“You got curlers? Go for it. No judgment.” Higgs shrugged. “She a stripper? Married? Ugly as sin?”
“What? No!” Brad sat up and shoved at his roommate. The man didn’t budge.
“So there is a woman. Damn, you’re bad at this.” Rolling to his feet, Higgs chuckled as Brad threw his second pillow—this time with perfect aim—at his back. “Just saying, if you’ve got a girl, and you want to keep her quiet for whatever reason, it might be a good idea to be more discreet. Take her down to Topsail Beach or something. But don’t leave the BOQ dressed like you’re gonna meet her father. Guys talk.” With a wink, he closed the door behind him.
He didn’t have a girl. First off, the whole have part was insulting. And secondly, Marianne Cook was most certainly not a girl. Those had been the curves of a petite bombshell of a woman under his hands. That kiss had been with an active participant. The thoughts that had rolled around in his mind all the way back to the BOQ had been of two consenting adults.
And now his dick was semi-hard, with no hope of sharing the fun of remedying that problem. Fantastic.
The worst part was, he’d enjoyed the evening. He was struggling to remember the last time he’d had such a good time with a woman, even his sister. Marianne was funny, smart and could clearly hold her own around a bunch of hard-ass Marines. That was appealing in more ways than one. Even if there’d been no spark, he’d have been happy to call her a friend and hang out. He had no doubt she’d be the kind of girl to flirt platonically with you one minute, then drink your ass under the table the next.
But that spark. That damn spark . . .
His lips were still tingling from the contact. He might have initiated the kiss, but she’d hopped on that ride without a second glance behind her. The things they’d do to each other if they got naked on a bed. Or a couch. Or against a wall . . .
He groaned and rolled over on his stomach. His erection pressed painfully into the mattress, an apt punishment for letting his mind wander down the can’t-go-there path.
She was intelligent, and she was cool. She’d probably laugh it off with him, if he managed to play it right. Marianne wasn’t the kind of woman to go running to a superior for a single kiss that they’d both participated in. She’d probably go right back to annoying the hell out of him about his knee, come to think of it.
Captain Rock, meet Major Hard Place.
* * *
MARIANNE jingled her keys—all forty of them—in the palm of her hand as she walked into the gym. She tossed them up and nearly bobbled them on the catch. And her mind turned, unbidden, to the last time she’d dropped them, and what had followed.
Bad Marianne.
She took a deep breath and opened the auxiliary doors to the main gym, where the mats and conditioning equipment were—and immediately felt like the air had been sucked from her lungs.
Despite the fact that it was only seven in the morning, the heat was edging up on unbearable in the gym. With only a few windows, and high ceilings, the dark room seemed like it should be a cool haven from the summer sun. But instead, the arena turned into an oversized sweatbox in ten seconds flat. Hydration and stretching would be key, along with regular breaks. She’d have to speak to Coach Ace about that.
Several Marines were already there, stretching or chatting on the main mat. Coach Willis—who sort of reminded her of Danny DeVito with some wicked facial hair—was there, but the other two coaches weren’t around. And, because she couldn’t help but search him out, she noticed Brad was MIA. With a sigh, and with the realization she wouldn’t be able to grab him quickly before practice for a chat to clear up the night before, she unlocked her training room.
The instant she opened the door, before the lights even went on, she knew something was wrong. Flicking on the light, she sucked in a breath and immediately gagged at the smell.
Gauze wraps and athletic tape covered the room, as if the place had been TP’d by a high schooler. They hung from the ceiling, from light fixtures, wound around fan blades and chair legs. The place was a spiderweb of sticky substances. She couldn’t even walk into her training room. She’d have to hack at the stuff with scissors like a machete through jungle brush.
Heating pads and pillows lay in a heap on the floor, soaked in what she could only assume from the smell was the alcohol she diluted and used as a cleaning agent. Someone had written more than one foul word over the walls in what looked like the same permanent marker she used to mark files. And two of her exam tables had been tipped onto their sides.
And . . . Oh my God. Was that a puddle of pee on the floor?
What. The. Hell.
