by Rachel Grant
Exchange complete, she left the food stalls, which were fragrant and colorful with fresh fruit imported from other lands—Djibouti had no crops of its own—and headed toward the textiles to find a hat.
People bumped and jostled them, and a few tried to cut between them, but she kept her word and held on to his arm. It had been awkward during the money exchange, but rules were rules. She didn’t always like them, but she did know how to follow them.
Holding Pax’s arm, however, was no hardship.
She glanced up to see a frown marring his handsome lips and guessed his phone conversation had triggered it. She kept up her pretense of distracted shopping and tried on a scarf that was the color of a Djibouti sunrise. The scarf was lovely, sheer with lace edging, but not practical for her needs.
She turned to make a beeline for a vendor who had a stack of boonie hats, but Pax stayed rooted to the spot. She turned to see him tuck his phone away, then dig out his wallet. He handed the vendor two thousand francs and took the scarf.
“A beautiful scarf for a beautiful woman,” the vendor announced in heavily accented English as Pax draped the scarf over her head.
“My thoughts exactly,” Pax said to the vendor.
His words and action sent a thrill through her, and she wished she could see his eyes, but they were covered with dark lenses. “Thank you,” she said.
“It’s a trade. For the Redskins shirt.” His voice was gruff, telling her he already regretted the impulsive purchase. He probably was worried she’d take it the wrong way.
Had she?
It was a sweet gesture, sure. But she knew it didn’t change a thing about their situation.
He lowered the scarf to her shoulders. “I suppose you still need a hat for the field.”
She nodded, and they made their way toward the boonie hat stall, where she purchased the first hat she could find that was the right size. Pax scanned the crowd over her head, making it look like he was admiring the hat, but she knew his eyes behind the dark shades were taking in everything, everyone.
He took his job seriously, and for that she was grateful. She had a feeling he’d never provided private security before, but he was good at it. Maybe, when he left the Army, he’d get a job in the security field.
She pulled her brain back from that thought. Aside from feeling an irrational surge of jealousy toward his imaginary female clients of the future, she also mentally had him leaving the Army, which he’d made clear he had no plans to do.
And after growing up a military brat, she’d sworn off being a military girlfriend or wife. If she and Pax did end up in bed together, sex was all they could have. She would never get seriously involved with an Army man, no matter how perfect his abs.
They resumed walking, reaching a gap between two empty stalls. “What’s the word?” she asked.
He leaned down to speak softly, his lips a scant inch from her ear. “Not here.” He tucked a lock of her hair under her new hat, playing his part.
She must remember that this was all a role. A disguise of sorts.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t have fun. She pressed close to him. Standing as they were, with his large form between her and the rest of the market and an empty stall at her back, she was shielded from view. Feeling wicked, she ran her tongue over the suprasternal notch of his manubrium. She supposed there was a non-technical term for the groove at the base of the throat, but she didn’t know what it was. She could, however, name every process and tuberosity on human—and hominid—bones.
“You’re a bad girl, Dr. Adler.”
“You should probably spank me.”
She felt the intensity of his gaze even though she couldn’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses. “Do you like spanking?”
“It depends on the timing. As I’m coming—yes. Pretty much any other time—no.”
“Ah, fuck,” he whispered. “How the hell am I going to get that image out of my brain?”
She grinned. “I can think of one way.”
His brows lowered under the sunglasses frames. “For that, I’m only going to spank you in ways you don’t like.”
She licked her lips. “As long as your hand and my butt are bare, I’m game.”
He took her arm and pulled her between the empty stalls until they were tucked and hidden in the back, next to one of the buses that littered the market. He pressed her back to the dusty side of the vehicle. “You keep this up, and I end up fucking you, I will not apologize for crawling out of bed five minutes after I come. You got that? I will fuck you and walk away. No emotions.”
“Works for me.”
She thought he was going to kiss her, but he didn’t. He grabbed her hand and turned to drag her back through the crowd. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
It took her a moment to realize he was pissed. She dug in her heels, stopping him.
“Don’t, Morgan. I’ve made the rules clear.”
He had, but she kept on pushing until he admitted to having cracks in the shield he’d erected to defend himself against her. The only thing she’d get from him—if he gave in—was angry sex. Well, the angry kiss had been hot as hell. Could she settle for angry sex?
Fiery, angry, animal fucking with the hottest man she’d ever met?
Was it wrong that her first thought was, yes, please?
Chapter Eleven
She’d treated his statement like a thrown-down gauntlet, which pissed him off no end. He wasn’t playing games. He’d spoken the truth, and she was after the challenge. But Morgan Adler had no idea what she was signing herself up for.
“You’ve got your hat. I’m done with my calls. Let’s go. We’re rendezvousing with marines in ten minutes.”
They were three-quarters of the distance to the Toyota when he saw a man who looked familiar. He’d seen him earlier, chewing khat on the street in front of the minister’s office. The man scanned the crowd, looking for someone.
Pax had changed shirts, but Morgan hadn’t, and her beautiful long French braid would be easy to spot.
