by Angel Payne
Apparently not.
She’d gotten Mother’s sigh in triplicate first. “So now you’re going to embarrass us even worse by running away?”
Shane had tossed aside the head tilt in favor of a full glower. “Rose, really. It’s been barely a year. We’re only now getting invitations again to the events that matter. Don’t you understand? We need this season to gain face again! How are we supposed to show ourselves in society and explain that you’ve run off to a desert hellhole for your eat-pray-love break? Couldn’t you have chosen Paris, New York, even India?”
She gripped her pen harder to stop her hand from shaking. “Thoughts on the now,” she whispered to herself. Time to stop thinking about events she couldn’t undo, about the person she wasn’t capable of being. About mistakes that weren’t yet forgiven, much less forgotten.
She focused again on the paper in front of her. It was their last session of the day. The senator had instructed them to write down their reasons for initially applying to the team and how those motives had changed now, if at all. He’d given them fifteen minutes to consider their answers, urging them to “dig beneath surface responses.” She’d filled her paper in about five minutes but then had the next ten to stress over every line. There were no right or wrong responses, Moore had said. Yet when she dared a look up at him, she caught his leonine stare fixed right on her. It felt like he was already assessing her answer by telepathy.
His lips quirked. The look was almost a smile. Millimeters at a time, she felt her own mouth shifting in the same direction. Parched libido, meet beautiful oasis. He entranced her all over again, making the room go away with his intensity. She’d thought of electricity when they’d first met. Now that current arced again. Only this time, it bypassed the rest of her body and shot to her most intimate core. Her eyebrows jumped as the arousal spread, making her thighs tingle, sending its stunning impact down to her toes.
That was when the senator’s gaze locked down again and his mouth pressed to a line.
The senator, Rose reminded herself. Okay, one who’d stepped down from office six months ago, but still a man who’d bear the title the rest of his life. And she’d just gawked at him like a fifteen-year-old at a boy band concert.
Hell. Would she ever get something right in her life again?
Best not to consider that answer too hard.
“Pens up.”
His voice carried the edge of experience yet the confidence of command. The rest of the class raised their heads along with their pens, but Rose didn’t join them. That tone of his, clipped and commanding, finished what his gaze had started in her sex. Now she contended with drips down her labia and a flush to her whole face. She hoped the writing exercise had been just that, an exercise, and that they wouldn’t be actually asked to share what they’d written with everyone. She wasn’t sure what her voice would sound like, with her body raging in this condition.
“Who’d like to share their answer first?”
For the first time in three days, she didn’t volunteer for the duty. But her die had been cast. From two rows behind her, a snicker broke out. “Why don’t we let Rose have the honor? After all, when a woman begs enough…”
Forget the flush. Her face burned now. It wasn’t the first time Ryan Johnson zinged a one-liner at her expense. He did it enough back at the office in Chicago, seeming to think his continued friendship with Owen gave him the right. Though Owen had left GRI for the corner office at his dad’s firm long before the wedding day, Ryan kept the strings tied nice and tight between them. Turned out that a flawless face and a ripped torso really could get a cheap gutter snake invited to the best parties.
“In your dreams, Ry-Ry,” she managed to snap back. It wasn’t her best effort, but she usually didn’t have to process Ryan’s crap with her shields down, her body on fire, and her logic shot to hell. She couldn’t summon even a decent eye roll to finish it off.
There was also the matter of him being right. She’d made an idiot of herself, hadn’t she? In longing to earn Moore’s approval signature on her training docs, she’d instead exposed her true colors, something in a hue between desperate and seriously messed up. Moore would likely make it worse right now too. She could already hear him dressing Ryan down, telling the ass to apologize. Then she’d have to endure Ryan’s insincere compliance. And she sure as hell could feel what she’d want to do after that. She gazed at the floor, wondering how hard she’d have to fall to blend into the carpet.
