by Lindsay McKenna - Course of Action: The Rescue: Jaguar NightAmazon Gold
“How did it go with the JAG?”
“As expected. There’ll be an Article 32 investigation into the shooting. You’ll probably have to give another deposition.”
“That’s it?”
“Almost. Turns out escorting the remains of a dead deserter back to the States requires considerably less paperwork than extraditing a live prisoner.”
“You’re taking McMasters home?”
“To the Mortuary Processing Unit at Dover Air Force Base, by way of Panama and Norfolk. SOUTHCOM diverted a C-130 as soon as they received my sitrep. The plane’s less than an hour out.”
Her heart tripped at the thought of his imminent departure from her life. Ridiculous, considering he’d entered it less than a week ago.
Well, what had she expected? She knew before they tumbled into bed it couldn’t lead to anything. He was Army, she reminded herself. She was navy. They didn’t have a shot at any sort of commitment.
“I guess that’s that.”
She dug deep for a smile. Lifting a hand to his cheek, she rose up on tiptoe and brushed her lips over his.
“Have a good flight home, Halliday. Maybe I’ll see you again someday.”
She’d been going for calm and dignified. Jack, apparently, wasn’t into either. She’d taken all of two steps before he caught her arm and swung her back around.
“Damn straight you will, Dawson. And if your face wasn’t so banged up, we’d seal the deal with a whole lot more than that little peck on the lips.”
Chapter 9
Charley rotated back to the States two months later. After the sweltering mugginess of the Amazon, she couldn’t get enough of the cold, crisp air turning the leaves to bright gold on Yorktown Naval Weapons Station.
The base was one of the nation’s oldest military installations, and the Yorktown area had certainly seen its share of history. Settlers waded ashore at nearby Jamestown thirteen years before the first Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts. Lord Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington after the Battle of Yorktown, thus ending the Revolutionary War. Civil War troops on both sides had slogged along Old Williamsburg Road, which still ran through the station. At the outbreak of WWI, a presidential proclamation turned the four thousand acres housing the DuPont Dynamite Plant over to the military, thus making the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station one of the largest naval installations in the world.
Nor was it the only military installation in the area. With Norfolk Naval Shipyard and Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base and Fort Eustis and Langley Air Force Base and dozens of smaller units all clustered nearby, the Hampton Roads area represented the greatest concentration of military power anywhere on the planet.
So it was only fitting, Charley thought as she exited the sprawling naval weapons station, that Yorktown was now home to a training detachment of the Coastal Riverine Force. Established only last year, CORIVFOR combined the United States’ green-and brown-water navies—riverine patrol units and the maritime security forces charged with protecting vital coastal assets. The marriage was still relatively new and going through an adjustment period, but both partners were eager to make it work.
Not that the merger had altered Charley’s day-to-day duties all that much. Her fluency in Spanish and recent hands-on experience in South America had made her a natural for Chief in Charge of the weapons phase at the joint U.S./Latin American Riverine Ops School. She loved sharing her knowledge with—and learning from—sailors as dedicated to protecting their countries’ inland waterways as she was. The two months since she’d returned to the States had flown by.
Mostly.
There’d been moments like this one, when she missed Jack with an ache that wouldn’t quit. Too many moments, she admitted as cold, sharp air blew in through the windows of the slick little sports car she’d treated herself to when she hit Yorktown with six months of unspent pay in her bank account. She wasn’t sure how she could hurt so badly for someone she’d known only a few days, but she did, dammit. She did.
She was a sailor. She’d been married to another sailor, however briefly. She knew what long-distance love was all about. Except...
Neither she nor Jack had inched anywhere close to the dreaded L-word. Not in Peru. Nor in any of the communications they’d shared since. She could count those on ten fingers and three toes. Kind of hard to maintain a running dialogue with someone who was off on a classified mission and incommunicado at least half of the time. Someone whose supersecret unit didn’t even exist on paper. Charley had tried to judge from the nightly news what hot spots Delta Force teams had deployed to. Those were only guesses, though, and no real substitute for knowing where Jack was on any given day. Or night.