Marianne’s eyes started to water from the alcohol. She closed her eyes, pulled her work polo over her face to blot at her leaking eyes and to cover her nose and stepped back out of the room, only to bump into a body.
“Sorry,” she managed to mutter quickly. “Sorry.” But there was no way she was pulling her face out from the shirt until she’d wiped all the tears away and had taken several more giant steps away from the stench.
“Hey,” a deep voice said. Not one she recognized by sound. “Who’s in there?”
“Cook,” she said, then pulled away from the steadying hands and took one more step back before pulling the shirt down around her nose. With still-watery eyes, she saw one of the older Marines—his name began with an H, but she couldn’t place it just yet—watching her with concern.
“Everything okay?” He started to say something else, then his nose wrinkled. “What’s that smell?”
She said nothing, just pointed toward her room. Who could talk with that stench burning the hairs in her nostrils? She had to find a janitor, and Coach Ace, and call her supervisor. They’d have to triage what supplies could be salvaged, see if the ice machine was still functional, set up somewhere else for the time being in case—
“What the fuck?” She heard Brad’s voice before she saw him around the other Marine’s arm. His voice was a low growl, followed by a tight, “Where’s Marianne?”
“I’m right here,” she answered, waving a hand over the other man’s shoulder. Cautiously, she lowered her shirt all the way and took a delicate sniff. No lingering burning smell. She was probably safe. “Thank you very much . . .”
“Higgs,” he offered with a charming smile. “It’s Higgs, ma’am.”
“Cook,” she returned, then smiled back.
Brad was by her in an instant. After a cursory glance at Higgs, his eyes leveled at her. “What the hell happened? Are you okay?” He took a step toward her, as if he was going to hug her, then pulled up at the last second.
Higgs, looking between them, deserted the field. “I’m going to look for Coach Ace.”
“Oh, I’ll do that,” she started, but he was already out of hearing range. The man moved like the wind. “Damn it, I’m responsible for the mess, not him. He needs to start stretching.”
“Pull off the trainer hat for a second and look at me.” His voice was so calm, so intense, Marianne followed the instruction without thinking twice. His eyes bore into hers. “Are you okay?”
“It didn’t happen while I was here. I just found it five minutes ago.” She rubbed the heels of her hands over her cheeks to wipe off the last of the tears. “Wow, that stuff’s lethal in that large a dose.”
She saw his eyes dart around, then he reached out and brushed a hand down her arm, shoulder to elbow. Just one light brush, nothing dangerous. But the support, the contact, the obvious I’m here sent an extra ounce of steel to her spine. And she felt ready to attack the situation head-on.
Nodding once, she gave him a slight smile. “Guess I’ve got my work cut out for me today.” She pulled her cell from her pocket, ready to make the first of numerous calls, when she heard a shriek. She slid the phone back in her pocket with a sigh. “And looks like Nikki’s early.”
“You’d think she saw a snake,” Brad muttered, and she gave a watery chuckle. Okay, so she wasn’t quite as composed as she wanted to be. But she’d
get there.
“Yeah, well, you should hear her when she does the laundry. Watching her pick up sweaty towels with two fingers while gagging is pretty entertaining.” She pointed to the mat and gave him her best stern face. “Now go stretch, Marine. I don’t want to see you in my . . . um, see you wherever I’m camped out later because you’ve got muscle cramps.”
He raised a brow, but didn’t fight her on it. He tossed his bag to the side, into the same pile as the rest of the duffels, and jogged over to the mat, where his potential teammates were stretching and jumping rope.
With another heavy sigh, she walked back to the open door of the training room. Nikki was still there, still as a statue, one hand draped in a practiced pose over her chest.
“What happened? Who would do this?”
At that moment, Levi ambled up, earbuds in, head nodding along with the music. He pulled up to a halt when he saw them at the doorway, then glanced in. With a low whistle, he pushed a hunk of hair out of one eye and leaned over Nikki’s shoulder to survey the damage further.
“Damn, what happened?”
“I don’t know,” Marianne said quietly. She grabbed both their arms and pulled them away from the stench. “But let’s get to work.”
