On the Line (Special Ops)

by Montgomery, Capri

  “You’re ready,” she told her. “You’re going to take their breath away just as you take mine away when I watch you move.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. I’m in awe of your passion and skill and talent. You’re an amazing dancer, a brilliant woman and you’re beautiful. Have a little faith in yourself.”

  Zahara laughed. “I don’t know how beautiful I am, but I will try to have faith in me.”

  “Is this still about the guy who got away?”

  Zahara nodded. “Maybe a little. I’m average, Ariana. I’m not tall; five-five is not tall. I don’t have big breasts,” Ariana watched as Zahara looked down to the b-cup breasts she sported. “I’m a little curvy, but not super curvy or anything. I’m just me and I don’t think “just me” attracts the right kind of man.”

  Ariana nearly doubled over with laughter. The girl was a knockout beauty. She was a delicate and exotic mixture of Hawaiian with white and a hint of Japanese. Her mother being full blooded Hawaiian and her father being white with a hint of Japanese in his bloodline on his father’s side of the family came together to create exotic beauty. The slight angle to Zahara’s eyes told of her mix, the long silky hair she had pointed to the Polynesian in her, and those striking blue eyes against her tanned features and raven hair was amazing. She had more admirers than she knew. Ariana had seen the way men looked at her when she passed them by, or when they passed her by. Every Thursday they had brunch at their favorite café on Plaza and every Thursday Ariana watched how men nearly tripped over their feet trying to get a better look at the woman.

  “You are so in denial,” she finally said. “You’re gorgeous. Men notice you; trust me on that. They just keep going because you never give them the impression that you’re interested in having them notice you. The ones who approach you and keep bugging you, the type you don’t want, are the ones who aren’t waiting for a sign that you’re interested and aren’t quick to leave once they find out you’re not.”

  “Yes oh wise one,” she put the palms of her hands together in front of her chest and bowed her head. Ariana laughed.

  “You’re young still. You’ll find the right man. But first you must find your confidence in yourself. I see it in you when you dance. I see it in you when you speak at conferences for your profession. I see it in you when I look at the woman who won a research grant away from older men with far more acceptable years in the field listed on their resume.”

  “Yeah, but I have been studying the heavens with my father since I was a little girl. I was two and he would take me out to Anini Bay Beach Park or up into the Na Pali cliffs to study the stars. My mom worked with the observation of the rainforest…that’s how they met actually, but I already told you about that. My point is I’m comfortable and confident with my career because I have technically been training for it since I was two years old. I know more than a lot of these guys who didn’t start studying about the stars until they got their first telescope at the age of twelve. I had an expert teaching me about the stars and an expert teaching me about the rainforest and the earth.”

  “True and you have an expert teaching you about dance.” She reminded her.

  “I know, but I haven’t been doing it as long. Maybe in another twenty years I’ll feel like a pro.”

  “Well I would suggest you feel like a pro by Friday night,” she laughed. “You always feel the music when you dance. That’s not something I can teach it’s something you’re born with. Embrace it.”

  She fell onto her back on the fainting couch in a mock over dramatic fainting move with the classic damsel meets diva fainting spell yell. Ariana laughed. “Don’t dramatize it silly.”

  Zahara laughed as she sat up. “I’m going to try to rock it out. I have a great costume. I have a great song to dance to. I’m mostly improvising so if I mess up I’ll just keep going like you always tell us to. That’s the great thing about the solo and not the group. If I mess up on a group routine then everybody knows.”

  “So true,” she nodded. “So, how are you really doing with being back in Texas? I know you have been here for a little while but you seem to miss Alaska sometimes.”

  She shrugged. “I love Hawaii and would have moved back there if I could have gotten on at the university. Alaska was okay. It wasn’t horrible. The sky is beautiful to watch, but it’s cold.” She put the emphasis on cold. “I guess what I miss is that it’s so far away from here.”

  “You were never happy here were you?”

  “I was. I mean when my dad told us we were all moving to Texas I nearly had a stroke. I was twelve, had the best friends, was living in the best place in the world, and he wanted to move to Texas. Why? But then I got here and on my first day of school I met somebody great. I found out that I liked boys in ways I never thought I’d like them. I met a nice girl and she got the guy. That was killer because I was right there in front of him and he chose her. They started dating our junior year of high school when I had been in love with him since I was twelve. They dated all the way through high school and pretty much was on the fast track to marriage. I couldn’t take it. It hurt too much. So I…”

  “Ran away?”

  She nodded sheepishly. “Coward that I am.”

  “Well that makes me one too in a way,” she said.

  “Your situation was different, Ariana.”

