “it’s that you can’t force people to like each other.”
The stupid thing was, Harvard did like P.J. He liked her a lot.
“But it’s not too much to ask that you and she work together in a civil manner,” Joe continued.
“I’ve been civil,” Harvard said. “She’s the one who walked away in a huff.”
Joe nodded. “I’ll speak to her about that in the morning.”
“No, Cat…” Harvard took a deep breath and started again. “With your permission, Captain, allow me to handle the situation.” He wasn’t a bigot, but he was guilty of generalizing without noting that there was, of course, a minuscule amount of the population that was an exception to the rule. And maybe P. J. Richards was in that tiny percentage.
Joe Cat looked at Harvard and grinned. “She drives you crazy, but you can’t stay away from her, can you? Aw, H., you’re in trouble, man.”
Harvard shook his head. “No, Captain, you’ve got it wrong. I just want to be the lady’s friend.”
They both knew he was lying through his teeth.
CHAPTER SIX
“THAT’S AN APOLOGY?” P.J. laughed. “You say, ‘Yes, I’m guilty of being small-minded when it comes to my opinions about women, but oh, by the way, I still think I’m right’?”
Harvard shook his head. “I didn’t say that.”
“Yes, you did. I’m paraphrasing, but that is the extent of the message you just delivered.”
“What I said was that I think women who have the, shall we say, aggressive tendencies needed to handle frontline pressures are the exception rather than the rule.”
“They’re few and far between, was what you said.” P.J. crossed her arms. “As in practically nonexistent.”
Harvard turned away, then turned back. He was trying hard to curb his frustration, she had to give him that much. “Look, I didn’t come here to argue with you. In fact, I want us to try to figure out a way we can get along over the next six weeks. Joe Cat’s aware that we’re having some kind of personality clash. I want him to be able to look over, see us working side by side without this heavy cloud of tension following us around. Do you think we can manage to do that?”
“The captain knows?” Every muscle in P.J.’s body ached, and she finally gave in to the urge to sit on the soft leather of the lobby couch.
Harvard sat across from her. “It’s not that big a deal. When you’re dealing with mostly alpha personalities, you’ve got to expect that sometimes the fit won’t work.” He gazed at her steadily, leaning slightly forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “But I think that transferring out of this particular program isn’t an option for either of us. Both of us want to be here badly enough to put in a little extra effort, am I right?”
“You are.” She smiled. “For once.”
Harvard smiled, too. “A joke. Much better than fighting.”
“A half a joke,” she corrected him.
His smile widened, and she saw a flash of his perfect white teeth. “That’s a start,” he told her.
P.J. took a chance and went directly to the bottom line. “Seriously, Senior Chief, I need you to treat me as an equal.”
She was gazing at him, her pretty face so somber. She’d changed out of her uniform shirt and into a snugly fitting T-shirt boasting the logo, Title Nine Sports. She had put on running shorts, too, and Harvard forced his gaze away from the graceful shape of her bare legs and back to her eyes. “I thought I had been.”
“You’re always watching me—checking up on me as if I were some little child, making sure I haven’t wandered away from the rest of the kindergarten class.”
Harvard shook his head. “I don’t—”
“Yeah,” she said, “you do. You’re always looking to see if I need some help. ‘Is that pack too heavy for you, Ms. Richards?’ ‘Careful of your step, Ms. Richards.’ ‘Let me give you a boost into the boat, Ms. Richards.’”
“I remember doing that,” Harvard admitted. “But I gave Schneider and Greene a boost, too.”
“Maybe so, but you didn’t announce it to the world, the way you did with me.”
“I announced it with you because I felt it was only polite to give you a proper warning before I grabbed your butt.”
She gazed steadily into his eyes, refusing to acknowledge the embarrassment that was heating her cheeks. “Well, it just so happens that I didn’t need a boost. I’m plenty strong enough to pull myself into that boat on my own.”
“It’s harder than it looks.”
“I didn’t get a chance to find that out, did I?”
She was right. She may indeed have found that she couldn’t pull herself into the boat without a boost, but she hadn’t had that opportunity, and so she was right. Harvard did the only thing he could do.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have assumed. It’s just that women tend not to have the upper body strength necessary—”
“I do.” She cut him off. “It’s one of the times my size works to my advantage. I can probably do more chin ups than you, because I’m lifting less than you.”
“I’ll grant that you weigh less because you’re smaller, but everything’s smaller. Your arms are smaller.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t have muscles.” P.J. pushed up the sleeve of her T-shirt and flexed her biceps. “Check this out. Feel this. That’s one solid muscle.”
She actually wanted him to touch her.
“Check it out,” she urged him.
Harvard was so much bigger than she was, he could have encircled her entire upper arm with one hand—flexed biceps and all. But he knew if he did that, she would think he was mocking her. Instead, he touched her lightly, his fingers against the firmness of her muscle, his thumb against the inside of her arm. Her skin was sinfully soft, impossibly smooth. And as he moved his fingers, it was more like a caress than a test of strength.
His mouth went dry, and as he looked up, he knew everything he was thinking was there in his eyes, clear as day, for her to see. He wanted her. No argument, no doubt. If she said the word go, he wouldn’t hesitate even a fraction of a second.
P.J. pulled her arm away as if she’d been burned. “Bad idea, bad idea,” she said as if she were talking to—and scolding—herself. She stood up. “I need to go to bed. You should, too. We both have to be up early in the morning.”
Harvard slouched on the couch, drawing in a deep breath and letting it out in a rush of air. “Maybe that’s a way to relieve some of the tension between us.”
She turned to look at him, her beautiful eyes wary. “What is?”
“You and me,” Harvard said bluntly. “Going to bed together—getting this attraction thing out of our systems.”
P.J. crossed her arms. “Now, how did I know you were going to suggest that?”
“It’s just a thought.”
She looked at him, at the way he was sitting, the way he was trying to hide the fact that he’d gotten himself totally turned on just from touching her that little tiny bit. “Somehow I think it’s more than just a thought.”
“Just say the word and it changes from a good idea to hard reality.” His eyes were impossibly hot as he looked at her. “I’m more than ready.”
P.J. had to clear her throat before she could speak. “It’s not a good idea. It’s a bad idea.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“You know it’d be great.”
“No, I don’t,” she told him honestly. “Well, I know it would be better than great.” He looked as if he were ready to sit there all night and try to tease her into getting with him.
But no matter how determined he was, she was more so. “I can’t do this. I can’t be casual about something so important.” Lord, if he only knew the whole truth…. She turned toward her room, and he stood up, ready to follow her.
“I’m not just imagining this,” he asked quietly, his handsome face serious, “am I? I mean, I know you feel this thing between us, too. It’s damn powerful.”
“There’s a definite pull,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t mean we should throw caution to the wind and go to bed together.” She laughed in disbelief, amazed their conversation should have come this far. “You don’t even like me.”
“Not so,” Harvard countered. “You’re the one who doesn’t like me. I would truly like us to be friends.”
She snorted. “Friends who have sex? What a novel idea. I’m sure you’re the first man who’s ever come up with that.”
“You want it platonic? I can keep it platonic for as long as you want.”
“Well, there’s a big word I didn’t think you knew.”
“I graduated with high honors from one of the toughest universities in the country,” he told her. “I know lots of big words.”
P.J. desperately wanted to pace, but she forced herself to stand still, not wanting to betray how nervous this man made her feel.
“Look,” she said finally. “I have a serious problem with the fact that you’ve been treating me as if I’m a child or—a substandard man.” She forced herself to hold his gaze, willed herself not to melt from the magmalike heat that lingered in his eyes. “If you really want to be my friend, then try me,” she said. “Test me. Push me to the edge—see just how far I can go before you set up imaginary boundaries and fence me in.” She laughed, but it wasn’t because it was funny. “Or out.”
Harvard nodded. “I can’t promise miracles. I can only promise I’ll try.”
“That’s all I ask.”
“Good,” Harvard said. He held out his hand for her to shake. “Friends?”
P.J. started to reach for his hand, but quickly pulled away.
“Friends,” she agreed, “who will stay friends a whole lot longer if we keep the touching to an absolute minimum.”
Harvard laughed. “I happen to disagree.”
P.J. smiled. “Yeah, well, old buddy, old pal, that’s not the first time we’ve not seen eye to eye, and I’m willing to bet it’s not going to be the last.”
“Yo, Richards—you awake?”
“I am now.” P.J. closed her eyes and sank onto her bed, telephone pressed against her ear.
“Well, good, because it’s too early to be sleeping.”
She opened one eye, squinting at the clock radio on the bedside table. “Senior Chief, it’s after eleven.”
“Yeah, like I said, it’s too early to crash.” Harvard’s voice sounded insufferably cheerful over the phone. “We don’t have to be on base tomorrow until ten. That means it’s playtime. Are you dressed?”
“No.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Get shakin’, or they’re gonna start without us. I’m in the lobby, I’ll be right up.”
“Start what?”
But Harvard had already disconnected the line. P.J. hung up the phone without sitting up. She’d gone to bed around ten, planning to get a solid ten hours of sleep tonight. Lord knows she needed it.
