She laughed. “Yeah, all we do at brigade is come up with good ideas to screw with you down in the companies.” She studied him, the dark shadows cast beneath his eyes, the tight lines around his mouth. Tension wound its way around her, radiating from him with the same power and confidence he wore like a shield. “Well, then I won’t see you around.”
“No. Probably not.”
Hesitant, unsure of her reception, she took a step forward. Close enough that she could see the faint shadow against his jaw. “Do you ever relax?”
His only movement was a slight flare of his nostrils. “No.”
She took another step. Reached up and placed her hand on the solid wall of muscle over his heart. “Never?”
His lips parted, just a hint. “No.”
His scent was dark and arousing. Making this big man go still and quiet? Powerful. He was wound so tight, tension burned beneath her touch. “So you think this would be a mistake, don’t you?”
“Yes.” His voice was rough.
“Do you ever make mistakes, Evan?” she whispered, her mouth a breath from his.
“Mistakes get people killed.” His words traced over her lips, sending a hot spike of arousal racing through her blood.
“Hmmm.” It was nothing to brush her top lip against his. His chest stopped moving beneath her palm.
His mouth opened, until she could feel his breath mingling with hers. Her blood sang with thick and heavy sensual need. His tongue flicked against hers, an open, hot invitation.
* * *
Evan had no idea what the hell he was thinking, but this woman had struck a chord inside him, awakened a hunger that refused to be ignored. Kissing her was a mistake, a sensuous, gorgeous mistake.
He gave over to the temptation he’d fought earlier and lifted his hands to her neck, sliding his palms over her skin to thread them into her hair. It was warm silk against the back of his hands, a raw, simple pleasure.
Her mouth opened beneath his, her tongue sliding against his, signaling a salient desire that penetrated his defenses and made him no longer care that she was in his brigade. There were no rules against them doing any of this—whatever this was—but he didn’t date at work. As he lost himself in her taste and touch, he seriously reconsidered that personal rule. He captured her quiet gasp against his mouth and felt the locks turning on the chains that held his restraint.
It was a long moment before Claire eased back, nibbling on his bottom lip before she broke the tentative connection between them.
“What was that?” he asked, his voice rough and unfamiliar to his own ears.
She smiled. “A mistake.” She swiped her thumb over his bottom lip. “But one I enjoyed.”
She eased back until he was forced to release her. Regret that this would go no further settled in his belly. “I’ll see you around, Evan.”
He watched her go, the slight sway of her hips more alluring because she did not try to affect any sensuality. She simply walked, cloaked in confidence and sexual appeal.
He let her go. Because Evan Loehr knew all about mistakes, and he wasn’t about to make one with Claire Montoya.
Chapter One
Late 2008
Colorado Springs, Colorado
“So this is hell? Very scenic.” Claire shivered and slouched over a steaming mug of coffee, wishing it were a bathtub she could crawl into. The lobby of the Evergreen Lodge was polished ski-lodge elegance and pretty much guaranteed to give the budget overlords coronaries. A huge stone fireplace in the middle radiated a welcoming heat from all four sides. Overstuffed chairs were intermixed with coffee tables and potted plants. Tiny white lights decorated the rafters and looked like diminutive stars against the dark oak. The dining room took up half the lobby, and dozens of windows let the wild mountain view in while keeping the cold out.
Across the white tablecloth, Claire’s oldest friend and fellow army captain Sarah Anders laughed and stirred her hot cocoa. “You know, if you stopped complaining for a second, you’d realize that it’s called the Garden of the Gods for a reason.”
“There is not enough cold-weather gear in the entire army inventory to make me stop complaining. I’ve never been so cold in my life,” Claire grumbled. “I can’t believe I’m saying this but I’d rather be in Iraq right now. At least I’d be warm.”
“It doesn’t help that you get to stay in this beautiful ski lodge because the budget people screwed up?”