He tugged down the brim of her new hat as he pushed her into a gap between two buses. He could just see the market and the man through the windows of a bus.
Pax cupped her cheeks and planted his mouth on hers. The kiss was meant to hide her face, but, true to form, the woman slid her hands around his neck and her fingers stole into his hair. She thrust her tongue into his mouth, and he sucked on it like the gift it was.
This kiss was all he could have. This soft slide into paradise. He plundered her mouth, taking everything he wanted, knowing there’d be no more where this came from.
His XO had signed him up for a little slice of hell. Daily proximity to the sexiest woman he could imagine, but not only did he need to maintain his focus, he also shouldn’t forget that she was a general’s daughter. It didn’t matter that her father was an ass. If they screwed around, the general would almost certainly find out. Some asshole with an ax to grind would rat him out. It was never a good idea for an enlisted man to get involved with an officer’s daughter.
He’d played that game once already, when he was young and stupid. After spending three years busting his ass to get into the Special Forces Qualification Course—a goal he’d shared with his ex-wife on their very first date—his then father-in-law tried to put the kibosh on his acceptance in hopes of steering him into the Green to Gold program, because an enlisted soldier wasn’t good enough for a colonel’s daughter. Worse was learning Lisa had encouraged her father’s action because she’d wanted him to get into the officer program. She’d felt enlisted was beneath her too.
His marriage had lasted less than a year, and divorce papers were signed a month after Pax entered SFQC. An experience like that tended to make a soldier wary of the next officer’s daughter who came along.
He ended the kiss and whispered in her ear, “There’s a guy at my four o’clock, other side of the bus. He was at the minister’s office. The kiss was to hide your face. Nothing more.”
His words were both true and a lie. The intention had been to hide her face. That he’d gotten more in the bargain was for him to deal with in silence.
She glanced toward the bus, keeping her head down. He shifted so his body hid most of her face.
“Did you see him?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“Was he looking this way?”
“No.” She looked again. “He’s heading toward the fruit vendors. Away from us.”
“Good. Let’s get out of here.”
They had to backtrack to get to the SUV, but managed to avoid the man searching for them. And now they had a description to give to the MPs who would follow up on the day’s events.
They arrived without incident at the rendezvous point—an abandoned gas station on the edge of the city. An armored Humvee arrived minutes later, and he and Morgan slipped into the backseat. Two marines took over the Toyota SUV and would drive around the city until Morgan was safely within the fence of Camp Citron.
On base, Morgan made a beeline for the skipper’s office, while Pax met with his XO, Captain Oswald. He turned the cell phone he’d taken from Morgan’s apartment over to his superior, and gave him a rundown of the day’s events. An hour later, he found himself in a large conference room as Morgan met with the top brass to determine how best to deal with her archaeological project that had just become both a priority of and a major fuckup for the US military in Djibouti.
In the center of the table lay a three-million-year-old cranium. It was mostly intact, but even his untrained eye could see the left side had fresh breaks along the cheekbone and pieces of the heavy bony brow lay in a pile next to the skull.
Captain O’Leary didn’t even appear chagrined at what his orders had wrought upon a singular and spectacular find that could alter what was known about human evolution.
Pax smiled wryly at the thought. Clearly, he’d been suckered in by Morgan’s enthusiasm.
He would have loved to see Morgan face down the captain, but then, for the sake of his career, he had a feeling it was better she’d faced the man in his office alone. He just hoped for the sake of her argument she’d been able to keep the angry tears to a minimum, because O’Leary would view them as a weakness to exploit.
For now, Morgan sat quietly at the far end of the table saying nothing. She met his gaze, but her face remained carefully blank.
He had to wonder where her stoic mask came from. To the casual observer, they’d look like strangers, not two people who were fighting a losing battle with attraction.
He had to admit he preferred her passion and anger to this reserved façade. She lived life full of emotion. He liked that about her.
But then, he liked almost everything about her.
From the ideas being tossed across the table, it was clear the Navy intended to seize control of Morgan’s project, riding roughshod over her just as she’d feared. It was equally clear that the powers that be in this room didn’t know fuck about archaeology. The Navy had specialists on staff who’d visited and consulted on sites in the past, but they were currently stateside, and getting civilian employees to Djibouti in a hurry wasn’t a specialty of the bureaucrats at home who managed travel orders.
Aside from Morgan, there was another civilian woman at the table who remained silent. It was an open secret that Savannah James was CIA, and the fact that she’d been invited to this meeting raised all sorts of questions for Pax. What was the CIA’s interest in Morgan?
The CIA was certainly gathering intel on Desta, but was James working the China angle? This might not be about Desta at all. It was entirely possible the warlord was nothing more than China’s scapegoat.
Finally, after sitting in silence for nearly forty minutes as men who knew nothing about archaeology expressed how Morgan’s project—and she—would be handled, Morgan cleared her throat. “I don’t care if you can get Navy archaeologists here tomorrow,” she said softly, the words drifting under the sounds of ignorant men making foolish assumptions.