Bam, bam, bam. “Richards, open up!”
Now the fool was at the door. P.J. closed her eyes a little tighter, hoping he’d take a hint and go away. Whatever he wanted, she wanted to sleep more.
The past week had been exhausting. True to his word, the Senior Chief had stopped coddling her. She’d gotten no more helpful boosts, no more special treatment. She was busting her butt, but she was keeping up. Hell, she was out front, leading the way. Of course, the FInCOM agents were being trained at a significantly lower intensity than the SEALs normally operated. This was a walk in the park for Alpha Squad. But P.J. wasn’t trying to be a SEAL. That wasn’t what this was about. She was here to learn from them—to try to understand the best way not just FInCOM but the entire United States of America could fight and win the dirty war against terrorism.
Harvard hadn’t stopped watching her, but at least now when she caught him gazing in her direction, there was a glint of something different in his eyes. It may not quite have been approval, but it was certainly awareness of some kind. She was doing significantly better than Farber, Schneider and Greene without Harvard’s help, and he knew it. He’d nod, acknowledging her, never embarrassed that she caught him staring.
She liked seeing that awareness. She liked it a lot. She liked it too damn much.
“Oh, man, Richards, don’t wimp out on me now.”
P.J. opened her eyes to see Harvard standing next to her bed. He looked impossibly tall. “How did you get in here?” she asked, instantly alert, sitting up and clutching her blanket to her.
“I walked in.”
“That door was locked!”
Harvard chuckled. “Allegedly. Come on, we got a card game to go to. Bring your wallet. Me and the guys aim to take your paycheck off your hands tonight.”
A card game. She pushed her hair out of her face. To her relief, she was still mostly dressed. She’d fallen asleep in her shorts and T-shirt. “Poker?”
“Yeah. You play?”
“Gambling’s illegal in this state, and I’m a FInCOM agent.”
“Great. You can arrest us all—but only after we get to Joe Cat’s. Let’s get there quickly, shall we?” He started toward the door.
“First I’m going to arrest you for breaking and entering,” P.J. grumbled. She didn’t want to go out. She wanted to curl up in the king-size bed. She would have, too, if Harvard hadn’t been there. But sinking back into bed with him watching was like playing with fire. He’d get that hungry look in his eyes—that look that made her feel as if everything she did, every move she made, was personal and intimate. That look that she liked too much.
P.J. pushed herself off the bed. It would probably be best to get as far away from the bed as possible with Harvard in the room.
“Those electronic locks are ridiculously easy to override. Getting past ’em doesn’t really count as breaking.” He looked at the ceiling, squinting suddenly. “Damn, I can feel it. They’re starting without us.”
“How does the captain’s poor wife feel about being dropped in on at this time of night?”
“Veronica loves poker. She’d be playing, too, except she’s in New York on business. Come on, Richards.” He clapped his hands, two sharp bursts of sound. “Put on your sneakers. Let’s get to the car—double time!”
“I’ve got to get dressed.”
“You are dressed.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Not exactly elegant, but certainly practical in this heat. Come on, girl, get your kicks on your feet and—”
“I can’t go out wearing this.”
“What, do you want to change into your Wonder Woman uniform?” Harvard asked.
“Very funny.”
He grinned. “Yeah, thanks. I thought it was, too. Sometimes I’m so funny, I crack myself up.”
“I don’t want to look too—”
“Relaxed?” he interrupted. “Approachable? Human? Yeah, you know, right now you actually look almost human, P.J. You’re perfectly dressed for hanging out and playing cards with friends.” He was still smiling, but his eyes were dead serious. “This was what you wanted, remember? A little platonic friendship.”
Approachable. Human. God knows in her job she couldn’t afford to be too much of either. But she also knew she had a tendency to go too far to the other extreme.
As she looked into Harvard’s eyes, she knew he’d set this game of cards up for her. He was going to go into Joe Cat’s house tonight and show the rest of Alpha Squad that it was okay to be friends with a fink. With this fink in particular.
P.J. wasn’t certain the Senior Chief truly liked her. She knew for a fact that even though she’d proved she could keep up, he still only tolerated her presence. Barely tolerated.
But despite that, he’d clearly gone out of his way for her tonight.
She nodded. “I thank you for inviting me. Just let me grab a sweatshirt and we can go.”
This wasn’t a date.
It sure as hell felt like a date, but it wasn’t one.
Harvard glanced at P.J., sitting way, way over on the other side of the big bench seat of his pickup truck.
“You did well today,” he said, breaking the silence.
She’d totally rocked during an exercise this afternoon. The FInCOM team had been given Intel information pinpointing the location of an alleged terrorist camp which was—also allegedly—the site of a munitions storage facility.
P.J. smiled at him. Damn, she was pretty when she smiled. “Thanks.”
She had used the computer skillfully to access all kinds of information on this particular group of tangos. She’d dug deeper than the other agents and found that the terrorists rarely kept their munitions supplies in one place for more than a week. And she’d recognized from the satellite pictures that the Ts were getting ready to mobilize.
All three of the other finks had recommended sitting tight for another week or so to await further reconnaissance from regular satellite flybys.
P.J. had written up priority orders for a combined SEAL/FInCOM team to conduct covert, on-site intelligence. Her orders had the team carrying enough explosives to flatten the munitions site if it proved to be there. She’d also put in a special request to the National Reconnaissance Office to reposition a special KeyHole Satellite to monitor and record any movement of the weapons pile.
There was only one thing Harvard would have done differently. He wouldn’t have bothered with the CSF team. He would have sent the SEALs in alone.
But if Joe Cat’s plan worked, by the time P. J. Richards completed this eight-week counterterrorist training session, she would realize that adding FInCOM agents to the Alpha Squad would be like throwing a monkey wrench into the SEALs’ already perfectly oiled machine.
Harvard hoped that was the case. He didn’t like working with incompetents like Farber. And Lord knows, even though he’d been trying, he couldn’t get past the fact that P.J. was a woman. She was smart, she was tough, but she was a woman. And God help him if he ever had to use her as part of his team. Somebody would probably end up getting killed—and it would probably be him.
Harvard glanced at P.J. as he pulled up in front of Joe Cat’s rented house.
“Do you guys play poker often?” she asked.
“Nah, we usually prefer statue tag.”
She tried not to smile, but she couldn’t help it as she pictured the men of Alpha Squad running around on Joe Cat’s lawn, striking statuesque poses. “You’re a regular stand-up comic tonight.”
“Can’t be a Senior Chief without a sense of humor,” he told her, putting the truck in Park and turning off the engine. “It’s a prerequisite for the rank.”
“Why a chief?” she asked. “Why not a lieutenant? How come you didn’t take the officer route? I mean, if you really went to Harvard…”
“I really went to Harvard,” he told her. “Why a chief? Because I wanted to. I’m right where I want to be.”
There was a story behind his decision, and Harvard could see from the questions in P.J.’s eyes that she wanted to know why. But as much as he liked the idea of sitting here and talking with her in the quiet darkness of the night, with his truck’s engine clicking softly as it cooled, his job was to bring her into Joe’s house and add to the shaky foundation of friendship they’d started building nearly a week ago.
Friends played cards.
Lovers sat in the dark and shared secrets.
Harvard opened the door, and bright light flooded the truck’s cab. “Let’s get in there.”
“So do you guys play often?” P.J. asked as they walked up the path to the front door.
“No, not really,” Harvard admitted. “We don’t have much extra time for games.”
“So this game tonight—this is for my benefit, huh?” she asked perceptively.
He gazed into her eyes. Damn, she was pretty. “I think it’s for all of our benefit,” he told her honestly. He smiled. “You should be honored. You’re the first fink we’ve ever set up a poker party for.”
“I hate it when you call me that,” she said, her voice resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going to stop. “And this isn’t really any kind of honor. This is calculated bonding, isn’t it? For some reason, you’ve decided you need me as a part of the team.” Her eyes narrowed speculatively. “It’s in Alpha Squad’s best interest to gain me as an ally. But why?”
She was pretty, but she wasn’t half as pretty as she was smart.
Harvard opened Joe’s front door and stepped inside. “You’ve been doing that spooky agent voodoo for too many years. This is just a friendly poker game. No more, no less.”
She snorted. “Yeah, sure, whatever you say, Senior Chief.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
P.J. WAS LATE.
A truck had jackknifed on the main road leading to the base, and she’d had to go well out of her way to get there at all.
She grabbed her gym bag from the back of her rental car and bolted for the field where SEALs and FInCOM agents met to start their day with an eye-opening run.
They were all waiting for her.
Farber, Schneider and Greene had left the hotel minutes before she had. She’d seen them getting into Farber’s car and pulling out of the parking lot as she’d ridden down from her room in the glass-walled elevator. They must’ve made it through moments before the road had been closed.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said breathlessly. “There was an accident that shut down route—”
“Forget it. It doesn’t matter,” Harvard said shortly, barely meeting her eyes. “We ready to go? Let’s do it.”
P.J. stared in surprise as he turned away from her, as he broke into a run, leading the group toward the river.
