Hot Soldier Cowboy

by Cindy Dees

  Within ten minutes or so, Frank pronounced them ready to go. Susan shook her head. They were the most motley cavalry types she’d ever seen. Fortunately, she trusted her wonderfully trained Arabians to keep both men out of trouble. Frank opened the paddock gate and let them out into one of the pastures that made up her ranch. They would reach Frank’s land around lunchtime. She rode up to join Mac and Dutch. “How long do you expect us to have to camp out?”

  Mac scanned the horizon. “Three days, maybe.”

  Three days with Mac Conlon in the wilds of West Texas? Her stomach flip-flopped. She clamped down on the unwelcome sensation. She was not even going to contemplate falling again for Mac Conlon. Wordlessly, she pointed her mare’s nose toward the mountains on the horizon. She looped the packhorse’s reins around her saddle horn, waited until Dutch’s and Mac’s horses fell in behind, then she clucked to Malika.

  It wasn’t as bad as she expected. It was worse. Mac and Dutch acted like Ruala was lurking behind every outcropping of rock, and before the day was half over, their paranoia had rubbed off on her. The rugged landscape ceased to be beautiful and peaceful, a place that restored her soul. Instead it became an unfamiliar and threatening wilderness. She jumped at every little noise or movement and rode along in a constant state of nervous agitation. Malika picked up on her jumpiness and was a handful to manage.

  She felt exposed and vulnerable, with only Mac and Dutch standing between her and disaster. She didn’t like the idea of needing Mac one little bit. But then a twig would snap, her heart would slam into her throat and she was reluctantly glad for his solid presence beside her.

  They stopped for the night in a small valley. Mac and Dutch set up camp while she took care of the horses. Her knee ached, but she’d be darned if she’d admit that to Mac. The extreme normalcy of the scene belied the tension in all of them.

  Beneath their calm exteriors, Mac and Dutch must be wired, because their horses were nervous wrecks as she unsaddled and hobbled them. Eventually she managed to calm all the animals with a good brushing. If only her nerves could be quieted so easily.

  She finished grooming the last horse and joined Mac and Dutch by the already merrily crackling fire. Her tent was set up, her sleeping bag spread inside it, her pack of gear sitting beside the tent’s front flap. She commented, “You guys are pretty good at this camping stuff.”

  Mac shrugged. “We do it for a living. We’d better be good at it.”

  “I mean it. You’d make Boy Scouts a little jealous.”

  Both men laughed at that. Dutch remarked, “Hey, maybe they’d give me a merit badge for my one hundredth kill.”

  Susan blinked. Was he serious? She couldn’t tell from his casual tone of voice.

  “Nah,” Mac retorted. “If you really want to rack up the merit badges, you have to blow up stuff like I do.”

  Susan shuddered and asked, “How can you be so casual about something like that?”

  Mac replied, “It’s just a job. Analyzing weapons systems is your job. Covert ops is mine.”

  Disturbed, Susan got up and walked a lap around the camp, trying to stave off the stiffness that was setting into her knee. Finally she returned to the fire and sat down, rubbing the joint absently. Mac had changed. Gone was the careless young man who worked hard and played harder. In his place was this serious, focused professional, talking casually about killing people. The younger man had been so much simpler to deal with. This man was too complicated, with too many new sides to his personality, too much darkness where there once had been light.

  Dutch ate a quick bite and slipped off into the encroaching blackness of night. Susan looked up from her supper as he left and realized she was completely alone with Mac. “Where’s Dutch off to?” she asked nervously.

  “Patrolling,” was Mac’s brief reply.

  “What does that mean?”

  He glanced up at her. “He’s having a look around, setting up a perimeter and standing guard.”

  She looked around the little camp, abruptly uncomfortable with the idea of being alone with Mac. “How long will he be gone?”

  His mouth turned up in a sardonic smile, but there was little humor in his voice. “Long enough for you to take a chunk out of my hide if you want.”

  Susan was taken aback. The guy she remembered didn’t have this hard edge. She studied Mac as he sat on a rock, staring intently into the fire, his thoughts a million miles away.