“That’s a considerate gesture, Mr. Johnson.” Moore’s voice now sounded like an ironic tease. “As a reward for such, why don’t you take the honor of first stab, instead?”
Ryan’s two buddies, Kai Thomas and Peter Ferne, chuckled and elbowed him. The three had nothing in common physically, which balanced the fact that they shared the same brain, clearly set on adolescence as the default under tension like this.
Despite their ribbing, Ryan replied, “Sure thing, Senator. I’m game. You want my full essay, or just the flyover?”
Rose heard Moore’s measured exhalation. “The main points will be fine.”
“That’s good, because I really have just one.”
“And that is?”
“Excellence, plain and simple. I stand proudly for it.”
Peter snickered. “They don’t call him the human tripod for nothing.”
Rose got in her eye roll, if only to herself. “Or the money burner. Or Mr. Atlantic City.” She was confident the comment went unnoticed in the round of chuckles that answered Pete’s quip. Still, the senator’s next sigh had a knowing weight to it.
“Decent start, Mr. Johnson. Maybe a little more detail is in order.”
“No problem.” Ryan shuffled in his notebook. “All right, we all know GRI wasn’t the first contractor of choice on this gig. Instead, they selected Renovera. Granted, the big R is Swiss and neutral, but they also don’t know how to do things properly. They used shoddy materials on the initial build-out, and were likely too lazy or just too ignorant to double-check the geo study numbers after pouring the foundation. Now look what’s happened. The school is falling down after a year. The hospital isn’t even finished. We stand for excellence, for doing things perfect the first time. We gotta be diligent, and that’s what we’re gonna do. I can’t wait to get over there and show these bozos how great American companies kick ass the right way.”
The class erupted in applause and a round of woots. Everyone except for Senator Moore.
“Not a bad response,” the man said after the clapping abated. “And not a bad way to think either. Back in my marines days, I’d have been proud to have you on my team, Mr. Johnson. But”—he paused, letting Ryan have a good preen first—“it comes close to a deadly way to think when you’re in a civilian contracting situation. You’re not just representing America and GRI. You’re there to absorb and respect the Iraqis in their land. You’re a visitor, not an invader. Don’t forget it. Take the GI Joe attitude into subjects beyond your immediate expertise, such as their food, their drink, their women or God help you, their religion, and you’ll find yourself in a prison with medieval standards at best. Your kick-ass company won’t be able to get to you, and your so-called native hosts will use that third leg of yours as your cell torch.”
Ryan, Pete, and Kai gave up discomfited laughs. The rest of the class gasped. Rose felt sacrilegious for her gloating smile and tried to hide it. But Moore was back to his homing-beacon stare on her face. She glanced up to find him flashing a secret grin back at her. It had her bracing for his next words. Oh yeah, he definitely had the laser trained on her now.
“Can I go next?”
She secretly hugged Aria Cyrre for the injection. The blonde logistics specialist from the Austin office, who looked like Tinker Bell but could cuss like a truck driver, spoke up from the middle of the room.
“You’re up,” Moore conceded to her.
“I might be stating the obvious, but this is a chance to be part of history, you know? Taking down that assho
le’s regime was just the start. We helped make that blood-and-piss mess. I think it’s only right that we help clean it up.”
As the room broke into chuckles, Moore stepped out from the podium. “Excellent point, Aria. It helps speak to a larger issue here too. Listen up on this, people. It’s great to feel good about what you’re doing on this project, but the people you’re doing it for will not all embrace you as heroes. You will meet many natives who see you as part of the boots who kicked the hornet’s nest. You’re not going to get the Lifetime-TV ending with them, even after those buildings are finished the right way.”
He shifted again, hitching a thigh onto the desk next to her. Though Rose ordered herself against it, she found her gaze looking at that leg through the curtain of her lashes. Toned. Marine-hard. Well, hell.
He leaned his elbow to his knee. She swore she could feel the heat of his renewed stare. Her heartbeat became a torment again.