To Harvard, tardiness was the original sin. There was no excuse for it. She’d fully expected him to lambaste her good-naturedly, to use her as yet another example to get his point about preparedness across. She’d expected him to point out in his usual effusive manner that she should have planned ahead, should have given herself enough time, should have factored in the possibility of Mr. Murphy throwing a jackknifed truck into her path.
She’d even expected him to imply that a man wouldn’t have been late.
But he hadn’t.
What was up with him?
In the few days since the poker game, P.J. had enjoyed the slightly off-color, teasing friendship of the men she’d played cards with. Crash had been there, although she suspected he was as much a stranger to the other men as she was. And the quiet blond lieutenant called Blue. The team’s version of Laurel and Hardy had anted up, as well—Bobby and Wes. And the captain himself, with his angelic-looking baby son asleep in a room down the hall, had filled the seventh seat at the table.
P.J. had scored big. As the dealer, she’d chosen to play a game called Tennessee. The high-risk, high-penalty, high-reward nature of the game appealed to the SEALs, and they’d played it several times that evening.
P.J. had won each time.
Now she tossed her bag on the ground and followed as Joe Cat hung back to wait for her. The other men were already out of sight.
“I’m really sorry I was late,” she said again.
“I pulled in about forty-five seconds before you.” The captain pulled his thick, dark hair into a ponytail as they headed down the trail. “I guess H. figured he couldn’t shout at you after he didn’t shout at me, huh?”
They were moving at a decent clip. Fast but not too fast—just enough so that P.J. had to pay attention to her breathing. She didn’t want to be gasping for air and unable to talk when they reached their destination. “Does the Senior Chief shout at you?” she asked.
“Sometimes.” Joe smiled. “But never in public, of course.”
They ran in silence for a while. The gravel crunching under their feet was the only sound.
“Is his father all right?” P.J. finally asked. “I didn’t see Harvard at all yesterday, and today he seems so preoccupied. Is anything wrong?” She tried to sound casual, as if she were just making conversation, as if she hadn’t spent a good hour in bed last night thinking about the man, wondering why he hadn’t been at dinner.
They’d only gone about a mile, but she was already soaked with perspiration. It was ridiculously humid today. The air clung to her, pressing against her skin like a damp blanket.
“His father’s doing well,” Joe told her. He gave her a long, appraising look. “H. has got some other personal stuff going on, though.”
P.J. quickly backpedaled. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, your question was valid. He was uncharacteristically monosyllabic this morning,” he said. “Probably because it’s moving day.”
She tried not to ask, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Moving day?”
“H.’s parents are moving. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I think he feels bad that he’s not up there helping out. Not to mention that he’s pretty thrown by the fact that they’re leaving Massachusetts. For years his family lived in this really great old house overlooking the ocean near Boston. I went home with him a few times before his sisters started getting married and moving out. He has a really nice family—really warm, friendly people. He grew up in that house—it’s gotta hold a lot of memories for him.”
“He lived in one house almost his entire life? God, I moved five times in one year. And that was just the year I turned twelve.”
“I know what you mean. My mother and I were pros at filling out post office change of address cards, too. But H. lived in one place from the time he was a little kid until he left for college. Wild, huh?”
“And on top of that his parents are both still alive and together.” P.J. shook her head. “Doesn’t he know how lucky he is? Unless he’s got some deep, dark, dysfunctional secret that I don’t know about.”
“I don’t think so, but I’m not exactly qualified to answer that one. I think it’s probably best if Harvard got into those specifics with you himself, you know?”
“Of course,” she said quickly. “I wasn’t looking to put you on the spot.”
“Yeah, I know that,” he said easily. “And I didn’t mean to make it sound as if I was telling you to mind your own business. Because I wasn’t.”
P.J. had to laugh. “Whew—I’m glad we got that settled.”
“It’s just… I’m speculating here. I don’t want to mislead you in any way.”
“I know—and you’re not.” As he glanced at her again, P.J. felt compelled to add, “The Senior Chief and I are just friends.”
Joe Catalanotto just smiled.
“I’ve known H. almost as long as I’ve known Blue,” he told her after they’d run another mile or so in silence.
“Yeah, you told me you and Blue—Lieutenant McCoy—went through BUD/S together, right?” P.J. asked.
“Yeah, we were swim buddies.”
Swim buddies. That meant Joe Cat and Blue had been assigned to work together as they’d trained to become SEALs. From what P.J. knew of the rigorous special operations training, they’d had to become closer than blood brothers, relying on one man’s strengths to counter the other’s weaknesses, and vice versa. It was no wonder that after all those years of working side by side, the two men could communicate extensively with a single look.
“H. was in our graduating class,” Joe told her. “In fact, he was part of our boat team during Hell Week. A vital part.”
Funny, they were talking about Harvard again. Not that P.J. particularly minded.
“Who was his swim buddy?”
“Harvard’s swim buddy rang out—he quit—right before it was our turn to land our IBS on the rocks outside the Hotel Del Coronado.”
“IBS?”
“Inflatable Boat, Small.” Joe smiled. “And the word small is relative. It weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds and carries seven men. The boat team carries it everywhere throughout Hell Week. By the time we did the rock portage, we were down to only four men—all enlisted—and that thing was damn heavy. But we all made it through to the end.”
Enlisted? “You and Blue didn’t start out as officers?”
Joe picked up the pace. “Nope. We were both enlisted. Worked our way up from the mail room, so to speak.”
“Any idea why Harvard didn’t take that route?” she asked. She quickly added, “I’m just curious.”
The captain nodded but couldn’t hide his smile. “I guess he didn’t want to be an officer. I mean, he really didn’t want to. He was approached by OCS—the Officer’s Candidate School—so often, it got to be kind of a joke. In fact, during BUD/S, he was paired with a lieutenant, I think in an attempt to make him realize he was prime officer material.”
“But the lieutenant quit.”
“Yeah. Harvard took that pretty hard. He thought he should’ve been able to keep his swim buddy—Matt, I think his name was—from quitting. But it was more than clear to all of us that H. had been carrying this guy right from the start. Matt would’ve been out weeks earlier if he hadn’t been teamed up with H.”
“I guess even back then, Harvard was a team player,” P.J. mused. The entire front of her T-shirt was drenched with sweat, and her legs and lungs were starting to burn, but the captain showed no sign of slowing down.
“Exactly.” Joe wasn’t even slightly winded. “He hated feeling like he was letting Matt down. Except the truth was, Matt had been doing nothing but letting H. down from day one. Swim buddies have to balance out their strengths and weaknesses. It doesn’t work if one guy does all the giving and the other does nothing but take. You know, even though Harvard saw Matt’s ringing out as a personal failure, the rest of us recognized it for the blessing it was. God knows it’s hard enough to get through BUD/S. But it’s damn near impossible to do it with a drowning man strapped to your back.”
She could see Harvard way up ahead on the trail, still in the lead. He’d taken off his T-shirt, and his powerful muscles gleamed with sweat. He moved like a dancer, each step graceful and sure. He made running look effortless.
As Joe Cat cranked their speed up another few notches, P.J. found that it was getting harder to talk and run at the same time.
The captain kept his mouth tightly shut as they raced past first Schneider and Greene, then Tim Farber, but it wasn’t because he couldn’t talk. Once out of the other agents’ earshot, he turned to grin at her.
“My grandmother could outrun those guys.”
“How far are we going today?” P.J. asked as they passed the five-mile mark. Her words came out in gasps.
“However far H. wants to take us.”
Harvard didn’t look as if he were planning on stopping anytime soon. In fact, as P.J. watched, he punched up the speed.
“You know, I used to be faster than H.,” Joe told her. “But then he went and shaved his head and cut down on all that wind resistance.”
P.J. had to laugh.
“So I asked Ronnie, what do you think, should I shave my head, too, and she tells me no way. I say, why not? She’s always talking about how sexy Harvard is—about how women can’t stay away from him, and I’m thinking maybe I should go for that Mr. Clean look, too. So she tells me she likes my hair long, in what she calls romance-cover-model style. But I can’t stop thinking about that wind resistance thing, until she breaks the news to me that if I shaved my head, I wouldn’t look sexy. I’d look like a giant white big toe.”
P.J. cracked up, trying to imagine him without any hair and coming up with an image very similar to what his wife had described.
Joe was grinning. “Needless to say, I’m keeping my razor securely locked in the medicine cabinet.”
Harvard heard the melodic burst of P.J.’s laughter and gritted his teeth.
It wasn’t that it sounded as if she were flirting with Joe Cat when she laughed that way. It wasn’t that he was jealous in any way of the special friendship she seemed to have formed with Alpha Squad’s captain. It wasn’t even so much that he was having one bitch of a bad day.
But then she laughed again, and the truth of the matter smacked him square in the face.
She did sound as if she were flirting with Joe Cat. Harvard was jealous not only of that, but of any kind of friendship she and the captain had formed, and he couldn’t remember ever having had a worse day in the past year, if not the past few years. Not since that new kid who transferred from SEAL Team One had panicked during a HALO training op. The cells of his chute hadn’t opened right, and he hadn’t fully cut free before pulling the emergency rip cord. That second chute had gotten tangled with the first and never opened. The kid fell to his death, and Harvard had had to help search for his remains. That had been one hell of a bad day.