“Not a bit. They could have us at the swankiest place in Colorado Springs and I’d still complain about the cold.”
“But you love me, which is why you’re here.” Sarah’s flip remark belied the serious edge to her words. Claire had been friends with Sarah far too long to miss the fact that she was, in fact, deeply worried.
“I’m here because my brigade commander ordered me here,” Claire said as she cradled her coffee mug. “The only good thing about it is being stuck with you. Why did you have to be the one tapped for this mission?”
Sarah shrugged and sipped her hot chocolate. “I’m the only company commander who hasn’t deployed recently. It’s my turn.”
A shadow fell across her friend’s face and Claire reached across the table to squeeze her friend’s hand. “We’ll get your team ready, Sarah.”
In truth, nothing they did in training could prepare Sarah for the mission she was about to command. She was leading a logistics company into the tail end of the Surge, the buildup of American forces designed to stabilize Iraq. As someone who had recently returned from Iraq, Claire knew Sarah’s mission intimately.
Nothing was going to help take a company of combat-inexperienced soldiers and turn them into steely-eyed killers inside of a month. But Claire said none of that. It was the dead last thing that Sarah needed to hear right now.
Sarah tucked a stray lock of hair behind one ear and slid her water to one side of the table to make room for a briefing folder. “Okay, so let’s talk about the mission, because I’m in way over my head and I could use your expertise.”
Claire mirrored Sarah’s movement and leaned forward to look at the timeline of events Sarah had slid in front of her. “Inspections, mission briefings, ranges,” Claire read. She glanced over at Sarah. “What’s the problem?”
“Look at the first three days.” Sarah flipped the page over. “We’re shipping our equipment in exactly five weeks. We have a sixteen-day training exercise to get our crap together because at the end of this exercise, we are shipping out our equipment, then we’re going on leave. All told, five weeks start to finish. And the brigade commander … Claire, he doesn’t understand our mission.”
“Wow.” Claire let out a low whistle. The training timeline was packed full of events that no one who’d deployed would waste time with. “Equal opportunity training? The only thing equal opportunity about this war is the roadside bombs that don’t care who they kill. Whose good-idea fairy was this training plan?”
“Someone who’s not paying attention to the fact that we are in no way ready for this mission. My company is full of supply clerks and the commander has us training mostly on shoot houses and hand-to-hand combat instead of convoy training. We don’t do convoy training until the last two days of the exercise … But that decision is way over my head. My focus right now is getting my team ready for running the roads in Iraq.”
“Then I’m your gal. I’ve got more than thirty thousand miles under my belt on the roads in combat.” Three tours to Iraq, one as a young enlisted soldier, two as an officer. She was all too familiar with the threat that was buried beneath Iraq’s roads. Sarah hadn’t deployed in almost four years. She should be nervous. The war had changed a lot since the first troops went in back in ’03. It changed every time Claire went back.
Sarah glanced over Claire’s shoulder and perked up. Claire twisted in the plush leather chair and groaned.
“Who is that?” Sarah murmured.
Claire sighed. “You’re just like every other female on the planet,” Claire said, ignoring the flip o
f her stomach. Evan Loehr was giving her an ulcer. Lovely. One kiss and it would freaking haunt her forever. She regretted ever touching him. “Sarah Anders, get ready to meet Captain America himself.”
“You know him?”
Oh yes, she knew him. Many a long night in the tactical operations center downrange had been spent fantasizing about those shoulders, along with other parts of his anatomy.
Stupid hormones.
“Wring out your panties, honey, he’s not someone you want knocking on your door.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Sarah said. Claire laughed quietly. It was good to see Sarah show some interest in a man—she hadn’t dated much since her husband’s death in Iraq four years ago. Claire wasn’t sure how Evan would react to Sarah’s appraisal, but she wasn’t about to tell him. That man’s ego did not need any stroking.
