“Heaven forbid we don’t teach a lieutenant how to brief.” Claire let the irritation rip, glad for the cover it offered from the lingering distraction of his kiss. She didn’t want to remember the feel of his lips moving over hers or the thread of his fingers through her hair. She felt needy. Claire hated feeling needy. “You could recommend it,” she said suddenly.
“Recommend what, exactly?”
“Recommend to Colonel Danvers that he change the focus to ranges and weapons training instead of insisting on all these stupid meetings.” A faint wisp of hope uncurled in the vicinity of her chest.
Evan shook his head. “Do you have any idea what it’s like with some of these guys? I’m a captain. Captains don’t recommend that a full bird colonel change his training plan just because someone on my team thinks it’s stupid.”
“What part of combat operations leads you to think that a PowerPoint slide on the proper storage of gasoline in Iraq is important? What war have you been fighting? Because the one I’ve gone to? The check-the-block stuff isn’t what saves lives. We need warriors teaching these kids how to survive.”
“Warriors like Iaconelli?”
“Yes, warriors like Reza,” Claire snapped. “Don’t start again.”
“He’s got a big problem if last night’s bender was anything close to routine for him.”
“So what are you going to do, Evan? Call up our brigade commander and tell Colonel Richter the Wonder Twins are screwing up again? ’Cause that’s what you want to do, right? Just like with the range fire?”
“You burned down fifteen acres of Fort Hood,” he said, his words harsh. “It’s not like I could hide that little fact from the boss.”
She smiled thinly. “You’re right, Evan. There was always only one option, right? Notify the commander. Not let Reza and me get things under control first. Make sure you brief that shit went to hell in a handbasket and we were the ones carrying it.” She sniffed and pulled on her sneakers. “You’d never guess that Reza used to work for you. You wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire if it wasn’t in accordance with the regulations.”
“Claire, you’re being unreasonable.”
“No, Evan, I’m being completely reasonable. Because you’ve never once broken the rules in your entire life. I shouldn’t expect you to start now.”
* * *
An hour later, Evan walked out of the gym, nearly plowing into Iaconelli. Irritation reached up and grabbed him by the throat. “Surprised to see you upright.”
“Nice to see you, too, Sir.” Iaconelli straightened and held Evan’s gaze for a long time. “Is there something you need to say?”
Evan opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. To hell with it. “Yeah, there is. You acted like an ass last night. You ever feel like trying to be a little more responsible? You damn near crushed Claire when you fell on her.”
A dark emotion flickered across Iaconelli’s face, the muscles in his jaw pulsed, hostility abruptly replaced with deep concern. “Did I hurt her?”
“You honestly don’t remember?”
“It’s … fuzzy.” Iaconelli swallowed hard. “She okay?”
“You’ve got a funny way of showing you care about someone,” Evan said, watching the big man’s reaction with keen interest. He couldn’t ask about their relationship. Couldn’t face the possibility that there was more than just loyalty and friendship between Claire and Iaconelli. Not after he’d kissed her last night. Not without revealing the true depth of the complicated feelings he had for her. Just admitting that there were feelings at all was a major step for him.
“It’s not like that.” Iaconelli shifted his gym bag over his other shoulder. “Sir, that would be like fucking my little sister. If I had one. Which I don’t.”
For some reason, the thought of Claire having Reza looking out for her calmed the sharp bite of emotion swiping at his insides. Little sisters needed watching over. That’s why they were issued big brothers. Or at least it should be. “Why’s that?”
“Why’s what?”
“Why would it be like fucking your fictional sister?”
Iaconelli scowled, finally noticing the edge in Evan’s voice. “I’ve known Claire for years. We served together when she was enlisted and again after she was a lieutenant in my brigade combat team on the initial invasion of Iraq.”
It was Evan’s turn to frown. He hadn’t known she’d been on the initial invasion. In the year following the September 11th attacks, the march to war with Iraq had been steady and constant, starting almost before the dust had settled in Afghanistan. When the war had started violently with the Shock and Awe bombing campaign, everyone had thought it would be over before it started.