  He’d grown up.

  He’d been tall when she knew him before, but now he’d filled out. Muscles rippled across his shoulders and neck, and his biceps bulged in a supremely male display of power. His waist was flat and hard beneath his cotton shirt, and his jeans hugged muscular thighs. His face was leaner, no longer round with the boyish charm of youth. Now his features spoke of maturity and self-assurance, of a man in his prime. In all these years, she’d never dreamed Mac Conlon could possibly get one bit sexier than the guy she’d known. But he had. In spades. And she was sitting with him under a starry sky beside a quietly hissing fire.

  Oh, boy.

  She rubbed her arms to chase away a sudden chill.

  Mac looked up and without speaking reached into his bulky, nylon backpack. He pulled out a black sweatshirt and tossed it to her. The night air was nippy. She shrugged into the garment, keenly aware of its soft, fleecy lining against her bare arms. She inhaled slowly, savoring the scent of him clinging to the cloth.

  She recalled another night like this, another bright, starlit sky. They’d sat in the back of his pickup truck and talked into the wee hours of the morning. That was when he’d kissed her for the first time. She still remembered the surprise of his warm mouth against hers, his arms tight around her, his breath as uneven as hers. They’d been young and awkward and eager, but somehow they’d managed to get it right. She would never forget the sweetness and poignancy of that first kiss.

  “Suzie? Susan!”

  She looked up, startled.

  Mac was squatting in front of her. “Are you all right? You made a noise like maybe you were in pain. Is it your knee?”

  “I’m fine. So’s my knee.” When he didn’t back off, she added, “Honest.”

  He frowned. “Are you sure? I know the last couple days have been pretty hard on you. Some people don’t handle being in danger real well. If you’re going to crack up on me, I need to know now.”

  Confusion swirled through her. She was supposed to despise him for breaking her heart. But this flash of the old Mac, as perceptive and considerate as ever, reminded her why she’d fallen head-over-heels for him in the first place. If two days in his presence had her this flustered, how was she going to handle a week? A month? Years, a voice whispered in her mind.

  She needed him to go away. She wanted him to stay. He continued to watch her with that meltingly warm gaze of his that always did her in.

  “I’m worried about you, Suzie.”

  “I’ll be okay. I just want it to be over.”

  His mouth turned down. “Yeah, I know. So I can get out of your life once and for all. I’m sorry about showing up here like this. I should’ve talked my boss out of sending me. My mistake.”

  Coming here was a mistake for him? Somehow that idea hurt almost worse than seeing him again.

  Why did she care if he didn’t want to deal with an ex-girlfriend who refused to sit in a bunker and knit while he went out and saved the world? She obviously hadn’t meant much to him back then, since he’d walked out and never, not once, looked back. And now she was just someone he was trying to avoid.

  Fine. If he was over her, then she was definitely over him. If he could put aside the past to do this mission, then she would do the same right back at him. “Look, Mac. You do your job, and I’ll do mine. This will all be over soon, and then we can both get on with our lives.”

  He stood up, towering over her, his expression completely, frighteningly, blank. She was struck suddenly by how imposing a man he’d become.

  His voice was flat. “I’ll
go relieve Dutch. Get some sleep if you can, Susan. It’ll be a long day tomorrow.”

  So. She was Susan, now, was she? Pain cut through her. Why did everything he said suddenly hurt? He’d only used her real name, for goodness’ sake. Except he’d always called her Suzie. The rest of the world looked at her and saw the intelligent, self-contained computer programmer, Doctor Susan Monroe. Only Mac, always Mac, had seen the outdoorsy, fun-loving girl named Suzie, who just wanted to be loved.

  She watched, her heart breaking, as Mac’s silhouette retreated into the darkness beyond the firelight. Her mind flashed back to another dark night. Another view of his unyielding back retreating into the darkness. Out of her bed and out of her life.