She took a deep breath, reminding herself she was not here to fight with Evan. Or pant after him. Neither would do her a damn bit of good. She was here to train her best friend for her deployment to combat. Lusting after the officer in charge was not part of the plan.
His gaze met hers across the wide-open space. He nodded once in greeting, but his mouth was set in a grim line. Obviously, Captain America wasn’t happy to be here, either.
Lovely. Just what she wanted to deal with on this last-minute Hail Mary mission: a cranky superhero.
* * *
Evan winced and shifted his assault pack to the opposite shoulder as he studied the only woman in the room wearing a military uniform. Glancing at the other woman’s name tag as he approached, he recognized Captain Sarah Anders, the support company commander. But Evan couldn’t take his eyes off Claire. A woman who ate napalm and pissed razor wire and inspired Evan to want to throttle her every time they were in the same room together.
An officer who could not spell doctrine if it was stapled to her forehead.
A woman he could barely be in the same room with without watching her body move, without wondering if she was as wild in the bedroom as she was on the battlefield.
He stopped and looked down at her where she sat, next to the massive fireplace in the center of the lodge with the support company commander. “Why are you in uniform?” His words came out too sharp, but then again, what else was new.
Claire raised both eyebrows. “I’m working, ergo I’m in uniform,” she said. “Is there a problem with that?”
“You’re in a civilian ski lodge, off-post, after duty. You should be in civilian clothes.”
She smiled coldly. “That’s rich, coming from you. You’ve practically got ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ tattooed on your ass.”
Evan sighed and shifted his pack to the other shoulder. “Fine. Sleep in your damn uniform if you want.”
“What crawled up your ass?” she said. “You’re not usually this charming until day four of a field problem.”
“Never mind. Forget I said anything.” Evan sighed hard. “I have more important things to do on this mission than argue with you.”
“I would have thought you had more important things to do in, oh say, Iraq, but you still managed to argue with me all the time over there.”
He pinned Claire with a deadpan look. “Are you trying to piss me off?”
She smiled sweetly. “I don’t actively have to try, now do I?”
“Okay, well, you two obviously have some catching up to do.” Sarah stood and Evan shifted to let her by. “Claire, call me tomorrow?”
Evan watched as Claire stood and hugged the other woman. An odd sensation caught in his throat at the genuine emotion on Claire’s face. She looked soft and appealing, in a way he had forced himself not to notice. He stared at her for a long moment before he caught himself and roughly cleared his throat.
“I need to run through the plan with you,” Evan said. Claire looked like she was about to argue but she didn’t say anything. “But I need some coffee first. Can we go to the restaurant?”
“Sure, I could use a refill,” she said.
Wary of the sudden truce, he followed her back to a quiet corner, wishing he didn’t notice the way her hips moved. There was an aching familiarity about seeing her in uniform. As though he’d been missing it—missing her, which was ridiculous. He didn’t even like her, let alone miss her.
He supposed it was just part of the transition of coming home. Every single time he returned from a deployment, he went through a period during which he wanted nothing more than to be back with the team he’d been with downrange. Seeing Claire in uniform fed the need for the familiar he’d found himself longing for since he’d been back from this most recent trip to the sandbox. Being around her was comforting, even if it was Claire.
He let himself wonder if she ever wore her hair down. He hadn’t seen it down since the first night they’d met. Was it still long, or had she cut it? It was a beautiful color—dark, dark red, halfway between copper and deep cherry.
He’d long ago come to think of Claire Montoya as all hard angles and sharp edges. Prickly. But with her head tipped forward and her hair starting to come loose at the back of her neck, she looked … soft. Soft and—dear lord, was he about to think desirable?
Holy hell, he needed to get some sleep if he was going to keep this little obsession under control.
The waitress saved him from any further awkward thoughts. Evan ordered a coffee, and then flipped open his files. “So let me ask you this,” he said, pulling out a timeline. “What’s your assessment of the unit? Are they prepared?”