But all of that changed when the U.S. troops got to Baghdad.
The Thunder Run had been engraved in army legend. A single army division—hell, it had really been one army brigade—had started and finished the fight against Saddam’s elite Republican Guard forces before the rest of the invasion force had even caught up with them. There were few if any modern parallels on the battlefield. Evan had watched the war unfold on the television monitors in the hallways of Armor Captains Career Course, anticipation mixing with a potent dose of adrenaline now that combat was no longer talked to death in PowerPoint classes.
The slice-and-dice operation through the center of Baghdad had been violent, and it had ended any rumors that the Iraqi Army wasn’t going to resist the U.S. invasion.
And Claire had been a part of that violent battle. So had Sarn’t Ike.
Evan looked at his former platoon sergeant with renewed respect. “Third Infantry Division?” The Third ID had pushed north, cutting through Iraq’s defenses like there was nothing there at all.
“Yeah.” Reza shifted his gym bag as they walked down the sterile hallway toward the locker room. “We lovingly refer to it as the You’re Fucking Kidding mission.”
“Why’s that?” Evan glanced inside the racquetball court where he’d spoken with Claire earlier. It was empty now. A vague and unexplainable disappointment settled in his stomach.
“Because that’s exactly what my battalion commander told his brigade commander when he was briefed on the plan. The Thunder Run was nuts, sir, totally nuts. We outran our supply lines.” Reza hooked his thumbs into the strap of his bag. “Claire took charge of the logistics resupply convoy trying to get us ammo and water.”
“You really ran out?”
Reza scowled. “Don’t look at me like I rolled out without my full load. We got pinned down and damn near used everything we had to keep ourselves alive. Got a piece of shrapnel in the ass to show for it, too.”
Evan pictured Claire running hell-bent for leather through the center of Baghdad, swearing the whole way. A fierce Valkyrie, leading her soldiers to victory. A twisted, grudging respect formed in his belly. She’d make a fierce opponent on the battlefield. Unpredictable and unrestrained.
Reza swiped his palm across his forehead. “By the way, if the briefing is delayed, I’m heading over to The Greasy Tube.”
Evan didn’t laugh. “And what the hell is The Greasy Tube?”
“A bar. I’ve got a potential date tonight.”
“Did the last five minutes of conversation actually happen? You need to cool it on the drinking and the catting around, Ike.”
Reza started to argue but instead shut his mouth, grinding out a harsh “Roger. Sir,” before he stalked off, irritation lining the hard set of his shoulders.
Evan let him go, distracted by thoughts of Claire, her body moving as she attempted to ease her mind. There was a new tension between them, and it had nothing to do with their different approaches to being an officer. No matter how much he might want to pretend otherwise, he wanted to taste her again. Wanted to touch the fire that was Claire Montoya.
He wanted her. He could at least admit that to himself now.
He just had no idea what to do about it.
* * *
The sun had not set. No, it was too cold for that.
Instead it froze behind the cold, grey clouds, sending the world into darkness. Claire threw her battle book onto the table and stripped off her wet uniform and boots. She’d spent the entire day freezing her ass off in the snow, trying to inspect a company that didn’t even know the meaning of the word inspection. She pulled on a dry sweater and jeans along with her boots and stepped out onto the balcony, needing the cold air to calm the burning anger in her lungs. Sarah had been embarrassed that Claire had seen her unit so jacked up, but that wasn’t the worst of it.
No, Lieutenant Engle had decided to take a particularly bad moment to argue with Claire. She’d made a dozen excuses why they weren’t ready to deploy and she’d actually had the gall to raise her voice. Claire had locked her heels, putting Engle at the position of attention, and had proceeded to go up one side of her and down the other. Claire might have received quite a few ass-chewings in her day but she also knew how to give them, and Engle had struck a nerve. Not because the inspection had gone so poorly, but for whining about it instead of pulling herself up by her bootstraps and fixing it.
