Slowing his stride, he cupped her elbow, guiding her up the long, slightly sloped walk that led to the two-story chow hall. This one could hold two-thousand people, but at this time of morning, there were no lines. Gage dropped his hand, and as they neared the double doors, he opened one for Alexa.
He allowed the door to shut, taking in the fairly quiet chow hall. They got in line after picking up aluminum trays. Gage liked the quiet, preferring that to its usual noise level.
“I don’t see Matt here,” Alexa said as they stood in line.
“Was he supposed to meet us here?”
Nodding, she slid her tray in front of the cook with all the eggs. “Yes, but he was really tired from coming off that op. He’ll probably show up at Supply later this morning.”
Gage noted the male cooks giving longing looks in Alexa’s direction. She’d taken off her knit cap, stuffing it in the pocket of her jacket, and her hair was mussed, giving her a young, girlish look. He felt protective of Alexa, although he knew she could take care of herself. All it took was a few black glares at the cooks and they quickly got the message that she belonged to him. Let them think what they wanted. Gage led her over to a corner with no windows behind it, finding a vacated area where they could sit together, looking out over the entire place.
“You’re just like Matt,” Alexa said, smiling, as she sat down with her tray. “Back to the wall, a position where you can see all the entrance/exit points.”
Taking off his jacket, he laid it next to where he sat. There was about a foot between himself and Alexa with no one else at the table to overhear their conversation.
“It becomes second nature,” Gage agreed. He saw that Alexa was eating heartily two eggs over medium, corned beef hash, and a cup of fruit.
“You’re eating for two,” Alexa said, grinning.
True enough. He had his tray piled high with scrambled eggs, a dozen pieces of bacon, and four biscuits slathered in gravy, along with a couple of oranges on the side. “I need to gain the weight I lost,” he said, digging in.
“Matt always loses weight on long ops too,” she said, frowning. “It’s a hard life. I’m glad he’s leaving Delta Force. We’ll have him home, where it’s safe.”
“He told me he’s looking forward to it,” Gage agreed. “Are you? Or are you going to miss flying?”
Wrinkling her nose, Alexa said, “I don’t think I’ll ever give up flying. I own a Boeing Stearman biplane, and I fly it all the time when I’m home. I’m sure I’ll be sitting in the cockpit at least a couple times a week when I’m working at Artemis. I need to keep my wings.”
“Why?” Gage enjoyed how easy it was to delve into Alexa. He saw no evasiveness, no manipulation. What you saw was what you got. It was so refreshing.
“I’ve always loved flying. Up there”—she pointed toward the ceiling—“I feel free . . . really free. I love the silence that surrounds me . . . the clouds . . . the changing weather. Everything is on the move around me; nothing is still.”
“And that sorta says something about you?” Gage asked, holding her pensive look.
“Yes, I guess it does.” She reached out, squeezing his lower arm. “Sure you aren’t a psychiatrist in disguise?”
He liked her teasing and shook his head. “High school education is all, Alexa.”
“Could have fooled me. You know, schools are terrible. They only set up their lesson plans for one kind of learner, the visual learner. There are actually six different types. There’s auditory, visual, tactile, analytic, global, and kinesthetic learners. So the other five types, when they go to school, never learn the way they need to learn, and they get dropped between the slats. If you aren’t a visual learner, you’re not going to be taught effectively. It usually affects your grades, too. Kids who get left out are often made to think they’re stupid or slow or just can’t learn, and that’s just not true.”
Gage nodded. “I’m best at hands-on stuff. I need to hold it, take it apart, and put it back together again. My dad bought me an Erector Set, Lincoln logs, and Legos as a kid, and I played with them for hours every day. I didn’t do well with a computer, and I’m not that skilled at using them to this day.”
“Then you’re what they call a tactile learner. You learn by touch, by drawing, playing board games, making models like with your Erector set and Legos. You’ll never learn a lot out of a manual or what’s written on a whiteboard.”
