“This is cause for despair?” He pulled his sunglasses halfway down his nose so she couldn’t miss his raised eyebrows.
“I asked for something comfortable for walking. I doubt that describes anything here.” A strong mother-daughter bond didn’t guarantee the same taste.
“Next you’re going to tell me there are clothes in this.”
Part of her knew she shouldn’t follow the conversation away from safe medical subjects and into the risks of personal details so easily, but that part had lost its voice.
He stopped moving and his eyes skimmed her body all the way to the ground. “Silk.”
His single word conjured a lush image that brought her to a standstill, an image of a man’s hand sliding a swath of fabric over her throat and chest to caress her skin. Her eyes locked on his fingers, tanned and strong, spread wide on her carton. They weren’t too thick, and his nails were clean. At his wrist, blond hairs touched his watchband. The hand would be just like Wulf’s.
“Or lace?” His voice had slipped to a depth that she rarely heard, because men didn’t describe medical symptoms in that slowly melting tone or present slides at battle update briefings with that husky vibration deep in their chest.
“I hope not.” Her voice barely squeezed out of her paralyzed throat, but she had to answer. Why was he flirting with her? She wanted to ask about helping Afghan women—she couldn’t allow anything more—but why did he want to talk to her? They both knew army rules; a relationship between them was off-limits. Special ops soldiers calibrated risk and quantified outcomes as finely as neurosurgeons, or they didn’t stay alive, yet he wrapped his voice around her like a net. She swallowed the knowledge that he wanted to take his chances.
“Dare I imagine a dress?”
A dress. She focused on her gray-and-brown pants fabric. This close, the blocks in the design were right angles, orderly and regular, like her life. To keep it that way, she had to stay far away from this man. A semisecret maternal clinic was enough professional risk. To pile on more by—no—they could be nothing to each other but people who nodded and exchanged half smiles across the dining facility.
“Imagine a dress if you want.” She started to shrug, but the move would lift her chest, so she turned and spoke over her shoulder as she moved away. “I’ll imagine practical pants.” Whatever her mother had sent, she doubted it would be practical, unless it was a nail file. “I hope being that close to something the army didn’t issue won’t cause you problems.”
“If I have a heart attack, I’m confident I’m in good hands.” He came even with her in three strides.
The image of leaning across his body to press his chest flashed in her mind, so real that her arm spasmed on the smaller box until its corner dug into her waist. She’d almost reached the end of temp city, rows of tents for soldiers taking breaks from more remote outposts. By comparison, the plywood hut she and Jennifer shared with four other females seemed posh.
“Where you headed?” he asked as they approached the rows of prefabricated housing that marked the main area of Camp Caddie.
“Bravo 8.” Revealing her hut location felt like giving out a phone number at a bar, but this afternoon she couldn’t blame alcohol.
His glasses re-covered his eyes. “For leave.”
“Oh.” She’d misinterpreted his question. Maybe she had read too much into all his conversation. “Rome.”
“Ahhh.” His sigh reminded Theresa of someone sinking into a hot tub. “Lucky you.”
“I know.” She lifted the smaller box. “Guidebooks.”
“Meeting someone?” A casual, polite question. He wasn’t fishing for her dating status.
“No. Planned it myself. The books should be enough, although I might join a Vatican tour. I’ve read that—” His sideways smile made her want to slap a hand over her inner babbler.
“So.” He stopped walking. The banter, and his smile, faded. “Someone sent the clothes and shoes?” His attention fixed her to the gravel.
“My mother.” Her throat clogged and breathing took effort. Too much dust.
He leaned closer. “Did she include anything else...”
Two tiny Theresa reflections stared at her, brown butterflies pinned to his lenses.
“...tempting?” he finished.
“Umm.” Flirting. Not her strength. His mouth came closer. She couldn’t think and watch his lips at the same time. “I mean—not unless you lose, oh, fifty pounds. Even then I doubt the clothes would match your, ah, active lifestyle.”
