At the Slightest Sound

by M. L. Buchman

  “Was that your idea of a good time?” Jesse’s whisper tickled against her ear as he began swaying them in a slow dance.

  She could only nod because there was too much caught in her throat to say. And something in her chest so big she didn’t even know what to do with it.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Worth leaving the Night Stalkers for?”

  “Worth leaving Delta for?” Jesse’s soft chuckle teased her back.

  Hannah shrugged against the uncomfortable question. It was too big. She couldn’t think about that right now.

  “I can think of a good distraction,” he whispered as the helicopter’s thrum faded into the night sounds of crickets and a hoot owl.

  “You sure that you can’t read minds?”

  “Give you one guess what’s on my mind.”

  She didn’t even need that.

  Hannah had no idea what the future held, but she knew what she wanted right now.

  She plucked the hat off his head as she slipped out of his arms and descended off the porch.

  “You’d best grab a blanket,” she let her hips swing loose as she walked away.

  No sound from behind her as she walked out of the range of the porch light.

  Then she plopped Jesse’s cowboy hat on her head, “Gonna hav’ta get me one of these.”

  There was a sudden clatter of boot heels on the porch. He must have cleared the steps down in a single jump without touching a one because the next thing she heard was his boots rushing through the grass. She could feel him coming for her.

  Yes, tomorrow was too far away to think about.

  But tonight…

  At the last moment she placed one hand atop his hat, then turned to face him.

  She enjoyed the fall, all the way down.

  Chapter 11

  “I really hate this!”

  Jesse pushed up on one elbow but didn’t see one thing for Hannah to be complaining about. The horse pastures stretched away to the south and west: empty with the darkness and all of the horses being tucked in the barn. At the horizon, a soft glow marked San Antonio, the best city in Texas, which meant the best anywhere. But here at Daddy’s ranch it wasn’t bright enough to dim the grand sweep of stars that he and Hannah lay beneath. They were swaddled up all snug in a couple blankets right on the edge of the sweeping prairie. Not wearing a stitch of clothing next to a woman like Hannah Tucker definitely kept him out of a complaining frame of mind.

  “Other than making love to you, it looks like an idyllic night.”

  “Other than?” She was so cute when she got bristly. Of course, what with her being a Delta Force operator, he wouldn’t be pointing the cute part out to her.

  “Yep! Other than.”

  “Other than I’m gonna have to bury you in the deep cotton until you grow some manners?” Her smooth Tennessee accent and looking more than a little like Reese Witherspoon wasn’t hurting things none either.

  “That cotton would sure grow fine if you did. See the real problem with you, Hannah—”

  “I’m the problem, cowboy? Careful, you’re walking on mighty thin ice here.”

  “It’s May in Texas. Only ice we’ve got us is in a Coke or a fine sipping whiskey.”

  “Jesse,” her growl only made him smile. He knew he was playing with fire, even if he couldn’t see it in the dark, but he couldn’t help himself around her.

  “Would you like some? I could just trot up to the house and fetch whatever you’d like.” He reached out and found his cowboy hat where he’d set it safely aside as they’d fallen on each other. He tugged it on, figuring she could see it against the sky.

  “You’d go like that, buck naked?”

  “Cowboy’s never naked when he’s got his hat on.”

  “But you’re a US Army Night Stalker helicopter pilot.”

  “Second best hat a man could wear is a flight helmet.”

  Apparently having no answer to that, she returned to her earlier question. “I’m the problem?”

  “Well, sure, Hannah. Think that should be plumb obvious.”

  “How?”

  He pulled her tight against him; she only protested a little. “That deep connection thing we’ve got goin’ on between us, doesn’t have a darn thing to do with idyllic.”

  “It doesn’t?” Her tone had a smile in it. He never could pull a hat down over her eyes for long. “Then what would you call it?”

  “Me?”

  “You, Mr. Cowboy Jesse ‘Outlaw’ Johnson.”

  “Lucky.”

  “Lucky?”

  “Sure. Like I must be the luckiest guy there ever was to have you lying in my arms.”

  For a time she pulled him in close, but he didn’t have to be a horse-whisperer type to feel when her mind was still wandering off into the night.