He quickly finished off his heap of scrambled eggs. “That’s right. What kind of learner are you?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m the visual learner. I do best with a manual or book. Which is why you’re a hands-on sniper, and I fly a Warthog. Give me a manual and I can learn anything. But if you threw your sniper rifle down and told me to strip and field-clean it, I’d be lost.”
Her smile and the sincerity in her sparkling hazel eyes went straight to his heart. “I like how humble you are,” he admitted.
“You’re the same,” she said, shrugging, eating heartily. “Maybe we’re more alike than we first thought?”
Gage doubted that but said nothing. “Maybe opposite bookends on a shelf?” he teased.
She gave him a studied look. “I don’t think so. I think in many ways, we may be very similar.”
“Give me an example.” He finished the biscuits and gravy in short order.
“My mom, Dilara, says people are vegetables or a legume.”
Gage grinned, brows raising. “Oh?”
“Yes,” Alexa said pertly, finishing her plate of food and pulling over the cup of fruit. “You have to understand, she’s from Turkey, so she uses veggies from her country to describe people. She said they fall into one of several categories. There are chickpeas, a legume, which means what you see is what you get—they’re simple and straightforward.” She held up two fingers. “Then there are eggplants.”
Gage couldn’t hold back a chuckle. “I hate eggplant!”
“I love it, but I have that Turkish gene and you don’t,” Alexa laughed. “If you cut an eggplant open, what do you see?”
“Rows upon rows of nonstop seeds,” he said. “Which is why I don’t like to eat it, because all those small seeds get caught between your teeth.”
“Well,” she said soothingly, patting his hand, which rested near his tray, “if I made you something with eggplant in it, you would not have that happen. It’s all in how it’s prepared.”
“What’s the eggplant personality like, then?” Gage asked, unable to stop from smiling.
“These are people who are always busy, always active either mentally or physically. They generally are very curious people, usually higher-educated multitaskers found in the sciences.”
“I think I’m a chickpea, then.”
“Oh, no,” Alexa protested with a laugh. “I’ve saved the best for last! You’re an onion, Gage. Just like me.”
Raising a brow, he muttered, “A lowly onion?”
She held up her hands. “Well, wait till I tell you what it means, okay? Onion personalities are people who are highly complex. They have many layers to them, and they usually don’t give them up easily. And because an onion doesn’t have a shell, it has no way to protect itself. So onion people hide a lot of themselves from the rest of the world. Sometimes it’s because they feel too vulnerable, as they lack a wall to protect them. Sometimes they just need to get to know the other person longer before they’ll show other layers of themselves.”
Gage picked up one of the oranges and began to put the peels on his emptied tray. “Complexity usually is an indicator of higher intelligence.”
“Well”—she hesitated—“it can be, yes. But it can also mean, according to my mom, who is a brilliant onion herself that you’ve been shaped very strongly by family circumstances. And depending upon whether or not the family was happy or dysfunctional or if trauma occurred in it, the layers develop.”
Mulling over the explanation, he slanted a glance in her direction. “So circumstances create the onion’s layers of com
plexity during childhood?”
“Yes. For example, I come out of a very strong, loving family. But I wasn’t overprotected, and I didn’t have helicopter parents. Our mom and dad were very clear about Tal, Matt, and me learning independence at an early age. Not only that, they really imbued us with self-confidence. We lived in a strict household where we were expected to work and be responsible. We washed dishes, put them away, did sweeping or ran the vacuum or washed windows. In other words, they made us realize at a very early age that hard work and responsibility were expected of us. And then we spent our summer vacations either in Kuşadası, Turkey, with my mother’s brothers and their wives, or with her Greek cousin over in Athens. We learned to travel when we were very young. We were taught English, Turkish and Greek in our household. I know how lucky we are, because I have friends who come from broken families.”
“Interesting concept,” Gage said, feeling his way through it. “You strike me as a highly complex person.”
“You’re an onion,” Alexa said quietly, becoming serious as she spooned the fruit into her mouth.