  “Yes, it was. Preston was the love of my life. He saved my life. But he also broke my heart. I thought we had something until he was packing his bag one day and he said to me, Air Force all the way, that’s who I am, what I am, and it’s the most important thing in my life right now. What was I supposed to think about that? Our marriage should have been the most important thing in his life. I should have been important in his life. I never asked him to give up his career. I never asked him to ask for modified duty—if he could even get it. I never asked him to give anything up and in that one sentence he told me just where I stood in his world…I was the mistress and his career was the love of his life. I didn’t want that. I wasn’t the woman for him—his career was. So I filed for divorce and sent the papers. I guess it was perfect for him because he signed them the same day he received them. He didn’t even call to ask me why or if we could work on it. If he had I would have known I meant something to him…that we meant something to him…but we didn’t, I didn’t. Whatever,” she pushed her curls back out of her face. “I have moved on. He has moved on. Everybody is happy.”

  “Liar,” Zahara said. Ariana knew the woman was too close to her. She never got this close to any of her students but she had with Zahara. Zahara knew more about her than anybody did, and far more than any student should know, but Zahara seemed a lot like a sister to her and that made her more than just a student. She was twenty-seven years old now. She had worked hard to get where she was and she had gone far for a young woman of her age. She had defied the odds and proved that age really was just a number. She finished her PhD studies in six years instead of eight and she didn’t look back. Ariana admired her. She was a woman who knew what she wanted. Maybe that’s why they got along so well. Ariana was the same way. She didn’t have a PhD under her belt, but she did have several world championship belly dance trophies. She had won in Morocco for six years straight until she stopped going over there for competitions—her hotel blowing up kind of put a damper on going to compete. Plus she got married and she decided to stay in the states to compete. She had been in Hollywood blockbuster movies, interviewed more times than she cared to keep count of, and had built her dance school and troop. She was forty-six now and her empire was established. She still danced and would probably dance until the day she died, but she spent more of her attention on training the next of the American based belly dancers than she did performing across the nation.

  “You’re right,” she finally admitted. “I still miss him. I still miss him and that makes me such an idiot because clearly he doesn’t miss me. It’s been eighteen years. Eighteen! And I
still can’t get over the way he used to look at me—like I was the sun rising in the east in the morning and the moon guiding him through the dark at night. And the way he made me feel when he touched me…heaven.” She smiled.

  “That good huh?”

  “That spectacular,” she admitted. “You know how it is.”

  “Uh…no. We haven’t really broached this conversation but I’m still a virgin, Ariana.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really,” she said with a hint of annoyance.

  “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Thanks. I can’t tell you how many idiots I have to set straight when they think just because I’m twenty-seven I should have fallen in the bed with a man by now. Their life is their choice. My life is my choice. When I do it I’m doing it for love. It’s going to be special. It’s going to be right. It’s going to mean something to me—something more than just a quick fix.”

  “Smart woman. Preston was my first, my only and my last,” she admitted something to Zahara that she hadn’t admitted to anybody else. “Thank God for vibrators.”

  Zahara laughed. “You so should reach out to Preston. Look him up and see where he’s at and what he’s doing now.”

  “I already know. He’s living in Austin. He’s moved since he bought his first place there. He has something bigger with more land now. He runs his own company. He has a search and rescue company called the Squadron.”

  “So go knock on his door.”

  “No. Not even. I only know where he’s at and what he does because I met somebody who knew him. We started talking and he told me about this guy who rescued him from some place in Egypt about five years ago. I did some serious searching and I found out a little about the company. If he wanted me to know about him then he would have called me and told me. I’m still in the same house I bought after our divorce. My phone number is still the same. I haven’t gone anywhere. Clearly he’s over me. He was probably over me a long time before we ended.” She shrugged. “But if I were in trouble he is the only man I would trust to save me. He saved me once and I know he would do it again…or at least I think he would. He was so honorable, and definitely driven. I can’t imagine that his honesty and code of honor would allow him to do anything else; he would definitely help even if he doesn’t like me anymore.” Ariana could see the look of compassion, empathy and pain etched on the young woman’s face as she spoke with her.

  “Anyway, you did not come in here for my drama and heartache. You came in here so I could make you feel better about the show. So, here’s my advice. Suck it up, my Hawaiian goddess belly dancer. You don’t carry the stage name of Isis so you can cower at the hands of men.”

  Zahara laughed hard. “I’m sucking it up,” she nodded. “Thanks. I really did need that. Now, may I see that picture you were looking at more than you were looking at the papers on your desk?”

