Bears of Burden: STERLING

by Candace Ayers

  I’d picked the bar I thought would be the least likely to attract anyone I knew. I didn’t want to hit the O Club and risk having to run into someone I’d need to have a civil, intelligent conversation with.

  Not tonight. Tonight I just wanted the chance to be sullen and enjoy a drink.

  I found a spot at the bar and ordered from the bartender, a good looking man in a tight shirt. Hmm, if I played my cards right, maybe I wouldn’t need to drive myself home after all.

  He returned with my vodka and asked my name, but it turned out I wasn’t in as much of a mood to flirt as I thought.

  I didn’t have the energy to keep a conversation with him going, and when he disappeared to take someone else’s order, he wasn’t eager to return to me.

  So much for playing my cards right.

  Chad

  I pushed the door open. God, I needed a drink.

  I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her, and it was pissing me off.

  Everything about her had been irritating. The way she’d assumed she had some sort of expertise that she could provide me with. Even if I hadn’t been her senior, I would have been damn insulted by that. Didn’t she have any knowledge at all about my background and career?

  Irritating didn’t even begin to describe it.

  The bar was just what I needed. The heavy smell of smoke lingering in the air, the haze that came with people looking to get away, to forget who they were and where they were coming from.

  Desperation, I suppose some people might call it.

  But, I call it relaxation.

  There was a brunette at the bar, her long hair tumbled down her back, the smooth skin of her back and shoulders mostly exposed. The scrap of a tank top she wore barely hid a tattoo that peeked out by her shoulder blade and then again just above the waist of her pants.

  That was what I needed. I tried not to notice the incredible shape of her ass in those jeans on that stool.

  I was moving toward her, intent on buying myself a drink and on buying her a drink too, I hoped. I needed to ease some of the frustration I’d been feeling since that encounter with Doc Thiel that morning.

  Shit. I immediately resented the fact that I was thinking about her right now, right when I was in the midst of escaping her.

  At first, I attributed that faint smell of wildflowers and sunshine to the unwanted memory of her. Until I sat down next to the woman at the bar, deliberately brushing up against her just enough so she might turn my way.

  Fuck. It’s her.

  The woman I’d spent an entire day stewing over.

  The woman I had come here to forget about.

  The woman whose ass I’d been eyeing the whole way across the bar.

  Dr. Brenna Thiel, herself.

  I stared blankly at her for a moment, unable to process the fact that moments before I’d been contemplating how I might take her home, peel the clothes off of her, and inspect that tattoo up close and personal.

  Apparently, I didn’t recover quickly enough, because I watched her eyes narrow, her full mouth twisting down into a frown.

  “Major,” she said in what I suppose was meant to pass as a strangled greeting.

  “Doctor,” I said in return, knowing that the omission of her military rank was going to eek a rise out of her.

  And liking the flash of heat and fire I saw snap in her eyes.

  Damn. The woman was infuriating.

  But, even knowing it was Brenna Thiel did nothing to mitigate the throb of desire I was feeling for her, the urge to run my hands through that hair and pull that killer body of hers close to mine.

  I was going to need a double shot.

  Silence stretched between us, and I was wondering if I should relocate, or even leave the bar altogether and just consider this night a failure when she sighed and began to talk.

  “Listen,” she said, pushing a piece of hair behind her ear so I got an uninhibited view of the delicate shell of her ear, a series of little silver hoops through the lobe.

  I tried to ignore pangs of desire that shot through me.

  “I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’d like to start over with you. Whether we agree on things or not, we are going to have to work together, and I think it will be in our best interest and in the best interest of our cadets to display civility and respect towards one another despite our different views.”

  My eyebrow arched upward.

  That was certainly not what I had been expecting.

  I watched her press down on her lower lip with her teeth and I had the sudden thought that I wished it was my lip instead.

  Dammit. I wanted her. Fiercely.

  It had been a long time since I’d had a woman, and of course it would be the one woman I shouldn’t have at all. The one woman I shouldn’t even consider wanting.

  That seemed pretty par for the course these days.

  “Alright, Captain. I think we can do that.” I knew I should stop there. I knew it, but instead I said, “Can I buy you a drink to celebrate our fresh start?”

  She graced me with a genuine smile, and I thought my heart might stop beating.

  “That sounds perfect.”

  It did. I raised my hand to catch the bartender’s eye and waited for him to come and take my order.

  I don’t think either one of had anticipated being out that late, but it was closing time when we finally headed out.

  I hadn’t wanted to file away the sound of Brenna’s laughter, or the little face she would make when she was thinking.

  But I knew it was happening, becoming a memory I was going to pull forward again and again. It didn’t matter if I wanted it to be a savored memory or not.

  “Do you need a ride home?” I asked, as we walked into the parking lot.

  “No, I’m good,” she said, flipping her hair back over her shoulder in an unmistakably feminine gesture that reminded me she was a woman first, doctor and soldier second.

  I knew she probably was good to drive, but I still felt a little tinge of disappointment. Not that I was really sure what I thought might come from giving her a ride home. A torrid little tryst? A kiss goodnight on a front step like an actual date?

  Neither one of those was going to happen, no matter how damn appealing I found them, and I cursed myself for even considering them.

  She stopped walking next to a car I could only assume was hers and gave me another one of those heart-stopping smiles.

