The Woman Left Behind: A Novel

by Linda Howard

  Levi waited, giving her a chance to spout off again. Jina pressed her lips together. She could feel words pushing against the back of her throat, but she bore down, called on her seldom-used smart-ass control and kept them there.

  After giving her time to verbally hang herself, he gave a brief nod indicating satisfaction that he’d sufficiently slapped her down—for now—and moved on to business. “Here’s what’s going to happen, and why. Your group is the first bunch of trainees who’ve had no prior jump experience, which means we aren’t set up to do training the way you’d get it if you’d been in the military. We’ve had a short tower built, and a swing-landing trainer in a big Quonset hut, but a big tower would call too much attention to us, so your first jump will be an actual jump. Has to be.”

  An actual jump. Her stomach didn’t wait, it jumped right then, up into her throat. If she’d needed to answer, tough, because she couldn’t have managed to say a word. And what the heck was a swing-landing trainer? She didn’t want to swing while she was landed. For that matter, “landing” meant she was in the air heading down, and she didn’t want to do that, either.

  “Boom is a certified jump instructor,” Levi continued. “He’s going to be in charge of your training, and it’s going to be fast. In the military, jump school takes three weeks. We’re going to have you jumping in less than a week, but it’s individual training instead of instructors handling a whole group, so it’ll work out to about the same. But don’t fucking waste our time—got it? If you can’t do it, walk out now.”

  That was what he wanted. She could see it in his eyes, hear it in the gravel of his voice, see it in his body language. He wanted her gone.

  Okay, damn it, she hadn’t wanted to be here any more than he’d wanted her here, but she’d committed her time, a lot of energy, and a buttload of pain, to doing this. She’d become provisional friends with most of the guys—provisional because they joked around with her, teased her, sometimes deliberately making themselves targets of her ire because they liked winding her up, but they were all still aware that she hadn’t made the final cut yet. She didn’t want to be provisional, she wanted to do this. She wanted to meet their friends and families, she wanted to be invited to their cookouts, feel as if she belonged.

  She straightened her shoulders and squared up with him. Even standing as tall as she could, he was so damn big her head barely reached shoulder level on him, but she refused to show that she was intimidated—just a little—by him. “I want to do it.” Lie. “I don’t like giving up.” Truth. “I’ll do my best.” Maybe. No, she’d try her damnedest, because she didn’t know any other way, so change that last one to truth. Two out of three wasn’t bad.

  The corner of his mouth did that twitching thing again. She did a quick mental check to make sure she hadn’t subconsciously crossed her fingers and he’d noticed, but no, her fingers were doing what they were supposed to do, clutching her own biceps to mimic his position. Maybe that was what was annoying him, that she was mimicking him. If so . . . tough.

  Typical Levi, he instantly went back to being all about the work. “Today you’ll learn about the different types of parachutes, how and why they’re different, and you’ll get into harness. It’s possible to harness yourself, but mostly buddies or instructors help because it’s awkward. When you’re getting in the harness, Boom will be passing straps between your legs for you to buckle in place. It’s not a big deal and he won’t be copping a feel, so don’t squeal and do something silly.”

  “I don’t do silly,” she growled, which might not be completely true in all situations but in this one she was serious. There were a couple of the guys who might let their hands go places where they shouldn’t, but Boom wasn’t one of them. She trusted him, and he wouldn’t do anything to make her uncomfortable.

  “Just letting you know what will happen. After you get through ground training, then you’ll do tower training, jumping off a thirty-four-foot tower into different ground conditions like sand or pebbles, learning how to land, how to roll.”

  “Won’t jumping from that high break my legs?” Or possibly kill her. She might not live long enough to die in a failed parachute jump. She’d read once that most lethal falls were from something like fifteen feet.

  “You’ll be harnessed to a safety line. If we didn’t know what we’re doing,” he said impatiently, “none of us would survive training.”

  She had to give him that, so she nodded.

  “Then you’ll do the swing landing, learning how to handle the parachute swinging from side to side, prepare for the unexpected. In three days, you’re jumping.”

  Three days. Jumping. Her. Out of a plane.

  Oh God.

  Her lips felt numb, so she didn’t try to talk, just gave another brief nod that she hoped looked curt, instead of simply being as much as she could move because she was mostly frozen stiff.

  “Your first jump will be tandem,” Levi continued. “Normally I’d hook a first-timer to a static line and kick his ass out, but he’d have already done tower jumping. Like I said, you aren’t military and that’s getting you a couple of breaks here.”

  Lucky me. Your kindness is astounding, she thought sarcastically, but still kept her mouth shut. Now was not the time to get him pissed off, not when he could still hook her to a static line, whatever that was, and kick her ass out of the plane. A tandem jump. Maybe she could handle that. The idea still made her stomach twist, but at least if she died she wouldn’t be alone. Yeah, she could find some comfort in that.

  “We’ll need the other guys to pull the ropes on the swing-landing trainer, but until then I’m pulling them off and having them do different stuff. They don’t need to be standing around watching you; they treat you like a spectator sport, anyway, and that shit needs to stop.”