He knew he should count his blessings. No one had died today. But thinking that way only made him feel worse. It made him feel guilty on top of feeling lousy.
He took a short cut to the base, knowing he could run forever today and it wouldn’t make him feel any better. He ran hard and fast, setting a pace he knew would leave the three male finks in the dust.
He had no doubt that P.J. would keep up. Whenever she ran, she got that same look in her eye he’d seen in many a determined SEAL candidate who made it through BUD/S to the bitter end. Like them, she would have to be dead and buried before she would quit. If then.
It was almost too bad she was a woman. As she’d pointed out to him, she was one of the best shooters in all of FInCOM. She was good, she was tough, but the fact was, she was a girl. Try as he might, he couldn’t accept that there was a place for females in combat situations. The sooner she got promoted up and out of the field, the better.
He ran faster, and as they reached the home stretch, Lucky was cursing him with every step. Bobby and Wes were complaining in stereo by the time Harvard slowed to a stop. Even Blue and Joe Cat were out of breath.
P.J. was trying not to look as if she were gasping for air, but she doubled over, head down, hands on her knees.
Harvard backtracked quickly, hoisting her into a more vertical position by the back of her T-shirt. “You know better than to stick your head down lower than your heart after running like that,” he said sharply.
“Sorry,” she gasped.
“Don’t apologize to me,” he said harshly. “I’m not the one whose reputation is going to suffer when you live up to everyone’s expectations by blacking out and keeling over like some fainthearted little miss.”
Her eyes sparked. “And I’m not the great, huge, stupid he-man who had to prove some kind of macho garbage by running the entire team as hard as he possibly could.”
“Believe me, baby, that wasn’t even half as hard as I can get.” He smiled tightly to make sure she caught the double entendre, then lowered his voice. “Just say the word, and I’ll give you a private demonstration.”
Her eyes narrowed, her mouth tightened, and he knew he’d gone too far. “What’s up with you today?”
He started to turn away, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm, unmindful of the fact that his skin was slick with sweat. “Are you all right, Daryl?” she asked quietly. Beneath the flash of anger and impatience in her eyes, he could see her deep concern.
He could handle fighting with her. He wanted to fight with her. The soft warmth of her dark brown eyes only made him feel worse. Now he felt bad, topped with guilt for feeling bad, and he also felt like a certified fool for lashing out at her.
Harvard swore softly. “Sorry, Richards, I was way out of line. Just…go away, okay? I’m not fit to be around today.”
He looked up to find Joe Cat standing behind him. “I’m going to give everyone the rest of the morning free,” the captain told him quietly. “Let’s meet at the Quonset hut after lunch.”
Harvard knew Joe was giving them free time because of him. Joe knew Harvard needed a few hours to clear his head.
He shouldn’t have needed it—he was too experienced, too much of a professional to become a head case at this stage of his life. But before Harvard could argue, Joe Cat walked away.
“You want to take a walk?” P.J. asked Harvard.
He didn’t get a chance to answer before she tugged at his arm. “Let’s go,” she said, gesturing with her chin toward the path they’d run along. She grabbed several bottles of water from her gym bag and handed one to him.
Damn, it was hot. Rivers of perspiration were running down his chest, down his legs, dripping from his chin, beading on his shoulders and arms. He opened the bottle and took a long drink. “What, you want to psychoanalyze me, Richards?”
“Nope. I’m just gonna listen,” she said. “That is, if you want to talk.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“Okay,” she said matter-of-factly. “Then we’ll just walk.”
They walked in silence for an entire mile, then two. But right around the three-mile marker, she took the boardwalk right-of-way that led to the beach. He followed in silence, watching as she sat in the sand and began pulling off her sneakers.
She looked at him. “Wanna go for a swim?”
“Yeah.” He sat next to her and took off his running shoes.
P.J. pulled off her T-shirt. She was wearing a gray running bra underneath. It covered her far better than a bathing suit top would have, but the sight of it, the sight of all that smooth, perfect skin reminded him a hundredfold that he wasn’t taking a walk with one of the boys.
“Look at this,” P.J. said. “I can practically wring my shirt out.”
Harvard tried his best to look. He purposely kept his gaze away from the soft mounds of her breasts outlined beneath the thick gray fabric of her running top. She wasn’t overly endowed, not by any means, but what she had sure was nice.
Her arms and her stomach glistened with perspiration as she leaned forward to peel off her socks. It didn’t take much imagination to picture her lying naked on his bed, her gleaming dark skin set off by the white cotton of his sheets, replete after hours of lovemaking. He tried to banish the image instantly. Thinking like that was only going to get him into trouble.
“Come on,” she said, scrambling to her feet. She held out her hand for him, and he took it and let her pull him up.
He wanted to hold on to her, to lace their fingers together, but she broke away, running fearlessly toward the crashing surf. She dove over the breakers, coming up to float on top of the swells beyond.
Harvard joined her in that place of calm before the breaking ocean. The current was strong, and there was a serious undertow. But P.J. had proven her swimming skills many times over during the past few weeks. He didn’t doubt her ability to hold her own.
She pushed her hair out of her face and adjusted her ponytail. “You know, up until last year, I didn’t know how to swim.”
Harvard was glad the water was holding him up, because otherwise, he would have fallen over. “You’re kidding!”
“I grew up in D.C.,” she told him matter-of-factly. “In the inner city. The one time we moved close enough to the pool at the Y, it was shut down for repairs for eight months. By the time it opened again, we were gone.” She smiled. “When I was really little, I used to pretend to swim in the bathtub.”
“Your mother and father never took you to the beach in the summer to stay cool?”
P.J. laughed as if something he’d said was extremely funny. “No, I never even saw the ocean until I went on a class trip to Delaware in high school. I meant to take swimming lessons in college, but I never got around to it. Then I got assigned to this job. I figured if I were going to be working with Navy SEALs, it’d be a good idea if I knew how to swim. I was right.”
“I learned to swim when I was six,” Harvard told her. “It was the summer I…”
She waited, and when he didn’t go on, she asked, “The summer you what?”
He shook his head.
But she didn’t let it go. “The summer you decided you were going to join the Navy and become a SEAL,” she guessed.
The water felt good against his hot skin. Harvard let himself float. “No, I was certain right up until the time I finished college that I was going to be an English lit professor, just like my old man.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
She squinted at him. “I’m trying to picture you with glasses and one of those jackets with the suede patches on the elbows and maybe even a pipe.” She laughed. “Somehow I can’t manage to erase the M-16 that’s kind of permanently hanging over your shoulder, and the combination is making for quite an interesting image.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Harvard treaded water lazily. “Laugh at me all you want. Chicks dig guys who can recite Shakespeare. And who knows? I might decide to get my teaching degree some day.”
“The M-16 will certainly keep your class in line.”
Harvard laughed.
“We’re getting off the subject here,” P.J. said. “You learned to swim when you were six and it was the summer you also made your first million playing the stock market? No,” she answered her own question, “if you had a million dollars gathering interest from the time you were six, you wouldn’t be here now. You’d be out on your yacht, commanding your own private navy. Let’s see, it must’ve been the summer you got your first dog.”
“Nope.”
“Hmm. The summer you had your first date?”
Harvard laughed. “I was six.”
She grinned at him. “You seem the precocious type.”
They’d come a long way, Harvard realized. Even though there was still a magnetic field of sexual tension surrounding them, even though he still didn’t want her in the CSF team and she damn well knew it, they’d managed to work around those issues and somehow become friends.
He liked this girl. And he liked talking to her. He would’ve liked going to bed with her even more, but he knew women well enough to recognize that when this one shied away from him, she wasn’t just playing some game. As far as P. J. Richards was concerned, no didn’t mean try a little harder. No meant no. And until that no became a very definite yes, he was going to have to be content with talking.
But Harvard liked to talk. He liked to debate. He enjoyed philosophizing. He was good with words, good at verbal sparring. And who could know? Maybe if he talked to P.J. for long enough, he’d end up saying something that would start breaking through her defenses. Maybe he’d begin the process that would magically change that no to a yes.
“It was the summer you first—”
“It was the summer my family moved to our house in Hingham,” Harvard interrupted. “My mother decided that if we were going to live a block away from the ocean, we all had to learn to swim.”
P.J. was silent. “Was that the same house your parents are moving out of today?” she finally asked.
He froze. “Where did you hear about that?”
She glanced at him. “Joe Cat told me.”
P.J. had been talking to Joe Cat about him. Harvard didn’t know whether to feel happy or annoyed. He’d be happy to know she’d been asking questions about him. But he’d be annoyed as hell if he found out that Joe had been attempting to play matchmaker.
“What, the captain just came over to you and said, guess what? Hot news flash—Harvard’s mom and pop are moving today?”
“No,” she said evenly. “He told me because I asked him if he knew what had caused the great big bug to crawl up your pants.”
She pushed herself forward to catch a wave before it broke and bodysurfed to shore like a professional—as if she’d been doing it all of her life.