“Now we’ll have the honor of hearing from Ms. Fabian.”
For a wild instant, she contemplated fabricating a reply instead of going with the sappy words on the page in front of her. But when she lifted her head and confronted the full strength of the man’s regard, she faced one unflinching realization.
She’d never be able to give Mark Moore anything less than the truth.
“I think that people deserve second chances,” she stated. He hardly reacted to that, except for the tiny creases at the tops of his cheeks, which deepened a little. It seemed a good thing. She hurried on. “I really think they deserve it more when their circumstances weren’t their direct doing, but the world has perceived it to be. These people only want what we all want. They want to walk down the street in peace, to raise healthy children, to have love, to be happy. To help them have that chance…” She shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed now, but finished. “It feels like a second chance for me too.”
She didn’t know whether the following silence was a good or bad thing, especially because it seemed to radiate from Moore himself. He returned to his feet, but his stance wasn’t anything she’d seen in the last two days. His arms, straight at his sides, ended in fists. He looked like invisible tethers held him back—but from doing what? A peek at his face didn’t give her the answer. His gaze now looked like a copper mine on fire. His pulse jumped beneath his trimmed beard.
Everything about him made her think of kissing him.
No. Letting him kiss her. Hard, heavy, brutally.
She almost thanked Ryan for breaking into her thoughts with his newest chortle. Almost.
“Oh hey, Rose. Sorry, I’m not laughing because— Well, I mean no disrespect.” She heard his clothes rustling as he swung his gaze around the room. “I think it’s…umm…brave of you to share your issues with everyone like this.”
The dig couldn’t have been more obvious. There was substance behind the comment, since Ryan had been sitting in the church the day of Owen’s famous no-show, but she decided to call the man on his own bluff. Ryan was a conceited coattail grabber, but not a cruel prick. “My ‘issues,’ Ryan?” She pivoted in her seat, making sure their gazes met. “You’re deciding to bump your project bonus more by applying for group shrink too?”
The guy’s surfing-god looks played to his advantage. He shrugged with a disarming smile. “I’m just saying it’s not a sin to use work as therapy. It’s how half the great corporations of the world got started.”
She rolled her eyes. Ryan didn’t flinch. The moment begged her to let his taunt lie and walk away. But if she couldn’t hold her own even with Ryan, what would the senator think about her ability to handle the rigors of what they’d face in Iraq?
“I’d suggest you heed Senator Moore’s advice, Mr. Johnson. Don’t tread in areas where you don’t have expertise, which in this case, includes my head.”
She swung forward again. Then made the mistake of taking a breath and thinking she could relax again.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Rose. You’re not the first person to get stood up on your wedding day.”
Correction. Ryan really could be that big a prick.
His truth dug in like a murder knife, cold and unhesitating—and accurate. He got her heart right down the middle. She’d come here to put the past away, to start on the clean slate of hope, but that was too damn impossible. Maybe fate didn’t use erasable chalk for someone like her. Maybe there would just always be shits like Ryan to throw the board back in her face, making her confront the humiliation all over again. Maybe she should have never made this lame attempt at hope or believed fresh starts could really happen.
She stayed upright as Kai and Pete added their chuckles to Ryan’s. But that made everyone else think she was in on the jab, and it was okay to join themselves. She deepened her stare at the carpet. The tropical print seemed a better escape route by the second. But damn it, a pair of Cavalli-clad feet got in her way. Not just any feet either. Mark Moore’s feet. That single factor made this embarrassment worse than the others. She wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye again. No more secret, selfish drags of his warm strength. Not after he knew about her grand failure.
The conclusion, so horrible and final, was what drove her to her feet. And right up the stairs. And right out of the room. Her inadequacy had screwed things up. Again.
Chapter Three
She’d disappeared out the door before Mark trusted himself to push past his fury and speak. Even then the words left him with savage force, cutting through the laughter they’d given Rose as a send-off.