The low tone worked in a way a shout wouldn’t have. Silence fell as Morgan rose from her chair. “You are not importing a man to take over my project. I hold the contract. I’m in charge.”
O’Leary launched into his argument. “Desta might not treat a man—”
She faced the skipper, fixing him with a blank expression, but Pax had glimpsed the contempt in her eyes. “He thought I was a man.” Her voice remained level. Even. “Don’t use a drug- and sex-trafficking warlord as an excuse for your sexism, Captain. I’m damn good at my job and have the fieldwork under control. Right now, you”—she gestured toward Linus’s skull—“have done as much damage to the find as Desta. If the site needs protection from anything, it’s from your ignorance. If you try to steal my project, I’ll tell the minister of culture exactly what you’ve done.”
A fierce pride shot through him. His woman recognized the source of her power and knew how to wield it to hold the big dogs at bay.
His woman?
It appeared the caveman was back.
“Morgan,” the skipper said, “you’re being emotional instead of logical—”
“Dr. Adler,” she corrected. “I have a PhD in archaeology. What archaeology degree do you have, Captain O’Leary?” She leaned on her fists on the table. “And since when is it emotional to demand the person with the most expertise, who in fact is contractually bound to perform the work, remain in charge of the project? How is that not logical? I know you’re trying to put me in my place, Captain, but you see, my place is at the head of my project, and no one, not even the almighty US military”—her gaze flicked to the only other woman in the room—“or the CIA, can shove me out.”
So Morgan had noticed and identified Savannah James too. Interesting.
“I refuse to work this project in name only,” Morgan continued. “It’s obvious you want a rubber stamp on the route to rush construction of the railroad without serious evaluation of the cultural heritage sites that can and will be destroyed. First of all, no archaeologist in their right mind would agree to that—so forget importing one of your own. I guarantee they’ll side with me. But more important, you can’t bring in someone else to work the project, because you lack the authority. You may be the mayor of Camp Citron, but my project is outside the confines of the base. It’s not your call to make. This project is, and shall remain, mine.”
She took a deep breath, then continued, “I’m staying in Djibouti. I will do my job. You’ll get your airstrip. But if you try to prevent me from doing what I came here to do, I will tell my client exactly how many international and US laws you broke when you sent a team of marines who know nothing about paleoanthropology to rip Linus from the ground. Do you think you’ll get your airstrip then, Captain?”
She met the gazes of each of the men at the table one by one, finally landing on Pax. He allowed his mouth to curve slightly, letting her know he approved and was on her side, for all the good it would do her. As a master sergeant, he was the lowest rank—and the only enlisted—in the room.
She returned her attention to the skipper. “To do my job, I need a phone, a computer, and a camera. Mine were destroyed by the explosion. I expect one of each to be delivered to my CLU this evening.” She again gestured toward the skull. “Linus will be stored in a secure facility here on base. I will contact two of the world’s foremost paleoanthropologists and ask if they would be willing to come to Djibouti to examine the skull. They will say yes without hesitation, and you will fund their visit and house them while they are here. You broke the skull, you will find the budget to fix it. When they ask, you will acknowledge full responsibility for the condition of the skull. That will not fall on me. Fortunately, both are experts in fossil reconstruction, so as long as none of the pieces were destroyed, there will be no data loss, and perhaps Linus’s head will be back together in time for the presentation to the media.
“Finally, I need to be at my project area by oh-seven-hundred tomorrow. If you won’t provide me with
a vehicle and a security detail, then I’ll be returning to my apartment in Djibouti City and finishing my project with no further interference from the US military. If you try to keep me prisoner here, I will make sure everyone associated with my contract knows what you are doing and why, including your plans for me to blithely disregard cultural resources because you find them inconvenient. Make no mistake, Djibouti may be poor, but they know damn well what their cultural resources are worth. They won’t take your interference lightly.”
With that, the beautiful and diminutive woman who had been disregarded, talked over, and minimized throughout the meeting, turned on her heel and left the room.
Pax leaned back in his chair and smiled. It appeared his woman was a black belt third dan in dealing with ignorant, sexist military leaders as well.
Chapter Twelve
There was a knock on Morgan’s CLU door at six thirty a.m. sharp. She opened it, expecting to see Pax, but instead found a young marine she hadn’t met before. His name patch said SANCHEZ, and he looked about nineteen with a sweet, boyish face. He wore desert camouflage and sported a belt full of military gear. “I’ve been assigned to your protection duty, ma’am. Are you ready to go?”
“Yes. Let me grab my field kit.” She gathered the gear she’d need for the day and locked her CLU behind her. As she followed Sanchez to the vehicle, she wanted to ask where Pax was, but odds were the boy wouldn’t know details, and there was no point in advertising her unhealthy interest in the Green Beret.
As it was, an air of melancholy entered her mood, making her aware of how much she’d anticipated working with Pax by her side, how she’d felt secure in the day’s work, knowing she’d have her own personal Green Beret providing protection.
The workday progressed as the survey had in the weeks prior to finding Linus, except two armed marines accompanied her, and she had three fewer crew members.