CHAPTER
7
“Day three, and who’s ready to go home?” Coach Ace barked as Brad and his potential teammates held their plank positions over the mat. A drop of sweat rolled down Brad’s forehead, caught momentarily in the lines etched between his brows.
Please don’t run into my eye. Please, for the love of all that’s holy . . .
He nearly breathed a sigh of relief—if he hadn’t been focused on steady breathing already—when it rolled down his nose instead and splashed harmlessly to the mat beneath his face.
“Nobody wants to go home?” Coach Ace walked through the rows, pausing to step over one man’s legs, weaving back around to nudge another’s ass down with the toe of his shoe back to proper plank position. “Sure is hot in here, boys. I’d like to go home myself, I think.”
The Marine next to Brad moaned, and Brad risked a quick glance over. The kid’s face was red as a third degree sunburn, and his arms were shaking like a sapling in a hailstorm.
Hell, Brad’s arms were quivering themselves, but he wasn’t three seconds away from knocking a tooth out like his neighbor.
“Breathe,” he whispered harshly.
The kid blinked furiously as sweat ran down his temples and shot Brad a nervous look.
“Breathe,” he said more forcefully. “Now. In. Out.”
The kid did as Brad commanded, and some of the redness faded out, revealing the freckled skin of his cheeks. So at least he wouldn’t pass out.
“Flex your arms,” he demanded, and the kid did immediately. His entire body focused to a sharpened point, and while he still vibrated with concentration, Brad noted with some satisfaction he’d stopped shaking hard enough to shift the mat. Which was good, because Brad was done helping. He had to focus on his own performance. Head down, eyes forward, push through the pain that was radiating from his knee up to his hip.
Coach Ace’s black gym shoes came to a halt just inside his line of vision. Brad didn’t move a muscle. Another drop of sweat rolled off his forehead and landed on the toe of the coach’s shoes. Neither man moved.
“You looking to take my job, Marine?” came the man’s growly, low voice.
“No, sir,” he said through gritted teeth.
A whimper came from behind him. They were all dying.
“You think you can coach these youngins better than I can?”
“No, sir.”
There was a long pause, then a quiet “Release.”
As one, they collapsed to the mat like two dozen puppets who’d all had their strings cut simultaneously. Most of them sprawled like broken dolls. A few tried to regain their dignity by crawling up to sit half-flopped-over. None of them were looking all that hot at the moment.
Brad leaned over and wiped his face clean with the bottom of his shorts.
“You’re dismissed for the night,” Coach Ace said. “If we called your name earlier, you need to see Coach Cartwright for your additional strengthening exercises. He’s got your sheets. You’ll have nobody to blame but yourselves if you get cut.”
They crawled, rolled and dragged themselves over to the area where they’d dumped their bags. Most were shaking their limbs out, trying to regain feeling. A few looked as though, if they tried to stand, they’d vomit.
Brad stood slowly, rolling up like a ninety-two-year-old man coming out of his favorite recliner. Creaky bones and all. Twenty-nine, and already too old for this shit. But he’d held his own.
“Hey.” The red-faced freckled wonder bounced over to him. Brad mentally cursed the recoverability of the young. “Thanks for earlier.”
Brad grunted and rolled his left shoulder, shaking out his right leg at the same time. He hissed in a pained breath when his knee throbbed and made the same grinding feeling it had been doing all through evening practice. He covered the hiss with a cough, reaching for his water. Right. Like dry mouth was the problem.
“You really pulled my ass out of the fire,” the kid went on, hovering while Brad debated the merits of putting his shirt back on or digging through his bag for a clean one. The old one was gross, but putting on a new one meant doing laundry that much faster.
Damn you, decisions . . .
“I’m Chalfant. Toby Chalfant. I’m with 2nd Recon.” The kid held out his hand for a shake. Brad stared at it a moment, then took it. Easiest way to get the kid—Chalfant—to back off was to follow along.
If Chalfant noticed Brad’s less-than-warm greeting, he didn’t act like it. “Anyway, so I was wondering if you do any coaching on the side or anything.”