She scrunched her nose and tried to squelch the old doubts, the old hurts left over from her marriage. So Alex had cheated on her? Jack lived by a different code. A rigid sense of loyalty to himself, his unit and country. Whether that loyalty extended to a woman he’d spent one torrid night with was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.
And not one likely to be answered anytime soon, Charley thought as she wheeled through the streets of Yorktown. She hadn’t heard from him since the two-line email he’d zinged off ten days ago to advise that he’d be out of pocket for a while.
Oh, well, at least she had her work to keep her busy. And evenings like this at the Yorktown Pub, where the latest elite group to complete the Joint Riverine Ops Tactical Course was gathering to celebrate surviving the brutal training. Charley was running late but lucked out. She pulled up to the popular eatery and bar just as another car was pulling out of a parking spot right in front.
As usual, locals and tourists crowded the waterfront restaurant. They were drawn by its unimpeded view of the York River and giant appetizer platter featuring steamed Middleneck clams, fresh oysters on the half shell and Cape May sea scallops breaded and deep-fried to a milky sweetness. Restaurant patrons usually overflowed into the bar area as well, but once every six weeks river rats from a dozen different countries claimed the pub as their own.
When Charley elbowed her way in, jokes and good-natured gibes in Spanish and English were making the rounds with as much gusto as the appetizers. She greeted a couple of newly graduated students, traded insults with the chief in charge of the navigation curriculum, and managed to pluck a sea scallop from a passing platter on her way to the bar.
Senior NCOs in BDUs stood three deep at the long slab of polished oak. Careful to down considerably more food than beer, they kept a watchful eye on their subordinates. No one wanted the celebration to end with a sailor getting a DUI and having to go before a captain’s mast.
The crowd parted to welcome Charley into the inner circle. “Yo, Dawson. ’Bout time you got here. What kept you?”
“Paperwork, Grover, paperwork.” She shook her head mournfully. “Whatever happened to the notion that computers would free us to...?”
She broke off, her eyes widening at the sight of a familiar face at the far end of the bar. “Jack!”
She’d never bought into all that nonsense about a girl’s heart turning somersaults or her breath backing up in her throat at just one glimpse of a man. Jack Halliday made a believer out of her. She just stood there with her chest thudding and a silly grin on her face while something clicked into place. A certainty, an absolute sense of rightness that she’d never expected to feel again.
She could love this man.
She did love this man.
He was in jeans, a black T-shirt and a well-worn leather jacket. His dark gold hair curled at his nape and was a good two inches longer than it had been in Iquitos. With his unshaven cheeks and scuffed boots, he stood out like a flashing navigational beacon in this all-military, all-uniformed gathering. Yet the men and women in the bar seemed to accept him as one of their own. Probably because he held himself with the same easy confidence and air of authority they did.
“Well, well,” he said when Charley wove her way through the crowd to his bar stool. “Of all the gin joints in all the world..
..”
She could barely hear him over the noise of the crowd but had to grin at his atrocious Humphrey Bogart impersonation. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.”
“You knew I’d be here?”
He waggled his brows. “Delta Force operators have their ways, Dawson. And I contacted the schoolhouse when I hit Norfolk this afternoon. You were out on a final evaluation run, but the helpful sailor I spoke to said your class would converge here to celebrate.”
“How...?” She sucked in a gulp of air redolent with fried scallops and draft beer. “How long will you be in town?”
The smile in his eyes got deeper and infinitely more personal. So did his voice. “That depends on a certain extremely gorgeous and very seductive chief.”
With the noise in the bar, she caught only half of his comment. Leaning forward, she cupped a hand to her ear.
“Repeat that.”
“I said, let’s get out of here.”
She was pretty sure she’d heard something different, but she wasn’t about to argue. “Follow me.”