Gage felt a shift in energy around her, could feel her probing the walls he’d had in place nearly all his life. For whatever reason, he didn’t feel threatened. Instead, he saw compassion shining in her eyes, as if she were sensing or picking something up about him on another unknown level. It was just a sense, but damned if he didn’t feel like she had some kind of X-ray vision and she saw him—warts and all.
He’d hidden, all right. And he was sure that if Alexa knew the whole story about him, she’d run screaming. He was no white knight. He was tarnished. Wounded. A part of him was no damn good. Gage wished he were someone else, a man Alexa could really look up to, admire, and respect.
“Is Matt an onion?” he asked her.
“Yep, and so is Tal. We’re all complex. My mother’s an onion. My dad is an eggplant.” She smiled fondly.
“No chickpeas, huh?” he teased, wanting to divert her from asking him anything personal about his family.
Alexa laughed and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “None. We’re a family of three onions and one eggplant, for better or for worse.”
CHAPTER 4
“Home sweet home,” Alexa said, turning to Gage as he stood in the middle of a cavernous supply warehouse. She pointed to the left. “The Delos pallet is over there in the corner. Time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.”
The entire place was nothing but pallets as Gage followed her over to the brightly lit corner. It was cold inside, but the lights above were warming. There was a lot going on within the warehouse, with equipment shuttling the pallets in and out at various exits, probably to be loaded on helicopters for transit and distribution.
Gage enjoyed watching Alexa walk just ahead of him as she eagerly hurried toward the Delos pallet.
He tried to tamp down his growing need to be around her. For the first time in a long time, Gage felt light. He was actually enjoying himself.
He’d had women before, and none of them had made him feel like this. So what was happening here? Alexa was warm, effervescent, outgoing, and personal with him. But she wasn’t flirting. Gage knew the difference. And when they’d entered the warehouse, and Alexa talked to the sentry, showing him her security card, she’d hugged him, too. The Army soldier had blushed, but Gage could see he truly enjoyed Alexa’s motherly warmth. And that was what it was. Alexa had told him she was like her mother, Dilara. She’d said enough about her mother that Gage had a pretty good picture of the woman. After all, pulling together scraps of observations was part of a sniper’s skill set. And the puzzle pieces seemed to create a caring picture of Dilara Culver. For sure, her youngest daughter Alexa was a carbon copy of her in every way.
He sauntered over to a pallet that was stacked ten boxes high. They all displayed the word “Delos” on the outside. Gage was beginning to get a taste of the Culver family passion to help others as he put his hands on his hips, his gaze ranging across the huge stack of goods.
Alexa went over to the pallet, turned, and said, “Help me here, Gage? Mom has had her people at the warehouse back in Alexandria, stuff folded cardboard boxes between the rows.” She smiled and leaned over, tugging out a group of them and dropping them at her feet. “Before the Army will deliver these goods to the Shinwari village tomorrow, we have to separate, identify, and code these cartons for shoe and clothing sizes.” She quickly crouched down and assembled the first box.
Gage stood over her, watching her hands move quickly. Alexa had done this a time or two, he realized, smiling to himself. “Got a marker of some sort to put the intel on the outside of the box?”
Giving him a triumphant look, Alexa stood and dug into her pocket. “Yep, two black felt-tip pens. One for you and one for me.”
Gage took the pen from her gloved hand. “Okay, you must have a system here, Alexa. Where do we start?” He wanted to stare into her upturned face, her eyes sparkling with excitement, her cheeks flushed. His hands itched to undo that long, red braid of hers that gleamed with the green and gold ribbons twisted within it.
“Oh, I have a system,” she assured him. Standing, she gestured at the many boxes. “When they are packed at the Delos warehouse in the U.S., they are not sorted by size. For example, a box of children’s shoes will hold all different sizes.”
She pointed to the stack of flattened cardboard boxes near her feet. “I’m going to mark on the side whether it’s girl or boy shoes and then put a size on it. When you’re out in the field, you can go to that box that has that child’s size in it and fit her or him. It’s a lot faster than digging through twenty pair of shoes in ten different boxes, trying to find a size for the child.”
