Fifteen minutes later, he came across a flowery print beach towel on the sand not far from the water. Scowling, he picked it up. It was Dana’s. Looking up, Griff scanned the ocean beyond the breakers. He hadn’t seen her car in the parking lot. Worriedly he squinted against the glare of the sun on the water. Was she out there somewhere? Was she all right?
Not about to make the same mistake twice, Griff stood for another fifteen minutes before he spotted Dana swimming strongly back toward shore. Wavering, wanting to stay and knowing it would be the wrong thing to do, he waged an internal battle with himself. He wanted to apologize to her. It wasn’t in his makeup to be the kind of bastard he’d been to her. There was a fine line between instructing and badgering a student. He’d badgered her. Kicking at the loose sand, Griff backed about twenty feet away from her towel and waited for her to come ashore. Somehow, he was going to have to make amends and try to start over with Dana. She deserved his apology.
Dana’s eyes narrowed when she realized it was Griff standing, waiting for her. As she came out of the surf, she allowed the warm salt water to wash off her arms and fingers. Pushing her hair out of her face, she tried to gird herself. Had the bastard come here, knowing she’d be here, to rub in her performance today? Was he going to ask if she got seasick, too? Anger overwhelmed other, more fragile feelings. Still, her pounding heart told her that, in his slacks and dark blue short-sleeved shirt, he was devastatingly handsome.
As she approached, she saw him pick up her towel and hold it out toward her. The uncertainty in his eyes threw her off guard. Halting a good ten feet from him, Dana clenched her fists against her legs.
“Just what the hell are you doing here?” she rattled tensely. “Didn’t you rub my nose in it enough this morning, Turcotte? I’ve heard of instructors badgering a student, but this is going beyond the call of duty. Or do you hate me so much that your battle lines have no parameters and I’m fair game twenty-four hours a day?”
Griff blinked and opened his mouth, taken aback by her fury. Her blue eyes blazed with a terrible light. “I didn’t know you were out here,” he began defensively.
Dana walked forward, grabbing the towel from his hand. She moved away, rubbing her hair, then placed the towel across her shoulders. It hurt to breathe as the anger bubbled up through her. “I’ll be coming here every day, Turcotte. And I don’t appreciate your presence. I may be stuck with you back on Whiting, but I don’t have to put up with you after hours. Now just leave me alone!”
Her voice cracked, and Griff saw tears in her eyes. “But”
“You really are a bastard, you know that? You haunt your students to death! No wonder you have the highest washout rate, if this is what you do to get them to quit!”
“You don’t understand, Dana, I—”
With a cry, Dana whirled away, running down the beach toward a second lot half a mile away where her car was parked.
Griff stood stunned. He watched Dana run with the born ease of a consummate athlete. Well, what had he expected? A welcome wagon after he’d raked her over the coals this morning? Bitterness coated his mouth as he assimilated her anger. He deserved it. She’d called him a bastard. So had Carol. But circumstances were far different. Unhappy with himself, Griff turned away and moved down the deserted beach, alone. Wednesday would bring another skirmish between them. Dana hated him now, and it was the last thing he’d wanted. But he’d been unable to stop his own feelings of the past from interfering with the present.
***
Dana sat tensely in the ready room. It was 0658. Griff would come through the door in two minutes. She placed her hand against her knotted stomach. Would she get airsick again? Oh, please, don’t let it happen. Don’t—
“Hey!” Manny sidled up to her and gave her a sunny smile. “I got the scoop on your IP.”
Vaguely, Dana recalled Maggie asking him to snoop around for personal information on Griff. “What did you find out, Manny?”
“Get this. Turcotte just got a divorce from his wife, Carol, six months ago. They were married five years and have no kids. She was a banker’s daughter and came from a pretty wealthy family. An only child, from what I hear.”
“A messy divorce?” Dana asked, thinking that Griff’s hatred of women could stem directly from that.
“Very messy. It was smeared all over the local newspapers, and even hit the society column in Palm Beach where her father has an estate.”
Griff wouldn’t be the type to enjoy any kind of press, Dana thought. Nor would she. “What about his wife? Did you find anything out about her?”