She’d asked Joe. Harvard followed her out of the water feeling foolishly pleased. “It’s no big deal—the fact that they’re moving, I mean. I’m just being a baby about it.”
P.J. sat in the sand, leaned back against her elbows and stretched her legs out in front of her. “Your parents lived in the same house for, what? Thirty years?”
“Just about.” Harvard sat next to her. He stared at the ocean in an attempt to keep from staring at her legs. Damn, she had nice legs. It was impossible not to look, but he told himself that was okay, because he was making damn sure he didn’t touch. Still, he wanted to.
“You’re not being a baby. It is a big deal,” she told him. “You’re allowed to have it be a big deal, you know.”
He met her eyes, and she nodded. “You are allowed,” she said again.
She was so serious. She looked as if she were prepared to go into mortal combat over the fact that he had the right to feel confused and upset over his parents’ move. He felt his mouth start to curve into a smile, and she smiled, too. The connection between them sparked and jumped into high gear. Damn. When they had sex, it was going to be great. It was going to be beyond great.
But it wasn’t going to be today. If he were smart he’d rein in those wayward thoughts, keep himself from getting too overheated.
“It’s just so stupid,” he admitted. “But I’ve started having these dreams where suddenly I’m ten years old again, and I’m walking home from school and I get home and the front door’s locked. So I ring the bell and this strange lady comes to the screen. She tells me my family has moved, but she doesn’t know where. And she won’t let me in, and I just feel so lost, as if everything I’ve ever counted on is gone and… It’s stupid,” he said again. “I haven’t actually lived in that house for years. And I know where my parents are going. I have the address. I already have their new phone number. I don’t know why this whole thing should freak me out this way.”
He lay back in the sand, staring at the hazy sky.
“This opportunity is going to be so good for my father,” he continued. “I just wish I could have taken the time to go up there, help them out with the logistics.”
“Where exactly are they moving?” P.J. asked.
“Phoenix, Arizona.”
“No ocean view there.”
He turned to face her, propping his head on one hand. “That shouldn’t matter. I’m the one who liked the ocean view, and I don’t live with them anymore.”
“Where do you live?” she asked.
Harvard couldn’t answer that without consideration. “I have a furnished apartment here in Virginia.”
“That’s just temporary housing. Where do you keep your stuff?”
“What stuff?”
“Your bed. Your kitchen table. Your stamp collection. I don’t know, your stuff.”
He lay down, shaking his head. “I don’t have a bed or a kitchen table. And I used the last stamp I bought to send a letter to my little sister at Boston University.”
“How about your books?” P.J. ventured. “Where do you keep your books?”
“In a climate-controlled self-storage unit in Coronado, California.” He laughed and closed his eyes. “Damn, I’m pathetic, aren’t I? Maybe I should get a sign for the door saying Home Sweet Home.”
“Are you sure you ever really moved out of your parents’ house?” she asked.
“Maybe not,” he admitted, his eyes still closed. “But if that’s the case, I guess I’m moving out today, huh?”
P.J. hugged her legs to her chest as she sat on the beach next to the Alpha Squad’s Senior Chief.
“Maybe that’s why I feel so bad,” he mused. “It’s a symbolic end to my childhood.” He glanced at her, amusement lighting his eyes. “Which I suppose had to happen sooner or later, considering that in four years I’ll be forty.”
Harvard Becker was an incredibly beautiful-looking man. His body couldn’t have been more perfect if some artisan had taken a chisel to stone and sculpted it. But it was his eyes that continued to keep P.J. up at night. So much was hidden in their liquid brown depths.
It had been a bold move on her part to suggest they go off alone to walk. With anyone else, she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But with everyone else, the boundaries of friendship weren’t so hard to define.
When it came to this man, P.J. was tempted to break her own rules. And that was a brand-new feeling for her. A dangerous feeling. She hugged her knees a little tighter.
“There was a lot wrong with that house in Hingham,” Harvard told her. “The roof leaked in the kitchen. No matter how many times we tried to fix it, as soon as it stormed, we’d need to get out that old bucket and put it under that drip. The pipes rattled, and the windows were drafty, and my sisters were always tying up the telephone. My mother’s solution to any problem was to serve up a hearty meal, and my old man was so immersed in Shakespeare most of the time he didn’t know which century it was.”
He was trying to make jokes, trying to bring himself out of the funk he’d been in, trying to pretend it didn’t matter.
“I couldn’t wait to move out, you know, to go away to school,” he said.
He was trying to make it hurt less by belittling his memories. And there was no way she was going to sit by and listen quietly while he did that.
“You know that dream you’ve been having?” she asked. “The one where you get home from school and your parents are gone?”
He nodded.
“Well, it didn’t happen to me exactly like that,” she told him. “But one day I came home from school and I found all our furniture out on the sidewalk. We’d been evicted, and my mother was gone. She’d vanished. She’d dealt with the bad news not by trying to hustle down a new apartment, but by going out on a binge.”
He pushed himself into a sitting position. “My God…”
“I was twelve years old,” P.J. said. “My grandmother had died about three months before that, and it was just me and Cheri—my mom. I don’t know what Cheri did with the rent money, but I can certainly guess. I remember that day like it was yesterday. I had to beg our neighbors to hold on to some of that furniture for us—the stuff that wasn’t already broken or stolen. I had to pick and choose which of the clothing we could take and which we’d have to leave behind. I couldn’t carry any of my books or toys or stuffed animals, and no one had any room to store a box of my old junk, so I put ’em in an alley, hoping they’d still be there by the time I found us another place to live.” She shot him a look. “It rained that night, and I never even bothered to go back. I knew the things in that box were ruined. I guess I figured I didn’t have much use for toys anymore, anyway.”
She took a deep breath. “But that afternoon, I loaded up all that I could carry of our clothes in shopping bags and I went looking for my mother. You see, I needed to find her in order to get a bed in the shelter that night. If I tried to go on my own, I’d be taken in and made a ward of the state. And as bad as things were with Cheri, I was afraid that would be even worse.”
Harvard swore softly.
“I’m not giving you the 411 to make you feel worse.” She held his gaze, hoping he would understand. “I’m just trying to show you how really lucky you were, Daryl. How lucky you are. Your past is solid. You should celebrate it and let it make you stronger.”
“Your mother…”
“Was an addict since before I can remember,” P.J. told him flatly. “And don’t even ask about my father. I’m not sure my mother knew who he was. Cheri was fourteen when she had me. And her mother was sixteen when she had her. I did the math and figured out if I followed in my family’s hallowed tradition, I’d be nursing a baby of my own by the time I was twelve. That’s the childhood I climbed out of. I escaped, but just barely.” She raised her chin. “But if there’s one thing I got from Cheri, it’s a solid grounding in reality. I am where I am today because I looked around and I said no way. So in a sense, I celebrate my past, too. But the party in my head’s not quite as joyful as the one you should be having.”
“Damn,” Harvard said. “Compared to you, I grew up in paradise.” He swore. “Now I really feel like some kind of pouting child.”
P.J. looked at the ocean stretching all the way to the horizon. She loved knowing that it kept going and going and going, way past the point where the earth curved and she couldn’t see it anymore.
“I’ve begun to think of you as a friend,” she told Harvard. She turned to look at him, gazing directly into his eyes. “So I have to warn you—I only have guilt-free friendships. You can’t take anything I’ve told you and use it to invalidate your own bad stuff. I mean, everyone’s got their own luggage, right? And friends shouldn’t set their personal suitcase down next to someone else’s, size them both up and say, hey, mine’s not as big as yours, or hey, mine’s bigger and fancier so yours doesn’t count.” She smiled. “I’ll tell you right now, Senior Chief, I travel with an old refrigerator box, and it’s packed solid. Just don’t knock it over, and I’ll be all right. Yours, on the other hand, is very classy Masonite. But your parents’ move made the lock break, and now you’ve got to tidy everything up before you can get it fixed and sealed up tight again.”
Harvard nodded, smiling at her. “That’s a very poetic way of telling me don’t bother to stage a pissing contest, ’cause you’d win, hands down.”
“That’s right. But I’m also telling you don’t jam yourself up because you feel sad about your parents leaving your hometown,” P.J. said. “It makes perfect sense that you’ll miss that house you grew up in—that house you’ve gone home to for the past thirty years. There’s nothing wrong with feeling sad about that. But I’m also saying that even though you feel sad, you should also feel happy. Just think—you’ve had that place to call home and those people to make it a good, happy home for all these years. You’ve got memories, good memories you’ll always be able to look back on and take comfort from. You know what having a home means, while most of the rest of the people in the world are just floating around, upside down, not even knowing what they’re missing but missing it just the same.”
He was silent, so she kept going. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked so much. But this man, this new friend with the whiskey-colored eyes, who made her feel like cheating the rules—he was worth the effort.
“You can choose to have a house and a family someday, kids, the whole nine yards, like your parents did,” she told him. “Or you can hang on to those memories you carry in your heart. That way, you can go back to that home you had, wherever you are, whenever you want.”
There. She’d said everything she wanted to say to him. But he was so quiet, she began to wonder if she’d gone too far. She was the queen of dysfunctional families. What did she know about normal? What right did she have to tell him her view of the world with such authority in her voice?
