Out of the Blue
Page 14
“Trickery’s the only way Levi’s getting our Ashley to say yes.” Sam high-fived Mason. “Ten bucks says she’ll skip the annulment and go straight to the kill you part of marriage. She gets to be a widow—you get to be dead. Problem solved.”
Which was no fun at all. Levi would prefer to aggravate her, get underneath her defiant, snarky surface, if only because she was the one woman who’d never, ever contemplated saying yes to him.
Mason grinned. “I bet you can’t get her to voluntarily say ‘I do.’”
Levi wasn’t Superman. No one could get Ashley to agree to anything she didn’t want to do without wielding some powerful ammo. “Say ‘I do’ to what?”
“You.” A big, obnoxious grin creased the face of the other SEAL.
“Are you doubting my powers of persuasion?”
The skeptical look Mason sported said that was an affirmative.
Gray cursed as if maybe, in some weird parallel universe, a Levi existed who actually wanted to be married to Ashley Dixon. “Ashley could out-stubborn a mule. She’d take a hell of a lot of persuading.”
“Just a matter of leverage.”
“Two minutes, ladies.” Gray stood and motioned for the team to head to the back of the plane. Air tore through the cabin as the National Guardsmen chauffeuring them to the day’s jump lowered the back ramp to reveal nothing but blue sky, empty air and a long drop to the landing zone. Levi slapped his hand on Sam’s shoulder, taking up his position behind the other SEAL as he braced against the plane’s upward pull.
He had never been wild about heights, but jumping out of a plane at thirty thousand feet beat the three-hour commute his brother bitched about, even if he was Navy and frogs weren’t meant to fly. The good thing about HALO jumping, however, was that once he’d gotten his ass out the door, the hard part was done. Gravity took over, and as long he’d packed his chute correctly the happy ending was practically guaranteed.
“Ready?” Gray bellowed the words in Levi’s ear, fighting to make himself heard over the slipstream’s roar. “Don’t make Ashley a widow. She’s gonna want the chance to kill you herself.”
“You betcha.” He touched the knuckles of his free hand to Gray’s. Seconds later, their team leader bellowed the order to jump and Sam flew out of the open bay. Gravity and the engine wake did their thing, sucking Levi out of the plane as he whooped, riding Sam’s ass as they hung in the air for a long moment.
Then they plummeted through the air at terminal velocity, facedown, arms and feet up as strips of road and field swung in crazy circles beneath them. Seventy seconds of flying—or falling—and he pulled the ripcord at four thousand feet above ground level, popping his chute. On a mission rather than a training run, he might wait until as low as a thousand feet to minimize the amount of time hostiles had to spot him. Today, though, he’d maximize his chances of getting to the ground intact. If his chute failed, he’d still have time to deploy the back up. The chute shot out of his back, the canopy catching air and jerking him sharply upward. Bingo.
Sure, Ashley would prefer skipping the divorce and aiming straight for widowhood, but he had no intention of making it easy on her. If she wanted to get rid of him, she’d have to work for it.
Don’t miss DARING HER SEAL by Anne Marsh, available May 2016 wherever Harlequin Blaze books and ebooks are sold.
www.Harlequin.com
Copyright © 2016 by Anne Marsh
Books by Jill Shalvis
Colorado Protector
Long-Lost Mom
The Rancher’s Surrender
The Detective’s Undoing
Who’s the Boss?
Roughing with Ryan
Tangling with Ty
Messing with Mac
The Street Where She Lives
Out of the Blue
Hero for Hire
ISBN: 9781459296336
Out of the Blue
Copyright © 2000 by Jill Shalvis
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