Engle was an officer, damn it. Officers were not supposed to make excuses. They were supposed to get results.
The sky was gunmetal grey, casting shadows across the suite.
The overcast sky reflected Claire’s mood, and she stood for a long moment and just watched the snow fall. Tugging the sleeves of her light blue ski sweater down, she leaned against the railing. The cold wrapped around her, penetrating her layers of clothing, and she shivered even as she took a deep, cleansing breath of crisp, biting air.
Everything about this mission was a disaster. Colonel Danvers, the brigade commander here at Fort Carson, was focused on the wrong things. He wanted his lieutenants to learn how to brief, how to do inspections, instead of training for combat. Not only that, but the inspections had not even gone well. The officers here might be able to brief well, but Claire doubted they could lead their way out of a paper bag. Not a single weapon had been touched yet. Not one piece of ammo fired. Their commander back at Fort Hood, Colonel Richter, would never have focused on checking the block. No, he was a warrior, focused on training. Real training. The kind that saved lives.
At least she didn’t have to worry about burning down Fort Carson. No, that thought wasn’t sarcastic. Not at all.
The thought did nothing to cheer her up. Idly, she piled some snow into a small mountain on the rail, then started forming it into a snowball, needing to do something with her hands as her mind tumbled over the problems with the evaluation.
It was killing her that one of her only friends was going into combat unprepared, untrained. And there was nothing she could do about it.
From the information she had, the brigade commander wanted to go into all of the exercises, from the shoot house to the mock-up of the city, without any ammo at all. He wanted the noise and the chaos more than he wanted people to actually get shot at with dummy rounds. And instead of tailoring each evaluation for the mission each company was doing, he was making everyone do everything.
So while Sarah’s company would spend the bulk of their time running convoys in Iraq, they were going to waste their precious training time doing shoot houses and inspections, instead of doing convoys with simunitions and pyro, which was probably the best way to get soldiers prepped for actual combat.
It was a waste of precious training time. Troops had a hell of a lot less bravery when there were actual rounds shooting at them from the end of a weapon instead of someone shouting bang-bang-bang.
She chafed under the restrictions. They limited the value of training and made it harder to re-create the realism of actual combat. The more realistic it was, the better prepared the soldiers would be. She set the first snowball down and started forming another one, ignoring the biting cold in her hands.
Lost in thought, she didn’t hear Evan’s door open on the balcony next door. Or the incoming projectile, until it landed with a splat against the side of her neck. Frigid snow slipped down the neck of her sweater and she shrieked, swatting at the cold wet stuff. She looked in the direction the missile had come from and glared as Evan melted from the shadows on the deck outside his own room.
“Not funny,” she said, rubbing the cold from her neck.
“Yeah, actually it was.” His laugh was warm and unfamiliar. Claire paused, unable to remember the last time she’d heard him laugh. It sounded foreign and reserved, but it was a laugh nonetheless. Something warm unfurled inside her at the sound, and she watched him walk across the snow-covered balcony to the barrier that separated their two rooms. Snow dusted the top of his head and he brushed it off.
“I take it you’re not mad at me anymore?” she asked him, brushing the snow from her neck.
“I’m too cold to be pissed at anyone. I just want to be warm,” he said, leaning on the rail in a move that dredged up old memories of the first time she’d met him. “What has you so distracted?”
“The entire day was wasted. They need at least a week to unscrew the inspections. It’s ridiculous that they’re trying to run an entire operation like this.” Her voice broke and she looked away as the fear finally slid through the cracks in her control. “They’re not ready for this. Sarah’s company … their lack of training scares me.”
“Are we ever really ready for stuff like this?” His voice was steady and low, but not warm enough to chase the creeping cold away. She shivered, and his gaze slid down her body. The gesture alone was enough to send heat running through her veins. “We should go inside,” he said. “I prefer to have my training doctrine conversations when I’m not freezing my balls off.”