“Coaching,” he muttered, going with the old shirt. Nasty, but he wasn’t out to impress the ladies. He was keeping himself as sane as possible with as little laundry as possible. “I’m here for a tryout, kid. Same as you.”
The “kid” was at least three inches taller than him, and spindly. But Brad had noticed him, and not just for his height. He had spirit, and a willingness to learn. Unfortunately, learning at this stage in the game wasn’t the point. You were here to show what you already knew. Brad doubted the young, cheerful Chalfant would make the team, unless injuries kicked more than the usual amount out.
Which reminded him of his own issue, and how he was going to sneak a bag of ice from the storage room Marianne Cook had reconned for her training room.
“Well, you know, if you ever wanna grab lunch or anything, my friend’s got an apartment here. I’m staying with him most of the time, since it’s more private than the barracks. We could hang out and watch some practice videos, maybe you could give me a few ideas . . .”
The hope and eagerness in the younger man’s eyes was about to kill him. Unable to bring himself to kick a Marine for being young and naive, he lifted one shoulder. “Sure, maybe sometime.”
“Costa!”
The barked word had Brad’s back straightening. Coach Ace had a voice that could make a SEAL piss his pants. As if sensing now was definitely not the time to hang around, Chalfant gave him a grimace of sympathy and waved before jogging off to get his bag.
Without any hitches in his step, without any pops or cracks from any joints.
Effing junior Marines.
Sweat-heavy shirt on and his duffel bag hitched over one shoulder, Brad turned and walked back to the coach. Every step was a deliberate choice to not limp or wince, to stay strong and not show any weakness.
“Costa,” Coach Ace repeated when Brad halted in front of him. “I’ve made a decision about how things are going to run from here on out. You’re the oldest one here.”
Jesus H., was there a newsletter circling or something?
“I’m going to be asking you to take on some of the younger men. They’re your responsibility to keep motivated and out of trouble.”
Brad blinked, then
rubbed at one temple. “I don’t understand exactly what you mean, Coach.”
“Consider it a tryout for captain. I watched you turn Chalfant’s focus from the pain to the gain in ten seconds flat. Sometimes, the motivation has to come from within the nucleus of a team, not the staff supporting it. I want to see how you handle that responsibility. So . . . get to know your mini-platoon.” He handed Brad a sheet of notebook paper with four names on it. “This is your new job.”
“My job is to box, sir.” Brad stared, unseeing, at the paper. He was struggling as it was to keep up and not get cut or kill himself. Now he had this added on?
“Now your job is to box, and to keep your mini-platoon in line. Consider it a bonus, without the pay increase.” Coach Ace slapped a hand on his shoulder and walked on, calling out Higgs’ name.
Something told Brad that Higgs—who was barely a year younger than him—was getting his own mini-platoon. When he saw Coach Ace hand Higgs a sheet of paper, the theory was confirmed.
He read the names on his own sheet, half-amused, half-groaning to see Chalfant’s name at the top. The other two were quiet guys he didn’t foresee any major problems with. But the last one . . .
Tressler.
Damn it all to hell and back. That moron was his responsibility now? What kind of sick joke was the universe playing on him?
Now he was a Marine, a boxer and a babysitter.
* * *
MARIANNE grabbed the wrap and sat back down on her low stool to examine the ankle hanging over the bench. “I’m going with a tendon strain, not a sprain. Give it two days of rest—”
The Marine, Bailey, coughed out what sounded like, “Bullshit.” She ignored that.
“—or, barring that, do your best to stay off it whenever you’re not in practice. Elevate, ice and heat, ibuprofen and no jumping or running outside of practice.”
“But Coach Cartwright just gave me a list of conditioning to do outside of practice,” he said quickly, leaning forward to hover over her while she wrapped the ankle.
Her hands didn’t pause in their work. Over, under, around. Check for circulation. It was soothing work, something she enjoyed and had no problems with. Wrapping ankles wasn’t beneath her, like some trainers complained it was. “You’ll just have to find other ways to condition yourself. Like getting extra rest. You know, being properly rested before a practice can almost double your performance.”
Below the Belt Page 7