  She’d called him to tell him she’d deciphered a critical piece of garbled surveillance tape. A phone call by Eduardo Ferrare setting up a meeting with the Gavronese rebels. In it, Ferrare confirmed a meeting time of midnight that night and named a bar where the meeting would take place. It was the break they’d been waiting for. She’d been so excited to tell Mac, so proud of the digital audio enhancement program she’d developed and how well it worked.

  Mac had come over to her apartment. She’d just assumed it was to pick her up to help with the surveillance of the big meeting. He’d kissed her wildly, passionately, and they’d ended up in bed. Mac had never made love to her like that before, almost as if he was desperate to capture a lasting memory of her and to leave one with her forever. Like an idiot, she’d put it down to pre-mission jitters.

  But then he’d gotten up, gotten dressed and paced her bedroom like a caged tiger. And like a tiger, he’d bared his claws and shredded her. Told her the relationship was over. That she was too emotionally involved with him and that he didn’t need some teeny-bopper groupie hanging around his neck. But he didn’t stop there. He told her she wasn’t needed on the op anymore. He knew how to operate her computer program and she was getting in the way of the mission. She was nothing more than an amateur computer geek, a wannabe of the worst kind. Case in point, her getting all excited about a snippet of meaningless audio.

  She’d argued. Tried to convince him that tonight was the big night. He’d rolled his eyes and told her she had no idea what she was talking about. She’d been infuriated when he refused to listen to her. She’d pushed as hard as she could to get him to take action. And all he did was tell her scornfully that he didn’t find women who wanted to have cajones like men attractive. He accused her of endangering the team with her wild conclusions and said she’d blow the mission if they didn’t dump her. And then he’d turned and walked out of her life.

  Like he’d done just now. A shadow blending into the dark until nothing remained but the night sounds and the wall of black beyond the campfire.

  In a few moments Dutch appeared in almost as ghost-like a fashion. The tall Viking—she’d always think of him that way—stretched out on his bedroll and fell asleep in a matter of seconds. Maybe it was a Special Forces trick to go to sleep instantly like that. She sighed, wide awake.

  As she sat there, mesmerized by the dying flames, Mac’s scent rose from his sweatshirt, and she hugged the baggy garment close. It was comforting to know he was out there in the dark somewhere, protecting her from unseen dangers. Wait a minute. Comforting? Mac? The man who’d mortally wounded her heart with his careless cruelty?

  The man had turned her into a freaking schizophrenic.

  Oh, she was in danger, all right. But tonight it wasn’t from Ramon Ruala.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Even though his gut yelled at him to run like hell, Mac forced himself to walk away from the campfire and Susan. For all the years he’d run from facing her, now that he was here he couldn’t hold himself apart from her. Wouldn’t. He had to make amends to Susan. It was now or never. And if he chose never, he would fall off that razor’s edge he’d walked for so long and end up destroying himself for good.

  But how in the hell was he supposed to make things right between them if she wouldn’t let him past her defenses? She was freezing him out with a cold shoulder made of dry ice.

  He put his body on autopilot, going through the familiar motions of perimeter surveillance by rote. Crouching down in the long grass, he eased to the top of the next ridgeline. He scanned the area through his field glasses.

  The gentle movement of the grass on the dark plain reminded him of Suzie’s auburn hair, flowing around him as they made love. The twinkle of the stars reminded him of the way her eyes used to light up whenever she’d look at him. The wide-open spaces of this country even reminded him of her free spirit when they first met.

  How was he supposed to do his job if he was all tied up in knots thinking about her? He needed to concentrate here.

  He was a professional.

  He was on a Tango One mission.

  He’d promised Colonel Foley he could handle this.

  He’d lied.

  Damn.

  He could still do this job. The trick would be to stay objective. He’d catalogue the changes he’d noted in her so far, analyze options for helping heal her heart.

  Her girlish slenderness had transformed into a willowy, womanly form. She was more beautiful than ever. Her youthful good looks had matured into the kind of ageless beauty that would shine when she was sixty-five. Of course, he would have to convince her of that. She’d gotten damned self-conscious since he last saw her. Frankly, he thought the slight limp and the scar on her neck lent her character. But then, he was used to hanging out with beat-up soldiers whose scars were viewed as badges of honor.