He cleared his throat. “So where do you live now, P.J.?”
She liked it when Harvard called her P.J. instead of Richards. It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. She liked the chill she got up her spine from the heat she could sometimes see simmering in his eyes. And she especially liked knowing he respected her enough to hold back. He wanted her. His attraction was powerful, but he respected her enough to not keep hammering her with come-on lines and thinly veiled innuendos. Yeah, she liked that a lot.
“I have an apartment in D.C., but I’m hardly ever there.” She picked up a handful of sand and let it sift through her fingers. “See, I’m one of the floaters. I still haven’t unpacked most of my boxes from college. I haven’t even bought furniture for the place, although I do have a bed and a kitchen table.” She shot him a rueful smile. “I don’t need extensive therapy to know that my nesting instincts are busted, big-time. I figure it’s a holdover from when I was a kid. I learned not to get attached to any one place because sooner or later the landlord would be kicking us out and we’d be living somewhere else.”
“If you could live anywhere in the world,” he asked, “where would you live?”
“Doesn’t matter where, as long as it’s not in the middle of a city,” P.J. answered without hesitation. “Some cute little house with a little yard—doesn’t have to be big. It just has to have some land. Enough for a flower garden. I’ve never lived anywhere long enough to let a garden grow,” she added wistfully.
Harvard was struck by the picture she made sitting there. She’d just run eight miles at a speed that had his men cursing, then walked three miles more. She was sandy, she was sticky from salt and sweat, her hair was less than perfect, her makeup long since gone. She was tough, she was driven, she was used to not just getting by but getting ahead in a man’s world, and despite all that, she was sweetly sentimental as all get out.
She turned to meet his gaze, and as if she could somehow read his mind, she laughed. “God, I sound like a sap.” Her eyes narrowed. “If you tell anyone what I said, you’re a dead man.”
“What, that you like flowers? Since when is that late-breaking piece of news something you need to keep hidden from the world?”
Something shifted in her eyes. “You can like flowers,” she told him. “You can read Jane Austen in the mess hall at lunch. You can drink iced tea instead of whiskey shots with beer chasers. You can do what you want. But if I’m caught acting like a woman, if I wear soft, lacy underwear instead of the kind made from fifty percent cotton and fifty percent sandpaper, I get looked at funny. People start to wonder if I’m capable of doing my job.”
Harvard tried to make her smile. “Personally, I stay away from the lacy underwear myself.”
“Yeah, but you could wear silk boxers, and your men would think, ‘Gee, the Senior Chief is really cool.’ I wear silk, and those same men start thinking with a nonbrain part of their anatomy.”
“That’s human nature,” he argued. “That’s because you’re a beautiful woman and—”
“You know, it always comes down to sex,” P.J. told him crossly. “Always. You can’t put men and women in a room together without something happening. And I’m not saying it’s entirely the men’s fault, although men can be total dogs. Do you know that I had to start fighting off my mother’s boyfriends back when I was ten? Ten. They’d come over, get high with her, and then when she passed out, they’d start sniffing around my bedroom door. My grandmother was alive then, and she’d give ’em a piece of her mind, chase ’em out of the house. But after she died, when I was twelve, I was on my own. I grew up fast, I’ll tell you that much.”
When Harvard was twelve, he’d had a paper route. The toughest thing he’d had to deal with was getting up early every morning to deliver those papers. And the Doberman on the corner of Parker and Reingold. That mean old dog had been a problem for about a week or two. But in time, Harvard had gotten used to the early mornings, and he’d made friends with the Doberman.
Somehow he doubted P.J. had had equally easy solutions to her problems.
She gazed at the ocean, the wind moving a stray curl across her face. She didn’t seem to feel it, or if she did, she didn’t care enough to push it away.
He tried to picture her at twelve years old. She must’ve been tiny. Hell, she was tiny now. It wouldn’t have taken much of a man to overpower her and—
The thought made him sick. But he had to know. He had to ask. “Did you ever… Did they ever…”
She turned to look at him, and he couldn’t find any immediate answers in the bottomless darkness of her eyes.
“There was one,” she said softly, staring at the ocean. “He didn’t back off when I threatened to call my uncle. Of course, I didn’t really have any uncle. It’s possible he knew that. Or maybe he was just too stoned to care. I had to go out the window to get away from him—only in my panic, I went out the wrong window. I went out the one without the fire escape. Once I was out there, I couldn’t go back. I went onto the ledge and I just stood there, sixteen stories up, scared out of my mind, staring at those little toy cars on the street, knowing if I slipped, I’d be dead, but certain if I went back inside I’d be as good as dead.” She looked at Harvard. “I honestly think I would’ve jumped before I would’ve let him touch me.”
Harvard believed her. This man, whoever he’d been, may not have hurt P.J. physically, but he’d done one hell of a job on her emotionally and psychologically.
He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “I don’t suppose you remember this son of a bitch’s name?” he asked.
“Ron something. I don’t think I ever knew his last name.”
He nodded. “Too bad.”
“Why?”
Harvard shrugged. “Nothing important. I was just thinking it might make me feel a little better to hunt him down and kick the hell out of him.”
P.J. laughed—a shaky burst of air that was part humor and part surprise. “But he didn’t hurt me, Daryl. I took care of myself and…I was okay.”
“Were you?” Harvard reached out for her. He knew he shouldn’t. He knew that just touching her lightly under the chin to turn her to face him would be too much. He knew her skin would be sinfully soft beneath his fingers, and he knew that once he touched her, he wouldn’t want to let go. But he wanted to look into her eyes, so he did. “Tell me this—are you still afraid of heights?”
She didn’t need to answer. He saw the shock of the truth in her eyes before she pulled away. She stood up, moved toward the water, stopping on the edge of the beach, letting the waves wash over her feet.
Harvard followed, waiting for her to look at him again.
P.J.’s head was spinning. Afraid of heights? Terrified was more like it.
She couldn’t believe he’d figured that out. She couldn’t believe she’d told him enough to give herself away. Steeling herself, she looked at him. “I can handle heights, Senior Chief. It’s not a problem.”
She could tell from the look on his face he didn’t believe her.
“It’s not a problem,” she said again.
Damn. She’d told him too much.
It was one thing to joke around about her dream house. But telling him about her problem with heights was going way too far.
It would do her absolutely no good to let this man know her weaknesses. She had to have absolutely no vulnerabilities to coexist in his macho world. She could not be afraid of heights. She would not be. She could handle it—but not if he made it into an issue.
P.J. rinsed her hands in the ocean. “We better get back if we want to have any lunch.”
But Harvard blocked the way to where her sneakers and T-shirt were lying on the sand. “Thanks for taking the time to talk to me,” he said.
She nodded, still afraid to meet his eyes. “Yeah, I’m glad we’re friends.”
“It’s nice to be able to talk to someone in confidence—and know you don’t have to worry about other people finding out all your deep, dark secrets,” Harvard told her.
P.J. did look at him then, but he’d already turned away.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“MAN, IT’S QUIET AROUND HERE TODAY,” Harvard said as he came into the decaying Quonset hut that housed Alpha Squad’s office.
Lucky was the only one around, and he looked up from one of the computers. “Hey, H.,” he said with a cheerful smile. “Where’ve you been?”
“There was a meeting with the base commander that I absolutely couldn’t miss.” Harvard rolled his eyes. “It was vital that I go with the captain to listen to more complaints about having the squad temporarily stationed here. This base is regular Navy, and SEALs don’t follow rules. We don’t salute enough. We drive too fast. We make too much noise at the firing range. We don’t cut our hair.” He slid his hand over his cleanly shaved head. “Or we cut our hair too short. I tell you, there’s no pleasing some folks. Every week it’s the same, and every week we sit there, and I take notes, and the captain nods seriously and explains that the noise at the firing range occurs when we discharge our weapons and he’s sorry for the inconvenience, but one of the reasons Alpha Squad has the success record it does is that each and every one of us takes target practice each day, every day, and that’s not going to change. And then the supply officer steps forward and informs us that the next time we want another box of pencils, we’ve got to get ’em from Office Max. We appear to have used up our allotted supply.” He shook his head. “We got lectured on that for ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes? On pencils?”
Harvard grinned. “That’s right.” He turned toward his office. “Joe’s right behind me. He should be back soon—unless he gets cornered into sticking around for lunch.”
Lucky made a face. “Poor Cat.”
“This is what you have to look forward to, O’Donlon,” Harvard said with another grin. “It’s only a matter of time before you make an oh-six pay grade and get your own command. And then you’ll be rationing pencils, too.” He laughed “It’s not just a job—it’s an adventure.”
“Gee, thanks, H. I’m all aquiver with anticipation.”
Harvard pushed open his office door. “Do me a favor and dial the captain’s pager number. Give him an emergency code. Let’s get him out of there.”
Lucky picked up the phone and quickly punched in a series of numbers. He dropped the receiver into the cradle with a clatter.
“So where’s everyone this afternoon?” Harvard called as he took off his jacket and hung it over the chair at his desk. “I stopped by the classroom on my way over, but it was empty. They’re not all still at lunch, are they?”