“They’re a brand-new brigade. More than half the soldiers have never deployed and Sarah’s company, sadly, is just as inexperienced as they are. Hell, Sarah hasn’t deployed since ’04, right before her husband died. The war has changed so much since then. So the long answer to your short question is no, they’re not prepared.” Claire’s eyes darkened, the strain showing in the tension in her neck. He looked down at his coffee as she continued to sift through his files. “There is not enough time for all this,” she said, her movements stiff and jerky, and he caught the slightest tremble of her fingers. She set the papers down, picking up a sugar packet. She sipped her coffee and set the cup down abruptly, pulling out a folded sheet of paper from her notebook and drawing his attention there. “Look at the timeline. It’s filled with things we don’t need to waste time on. We don’t have time for this stupid bonfire tonight. We need to get these guys on the range and start training as soon as possible.”
He recognized the gesture for what it was: an attempt to shift the conversation away from the worry for her friend to something she could control. He tapped the paper in front of her. “I take it we didn’t manage to get out of the bonfire?” He wondered if she would be changing out of her uniform for the evening, and then mentally slapped himself for falling down that rabbit hole again.
“No, we didn’t, and I resent the hell out of glad-handing and ass-kissing when we could be training.”
Evan sipped his coffee silently, watching her try to rein in her emotions.
“The platoon leaders brief their mission plans to the brigade commander the day after tomorrow, and the next day we start training. They don’t have enough tents, though, so they’re sleeping in their motor pools to simulate small forward operating bases in the cities. We’re back in the hotel every night instead of sleeping in the field like we normally would on a mission like this.” Her voice lowered, dark and husky and filled with unsaid things.
“Are they ready for the inspections to start?”
“The fact that these inspections are another stupid waste of time notwithstanding, no, they’re not ready. But we’re starting tomorrow, regardless.” She blew out a hard, frustrated breath. “If I were running this damn thing, I’d skip all the useless PowerPoint briefings and go straight to running missions. Training isn’t something you talk about, it’s something you do.”
A spark of passion lit her eyes when she spoke about training. Her intensity sparked a latent energy inside him, twisting in his belly. His lips cur
led into a faint answering smile as it dawned on him—she got a charge out of training. Call it an adrenaline boost or a combat high, but Claire didn’t just enjoy what she did, she loved it. Her eyes were dark and aroused, her body keyed up. It was singularly the most stunning change he’d ever seen in a woman.
“What?” she asked.
“The army. You really love it.”
Claire smiled, the first real smile he’d seen on her lips since their team had arrived in Colorado. “Yeah, I do.”
It wasn’t her hot temper or her fierce beauty that drew him. It was something else. A barely contained fire, a spark on the edge of a pool of gasoline, waiting for a gust of wind to ignite the world around her. And the reaction it caused in him was no less intense. No less fierce.
He shifted uncomfortably, then cleared his throat. The sound pulled her attention from the agenda and made her look up. She shifted the paper, and he gripped the edge to angle it so he could see it better. His fingers slid against hers, and he froze. She looked up, their fingers still touching, her green eyes darkening. Then she swallowed and pulled her fingers free from his touch.
This was not the woman he knew—the wildfire, out-of-control officer he was used to seeing in the tactical operations center. That woman made snap judgments and spoke before engaging her brain. This woman was restrained. Tense. This was new, a side of Claire that Evan had never seen before.
Her gaze met his, hesitant.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was thick, edgy and filled with a wariness that made his heart flip in his chest.
“Listening to your brief.” His voice sounded off to his own ears, harsh and rough.
“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.” She leaned back in the booth and stared at him, a sharp, hunted expression in her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
Silence hung over them, awkward and cold. She said nothing, and he could see her searching for the right words, fighting the edge of panic. “Like you’re looking to start rumors. Captain America doesn’t sleep with members of his team, remember? Violates some superhero code or something.”
Until There Was You (Coming Home, #2) Page 2