Manny watched the door, and kept his voice low so that no one else could overhear their conversation. “Carol Turcotte was what I’d call a clinger. You know: one of those women who comes from the double-standard society.”
“Helpless without a man around?” Dana guessed grimly.
“Yeah, that type. I guess she was a spoiled only child, used to having everything done for her. She had a record of nervous breakdowns. According to my source, she was hospitalized twice a year with different complaints. She tried to commit suicide once the last year she was married to Turcotte.” Manny shrugged. “Maybe he drove her to it.”
Dana wouldn’t be surprised. Still, her heart twisted in her chest. She mulled over the fact Griff had accused her of being weak. Carol obviously had had problems. Did he project that image on all women as a result? And then she made the connection. Griff’s mother had been an invalid since the day he’d been born. No wonder he thought all women were weak and incapable of standing on their own two feet!
Gripping Manny’s hand, she squeezed it. “Thanks for telling me this.”
“You owe me.”
She grinned slightly. “I’ll buy you an ice-cream cone over at the exchange. I know your downfall.”
With a laugh, Manny got up. He was married and already the father of two young daughters. “Bingo, Dana. Okay. A triple-decker Rocky Road after classes today at 1500. Deal?”
She laughed with him, her fear lightening beneath his teasing demeanor. “Deal, Manny. Thanks.”
As Dana turned, she saw Griff come through the door. Dark circles showed under his eyes, and if possible, he looked even more grim. Automatically her stomach clenched. His eyes never left hers. Her mouth dry, Dana stood, trying to find the strength to withstand his silent appraisal. What would today’s flight bring? She broke into a sweat, afraid as never before as he stood waiting for her.
Chapter Five
The airsickness pill that Dana had taken earlier was making her feel woozy, as if she were in a dreamworld, floating half out of her body. It was the only nonprescription drug she could find that might ward off sickness on the Wednesday-morning flight. Shaking her head in an attempt to clear it, she moved around the trainer under Griff’s critical gray gaze. His entire demeanor spoke of icy reserve. Dana was sure he was remembering their confrontation at the beach Monday evening. Tough. Who did he think he was, coming out to continue harassing her on off-hours?
As she leaned beneath that port wing to check for leaks, Dana considered lodging a protest with Captain Ramsey. In her experience at Annapolis, women were tolerated, and if they proved themselves, they were grudgingly respected. But if it came down to a woman’s word against a man’s, the man always won. Placing a sexual-harassment protest against Griff would more than likely cost her her Navy wings and a career in aviation. No, she’d have to keep her act together, rely on her internal strength and outlast Griffs hatred of her.
Griff watched Dana moodily from a distance. Her face was unreadable, her blue, eyes insolent. This morning he’d considered trying to explain why he’d been out at the beach Monday evening, but at her frosty look when he’d entered the ready room, his own anger resurfaced. Other instructors had told him they’d heard of Dana’s prestigious academy record, and envied him. Even Captain Ramsey was making an effort to note her flight grades because of her 4.0 average at Annapolis. Everyone seemed to like her except him.
Well, tha
t wasn’t quite accurate. He didn’t dislike Dana. In fact, he found himself alarmingly drawn to her. There was undeniable attraction between them, Griff sourly admitted. If only she wasn’t his student. If only she wasn’t a woman vying for a pilot’s slot, he could easily chase her until he caught her. Every damned night he dreamed about her, about that sweet athletic body of hers. Griff wondered about her passion—if the gold fire in her eyes was a telltale sign of her carefully hidden expression as a woman. And her mouth… Sighing, Griff forced himself back to the present. Dana had completed the walk-around, signed off the discrepancy log to Parker and was climbing into the front cockpit. Griff wondered if she was going to be airsick again.
This time, he ordered Dana to take off. He sat in the rear seat, his hands and feet hovering close to the controls in case she screwed up. He wasn’t about to become a fatality like Toby. To his surprise, Dana brought the responsive trainer off the runway at exactly ninety-five miles per hour. At one thousand feet, wings still level, she requested a left-hand turn from the control tower and got it. Ordinarily, at 0700, the air was dead calm. But today, cumulus clouds were already building over the gulf, and the air was filled with bumpy pockets. The trainer began to drop and rise twenty or thirty feet at a time.