  “So, what’s worrying at you, Hannah?”

  “Why isn’t it worrying at you?”

  “I mostly just take things as they come along.”

  “Oh, so this crazy attraction between us, psychic powers to create and project sound, and Colonel Gibson sending us to meet up with a bunch of other psychics doesn’t bother you at all.”

  “Nope. Though I admit ‘psychic’ doesn’t exactly give me an image I like. I asked Isobel about it while we were waiting on y’all to do that mission last night. She still thinks psi-chicks is the right replacement for psychics. When I pointed out that half of us weren’t women, she suggest that psis might work. Me? I find that awkward to say and far too close to, pardon my language, piss. Can’t say as I like thinking of myself that way. I suggested psi-folk rather than psychic. But I’m not letting it get to me.”

  “Why not?” She was so close to begging that he forced himself to roll back enough that he wasn’t preoccupied by the feel of her.

  “First off, I think that you’re doing enough worrying for both of us and a herd of horses asides. Second, I don’t really know enough to be worrying. I figure we spend some time with these folks, listen a bit, then maybe we can consider things all proper.”

  “Maybe it wore off in the night. After all, we only discovered it two days ago when I met you. Maybe I’m free of you now.”

  “Go ahead, make a sound. I dare you.” Jesse scooped her against him. He jolted when an alarm clock seemed to go off hard by his ear—a loud one with the two bells on top and the clanger between them.

  “I guess you heard that,” she said on a sigh.

  “My ears are still ringing. And you didn’t hear a thing?”

  “Still no.” Hannah was silent for a long time with her face buried against his shoulder. “Do you really think it will be okay?”

  “Wa’ll,” he thickened up his accent to beyond ridiculous. “I can tell you what I’m really a-thinkin’ ’bout if’n you’d like, ma’am.”

  “Let me guess.” Hannah snuggled in tighter.

  “Good guess,” he whispered as he buried his face once more in the lovely blonde hair.

  Chapter 12

  Hannah felt surprisingly good as she sat at the breakfast table in the cozy ranch kitchen, despite her life being flipped all topsy-turvy.

  Belle, a slender, cheery woman old enough to be Jesse’s grandmother, clucked her way about the kitchen as she made eggs, bacon, and from-scratch biscuits with sausage gravy. If Jesse bringing home a girl was unusual, she made no sign of it. She served breakfast and embarrassing stories of Jesse’s youth in equally generous portions.

  Rather than blushing, Jesse would just tease her right back. The love between them ran deep and clear.

  Walt Johnson’s main contribution to stories about his son’s antics were low chuckles.

  Hannah had never sat a table like this one. Even before her Pa had run off with Larry’s wife and Larry, the abusive bastard, had moved in with Ma, it had never been easy and caring like this. A Delta Force table was either silent or they talked in low tones about mission profiles and the lame-ass moves of lesser forces, especially SEALs.

  Even yesterday’s
BBQ dinner with the Manellas and Bowmans had been a soft and more serious affair. Not here in the Johnson household. She wasn’t any surer how to react than when Jesse had held her close for such a long while in the night. Right out there. She could look through the kitchen’s screen door and see where they’d made love. No. Had sex. She wasn’t the sort of woman who made love.

  Men liked their sex and done.

  Jesse didn’t have much to say, except when he was teasing her (something few got away with around her). Yet he seemed to think that keeping her close, after they were done, and watching the sunrise over the soft prairie lands was a good thing. She’d found it hard to complain even if she was just the next in some long line. He was certainly handsome enough to have his pick. His six-three of blond, blue-eyed, and soldier strong embodied the healthy outdoors look.

  “So did Jesse just jump in the sack with a lot women?” The question just stumbled out. Before she could try to turn it into a tease, a deep voice with a Mexican accent spoke nearby.

  “Oh, this is a conversation I want a part of,” Ricardo Manella had slipped up to the screen door without her noticing—even for a Delta operator that was hard to do around her.

  He knocked, then stepped in. “Hurry up, sis. This is gonna be good. Hello, sir,” he stepped up to Jesse’s dad. “Ricardo Manella, friend of these two here.”