  Ariana laughed. She hadn’t stopped wearing that locket around her neck. She took it off for shows, but she always put it back on after the show was over. Sometimes she would even find a spot within her costume where she could secure it without worrying about losing it during a performance. Preston had given her that locket and somehow wearing the gold heart with key pendent seemed like she was keeping him close to her heart. The photos inside the locket included one of him in his Air Force dress uniform on one side and one of their engagement photos on the other side. Well, it wasn’t an official engagement photo. It was just something she had taken with her old 35mm film camera and had her father develop for her. He had made one for their wall; it was a lovely black and white photograph that used to hang in their living room when she lived with Preston. It hung next to the wedding photo her father had taken. He was a photographer—a hobbyist he would say but he was a genius in her book. He did their photos in both black and white film and color and they were amazing—and free, which helped them with their budget. Not that she needed much help on that part seeing as though she had already made quite a bit of money on her dancing appearances. Preston had apparently asked her father to make one of him in his dress uniform for the locket he gave her on their wedding night. That was his wedding gift to her and just like the ring he had given her, she had never been able to pull it off.

  The ring was a simple sterling Celtic love knot ring with her March aquamarine birthstone in the center. He had a little money, but not much and she didn’t need any insanely expensive wedding ring so she didn’t offer to give him the money to buy her one. She loved the ring he gave her because it was simple and precious, and because he had actually had to have it made for her and modified to fit the stone in the center just as he wanted it to be. She had moved the ring over to her other hand, but even that had taken a good five years after the divorce to do.

  She waved Zahara over and opened the locket as she came to stand in front of her desk. She leaned forward and showed her the picture inside.

  “He’s so handsome.”

  “Yes he is,” she giggled like a school girl. “I haven’t seen any updated photos of him, but I can’t imagine he looks worse. He probably just looks better. That man is definitely a fine wine,” she winked. “He gets better with age I’m sure.”

  Zahara placed her hand on her shoulder and smiled at her. “He might have grown up some. You should send him a message like a little note card to his office. Do you know where it is?”

  “I know where it is, but I’m not even going there.”

  “Stubborn.”

  “What about you, missy? I don’t see you running to get the man you were in love with.”

  Zahara held up her hands in surrender. “Still in love with by the way,” she said as she went back to sit on the fainting couch. “That ship has sailed.”

  “Mine too,” Ariana said.

  “And we missed it,” Zahara said solemnly.

  Ariana sighed. “Okay, let’s stop with the pity party already and talk costumes.”

  “What’s wrong with my costume?”

  “Nothing at all. I just think we should add this,” she pulled a box out of her drawer. Zahara got up and came to the desk and opened it.

  “Ariana! These are your tribal arm cuffs. You wore these when you won your last Miss Belly Dance Universe show.”

  She smiled. “I sure did. They brought me good luck and I think the black with crystal stones will accent your Paradise Sunset colored costume. The cuff goes around your arm as high as possible. You should feel it in your armpit when your arm is down against your side,” she told her. “The black with the stone inlay wraps around your arm like a snake almost all the way down and then this section here will go over your wrists and your middle finger fits through the loop. Use it today while you practice to get used to it.” The costume Zahara had chosen was sexy and pure cabaret style costuming. The orange and red hues blended together to make it look as if the sun was cascading across her body as it started its descent in the evening sky.

  “I am going to look so sexy in this.”

  “See, positive attitude on your looks for a change. I’m so proud of you little butterfly,” she patted her arm.

  “Hey, I thought I was a goddess.” She laughed.

  “You are on the dance floor and to men. But to me you’re like a little butterfly. If I had gotten pregnant and had a child at nineteen you could be my daughter.”

  “Oh please. You don’t look a day over thirty-five.”

  “I knew I liked you for some reason,” Ariana teased. She had been told she looked younger than her years, but at forty-six years old she knew very well that Zahara could have been the age of her own daughter if her life had gone differently and she had become a mother at a young age. She didn’t have any children, and honestly she didn’t want any. She never had wanted any which is one of the things she and Preston had in common. They liked sending children home at the end of a few hours, not keeping them forever. Maybe it was best they hadn’t had any children since the marriage didn’t last.

  Ariana took one las
t look inside the locket that she just couldn’t seem to let go of and then she closed it. She had work to do and there was only so much memory lane she could afford to drive down before the memory of what they used to have destroyed the good day she was determined to have. She loved Preston and probably always would, but that ship had long ago sailed and they weren’t on it—at least not with each other.

  Chapter Three

  “You’re sure of the location?” Preston had his contact checking for him. He trusted the guy on the other end of the line and if he said Jules was being held south of the Temple at Karnak then she was being held south of there. Now that he had an approximate location, far enough from the ruins not to attract any tourists, but close enough for Preston to use it as his cover, he was going in. He hated working in Egypt. The region was beautiful, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was how hostile it was becoming and the fact that he hadn’t had the best experiences whenever he landed there. He always got the package brought home safely, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a world of trouble while trying to get the package out.