Alone in her mother's house, in her tomblike living room, where that stupid clock—the loudest clock in the entire damn world—ticked.
Joan had always hated that clock.
They'd sat there, surrounded by that infernal ticking, and Joan had babbled on and on about God knows what, talking about anything and everything to avoid discussing the subjects that really mattered. Like how completely freaked she got whenever she came into this house that she had no choice but to come to at least once a year because Donny never left. How awful it had been growing up under the shadow of Donny's illness. How badly she wanted Muldoon to tear her clothes off in a fit of passion that was violent enough to knock over that stupid clock, or at least noisy enough to drown out the ticking for a little while.
He now met her eyes as if he could read her mind, and she retreated back into the bathroom and picked up the ringing phone. "DaCosta."
"Hey, Joan, it's Tom Paoletti. I'm glad I caught you."
"No lunch today, huh?"
"Yeah, sorry about that. We'll have to reschedule. My timetable for a certain... project has just shifted, and..."
Joan shut off her curling iron. "It's not a problem, Commander."
"Good. I've made arrangements for you to have access to the base while we're gone through Lieutenant Steve McKinney, from the public affairs office."
"Gone?" she repeated. We, he'd said. She stretched the headset cord so that she could again lean out of the bathroom and look at Muldoon. "Are you going somewhere?" she asked.
Muldoon nodded while Tom answered. "Training op. We'll be off base for about forty-eight hours—we'll be back before you know it. Steve's a nice guy. He'll be able to answer any questions and even help you set up some of those photo ops you're looking for."
"Steve McKinney." Joan went back into the bathroom and wrote the name on a piece of toilet paper with eyeliner, digesting what Tom had just told her. Muldoon was going to be gone for forty-eight hours. And when he came back, Brooke would be in town.
Shit.
"I also wanted to leave you Kelly—my fiancée’s—cell number," Tom told her. "She didn't want to call and bother you, but she asked me to let you know that she's having an impromptu dinner—really casual—at our place tonight. It's something some of the wives and girlfriends like to do when we go wheels up like this. She told me to tell you that you're welcome to join them—you know, get a glimpse of that aspect of military life, if you want."
"That's ... very nice," Joan told him as she wrote down the number he rattled off. It was more than nice, it was brilliant. She could picture Brooke surrounded by a group of wholesome-looking young women, bonding over coffee. Myra was going to love that. "I'll definitely give her a call."
"Great. Again, I'm sorry about lunch."
"You're forgiven."
His laughter was a warm rumble in her ear. "I'm glad. Look, Joan, as long as I have you on the phone ... I know Lieutenant Muldoon spoke to you about this, and I understand you don't have the authority to make these kinds of decisions, but I really think this is the wrong time for President Bryant to come out here to the base. I mean, a low-profile tour would be one thing, but for the kind of dog and pony show that the White House is looking to put together... ?"
"I'll do my best to see that your reservations are brought to the attention of as many decision makers as possible, Commander," she told him. "At least then you'll be on record. And if something does go wrong—"
"I can say I told you so?" he interrupted. "That's not what I'm looking for. That's not good enough."
"I'm sorry, sir," she said. "But I just don't have the kind of influence to help you out."
"Do the best you can," he told her. "And if you see Muldoon, tell him to get his butt back to the base, ASAP."
"Good luck—wherever you're going," Joan said.
"Thanks. Catch you later."
Joan hung up the phone and went out of the bathroom.
Muldoon was still standing by the door.
"Is this really just a training op?" she asked him.
He looked her in the eye. "Yes, it is."
"Which is what you would tell me even if it wasn't, right?"
Muldoon nodded. "Yeah. But this one really is training."
"Which is also what you'd say," she pointed out.
"Yeah."
"Where are you—
"I can't tell you. You know that."
"Yes," she said. "Of course. I'm sorry. I'm just..."