  Friend? Hannah could count all her friends on a closed fist. The four other psi-gifted people who they’d met yesterday couldn’t already be friends, even if she did like them. Of course she’d only known Jesse two days and, impossibly, they were lovers—she never taken one so fast.

  Isobel stepped in, looking far beyond her mere beauty of yesterday. Ricardo looked much the same as yesterday, but Isobel had traded in her jeans and a button-down blouse for a flirty summer dress of deep red that revealed the ‘movie star.’ Hannah tried to remember if she’d ever worn a dress, but couldn’t recall if she had. With how Isobel looked in one, she might have to find one to try out on the cowboy.

  “This is my sister, Isobel,” Ricardo’s introduction was cut off by Belle small shriek of surprise. She clapped a hand over her own mouth, but it only muffled the sound.

  Belle’s reaction made Isobel’s lips twitch—apparently being a famous film star had made her used to it. Belle blushed a brilliant red, mumbled out some apology through the hand she kept over her mouth, then hurriedly turned back to her stove.

  Hannah was used to being unknown and invisible, and couldn’t imagine being any other way.

  Ricardo kicked out a chair and sat at the table. “We were just returning Jesse’s lame-ass rental car—you really got to talk to your son about such things—when I overheard folks talking and came around the side. Must say, I gotta hear how Jesse answers that one. Give it up, Outlaw.”

  Belle had two mugs of coffee poured before Isobel even did her normal sigh at her twin brother’s ways and sat beside him. Maybe if she didn’t roll her eyes at him so much, he’d behave more. Though Hannah rather doubted that. Then she spotted Ricardo’s smile just as he lifted his coffee mug in thanks to Belle. No, he knew exactly what he was doing to his sister.

  “Pardon my little brother. I think he is still five,” Isobel said with her perfect grace and lovely Spanish lilt in place.

  “Nah,” Ricardo replied. “Didn’t get interested in girls until I was at least six. There was this one who got away. Denise,” he offered a happy sigh. “She was the older and wiser woman.”

  “How much older?” Hannah gave him the expected line. She liked Ricardo, felt comfortable around a fellow Delta Force operator. In some ways more comfortable than she did around Jesse despite sleeping with him. Ricardo was the known—except for being a telepath. Jesse represented the unknown in so many strange ways she couldn’t even begin to list them.

  “She was seven. A whole year older, which is a lot when a boy is only six. Gods I worshipped her, but then she moved away. Broke my damn heart; never looked at a woman since.”

  “Ha!” His sister clearly knew how big a fib that was. Ricardo was darkly handsome with a dangerous look that Hannah knew a lot of women liked. She did herself…until she’d somehow stumbled into a far too wholesome cowboy.

  “Okay, never looked at woman that way since.” He appeared to believe what he was saying. Isobel’s shrug said that maybe that was even true. “Now you, give,” Ricardo aimed a finger at Jesse.

  “Wa’ll…” Jesse stretched the word out to previously unachieved lengths.

  Without being asked, Belle served up breakfast for Ricardo and Isobel. Ricardo slapped his hands over his heart as he looked down at the plate. Then he looked up at her. “If someone hasn’t married this woman, look out. She’s all mine.”

  “Thank you, Belle.” Somehow Isobel had quietly learned the woman’s name. Her kindness left Belle blinking in surprise for a moment, then she laughed at herself.

  “Well if that don’t beat all. You’re downright civilized—not who I thought you’d be with all your on-screen antics. And if you were a little older, young man, I might take you up on that. But I don’t need me a new puppy to train up. These two men were handful enough.” As everyone laughed at Ricardo’s pained expression, she served herself a plate and sat at the end of the table closest to the stove before continuing.

  “Jesse was always a good boy. If he brought a girl home, he made sure that I had a chance to feed her a proper breakfast before he drove her back round to her place. But, as much as I hate telling the truth about the dear boy, he more often than not took them home after dinner and was home quick enough after. I expect he left more frustrated girls in this county than most other men. Boy is just too polite for his own good.”

  “Just tryin’ to live up to your standards, Belle.”