“I think we’re done for the day, children. I suggest you use your free time to do something constructive. Like growing the fuck up.”
They went silent. It was paltry relief for the protective fire roaring through his body. He let the heat take over and ignite his muscles, propelling him up the stairs two at a time and out of the room. Out in the hall, he beheld an empty corridor, a glass wall, and the patio beyond that. Bright hibiscus and lush palms swung lazily in the island breeze, mocking him with their peaceful perfection.
He bit back an oath. She’d bolted fast, but she couldn’t have gone that far. He closed his eyes, drawing on instincts honed on the frontlines of Desert Storm, shutting down his reliance on a visual. He listened instead. And breathed. And hoped she’d give herself away with the patter of fleeing footsteps, maybe the lingering wisp of her fragrance on the air. In the last forty-eight hours, he’d tried like hell not to notice how she smelled. Now he was glad he’d failed. He remembered it precisely. A hint of magnolia, a kiss of vanilla, and a lot of clean, creamy skin.
There it was, off to the right. Her footfall, frantic and hard, confirmed his conclusion.
Without a second thought, he followed.
The corridor hooked a little to the left, then turned into a flagstone pathway that led through gardens, grottos, and water features. Mark followed it past a koi pond and a gazebo, finally finding her stopped against a river rock wall, in an alcove that was nearly a cave, thanks to its other wall being formed by a waterfall. She glared at the thundering water as if she longed to drown herself in it. Her high, classic cheeks were already wet. But he knew, certain as he breathed, the drops weren’t from the waterfall.
That look. Her tears. They almost caused him to turn and leave her be. They cracked him open. Decimated his logic. Shattered his professional composure. If he stayed for a second longer, he knew what he’d be tempted to do. To say.
She looked up and saw him.
He took a tentative step.
She jerked as if he’d thrown an electric charge across the grotto. Her lips, moist with her tears and berry bright from her bites, parted on a gasp. She drew breath for words. Mark cut her off.
“He’s an ass.”
He closed on her by two more steps. She stumbled back and slammed into the wall. “Oh, God!” Mortification stabbed the words. She palmed her cheeks.
As her hands came down, Mark grabbed them. And wondered what the hell he was doing. He didn’t care about the answer.
He only knew he longed to wipe out that pain in her eyes. No, it was more than pain. It was loneliness. He recognized it too damn well. Easy enough, when it was the same desperate glint he confronted in the mirror every morning.
“He’s an ass.” He let her see his locked teeth now. “Don’t you see that?”
“Of course I see it! He pulls crap like this all the time at home. Earth-shattering surprise, huh?”
He let her look everywhere but at him. He softened his grip, elated when she didn’t pull away. “But that’s the first time he’s ever pulled that particular wad of crap.”
Her grimace confirmed that. He nodded, barely battling the urge to find Johnson, tell him to forget the maturity lesson, and just go the fuck home. Baghdad wasn’t a place for sixteen-year-olds, even if they walked around in bodies twice that age.
While he got distracted with that fantasy, Rose finally took notice of how they stood. He nearly had her locked against the wall. Their hands, still joined, were the only thing that blocked their chests from touching. “Shit!” she cried. “Look…Senator…I apologize—”
“What the hell for?”
She shook her head. “It’s clear I can’t handle this. Apparently I can’t handle much of anything. I’m a mess. I’ll save the company some money and go home now.”
“The fuck you will.”
She actually glared at him for three seconds. She seemed stunned he’d use that word or that tone or both. That made her response, calm as morning mist, even more a shock.
“The fuck I won’t.”
She dropped her head and tried to pull free from him. She had a snowball’s chance of succeeding. “Rose,” he reprimanded. “Rosalind. Listen to me. Nobody deserves to be on this project more than you. Nobody’s got their head in a better space than you. Do you hear me on this? Rose?”