“Steady her out, Coulter,” Griff snapped. “Get the wings level! Ride those rudders.”
Dana broke out in a heavy sweat, feeling her stomach react instantly to the rough air. She choked down the bile, frantically trying to keep the wings level. It was impossible. The air seemed uncooperative and unrelenting.
“Dammit, Coulter, steady! What the hell are you going to do when you’re in the jet wash of a refueling tanker? You’ve got to be stable no matter how rough it is!”
Compressing her lips, Dana worked hard to get the trainer under control.
Griff was about to deliver another tongue-lashing when he heard her retch violently. Dana was airsick—again. He swallowed his tirade. “I’ve got the controls,” he gritted out.
Miserably, Dana wiped her mouth with the back of her gloved hand. She took back the controls minutes later.
“Get out of the traffic pattern. Make a ninety-degree right-hand turn,” Griff snarled.
The air smoothed out a bit. Dana gulped, and wished mightily for something to wash the terrible taste out of her mouth. This time, she hadn’t eaten any breakfast, thinking it might have contributed to her airsickness before. But evidently it hadn’t, and the airsickness pill had failed her—although it was making her dry-mouthed and dazed.
For the next thirty minutes, Griff drilled Dana on making smooth, banking turns while keeping the wings level. Using a highway two thousand feet below as a marker, he illustrated how to make S-turns, one hundred and eighty degrees at a time. Surprisingly, Dana kept the trainer fairly steady and didn’t lose or gain much altitude. Later, Griff knew they had to work on landings and takeoffs, and ordered Dana back to the pattern where the air was going to become increasingly bumpy. At least twenty other trainers were in the pattern circling the field, further chopping the air with their props.
Within a minute of getting into the pattern, Dana was sick again. When she’d recovered, Griff was on her to stay level and maintain the correct altitude. He yelled at her for not seeing a trainer coming in from the starboard side, flying too close to them.
Shaken, Dana forced herself to rise above her own physical misery and concentrate on the sky around her. Every bump made her stomach roll. Every snapping order from Griff drove her closer to tears. The first time she tried to land, she brought the trainer in too high. If not for Griff’s lightning response, Dana was sure they would have crashed. As it was, the wheels kissed the runway like a lover. She wondered if she would ever land half that well.
The second time around the pattern, lined up properly, Dana tensed, her hand gripping the stick so hard her fingers were aching. Fifty feet from the runaway, she felt Griff jerk the stick violently.
“Ease up, Coulter! Stop strangling the stick. Use two fingers to land this thing!”
Two fingers? Dana panicked, momentarily losing track of her altitude. The runway rushed up at her. The stall buzzer rang harshly in her ear. The nose was too high!
Griff cursed richly, rescuing Dana from another lousy landing. Again, he’d gotten them down in one piece. Once they’d landed, he ordered Dana to try it again. No sooner had she gotten the trainer airborne than she got sick a third time.
“That’s it,” he growled at her. “Land this thing! You’re no good to yourself or me, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to die in this cockpit because you can’t concentrate on your flying. Get us down, Coulter.”
“No!” Dana gulped back the bitterness in her mouth. “I can do it! Let me have one more chance!”
“No way. Land this thing. Now!”
Dana hadn’t meant for emotion to enter her voice, but it did. “Griff, give me one more chance! Just one! I know I can do it. Please…”
Her plea tore at him. Sitting in the rear seat, he glared at her helmeted head through the cockpit plexiglass. “You’re weak, Coulter. You don’t have what it takes.”
“I do, too! Let me prove it to you. I promise I won’t get sick again. Just let me try one more landing. If I do it right, will you let me have another hour in the air?”
Griff wanted to say no, but another part of him admired her courage. “You get sick one more time, and I’m grounding you, Coulter,” he warned gruffly.
“Okay,” Dana agreed. “But let me land and prove I can doit!”
“Doit.”
“Yes, sir!”