He was looking at her a little too intently, so she forced a smile despite her sudden realization that any given moment this man—and Cosmo and Gillman and Jenk and Sam Starrett and all of the other fabulous, wonderful men of Team Sixteen that she'd met over the past few days—might be thrust into any one of the numerous hot spots around the world where the U.S.'s Special Operations forces were going head-to-head with terrorists.
Forty-eight hours from any given moment, Joan could well be attending Mike Muldoon's funeral. She suddenly wanted to sit down, but she forced herself to stay standing, to keep smiling at him.
"You have my cell phone number, right?" he asked. "In case you need me? I mean, I'm sure Steve McKinney will be able to handle any problems, but..."
"I'll be fine," Joan told him. "Just... be careful, okay?"
He took a step toward her, and she turned away, suddenly afraid of what he had seen in her eyes.
God, what had he seen in her eyes?
Lust? Probably, God help her. He certainly was attractive, with his quiet, clean strength and the intelligence that lurked in those pretty blue eyes.
Longing? For sure—and that was even worse than lust. She could feel it still, bubbling within her, a rolling boil of feelings and emotions she was afraid to examine too closely for fear of what she might find.
It gave her a sense of immediacy, a sharp awareness that tomorrow was not always guaranteed.
It made her want to throw herself into Muldoon's arms and cling to him and beg him to come back in one piece.
It made her want him.
Yeah, right. Like she hadn't wanted this guy—Lieutenant Young and Perfect—before this. Nice try at fooling yourself, Joan. Still, here it was. Up at the surface. Impossible to ignore. Everything she'd spent the past few days running from.
This—what she was feeling right now—was why all those women married men they'd known for only a few days during World War Two.
Of course, this man wasn't exactly asking her to marry him, now, was he?
Joan briefly closed her eyes and lived their entire potential love affair in the space of three heartbeats. She could—right now—turn back to him and meet his eyes and let him see what she was thinking, what she was feeling—all of her concern and lust and longing and fear that this might be the last time she saw him alive. She didn't doubt at all that within ten seconds she would be in his arms, kissing him.
And oh, God, just thinking about kissing him, about losing herself in him, his mouth on hers, his tongue, his ... It almost made her turn around, but in her mind that kiss became lovemaking and that lovemaking became an ill-thought-out, awkward, ill-timed, mismatched relationship based on physical attraction and temporary insanity, with all of its missed expectations and pressures and failures and bitter disappointments.
Joan stood there with her back to Mike Muldoon and knew if she turned to face him that their friendship would turn from a thing of joy and laughter to a hardened, blackened little lump of resentment and pain. Sure, it would take slightly longer than three heartbeats to do so, but it would happen just the same.
She liked this guy.
That wasn't the big news flash here. The news flash had to do with just how much she liked this guy.
Enough so that her feelings for him trumped all of the confused emotions that came with that lust and longing. She had to smile at the irony of that. The truth was that she liked Muldoon way too much to sleep with him. If she didn't like him so damn much, she'd do him, as he'd so eloquently put it yesterday at lunch
. What would he say if she told him that?
But instead of revealing intimate secrets that were best kept to herself, Joan opened her eyes and found herself gazing at her laptop.
"Will you be back in time for the admiral's party?" she asked, able to turn and face him now that her anxiety could be blamed on a far more reasonable fear—that Brooke Bryant would be without an escort for a very important social event.
It was actually laughable how little she cared about that right now, but he didn't know that.
"It'll be tight, but yeah. I'll make it," Muldoon told her.
Now if she could only make him stop looking at her like that—as if he wanted to throw her down on her bed and...
"Good, because I emailed Brooke and, you know, told her all about you. She's really looking forward to meeting you. Very enthusiastic." Joan didn't bat an eye as she spun Brooke's emailed response of "Whatever" into something that sounded more enticing. "I told her to bring her whip. She emailed back and asked which one."
Surprise took over everything else that was written on his too-expressive face. But then he laughed. "Very funny, Joan."