  Spectator sport. Jina stiffened. She’d been cold, but now a flash of outrage sparked through her veins. She also found her tongue. “Spectator sport?” she asked carefully. She’d pushed herself so hard she’d been on the verge of collapse more days than not, and they thought of her as entertainment?

  “Don’t get your ass on your shoulders,” he advised shortly. “There’s no benefit, and if you blow up at them, you’ll lose their support. Just suck it up, and keep going.”

  That was what she’d been doing, and she hadn’t found any fun in it. But he was right; there was no benefit to getting angry. On the final analysis, she’d rather they enjoyed having her around than be actively looking for ways to get rid of her, because that could get ugly, fast.

  “Let’s get started,” she said, trying to sound positive, and headed back to the other guys.

  Levi watched her walk away from him and allowed himself a brief moment of purely male enjoyment at the view. He missed the softer curves she’d had at the beginning of her training, but there was nothing wrong with the rounded muscles of her ass now. She’d worked hard to get those muscles, so damn straight he was going to admire them. He just had to make sure that she didn’t catch him at it, and that his expression wasn’t as horny as he felt.

  He’d hoped that with time he’d get accustomed to having her around, that maybe he’d find something about her that killed or at least muted the attraction he felt. Hadn’t happened. If anything, she appealed to him more every day. How could she not? She had bone-deep grit and determination, way more than he wanted her to have. None of them, from the top down, had thought she’d make it this far, but she’d had the highest score on Mac’s spatial games and they couldn’t exclude her just because she was a woman. He’d waited not so patiently for the day she washed out; no one could say she hadn’t tried, because she’d kept at each phase or exercise way past what they’d thought she could do, and Mac would have put her back in her old job. That was the best-case scenario.

  If she’d washed out, then he could have seen about having some personal time with her, find out if she kissed with the same sass and pepper she threw at them every time she opened her mouth, find out if she was half as aware
of him as he was of her. He thought she was; no, he was sure she was. Levi was neither naive nor inexperienced, and he knew when a woman was attracted to him. She tried to hide it, but the color in her cheeks deepened whenever he was near. She tried like hell not to look at him, not to speak directly to him, and he knew why: she didn’t want to feed the attraction any more than he did. She wanted to control it, and above all she didn’t want any of the others to know.

  They’d both succeeded in keeping the others in the dark, but damn it, with everything else, he felt as if they were sliding down a slope with no brakes, no way to keep them from a hard fall. Just being near her made him feel as if the air between them was arcing with hot electricity; she felt it, too, and betrayed herself by getting as restless as if she had ants in her pants. She fidgeted, she twitched, she shifted back and forth, she’d start nervously feeling her long ponytail. Maybe she hadn’t admitted to herself yet how aware she was of him, but he knew. He was damn good at reading people; he had to be.

  This damn jump instruction would likely be the death of him. Boom could handle everything on the ground, but he wasn’t a certified tandem instructor, and Levi was. A tandem jump wasn’t anything to leave to someone inexperienced, no matter how many solo jumps that person had made. Strict professionalism was needed in a tandem jump, because hell, two people were harnessed together in spoon fashion. Given their height difference, she might need to sit on his lap to get her harnessed in the correct position, and the prospect made him feel grim while at the same time he couldn’t help anticipating it. He’d try getting her positioned without doing that, but safety won out over discomfort. She had to be in the right position. If the harness was too long and she was hanging lower instead of snugly against his chest, both steering the parachute and landing were more difficult. She was already so scared about trying, she needed a jump that went as smoothly as possible.

  If he was the double-crossing kind, he could scare the shit out of her and force her to quit, clearing the way for them to get up close and personal. That was dirty pool, though. He wouldn’t necessarily go out of his way to help her, but neither would he sabotage her. He’d be pissed as hell if someone did him that way, so he wasn’t going to do it to her. Fail or succeed, she’d do it on her own.

  If she succeeded—and she was damn close to finishing training ahead of everyone else—he’d have to tough it out and ignore how attracted he was to her. If she failed, then hallelujah, he was unleashed. Until then he was between a rock and a hard place. The rock was his own ironclad rule that placed her off-limits, and the hard place was in his pants.

  He rejoined the group and gave the guys their assignments. Jelly, predictably, groaned. “Ah, Ace, we wanted to watch her.”

  Levi saw her give them a quick, sharp glance and knew she hadn’t liked being regarded as their entertainment. He couldn’t help kind of agreeing with the guys, because, damn, there was no telling what might come out of her mouth. Still, no one wanted to be the comic relief.

  “We have other things to do,” he replied. “Boom will let us know when he needs our help.”

  Boom scowled at them. “Get outta here. Babe and I won’t need any of you until the tower training starts.”

  Jina gave the parachutes her undivided attention, because her life was going to depend on these nylon things. Boom had printed matter for her to refer back to, let her take notes, paused occasionally to look things up on his phone for her to watch. The harness was impressive, and far more complicated than she’d expected—not that she’d ever expected anything about parachuting, because she’d never thought she’d be required to do it. She studied the webbing and straps and buckles and rings; at first everything looked like a hopeless tangle, until Boom showed her how to step into it.