Lame, lame. She wanted to slap her forehead, but he laughed obligingly. “A mother who doesn’t send cookies?”
“Cookies? Oh.” Her shoulders fell away from their tight bunch by her neck. “Yeah, of course. She knows I have sergeants to bribe.” Grabbing the subject change would remind him of their different ranks.
“This particular sergeant is very bribable. And carrying your incredibly heavy box.” He sagged as if the contents had turned into concrete.
“Fine.” They were close to her quarters. Time to retrieve her box before someone saw. “Lend me a knife?” She’d pay him off and send him on his way.
He shifted the box to his other hand and pulled a serrated blade from his thigh sheath. The blade stretched from her fingertip to the base of her palm.
“Nothing small about you, is there?” Crap. Her cheeks flamed when his shoulders shook with laughter. She closed her eyes but couldn’t erase his white-toothed grin from inside her eyelids. “I didn’t mean—” She swallowed. “I give up. Go ahead.”
Holding the box between his forearm and shirt, he slit the tape and sheathed the blade with an economy of movement a surgeon would envy. At this distance she could see the pulse beat in his throat, but the thump-thump in her ears had to be her heart. If she placed her hand where his fingers hovered, above his thigh, she’d feel his quadriceps. Last night in her bunk, she’d squeezed her leg to recall the living steel that she’d accidentally gripped on the Black Hawk flight, but her own muscle had nothing in common with his. Today he stood next to her, a simple box separating them.
No. She grabbed for the cardboard flaps to end this folly.
“Oww.” A line of blood welled from a slice across the pad of her second finger.
He touched her wrist, then tugged her palm closer to examine the cut. A sensation not unlike hypoxia, complete with vertigo and shortness of breath, spun from her stomach to her head and knees. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, faint over a simple paper cut.
“I apologize.” He bent over her hand.
He wouldn’t kiss her finger; she couldn’t allow that. “It’s not your fault.” She tried to retrieve her hand, but his thumb pressed into her palm and he cradled her knuckles. Tugging harder didn’t help.
“My knife cut the box edge, not the tape.”
“I’ll be fine.” Her high-pitched tone must have reached him, because he released her. She immediately wished he hadn’t, then stifled the thought. “What were...oh, cookies.” This time she used care to open the flaps.
“Delicious.” His slow, deep voice returned, cueing her to look down.
Her mother hadn’t put cookies on top. Black lace peeked out of pink packing tissue. Jet beads caught the sun and winked at her from ribbon trim that connected two scalloped bra cups. She shoved the offending object deeper. Her jaw hurt from the pressure of gritting her teeth, but nothing she could say, nothing, would make this go away. She should shut up. Right now.
“If you decide to take her advice...” His smile lifted one side of his mouth.
What was he talking about? She followed his gaze to a sticky note that’d transferred from the tissue paper to her forearm. Not for your roommates! Share these with a nice boy. Written in her mother’s distinctive slanted loops.
She needed to escape before she surpassed her record for e
mbarrassment, set the day she broke her holster in pre-deployment training at Fort Benning, and her Beretta slipped down inside her pant leg. Two more minutes and she’d blurt out that story. That would impress a Special Forces stud.
“Here.” She reached deep, felt plastic and tugged out a bag of chocolate espresso swirls. After he caught them, her free hand snatched the carton he held, and she jammed the small box into the top. She was out of here like crap in a case of salmonella.
“Would you like to see a movie?”
Her mouth opened a second before her thoughts gelled into speech. “What did you say?” She suspected her mother’s cooking had led high school boyfriends to date her longer than they might have, but never had the effect occurred from merely seeing the food.
“Friday night movie at our ready room. Maybe cookies would cheer Captain Deavers.” The eyebrows arched over his shades ruined his sincerity. “Team’s worried.”
“Laying it on thick, aren’t you? I know his wife’s been to three parenting meetings already.”
“We’re showing Cinderella.”