  “Gowon,” she flapped a fork at him happily.

  Oddly, Hannah believed her. Despite how suddenly her relationship with Jesse had begun. Herself? She rarely slept with a man. Relationship logistics were hard for a military woman. Long deployments on short notice didn’t make much of a chance for getting to know and like someone before inviting them into her bed.

  Yet despite knowing Jesse for so short a time, she knew that what they had was somehow special—even if she didn’t know quite how. Which was so freaking her out that she missed the transition from a busy table filled with laughter to just the four of them sitting at the cleared table, hunched over cooling refills of their coffee.

  Isobel was watching her with those dark, penetrating eyes. “You’re upset.”

  “I like you, Isobel, but I really don’t like having some empath browsing through my emotions.”

  Her smile was soft and a little sad. “I’m not. It is a choice for me whether or not I can feel what you’re feeling. If I was always wide open I’d have to go be a hermit in the desert—it feels like being battered when I open up near a crowd. But that doesn’t mean that I’m blind. So, what’s upsetting you?”

  “It’s not me, is it?” Jesse’s made it a tease, but she could see that he wasn’t as self assured as he wished to be.

  She glanced at Isobel. Was only reading emotions on occasion all she did? No, she’d said it was much more. Still, even if she wasn’t “reading” Hannah at the moment, she did have a lifetime of practice matching faces to actual emotions with no guessing. So maybe…

  Hannah sighed. “You’re only part of my problem, cowboy.”

  “The good part, right?”

  She traded a smile with Isobel; men were almost comical at times. “Yes, Jesse. You’re definitely part of the good part. But it doesn’t make you any less scary. But that’s not what’s bothering me right now. It’s you,” she turned to Ricardo.

  “Me?” he grunted out in surprise.

  “You left Delta. How? Why? And now you’re a mercenary? That’s just so wrong.”

  Ricardo nodded his agreement. The former Delta, SEALs, and Rangers who’d left the military then joined the merc outfits were just bottom rung.

  Sure the money and t
he adrenaline was a powerful draw, but… “Even the good ones are no more than guns for hire. Like a vigilante who takes bribes.”

  Isobel started to respond, to soothe, but Ricardo raised a hand to silence her.

  “Yeah. I wrestled with that same shit. You know how hard I had to bust my ass to make Delta.”

  She did. Making The Unit—as Delta called themselves—was the hardest thing she’d ever done. And she sincerely hoped it was the hardest thing she ever would try.

  “And I was good. Not one of the best, not like a Colonel Gibson, but I was damned good.”

  Delta weren’t big on bragging, so if he said it, he probably was. “What happened?”

  “What happened? I’ll tell you what happened,” he knocked back the rest of his coffee, slammed the mug down on the wooden table and shoved it away. “I got in it bad, and deep too—pretty sure my ticket for this ride is punched and done. Then outta nowhere, there’s this voice in my head asking me what’s wrong. Asking if she could help. As if! Thought I’d lost my goddamn mind when this angel voice started talking to me out of nowhere—Michelle sounds just like in real life when she’s telepathing into my head or whatever you call it.”

  Hannah wondered just how surprised Michelle would be to hear herself described that way by the apparently ungrateful Ricardo.

  “I was hurting and figured I was hallucinating. Then her brother Anton spills blood getting me out of there. Fired a round of missiles from his Black Hawk to punch a hole in the jungle. Then he flew his damn bird right down into the hole, while the jungle was still burning and the guerrillas were firing away, to come rescue me. Flew out with a round through his thigh and a crew chief who needed a new shoulder. I was too damn grateful to keep my mouth shut when Gibson popped up for my debrief—you know how he does.”

  The commander of all Delta Force had a habit of doing things like that. You never knew when he’d show up, he just did…and then seemed to fade away afterward without you noticing.

  “This ain’t no downgrade, sister. This is next-level shit.”

  “Doing an extraction for the DEA is next-level shit?” Sure, the ride-along mission she and Jesse had joined yesterday had taken out a major Mexican drug cartel leader, but it was a pretty standard op. Even if her “new” skill had come in useful.