She forced herself not to smile. "Hey, I'm serious."
"Right."
"I am."
"Okay, fine," Muldoon pretended to surrender but then counterattacked. "Give me her email address so I can write to her myself. I want to help her pick one out from her vast S and M collection."
Joan was so busted, and they both knew it. But she refused to quit the game, giving him a holier-than-thou look instead. "I'm afraid I can't give out Brooke Bryant's email address to just anyone."
"Give me yours, then," he countered. "I'll email you and you can forward it to Brooke. If she wants to write back to me, then she can. If not..." He shrugged.
"You'll have access to email where you're going?" She fished through her handbag, searching for one of her business cards.
"Yeah," he told her. "At least part of the time."
She handed him her card with her email address on it. "It is just training you'll be doing, isn't it?" She tried to see inside of his head.
Muldoon just smiled as he glanced at her card, then tucked it into his pocket. "I'll call you later to make sure Steve's getting it done for you." He opened the door to let himself out, then turned back to add, "I'm still your official liaison. You have any trouble, call me, Joan. I'll get back to you as soon as lean."
"Be careful," she said again.
"Being careful isn't quite part of the job description, but we work hard to make sure all the men in the team are as safe as possible."
"Good," Joan said. "That's good. That's... good to hear."
He stood there, then, just looking at her, halfway out the door.
"Thanks again for this morning," she told him. It wasn't too late to rush toward him and kiss him.
Muldoon nodded, lingering just a moment longer as if he knew she was weakening in her resolve.
But she wasn't. She was strong. She gazed back at him and let herself like him. A lot. Too much to move and blow it.
A year from now she still wanted him to be her friend and not a former lover that she was too embarrassed to call and talk to.
"I'll see you on Saturday," he finally said, and shut the door behind him.
Mary Lou was waiting for him, right there in the corridor of the Team Sixteen building.
Jesus, Sam couldn't believe it. She was right outside of Lieutenant Jacquette's office.
Several weeks ago, the XO had spoken to Sam about Mary Lou's relentless on-base visits. "Tell your wife that the proper time for her to talk to you is when you're home. Tell her that other officers—higher ranking officers on base—are starting to comment on the fact that she's always here, checking up on you, distracting you and everyone else, making it impossible for you to do your job. Tell her how bad it makes you look when she comes here like that."
Sam had told her. But here she was. Back again. God damn it. And Jazz Jacquette was walking down the hall. He gave Sam a long, pointed look before going into his office.
"You're not supposed to be here." Sam was all but drowning in frustration. "I thought we got this settled weeks ago, Mary Lou. What do I have to do to get through to you?"
"I got your message. About you going out of town? But I needed to talk to you before you left." She must've just gotten off from work. She was still wearing her uniform and her hair was limp around a face slightly greasy from hours at the French fry machine. Her makeup had long since worn off from the heat and she looked even younger than twenty-two years old.
As if twenty-two wasn't ridiculously young enough.
Sam felt a twinge of guilt. This was his fault. He'd known she was young that first night he picked her up at the Lady-bug Lounge. Young, with a lousy education, and a lousier childhood.
She'd never told him about it specifically, but he'd gathered early on that she and her mother had had some kind of falling out quite a few years ago. There had been some kind of betrayal—exactly what, he wasn't sure. The tune he'd brought it up, shortly after their wedding, she'd changed the subject and started talking about the curtains she was planning to hang in the kitchen.
Curtains. Jesus.
He couldn't count how many times he'd tried to talk to her about real things, serious things that mattered to him, but she quickly brought the conversation back to such important topics of discussion as when was it time to cut the baby's toe-nails or the difference between using green or yellow split peas in pea soup.
Of course, it wasn't her scintillating conversation that had drawn him to her in the first place. It was the way she'd looked out on that dance floor in those cutoff jeans and an overburdened tank top.