Gage nodded. “That’s a slowdown,” he agreed.
“Once we get our boxes set up, marked, and put along the wall over there, then we can begin to open the ones on the pallet and distribute their contents to the correct box. Once that’s done, we repack the filled boxes back onto this pallet. The cargo guys will come by and throw heavy netting over it and anchor it such that they can pick it up with their front-end loader and take it out to the helo.”
“And how often do you do this?” he asked her, impressed. He liked seeing the commitment and care in her eyes and voice.
“Oh,” Alexa laughed, shaking her head as she leaned over, drawing more boxes from between the rows. “Ever since I was about eight years old. We grew up helping Mom and our charities.”
Gage gently snagged her arm and drew her back. “Let me do that. You start writing on the sides of the boxes as I get them to you, okay?”
Breathless, Alexa stared up into his warm blue eyes. His hand on hers, and she felt a stir beneath the layers of clothing she wore. “Sure . . .”
Gage released her arm as she stepped aside. “When Matt is here, what does he usually do to help you out?” he asked.
“What you’re doing.” She smiled. “See? I told you that you’re very much alike. He doesn’t like me climbing around and putting boxes together, either.”
“Women are good at organizing,” he said, agreeing with Matt. He carried several boxes over to the wall, and Alexa followed him.
Gage tried to stop feeling so damn happy as they labored for a solid hour getting the boxes labeled and organized. They worked in silence like a well-oiled machine, and at the end of the hour, there were thirty boxes, all labeled and waiting to be filled near the wall. Alexa had taken off her coat and gloves, and Gage enjoyed seeing how graceful she was. Even more important, she truly cared about others. It was more than just words—she backed them up with her actions. He looked around the busy, noisy warehouse and wondered how many other women would be down on their hands and knees on these dusty concrete floors, moving boxes around. Not many. It spoke of her commitment and her work ethic. She didn’t mind getting dirty, either. So far, Gage could find nothing to dislike about Alexa Culver—hard as he might try, because he knew they could never have a relationship as long as she was an officer and he was
enlisted.
*
“Time for a break,” Gage told her, holding out a bottle of water. “You’ve been working nonstop and need to hydrate.”
Getting off her knees, Alex tucked the pen away in her pocket, taking the proffered plastic bottle. “Thanks. I can’t help it, Gage. I get lost in what I’m doing, and I don’t think to stop to get some water or eat.”
He tipped his water bottle to his lips, drinking deeply. Wiping his mouth afterward, he watched her sip the liquid and marveled at her delicacy. Oh, he knew she was a tough combat pilot, but here, he suspected, she was just being her self.
“Let’s take a ten-minute break,” Alexa suggested, gesturing toward the pallet. She sat down on the wooden slats, Gage sitting next to her, but with enough room that she wouldn’t feel crowded.
Alexa was glad Gage wasn’t wearing his gloves or jacket anymore. Work like this was sweaty. Besides, she liked the way the material of his shirt stretched across his broad shoulders and deeply muscled chest. He looked strong and fit, but he was no bodybuilder—not as a sniper. They all ran on the lean side, like her sister, Tal.
Alex smiled as he sat down and offered her a protein bar. “You think of everything,” she said, thanking him. They’d rarely chatted while they worked, each with their area of duty to perform. She’d noticed that Gage worked at a good speed and was consistent.
“You know,” she said, opening up the wrapper, “you really remind me of my big sister, Tal.”
He smiled a little. “Really? In what way?”
Gesturing, Alexa said, “The way you work. The way you think. Your focus. You’re like a laser, Gage. Once you have your job figured out, it’s in your sights and you go for it.”
“I’ve been that way all my life, I guess.”
“What’s your family like? Your parents?” she asked, taking him by surprise. She looked up at him and suddenly felt a chill as he stopped chewing on the protein bar. What had she stepped into? Whatever it was, she felt a wall spring up between them. Uh-oh.
Broken Dreams (Delos Series Book 4) Page 5