“Have you been drinking?” She narrowed her eyes, studying him, looking for signs of imbibing.
“No, why?”
“Because you just made a joke.” She slid the door to her suite open. “I’m going to make some coffee. Do you want any?” She didn’t trust this unspoken truce between them, but she was too cold and too tired to argue with it. Or him, for that matter.
“Yeah. I’ll be over in a sec.”
He wasn’t lying. He climbed over the rail, and Claire took a step back to give him space. “Seriously? Climbing over railings and snowball fights? Who are you and what have you done with Captain America?”
Lines of fatigue attempted to pass for a smile. His day had not gone well, either. “You’ve always said I needed to relax. Guess I’m taking your advice to heart.”
“Since when?”
“Since now,” he said roughly, and she caught the dark edge of strain in his voice.
“Being home is really doing a number on you,” she murmured, opening the door and leading him through.
“Doesn’t going home throw you off balance?” he asked. The door closed behind him with a muffled click, shutting out the cold. But the warmth in the room wasn’t nearly enough to chase away the chill that had penetrated down to her very bones.
“Yeah, well that would imply that I had a home to go back to. Home is where the army sends me.” She dug into the small fridge for a bottle of water, avoiding the scrutiny of his gaze.
“Really? No family?”
Setting the bottle down, she started making the coffee. “Not really. The army is the only thing I’ve got going for me.”
Evan’s eyes were warm and speculative as he studied her for a long, silent moment, and she tried not to flinch beneath his scrutiny. “Kind of makes it a bigger deal when your career is on the line, doesn’t it?”
She swallowed the lingering resentment that he’d played a role in that. In truth, she only had herself to blame. “Yeah.” She took a long pull from the water bottle, then finished dumping the grounds into the filter. “I’ll manage, though.”
“You always do. So what’s got you so worked up that you’re not sleeping?”
She frowned. “How do you know I’m not sleeping?”
“Your lights reflect on the snow when you turn them on,” he said softly. He came around the large table that sat in the center of
the living area, leaning on it. He was entirely too close. Close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off his body.
She took a step back, uncomfortable with the warmth his nearness sparked. It felt too much like need, too much like a want that went beyond pure sexual attraction. Lust she could do. Need?
Need was not something she could control.
“Yeah, well, that only means you’re not sleeping either.”
“I don’t. Much. Maybe four, five hours at a stretch.”
“That’s a whole lot of free time. What do you do with it?” Oh, but she didn’t want to know. Knowing what he did with his downtime made him less cold and calculating and significantly more human. More appealing. More desirable.
“This and that. Makes it easy to get work done when you don’t have to sleep.” He watched her move, and Claire felt the weight of his scrutiny. “You’re really upset.”
Claire finally stopped, clenching her hands on the counter in front of her. “Yeah. Sarah’s my friend. And it’s killing me that her team isn’t trained. I mean, none of us are ever ready to go, but … this feels worse than normal.”
“They’re still going. Nothing we do here is going to change that,” he said quietly.
Claire ground her teeth. “Colonel Danvers is taking a brigade downrange to the middle of the nastiest fight in Baghdad and he’s training all of his people the same instead of giving them the flexibility to train for their actual mission.”
“He’s the commander. Just because it may or may not be stupid doesn’t mean we get to disobey.” He stiffened, and the easy, relaxed Evan instantly shifted into work mode. “Claire, you don’t know this guy. Changing the training plan is admitting he’s a shitty commander to his boss. He won’t do it.”
She set the water bottle down. “They need to be more prepared. The fight is entirely different now.”
“And we’re not going to be able to get them a full-blown Training Center rotation here. We’ve got all the time we’re going to get.”
“That’s your answer? Follow the rules? Evan, these guys have such limited experience. The only people who’ve deployed with them are, God help me for saying this, folks like Engle.”
Until There Was You (Coming Home, #2) Page 6