“No, they’re at the airfield. I’m heading over there myself in about ten minutes.” Lucky raised his voice to be heard through the open door.
Harvard stopped rifling through the files on his desk. “They’re where?”
“At the field. It’s jump day,” Lucky told him.
“Today?” Harvard moved to the door to stare at the younger SEAL. “No way. That wasn’t scheduled until next week.”
“Yeah, everything got shifted around, remember? We had to move the jump up a full week.”
Harvard shook his head. “No. No, I don’t remember that.”
Lucky swore. “It must’ve been the day you went to Boston. Yeah, I remember you weren’t around, so Wes took care of it. He said he wrote a memo about it. He said he left it on your desk.”
Harvard’s desk was piled high with files and papers, but he knew exactly what was in each file and where each file was in each pile. It may have looked disorganized, but it wasn’t. He’d cleared his In basket at least ten times since he’d taken that day of personal leave. He’d caught up on everything he’d missed. There was no memo from Wesley Skelly on that desk.
Or was there?
Underneath the coffee mug with a broken handle that held his pens and some of those very pencils the base supply officer had been in a snit about, Harvard could see a flash of yellow paper. He lifted the mug and turned the scrap of paper over.
This was it.
Wes had written an official memo on the inside of an M&M’s wrapper. It was documentation of the rescheduled jump date, scribbled in barely legible pencil.
“I’m going to kill him,” Harvard said calmly. “I’m going to find him, and I’m going to kill him.”
“You don’t have to look far to find him,” Lucky said. “He’s with the finks in the classroom at the main hangar. He’s helping Blue teach ’em the basics of skydiving.”
Harvard shook his head. “If I’d known the jump was today, I would’ve made arrangements to skip this morning’s meeting. I wanted to be here to make it clear to the finks that participating in this exercise is optional.” He looked sharply at O’Donlon. “Were you there when Blue gave his speech? Do they understand they don’t have to do this?”
Lucky shrugged. “Yeah. They’re all up for it, though. It’s no big deal.”
But it was a big deal. Harvard knew that for P.J. it had to be a very, very big deal.
When he’d figured out yesterday that she was afraid of heights, he’d known about the skydiving jump, but he’d thought it was a week away. If he’d known otherwise, he would’ve warned her then and there. He could’ve told her that choosing not to participate didn’t matter one bit in the big picture.
The purpose of the exercise was not to teach the finks to be expert skydivers. There was no way they could do that with only one day and only one jump. When they’d set up the program, the captain had thought a lesson in skydiving would give the agents perspective on the kind of skills the SEALs needed to succeed as a counterterrorist team.
It was supposed to underscore the message of the entire program—let the SEALs do what they do best without outside interference.
Harvard looked at his watch. It was just past noon. “O’Donlon, is the jump still scheduled for thirteen-thirty?”
“It is,” Lucky told him. “I’m going over to help out. You know me, I never turn down an opportunity to jump.”
Harvard took a deep breath. More than an hour. Good. He still had time. He could relax and take this calmly. He could change out of this blasted dress uniform instead of screaming over to the airfield in a panic.
The phone rang. It had to be Joe Cat, answering his page.
Harvard picked it up. “Rescue squad.”
Joe covered a laugh by coughing. “Sit rep, please.” The captain was using his officer’s voice, and Harvard knew that wherever he was, he wasn’t alone.
“We’re having a severe pencil shortage, Captain,” Harvard said rapidly, in his best imitation of a battle-stressed officer straight from Hollywood’s Central Casting. “I think you better get down here right away to take care of it.”
Joe coughed again, longer and louder this time. “I see.”
“So sorry to interrupt your lunch, sir, but the men are in tears. I’m sure the commander will understand.”
Joe’s voice sounded strangled. “I appreciate your calling.”
“Of course, if you’d prefer to stay and dine with the—”
“No, no. No, I’m on my way. Thank you very much, Senior Chief.”
“I love you, too, Captain,” Harvard said and hung up the phone.
Lucky was on the floor, laughing. Harvard nudged him with his toe and spoke in his regular voice. “I’m changing out of this ice-cream suit. Don’t you dare leave for the airfield without me.”
The half of a chicken-salad sandwich P.J. had forced down during lunch was rolling in her stomach.
Lieutenant Blue McCoy stood in front of the group of SEALs and FInCOM agents, briefing them on the afternoon’s exercise.
P.J. tried to pay attention as he recited the name of the aircraft that would take them to an altitude from which they’d jump out of the plane.
Jump out of the plane.
P.J. took a deep breath. She could do this. She knew she could do this. She was going to hate it, but just like going to the dentist, time would keep ticking, and the entire ordeal would eventually be over and done with.
“We’ll be going out of the aircraft in teams of two,” Blue said in his thick Southern drawl. “You will stay with your jump buddy for the course of the exercise. If you become separated during landing, you must find each other immediately upon disposing of your chute. Remember, we’ll be timing you from the moment you step out of that plane to the moment you check in at the assigned extraction point. If you reach the extraction point without your partner, you’re automatically disqualified. Does everyone understand?”
P.J. nodded. Her mouth was too dry to murmur a reply.
The door opened at the back of the room, and Blue paused and smiled a greeting. “About time you boys got here.”
P.J. turned to see Harvard closing the door behind him. He was wearing camouflage pants tucked securely into black boots and a snugly fitting dark green T-shirt. He was looking directly at her from under the brim of his cap. He nodded just once, then turned his attention to McCoy.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. It wasn’t until he moved toward the front of the room that P.J. noticed Lucky had been standing beside him. “Have you worked up the teams yet, Lieutenant?”
Blue nodded. “I have the list right here, Senior Chief.”
“Mind doing some quick revising so I can get in on the action?”
“’Course not,” Blue replied. He looked at the room. “Why don’t y’all take a five-minute break?”
P.J. wasn’t the only one in the room who was nervous. Greg Greene went to the men’s room for the fourth time in half an hour. The other men stood and stretched their legs. She sat there, wishing she could close her eyes and go to sleep, wishing that when she woke up it would be tomorrow morning and this day would be behind her, most of all wishing Harvard had given her some kind of warning that today’s challenge would involve jumping out of an airplane thousands of feet above the earth.
As she watched, Harvard leaned against the table to look at the list. He supported himself with his arms, and his muscles stood out in sharp relief. For once, she let herself look at him, hoping for a little distraction.
The man was sheer perfection. And speaking of distractions, his shirt wasn’t the only thing that fit him snugly. His camouflage pants hugged the curve of his rear end sinfully well. Why on earth anyone would want to camouflage that piece of art was beyond her.
He was deep in discussion with Blue, then both men paused to glance at her, and she quickly looked away. What was Harvard telling the lieutenant? It was clear they were talking about her. Was Harvard telling McCoy all she’d let slip yesterday at the beach? Were they considering the possibility that she might freeze with fear and end up putting more than just herself in danger? Were they going to refuse to let her make the jump?
She glanced at them, and Harvard was still watching her, no doubt taking in the cold sweat that was dampening her shirt and beading on her upper lip. She knew she could keep her fear from showing in her eyes and on her face, but she couldn’t keep from perspiring, and she couldn’t stop her heart from pounding and causing her hands to shake.
She was scared to death, but she was damned if she was going to let anyone tell her she couldn’t make this jump.
As she watched, Harvard spoke again to Blue. Blue nodded, took out a pen and began writing on the paper.
Harvard came down the center aisle and paused next to her chair.
“You okay?” he asked quietly enough so that no one else could hear.
She was unable to hold his gaze. He was close enough to smell her fear and to see that she was, in fact, anything but okay. She didn’t bother to lie. “I can do this.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do. It’s part of this program.”
“This jump is optional.”
“Not for me, it’s not.”
He was silent for a moment. “There’s nothing I can say to talk you out of this, is there?”
P.J. met his gaze. “No, Senior Chief, there’s not.”
He nodded. “I didn’t think so.” He gave her another long look, then moved to the back of the room.
P.J. closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath. She wanted to get this over with. The waiting was killing her.
“Okay,” Blue said. “Listen up. Here’re the teams. Schneider’s with Greene, Farber’s with me. Bobby’s with Wes, and Crash is with Lucky. Richards, you’re with Senior Chief Becker.”
P.J. turned to look at Harvard. He was gazing at her, and she knew this was his doing. If he couldn’t talk her out of the jump, he was going to go with her, to babysit her on the way down.
“Out in the other room, you’ll find a jumpsuit, a helmet and a belt pack with various supplies,” Blue continued. “Including a length of rope.”
Farber raised his hand. “What’s the rope for?”
Blue smiled. “Just one of those things that might come in handy,” he said. “Any other questions?”
The room was silent.
“Let’s get our gear and get to the plane,” Blue said.
Harvard sat next to P.J. and fastened his seat belt as the plane carrying the team went wheels up.
Sure enough, P.J. was a white-knuckle flyer. She clung to the armrests as if they were her only salvation. But her head was against the seat, and her eyes were closed. To the casual observer, she was totally relaxed and calm.
She’d glanced at him briefly as he sat down, then went back to studying the insides of her eyelids.