“Tell me that’s not spelled with an S.”
“Disney, I swear.” He raised a palm like a Boy Scout. “Kahananui’s pick. His girls are into the princess lifestyle. He wants to share it with them.” Lines at the corners of his mouth betrayed his struggle to hold a straight face. “You could bring Meena.”
“She still insists on being Mir.” She shouldn’t say yes, but how could she deny Nazdana’s helper the chance to see a cartoon?
“The rest of the team might know a new patient for you.”
This felt like high school, when guys had three idiotic ways to explain why getting a burger wasn’t a date, but finding women who needed medical care would involve Wulf and his team. “Okay, what time?”
“We start at twenty hundred. You know where our ready room is?”
“Yes.” If he knocked on her hut, gossip would explode like a rocket-propelled grenade.
“Until tonight.” He leaned in until her face filled his reflective lenses.
Did her eyes really look half-closed? Her lips half-open? Her sports bra compressed her chest as she struggled for air, waiting for him to close the last inch between their bodies even though he must not.
He swung a second bag of cookies in the air as he pulled away and gave her the free-form salute perfected by Special Forces.
She squeezed the big box until its seams creaked. The shameless bastard had grabbed her butteroons.
* * *
Wulf’s internal clock passed nineteen hours fifty-five minutes. He didn’t lurk next to the ready room door, but his team sensed not to get between him and the knob. He would answer when she knocked. At three minutes before eight, he heard two taps. He snapped the waistband of his army running shorts and counted to five before opening the door.
He hadn’t been this close to Captain Chiesa in a workout uniform since the first day in the gym. A benevolent deity had issued her the smaller size T-shirt, and she hadn’t swapped it for the gray garbage sack most females wore.
She cleared her throat.
Remembering his manners, he looked at her face. Fuck. She was frowning. He beckoned her and Mir into the room. “Welcome to our humble abode.”
Inside the door, Mir slipped off her sandals and barreled across the room to throw herself on a stack of embroidered pillows, but Theresa paused. “This is your ready room?”
“Expecting camo netting?” Rugs on the plywood surfaces showcased the colors and textures of the Silk Road. On the walls, birds with black-and-gold tails cavorted with deer in shades of brown, while geometric red-and-black designs softened the floor.
“Wondering what it keeps you ready for.”
Before he could reply, Kahananui dimmed half the lights and announced, “Aloha, ma’am. Thanks for bringing our buddy. And now Cinderella is about to begin.”
As Theresa bent to untie her running shoes, her black nylon shorts stretched across her ass like plastic wrap on cherry pie.
Fuck good manners. He stared.
Quiet, stifling as a sandpit, descended on the room until she shifted position to tuck her butt to her heels. She lowered her head, too, but not before he spotted the red color spread across her cheeks. Shit. She’d realized where every last eye had been plastered. His frown whipped the circle. Immediate conversations about the Yankees, whether frozen fish retained its texture in the mess and Cruz’s daily hypothetical—would you rather wake up as the Terminator or Linda Hamilton—where did he get those?—filled the dead air.
Her eyes and posture had the awkward, blinking innocence of a colt, as if she might leap to her feet and stagger away, so he’d let her come to him. Instead of pointing to the pillows and low table he’d chosen, he summarized the movie plot in Pashto and told Mir where to sit. The nine-year-old grinned and grabbed Theresa by the hand as Wulf brought over the coffee tray.
Good girl, he wanted to say, but the other guys understood enough of the language to catch him out, and they’d had his number since the cafeteria weeks ago. “Your beverage service, ma’am.” He said Theresa’s title as if it were an endearment, not a barrier. To a man who’d stolen Ottoman princesses, higher rank was not an obstacle.
She laid three bags of cookies on the table before she lowered herself to the pillows, but her spine didn’t bend until Mir hugged her. He’d send the kid home with reams of paper and every government Skilcraft pen in camp to start her own school if she remained on his side.