For the next hour, Dana forced herself to concentrate as never before. Her flight suit was wringing wet with sweat at the end of that time. After the last landing, she sat in the cockpit, so weak she couldn’t move. All her emotions, her feelings, had been extruded and used up in forcing her body not to react to her airsickness. She threw up one last time taxiing back to the ramp, but Griff said nothing as long as she continued to steer the plane back to its slot without incident.
Griff climbed out first, moving around to the nose of the trainer, finishing out his report and grade on her. When Dana didn’t move, he scowled and came around to the port side of the trainer.
“Coulter?”
“I’m coming.” Dana willed herself to move. Feeling incredibly weak, she was afraid she’d collapse. Grasping the windshield and side of the cockpit, she forced herself to stand. Her knees were shaking so badly she wanted to sit back down again, but Griff’s glare made her decide otherwise. As she stepped onto the wing, Dana was afraid to see the grade he’d given her. Wiping her hands on the damp thighs of her flight suit, she forced herself to take off the helmet. Her hair was wet, plastered against her skull beneath the cotton helmet liner.
Griff came forward, thrusting the board toward her. She took it with a trembling hand.
“You can’t take this, Coulter.”
Dana’s entire focus moved to the grading box. A 2.0! At least he hadn’t failed her. Not yet. The last three landings had been decent, but not great. Those he’d graded as 2.1s. All the others were 1.9s. The average came out to a barely passing grade. Swallowing back the sudden tears of relief, Dana searched numbly for the pen in the pocket of her left sleeve.
“Here,” Griff growled impatiently. “Sign the damn thing. I’m in a hurry. I’ve got things to do.”
Stung, Dana took his pen, her name illegible because of her shaking hand.
Taking back the board, Griff pinned her with a dark look. “Admit it. You can’t make the grade, Coulter.”
Her nostrils flaring, Dana held his gray gaze. “I’ll make it.” The words were bitten off and flung back at him.
“I’m not putting up with another two hours of airsickness from you.”
“I’ll make sure I don’t get sick.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” he rasped. She looked frail and pale, standing there, the suit clinging to her tense form. “Students like you never make it. Your body isn’t a
djusting to flying. It’s just a matter of time before I wash you out.”
The irony that it might be her body betraying her ability to get her wings frustrated Dana to the point of tears. She swallowed hard, holding Griff’s accusing look. “Lieutenant, I’m not giving up. I’m not throwing in the towel.” She jabbed a finger at him. “Dammit, I’m not a weakling! You’ve accused me of it enough that I swear I’ll never quit.”
He flung her a lethal smile. “If you don’t, I’ll make sure you do.”
Dana’s eyes widened enormously. As he turned away, she reached out, jerking him to a halt. “Is that a threat, Lieutenant? I’ve heard that kind of tone before, and I don’t like it. If you try and wash me out for any reason other than a fair one, I’ll press charges.”
Griff froze, glaring down at her. The set of her mouth and those blue eyes narrowed with defiance told him she was serious. Wrenching his arm out of the grasp of her hand, he snarled, “Coulter, you’re going to fail yourself. I’m not going to have to do it for you. Airsick students don’t last more than two weeks.”
Dana stood there, her chest heaving with the need to cry. Damn him! She spun away, heading back to the trainer to pick up her helmet bag and the embarrassing burp bags. AVM Parker was standing there, holding them out to her.
“You okay, ma’am?” he inquired.
“I’m fine.”
Parker shrugged his thin shoulders and offered her a slight smile. “Buck up, Miss Coulter. He gave you a passing grade, didn’t he?”
“Yes.” Barely.
“You know he Boarded both his other students on this last session, didn’t you?”
Stunned, Dana stared up at the young crew chief. “Uh, no. No, I didn’t.”
“Mr. Turcotte’s a stickler on learning landing procedures. You know, he was Top Gun at Miramar two years ago.”
Dana’s heart sank. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“Yes, ma’am. He’s a Top Gun. One of our best.” Parker offered her a bit more of a hesitant smile as he patted the trainer affectionately. “If you can see his job through his eyes, and what he was to accomplish with you in six short weeks, maybe you can understand his driving need to qualify you. It’s a hard, thankless job. I watched your landings. You did pretty good for a first time.”
No Quarter Given (SSE 667) Page 8