  She was more guarded, more defensive than he remembered. It might even be fair to say she’d become a shade reclusive. God help him, was she ashamed to go out in public? Clearly he would have to fix that one—after Ruala was off the market. A weariness of spirit hung over her sometimes, now. As if she’d done a lot of hurting over the years. Both the physical kind and the emotional kind that wilts a person’s soul.

  The good news was she wasn’t quite dried up inside yet. No woman who rode around in a pair of hot-pink cowboy boots had gone totally dead inside. Those damned boots had had him thinking dirty thoughts all day.

  He slipped on a pair of night-vision goggles and scanned the area for heat signatures. The outlines of a couple of distant coyotes popped into view.

  God, he’d missed her. His whole world had revolved around her once upon a time. He’d been so sure she was The One. His soul mate. He’d flung himself headfirst into loving her and hadn’t looked down or looked back. Hell, he still blew off dating other women because they weren’t her….

  Abruptly Mac froze, his train of thought snapped. His attention riveted on the landscape in front of him. Something had moved. Something that didn’t belong there. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and every sense went on full alert. Very slowly he scanned the horizon. And sucked in a sharp breath. There was a person out there. He magnified the zoom on his NVGs and made out one man. He was dressed in dark clothing and carried a standard pair of civilian night-vision goggles. They didn’t look like heat seekers, which was good, or the guy would have already seen the column of hot air rising from their fire beyond the next ridge.

  The guy was maybe a quarter mile away, moving from right to left across Mac’s field of vision. He wasn’t bothering to move stealthily, so he probably didn’t know Mac was out here. It also meant he hadn’t spotted their camp yet. Mac reached for his throat mike out of habit, and realized he wasn’t wired. Sloppy. A mistake they couldn’t afford. He couldn’t warn Dutch to hit the dirt with Suzie.

  He cursed under his breath. Had Ruala picked up their trail already? Dammit! They needed one more day to get to the rough terrain where the horses gave them the advantage. How had Ruala mobilized so blasted fast? The guy must be outrageously motivated to find Susan. Chagrin filled him. It wasn’t often The Blackjacks underestimated an opponent or got caught flat-footed.

  He slithered backward until he was below the ridgeline and then he took off running, low a
nd silent, toward Dutch and Suzie. By paralleling the guy’s course, Mac could get to the camp first—if he hustled.

  He hustled, all right. He busted his butt, in fact, and was panting when he burst into the circle of firelight. Dutch was on his feet before Mac even skidded to a halt.

  “What’s up?” Dutch asked shortly, as he tossed on a bulky ammo belt and picked up his rifle.

  “One man, dark clothes, night-vision goggles, a holstered pistol, looks to be scouting. Approaching from the northwest, estimated time of arrival, two minutes. No time to pack up and ride out of here before he arrives.”

  “Ruala?” Dutch bit out.

  “No. Too short. A flunkie.”

  Dutch glanced around their camp. “No time to bug out. Do we take him down?”

  Mac ignored Susan’s gasp. He thought fast. “If we take him down and he doesn’t report back in, more men will follow. I hoofed it back here and didn’t locate his base camp to see how much backup he’s got.”

  “Options?” Dutch asked, smearing black grease hastily on his face.

  “Diversion. Disguise Susan. She and I will be a guy and his girl out for a tryst. We’ll give him a show and distract him while you get into position to track him. Drop him if he threatens Susan.”

  “You got it,” Dutch said grimly, pulling the black dew rag from around his throat up and over his light hair. “Get wired. I’ll call when I can.” Although he was a big man, Dutch slipped away in catlike silence.

  Mac dug in his pack and then hurried to Suzie’s side. She was already bundling up Dutch’s bedroll and stuffing it in her tent. He hefted Dutch’s saddle and tossed it inside as well. It would be hard to explain two humans toting three saddles.

  “Here. Put this on.” It was a brunette wig.

  She twisted her own hair up onto her head and yanked on the wig. It was all they had time for. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with fright. “Is it him?” she asked breathlessly. “Ruala?”