When he lifted the silver coffeepot, someone with a death wish snickered, but the modern custom of flashing a middle finger solved that.
The opening credits hadn’t finished before someone called, “Sarge, pass a cookie?”
Reaching across Mir to the bags in front of Theresa, he slipped a slice of nut and raisin roll onto a napkin and handed it away.
“Wulfie, dude, me too.” This request came from the other side of the room.
This time he handed a cranberry chocolate chip concoction past her. Inches from his forearm, her breasts rose as she inhaled and held her breath, but he mustered his self-control. If he brushed them, even with the outside of his arm, he suspected she’d flee.
“Over here, Sarge.” The team was having too much fun.
“Don’t make me teach you manners tomorrow.” Although he didn’t mind being the butt of a joke—he’d pin them on a gym mat until they whimpered—Theresa had sunk lower and hunched her shoulders as the needling continued.
“Yeah, knock it off, you puky wahines.” Kahananui jumped to his rescue. “You’re worse than my six-year-old. I want to hear the frigging mice.”
Immersing herself in the story despite the language barrier, Mir flipped to her stomach and slid under the low table until her head came out the other side. And when she did, the feeble obstacle her presence had provided between Theresa and him disappeared.
He knew how to hunt. How to stalk. How to capture. He could cover the space to Theresa in one move, but it was smarter to bide his time. He shifted his hip, placed his coffee on the table and shifted again to recline. Here the carpet radiated warmth, as if she’d withdrawn only a moment before. They were close enough now that although their bare legs didn’t touch, his skin vibrated with awareness.
When the stepsisters attacked Cinderella and shredded the mouse-made gown, Theresa tensed.
He took the opening and slipped his hand over hers.
Her hand turned and squeezed as, on-screen, pearls flew and the frenzied sisters continued the mugging.
Closing his eyes, he blocked out the princess-erella so he could absorb the feel of a real woman’s fingers. His thumb traced her knuckles. Like a miracle, her thumb returned the circle on his palm. He opened his senses to her, but the syrupy blonde and squeaky rodents intruded. At least tonight Kahananui hadn’t picked Slee
ping Beauty. Last week that dragon had given him a nightmare. Even after he woke, he’d had sulfur and charred horse meat in his nose and Jurik’s name caught in his throat. He’d tried to joke about his thrashing by blaming Kahananui’s socks on the end of the bunk, but it had been the fire breather. Jurik had burned while the girl ran the wrong way, ran at the beast, too fast to catch when he was hampered by chain mail.
Theresa tugged her hand. His memories had caused him to squeeze too hard.
When he loosened his grip, the next step came easily in the dark. He trailed her shaking fingers across his lips, a light brush as he inhaled. Chocolate cookies and coffee perfumed her palm, better than harem attar. Her scent replaced the vile smoke of his memory. The rustle of her nylon running shorts replaced the screams. Then the skin above her socks branded his knee, a brand that howled my woman touched here. His imagination soared with the movie waltz.
Behind him someone coughed, a throat-clearing hack that sounded like his name.
“Hah-chh-out,” someone else sneezed. Watch out, they meant.
Touching Theresa was boneheaded for at least fifty reasons. He dropped her hand.
As Cinderella dashed down the steps to escape being unmasked, the music’s shift to desolation mirrored his feelings. He didn’t want to leave these brother warriors, and whenever he chased a woman, discovery followed. Women never let details pass unnoticed. No matter how much he yearned to whisper her name and feel its shape on his tongue, he couldn’t. If he pursued Theresa, he’d end up alone on the side of the road like this cartoon girl. Doctors asked questions and collected data, yet he’d touched one willingly, as eager as a dog to feel her fingers ruffle his hair, as needy as that round mouse.
No. Pushing to his feet, he staggered to the fridge. He’d found a home with the best men he’d ever fought alongside. They’d have to be enough. A few men turned at the white glow as he grabbed a bottle, but most stayed engrossed in the movie as the mice stole a key.
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