She should have known she couldn’t make a graceful exit with a stranger. The riverine fraternity was too tight-knit, and knew each other too well. The fact that Charley was abandoning a traditional gathering to go off with someone outside their ranks elicited a chorus of hoots and catcalls.
She escaped into the rapidly descending dusk with a sigh of relief. Jack exited the pub right behind her. Her breath frosting on the cold air, she gestured to her new acquisition.
“My place is only a few miles from here. We can take my car.”
Jack gave the fire-engine-red sports car a dubious glance. “I could probably corkscrew myself into that, but I’d never uncork. You lead, and I’ll follow in my rental.”
Charley’s nerves danced all the way to the efficiency she’d rented in a newly constructed fifteen-story tower. Square-footage-wise, the apartment wasn’t much larger than her RCB. But in daytime the balcony offered a stunning view of the York River as it emptied into mighty Chesapeake Bay. The view at night was just as awesome. Then the bay was an endless stretch of black broken by the reflection of a full harvest moon and the lights of the ships plying its dark waters.
Jack was as drawn to the vista beyond the sliding glass doors as Charley had been when she’d first seen it. She almost hated to turn on a lamp. When she did, the glow cast his profile in soft relief. Then he turned to face her, and her heart did that silly somersault thing again.
All right! Okay! This was too stupid for words. She was a highly trained war fighter. A seasoned veteran with several combat tours under her belt. Why the heck her nerves should be humming and her pulse skipping like a high schooler’s was beyond her.
With typical riverine resolve, she decided there was only one way to deal with the situation. She crossed the apartment, shedding her hat and her field jacket as she went, and looped her arms around Jack’s neck.
“I’ve missed you, Halliday.”
“Same here, Dawson.”
When he lowered his head, every one of her senses went from shimmer to simmer. Hunger flared, hot and bright, and her entire body tightened with anticipation. She was so ready, so eager, to feel his mouth and his teeth and his hands on her that it took a moment to realize he wasn’t employing any of his weapons. Frowning, she saw him skim a cautious glance around the apartment.
“Where’s your little critter?”
Her frown morphed into a grin. “The critter that likes to scamper up shirtsleeves and jump down collars?”
“That’s the one.”
“Over there.”
She nodded to the broad-leafed banana plant tucked in the corner. Snowball sat on his favorite perch, watching them with round black eyes.
“I fed him a tasty banquet of melon slices, salted sunflower kernels and boiled chicken this morning. He should be happy where he is...unless he decides he wants to play.”
“You don’t have a cage or a shoebox or something you can put him in?”
The idea that a tiny, two-inch mammal could make a big, tough Delta Force operator nervous tickled Charley to no end.
“Sorry, Halliday,” she said, laughing. “Guess you’ll just have to hope you won’t get bit on the ass.”
“Oh, baby.” He snaked his arms around her waist and dragged her hips into his. “That’s exactly what I’m hoping for.”
* * *
Jack had been kidding. Mostly. But Charley took him at his word. Planting her hands on his hip, she rolled him facedown on the mattress. She alternated sharp, stinging little nips with wet, sloppy kisses, until every nerve and muscle in his body could have howled with delight.
Not content to work only on his posterior, she nudged him over and went to work on the front. When she nipped his chin, he had to clench both fists to keep from hauling that luscious mouth up to his. And when she licked a hot, wet trail down his chest, he felt his stomach roll with eager anticipation.
He could do this, he swore silently. He could let her taste and tease and tantalize. But when she took him in her mouth, his self-restraint damned near shredded.
He stood it as long as he could. Her moist lips. Her velvet tongue. Her busy, busy fingers. When the fuse was as short as he dared let it get, he called a halt and rolled on a condom.
Then she was on her back, her eyes luminous, her hair spilling across the pillow. Her body gleamed in the soft lamplight, all sleek contours and dark shadows and well-toned muscle. Jack had never seen anything as enticing or exciting, and told her so.