  “Don’t expect a harness to be comfortable,” he said, “though they’re better now than they used to be. The leg straps are a bitch. Women don’t have the problems there that men do, but when the canopy opens and jerks you back, you feel it. After you’re under canopy, you can adjust the straps across your boobs some, make them more comfortable.”

  She didn’t react to the boobs comment, because it hadn’t been made salaciously; he’d been giving her information, nothing more. Besides, her boobs were barely there, so she didn’t expect she’d need much strap adjusting.

  But the harness itself . . . damn. Jina saw now what Levi had meant about needing a buddy to get it strapped on. Doing it alone was possible, but she was glad she didn’t have to figure it out by herself.

  A question gnawed at her and finally, after looking around to make certain no one was within earshot, she said, “Boom, give me a straight answer on something.”

  He was bent over straightening the harness, preparing to guide her again through the process of putting it on. “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t commit to anything without knowing what it is.”

  “Fair enough. Do the guys make fun of me when I’m not around?”

  He straightened abruptly, giving her a startled look. “Make fun of you? Hell no! What made you think that?”

  “Something Levi said.” She quickly amended, “Ace,” because that’s what everyone else called him—except she couldn’t make the nickname stick in her head. She didn’t have that trouble with any of the others; some of them, she didn’t even know their real names. “That they looked at me as their comic relief.”

  To her dismay, Boom laughed. “Not in what you do, because you try so hard sometimes you put them to shame. It’s what you say the whole time you’re doing it, cussing under your breath like you think we can’t hear it, yelling that we’re insane morons, little things like that.”

  “Oh.” She did tend to mutter to herself, and after that first horrendous day, she might have gotten in the habit of telling them what she thought of them and the ordeals they put her through, but what was the point in saying they were syphilitic sadists if they thought it was funny? “I thought maybe y’all didn’t like me.”

  He put his ham-sized hands on his hips and scowled at her. “What makes you say a stupid-ass thing like that?”

  Jina sighed. She was beginning to feel like a moron herself. She never should have brought up the subject, because acting needy wasn’t cool. “I don’t get invited to the cookouts,” she mumbled. God, how lame! She might as well be in middle school again.

  Boom’s mouth fell open, and he looked thoroughly befuddled.

  “The cookouts?”

  “Yeah. When y’all hang out together.”

  Funny; as she watched, his dark skin took on a sheen as he began to sweat. He rubbed his jaw. He looked left, then right, as if some elusive answer lurked off to the side. “Uh,” he said.

  Yeah. Uh.

  She sighed. “Never mind. I know I’m not a real part of the team, I’m a tech FNG you’ve been saddled with.”

  Boom was beginning to get the panicked, slightly crazed look a lot of men got when confronted with things like female feelings and etiquette. “The wives do it,” he finally blurted.

  “You’re blaming it on the wives? The same wives who—I’d like to point out—I’ve never met?” It was probably mean of her, but she was beginning to have fun. Boom looked so totally helpless and at sea, and it was kind of funny because after Levi, he was the one the others on the team looked to for guidance, because he was the oldest and most experienced.

  “You haven’t?”

  She snorted. “Nice try. You know I haven’t. I’m fairly sure you’d have noticed if I’d been sitting at your dinner table.”

  More jaw rubbing. He shifted his feet. “Uh,” he said again. Then he rallied. “The wives plan the barbecues. If any of the single guys are dating anyone regularly, they’re welcome to bring their girlfriends, but most of them don’t unless it’s starting to feel serious. I, uh, I guess we didn’t introduce you, did we?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Hmm. Okay. My wife’s name is Terisa, Snake’s is Ailani. She’s Hawaiian. She does some catering on the side, so whe
n she cooks, we like to be there, because she’s damn good. Terisa’s a nurse. That means she orders a mean pizza.”

  “I’m going to tell,” Jina blurted, because for sure he’d get in trouble if his wife knew he’d said that. She relished having something to hold over any of the guys, even the nice ones. Well, they were all nice, except for Voodoo. And Levi.

  He glared at her. “You better not. No way in hell am I arranging for you to come hang out with the team if you’re gonna start tattling.”

  “Are you? Arranging, I mean.”

  “I guess. I’ll tell Terisa you’ve been left out. She’ll get mad at all of us, then she’ll call Ailani, then they’ll get something planned.”

  Jina had a second thought. “How about I throw together a taco bar or something like that at my place?”

  If she’d taken the time to have a third thought, she’d have kept her mouth shut, because Boom jumped on that like a duck on a june bug. Evidently he’d thought twice about informing his hardworking wife she needed to put together a cookout. A split second after, she remembered how small her place was. If all the guys brought dates, if Boom and Snake both brought their kids, she’d have about twenty people crammed into her little condo. She didn’t even have enough chairs for twenty people to sit down. Oh, what the hell; she could buy some cushions and throw them on the floor. The kids, at least, wouldn’t mind, and she’d make sure she was one of the floor sitters herself.

  She forced herself to concentrate on the rest of the parachute lessons, but damn, if anything could distract her from her terror at the idea of jumping out of a plane, throwing a kind-of impromptu party for the guys—and two wives, an unknown number of girlfriends, as well as some little kids—did the job.