She was the anti-Alyssa, telling him in her southern sugar pie voice how she was a regular winner in all of the local wet T-shirt contests as if that were something to be proud of, and, yes, he'd pursued her precisely because of that.
Although Mary Lou had been as eager to take him home that night as he'd been to go there. That part wasn't his fault. It was the other nights, after he'd realized that she'd cast him in the role of Prince Charming, after he knew she didn't see their casual sex as either casual or mere sex, that he was to blame.
To give himself a little credit, he'd ended their affair when he realized she was actually hoping he'd marry her. He wasn't a total shit. Just a partial shit, with a run of some very bad luck.
A partial shit who'd found out the hard way that getting fucked turned into a negative, soul-sucking experience if there wasn't love or at least genuine caring involved. A loser who had learned that hero worship wasn't love. That it wasn't even close.
There was an op last year in Afghanistan that went really wrong. Sam had led a squad—Muldoon, Gillman, Izzy, Jenk, and Cosmo—that got hit by an al-Qaeda ambush. The ambushers were amateurs and didn't wait until the SEALs were close enough to wreak real havoc. Cosmo took a hit, but the bullet was spent and didn't do much damage.
When the SEALs returned fire, the tangos turned tail and ran, but Sam gave the order to engage the enemy—to go after them and either bring them in for questioning or eliminate them.
The terrorists didn't go for plan A, opting instead to fight to the death.
Which the SEALs did, quickly and efficiently, only to find that two of their ten attackers couldn't have been more than eight years old. As for the others, the oldest was maybe eighteen.
Amateurs, indeed. They were children. And now they were dead children.
The CO had made them all go in for a couple of extra sessions with the shrink after that one.
It had been Mike Muldoon's personal nightmare— engaging the children who fought as terrorists, and God knows there were a lot of them in al-Qaeda, may their parents burn in hell—and Sam spent hours with the younger man, just letting him talk it out, just listening.
But eventually Sam had gone home to a hot dinner that Mary Lou cooked for him.
He couldn't choke it down. He'd needed to talk about i
t, too.
And there was Mary Lou. His wife. Sitting across the kitchen table.
He'd reached for her hand.
"Who would teach their children to hate and to kill like that?" he'd asked after haltingly telling her as much as he was allowed to about the op, about how sick he'd felt looking into the faces of those dead little boys.
And Mary Lou had started to cry.
Her tears, however, were not in sympathy. No, in fact, she was upset with him, and she pulled her hand away. This was in the days when they still fought regularly. It was before she started trying to please him at all costs.
"Don't talk like that," she'd told him. "You're a SEAL. You shouldn't be talking like that, like they didn't deserve what they got. I'm the one who suffered. I was scared—terrified— when that helicopter went down in Pakistan. I'm the one who sat in front of the TV for eighteen hours, waiting for a scrap of news that would tell me if I was going to have to raise our baby girl without a daddy. You wanted to go there. You wanted to fight. I hear you say that all the time. You want to feel bad for someone? Feel bad for Haley, who spent the past four weeks without her father!"
Needless to say, their conversation hadn't gone any further.
That was the day he had understood that she didn't love him any more than he loved her. She loved the idea of him, sure. She maybe even loved the image she'd built of him in her head—some superman who never doubted himself, never faltered, and never failed.
But that sure as shit wasn't him.
Truth was, Mary Lou didn't give a damn about him. She had no real desire to get to know him—especially if the real him deviated from the picture-perfect super-him she held in her head.
From that day on, Sam had given up trying to make his marriage work. He stopped attempting to be interested in the differences between green and yellow split peas or how many pies to bake for the church bazaar, and started merely to endure.
"Come on, I'll walk you back to your car," he told Mary Lou now, aware that Jazz's door was wide open.
"I wouldn't've come here if it wasn't important," she told him as they headed for the stairs. "I've been trying to be patient about a lot of things, Sam, but this is something I cannot abide."
Troubleshooters 05 Into The Night Page 19