“Seems like we had this conversation before,” she got out, gasping as he found the wet heat between her thighs.
“Remind me not to bring it up tomorrow, when we meet Dan and Duke.”
“Who?”
“Duke Carmichael and Dan Taylor.”
He nudged her thighs farther apart. “Two of my Sidewinder pals.”
“What...? Why...? Ooooh.”
Every thought flew out of Charley’s head. All she knew, all she felt, was the erotic dance of Jack’s flesh on hers. One flex of his hips, one smooth thrust, and they were joined.
She didn’t recover until later. Much later.
She and Jack were side by side, with the lamp off and the curtains open to the dark Chesapeake and the bright, full moon. Snowball had ventured down from his perch and was making happy little clicking noises as he chattered to his ghostly reflection in the mirror above the dresser.
Sleepy and relaxed, Jack nevertheless kept a wary eye on the monkey. He also kept the bedcovers tucked tight around his chest to prevent an unauthorized entry as he picked up the conversation he’d left off some hours ago.
“Here’s the deal,” he said lazily. “It’s a rare occasion when two or more Sidewinders are in the same state, much less the same city, at the same time. This is one of those occasions. Turns out Dan and Duke are attending a joint-service black-ops symposium at Langley this week. I’d like you to meet them. More important, I want them to meet you.”
She levered up on one elbow, swallowing a little niggle of hurt. “Is that why you’re here, too? For this symposium?”
“Negative. I’m here for only one reason, and I’ve got her right where I want her for the next, oh, fifty years or so.”
“Huh?”
Not the most intelligent response in the world, but Charley was too surprised for anything else. She stared at him with wide eyes while he pushed upright. When his back settled against the padded headboard, the bedcovers fell away. Moonlight played over his chest, his muscled shoulders, the rattler tattooed on his biceps. But Charley’s attention was all on the face that had gone from lazy and relaxed to dead serious.
“I know this is too soon,” he said quietly. “We still have so much to learn about each other. Starting with why the hell you want to let a hairy little rodent run loose around the house. But I haven’t stopped thinking about you since Iquitos. Your courage. Your smarts. Your hair and your mouth and the anchor on your hip.�
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He caught a thick strand of the hair he’d just referenced and ran it through his fingers.
“I know you got burned once, so I’m not going to push you into something you’re not ready for. I just wanted you to know that I am. So ready I ache with it. I want you, Charlene. In my bed. In my life. Any way I can have you.”
For the space of a heartbeat she let herself remember the doubts and insecurities that had racked her after her divorce. She’d jumped in once with both feet and damned near drowned.
But she hadn’t jumped in with Jack. As quickly as they’d come, the doubts disappeared. Just went away. Washed out to sea like tidal scum.
Life was all about taking risks. Every mission Charley went on, every op Jack participated in, underscored those risks. Yet they each went for it. Each grabbed at danger, chewed it up, spit it out. This was no different, and she’d be flat-ass stupid to pass up the chance to share her life with someone she respected and admired as much she lusted for. Still, she felt compelled to issue a warning.
“It won’t be easy. We’ve got separate careers. Serve in separate branches of the military. We’ll have to work around my deployments, your classified ops.”
He fisted his hands in her hair and dragged her mouth down to his. “Hell, Dawson, if I wanted easy, you think I’d fall for a stubborn, redheaded river rat?”
Chapter 10
Charley should have known Jack’s idea of “not pushing” differed considerably from hers. He made that clear the following evening, a little more than fifteen minutes after they walked into the Enlisted Lounge of the Langley Club.
The Eustis-Langley complex was home to primarily army and air-force units, so they were well represented. But Charley spotted a fair number of navy and marines, as well as the flags of several foreign nations on sleeves and pocket patches.
Like the crowd in the Yorktown Pub the previous night, most of the men and women jamming the lounge wore BDUs.