Harvard took the opportunity to look at her. She was pretty, but he’d had his share of pretty women before, many of them much more exotic-looking than P.J.
It was funny. He was used to gorgeous women throwing themselves at his feet, delivering themselves up to him like some gourmet meal on a silver platter. They were always the ones in pursuit. All he’d ever had to do was sit back and wait for them to approach him.
But P.J. was different. With P.J., he was clearly the one doing the chasing. And every time he moved closer, she backed away.
It was annoying—and as intriguing as hell.
As the transport plane finally leveled off, she opened her eyes and looked at him.
“You want to review the jump procedure again?” he asked her quietly.
She shook her head. “There’s not much to remember. I lift my feet and jump out of the plane. The static line opens the chute automatically.”
“If your chute tangles or doesn’t open right,” Harvard reminded her, “if something goes wrong, break free and make sure you’re totally clear before you pull the second rip cord. And when you land—”
“We went over all this in the classroom,” P.J. interrupted. “I know how to land.”
“Talking about it isn’t the same as doing it.”
She lowered her voice. “Daryl, I don’t need you holding my hand.”
Daryl. She’d called him Daryl again. She’d called him that yesterday, too. He lowered his voice. “Aren’t you just even a little bit glad I’m here?”
“No.” She held his gaze steadily. “Not when I know the only reason you’re here is you don’t think I can do this on my own.”
Harvard shifted in his seat to face her. “But that’s what working in a team is all about. You don’t have to do it on your own. You’ve got an issue with this particular exercise. That’s cool. We can do a buddy jump—double harness, single chute. I’ll do most of the work—I’ll get us to the ground. You just have to close your eyes and hold on.”
“No. Thank you, but no. A woman in this business can’t afford to have it look as if she needs help,” she told him.
He shook his head impatiently. “This isn’t about being a woman. This is about being human. Everybody’s got something they can’t do as easily or as comfortably as the next man—person. So you’ve got a problem with heights—”
“Shh,” she said, looking around to see if anyone was listening. No one was.
“When you’re working in a team,” Harvard continued, speaking more softly, “it doesn’t do anybody any good for you to conceal your weaknesses. I sure as hell haven’t kept mine hidden.”
P.J.’s eyes widened slightly. “You don’t expect me to believe—”
“Everybody’s got something,” he said again. “When you have to, you work through it, you ignore it, you suck it up and get the job done. But if you’ve got a team of seven or eight men and you need two men to scale the outside of a twenty-story building and set up recon on the roof, you pick the two guys who are most comfortable with climbing instead of the two who can do the job but have to expend a lot of energy focusing on not looking down. Of course, it’s not always so simple. There are lots of other things to factor in in any given situation.”
“So what’s yours?” P.J. asked. “What’s your weakness?” From the tone of her voice and the disbelief in her eyes, she clearly didn’t think he had one.
Harvard had to smile. “Why don’t you ask Wes or O’Donlon? Or Blue?” He leaned past P.J. and called to the other men, “Hey, Skelly. Hey, Bob. What do I hate more than anything?”
“Idiots,” Wes supplied.
“Idiots with rank,” Bobby added.
“Being put on hold, traffic jams and cold coffee,” Lucky listed.
“No, no, no,” Harvard said. “I mean, yeah, you’re right, but I’m talking about the teams. What gives me the cold sweats when we’re out on an op in the real world?”
“SDVs,” Blue said without hesitation. At P.J.’s questioning look, he explained. “Swimmer Delivery Vehicles. We sometimes use one when a team is being deployed from a nuclear sub. It’s like a miniature submarine. Harvard pretty much despises them.”
“Getting into one is kind of like climbing into a coffin,” Harvard told her. “That image has never sat really well with me.”
“The Senior Chief doesn’t do too well in tight places,” Lucky said.
“I’m slightly claustrophobic,” Harvard admitted.
“Locking out of a sub through the escape trunk with him is also a barrel of laughs,” Wes said with a snort. “We all climb from the sub into this little chamber—and I mean little, right, H.?”
Harvard nodded. “Very little.”
“And we stand there, packed together like clowns in a Volkswagen, and the room slowly fills with water,” Wes continued. “Anyone who’s even a little bit funny about space tends to do some serious teeth grinding.”
“We just put Harvard in the middle,” Blue told P.J., “and let him close his eyes. When it’s time to get going, when the outer lock finally opens, whoever’s next to him gives him a little push—”
“Or grabs his belt and hauls him along if his meditation mumbo jumbo worked a little too well,” Wes added.
“Some people are so claustrophobic they’re bothered by the sensation of water surrounding them, and they have trouble scuba diving,” Harvard told her. “But I don’t have that issue. Once I’m in the water, I’m okay. As long as I can move my arms, I’m fine. But if I’m in tight quarters with the walls pressing in on me…” He shook his head. “I really don’t like the sensation of having my arms pinned or trapped against my body. When that happens, I get a little tense.”
Lucky snickered. “A little? Remember that time—”
“We don’t need to go into that, thank you very much,” Harvard interrupted. “Let’s just say, I don’t do much spelunking in my spare time.”
P.J. laughed. “I never would have thought,” she said. “I mean, you come across as Superman’s bigger brother.”
He smiled into her eyes. “Even old Supe had to deal with kryptonite.”
“Ten minutes,” Wes announced, and the mood in the plane instantly changed. The men of Alpha Squad all became professionals, readying and double-checking the gear.
Harvard could feel P.J. tighten. Her smile faded as she braced herself.
He leaned toward her, lowering his voice so no one else could hear. “It’s not too late to back out.”
“Yes, it is.”
“How often does your job require you to skydive?” he argued. “Never. This is a fluke—”
“Not never,” she corrected him. “Once. At least once. This once. I can do this. I know I can. Tell me, how many times have you had to lock out of a sub?”
“Too many times.”
Somehow she managed a smile. “I only have to do this once.”
“Okay, you’re determined to jump. I can understand why you want to do it. But let’s at least make this a single-chute buddy jump—”
“No.” P.J. took a deep breath. “I know you want to help. But even though you think that might help me in the short term, I know it’ll harm me in the long run. I don’t want people looking at me and thinking, ‘She didn’t have the guts to do it alone.’ Hell, I don’t want you looking at me and thinking that.”
“I won’t—”
“Yes, you will. You already think that. Just because I’m a woman, you think I’m not as strong, not as capable. You think I need to be protected.” Her eyes sparked. “Greg Greene’s sitting over there looking like he’s about to have a heart attack. But you’re not trying to talk him out of making this jump.”
Harvard couldn’t deny that.
“I’m making this jump alone,” P.J. told him firmly, despite the fact that her hands were shaking. “And since we’re being timed for this exercise, do me a favor. Once we hit the ground, try to keep up.”
P.J. couldn’t look down.
She stared at the chute instead, at the pure white of the fabric against the piercing blueness of the sky.
She was moving toward the ground faster than she’d imagined.
She knew she had to look down to pinpoint the landing zone—the LZ—and to mark in her mind the spot where Harvard hit the ground. She had little doubt he would come within a few dozen yards of the LZ, despite the strong wind coming from the west.
Her stomach churned, and she felt green with nausea and dizziness as she gritted her teeth and forced herself to watch the little toy fields and trees beneath her.
It took countless dizzying minutes—far longer than she would have thought—for her to locate the open area that had been marked as their targeted landing zone. And it had been marked. There was a huge bull’s-eye blazed in white on the brownish-green of the cut grass in the field. It was ludicrously blatant, and despite that, it had been absorbed by the pattern of fields and woods, and she nearly hadn’t seen it.
What would it be like to try to find an unmarked target? When the SEALs went on missions, their landing areas weren’t marked. And they nearly always made their jumps at night. What would it be like to be up here in the darkness, floating down into hostile territory, vulnerable and exposed?
She felt vulnerable enough as it was, and no one on the ground wanted to kill her.
The parachute was impossible for her to control. P.J. attempted to steer for the bull’s-eye, but her arms felt boneless, and the wind was determined to send her to another field across the road.
The trees were bigger now, and the ground was rushing up at her—at her and past her as a gust caught in the chute’s cells and took her aloft instead of toward the ground.
A line of very solid-looking trees and underbrush was approaching much too fast, but there was nothing P.J. could do. She was being blown like a leaf in the wind. She closed her eyes and braced herself for impact and…jerked to a stop.
P.J. opened her eyes—and closed them fast. Dear, dear sweet Lord Jesus! Her chute had been caught by the branches of an enormous tree, and she was dangling thirty feet above the ground.
She forced herself to breathe, forced herself to inhale and exhale until the initial roar of panic began to subside. As she slowly opened her eyes again, she looked into the branches above her. How badly was her chute tangled? If she tried to move around, would she shake herself free? She definitely didn’t want to do that. That ground was too far away. A fall from this distance could break her legs—or her neck.
She felt the panic return and closed her eyes, breathing again. Only breathing. A deep breath in, a long breath out. Over and over and over.
When her pulse was finally down to ninety or a hundred, she looked into the tree again. There were big branches with leaves blocking most of her view of the chute, but what she could see seemed securely entangled.
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