  “Thanks for tonight, Major. I think we’re off to a good start.”

  “I think you should call me Chad,” I said, not ready yet to have her disappear into the car.

  She gave a little noncommittal sound and pulled open the door to the driver’s side. “Maybe,” she said, positioning herself so the door was separating us.

  I stepped in toward her anyway, the door providing me with an excuse to stand closer than I should to her.

  “Definitely.” I wanted to hear her say my name, see its shape on her lips.

  God, I wanted that. Which was exactly why I needed to get away from Doctor Brenna Thiel.

  “Goodnight,” she said, folding herself into the car and fastening her seat belt. She gave the smallest wave of her hand before starting the car and pulling away, leaving me in the parking lot watching her taillights disappear into the dark.

  I stood there a moment longer, both wishing things had ended differently, and wishing I hadn’t let them go where they had.

  Then I crossed the lot to my bike and pulled my helmet on, kicking the bike into gear, the sound of the engine drowning out the sound of my thoughts, at least for a little while.

  CHAPTER 3

  Brenna

  I let myself sleep in later than I should have.

  I figured I deserved it because I hadn’t let anything happen between Matthews and me last night.

  And, somehow, somewhere along the way, it was like I’d forgotten what a total ass he was, and I’d desperately wanted something to ignite between us.

  I knew I wasn’t al
one in that desire — I’d seen it reflected in his eyes — but if that overture at the end of the night was any indication, I was certainly the more likely of the two of us to prevent it from happening.

  I wasn’t sure if that was something to be proud of, or something to be resigned to.

  I put him out of my mind as best I could and managed to make it through the next few days without our encounters hanging over my head.

  I wasn’t going to be able to avoid it forever, though, because classes were about to ramp up and I’d see him daily.

  It wasn’t going to be pretty, either. We’d be doing unpleasant simulations, and at the end of the six-week course, we’d have the mother of all survival experiences. The plan was to turn loose the cadets at the bottom of the mountain and let them rely on everything they’d learned to pull them through.

  I’d seen sworn vegetarians kill a rabbit with their own hands at the end of a week of survival skills.

  Major and I would be out there on the outskirts, watching them, aiming to be as undetectable as possible, just an emergency resource at their disposal. One more safeguard against a tragedy happening.

  That meant he and I would be spending a lot of time together. Alone. Unsupervised. In the mountains. With nothing to do.

  I was trying not to focus on that part of the course. I was pretty sure I could come up with a few ways we could keep ourselves occupied. And it wasn’t gin rummy.

  I fought a growing desire to “accidentally” run into Chad Matthews. I threw myself into rounds at the hospital. I stayed late. I picked up shifts. I did whatever I could to avoid going home to my military issue two-bedroom apartment. Idle hands and all that.

  But I was officially out of time.

  Tomorrow, bright and early, I was going to be in a classroom with a list of cadets in front of me.

  And a man beside me that I couldn’t seem to put out of my mind.

  Chad

  I had the distinct impression I was being intentionally avoided.

  Not that I was broken up about it, or anything. The Captain was just one in a sea of pretty women I didn’t have time for. Yep, one more that I had no interest in using as anything more than a brief distraction.

  I told myself that at least twice a day.

  I also tried to kid myself into believing that I wasn’t looking forward to the coming week, when I would have the excuse to see her every day.

  Not excuse. It wasn’t an excuse. It was a job requirement.

  If I were being brutally honest with myself, I would have to admit that Brenna had totally derailed me. Since that night at the bar, I had only felt myself spiraling further and further from myself, the pull of the mountains and the night stronger than I wanted to admit.

  It was part of the reason I had enlisted in the military. To learn to control it. To learn to dampen the urges and needs that were rooted in my very soul.

  But now, each step outside into the new summer air sent a tingle spiraling along my skin, had me on the very edge of my senses, all but sniffing the air like an animal.

  I hadn’t felt this out of control since I was a teenager, dammit, and I wasn’t relishing the trip down memory lane.

  A cold shower and two cups of biting hot coffee later, I was dressed and ready to meet the class.

  The campus was a quick walk from temporary housing, where I had been put up over the summer. This wouldn’t be a long term position for me — just something to fill the stretching void between deployments. It looked good to my teams when I was overseas, and it looked good to the cadets when I was there at the Academy. The Air Force knew how to use its resources.

  I’d been in the classroom the day before to make sure I had everything I’d need. I wasn’t a big believer in using a classroom for teaching something like survival. Anything I could teach in a classroom, they could learn themselves from a damn book. But, there were a few things we could go over for safety’s sake.

  We’d spend the first week in there, max, then we would be out in the field, setting snares, starting fires, putting out fires, working without instrumentation… thinking about the syllabus had me excited all over again. We would do our best to address any and all of the scenarios they might find themselves faced with.

  Maybe that was the way to keep Brenna out of the equation. Focus on the nitty gritty. Don’t engage her.

  Certainly don’t think about that tattoo, or the incredible way she filled out a pair of jeans. Or that mouth.

  Dammit. I hadn’t even seen her this morning and she was already consuming my thoughts.

  This could prove to be the longest summer of my life. If I couldn’t get my bear under control.

  She hadn’t arrived at the classroom yet, so I set about writing on the board organizing the handouts, and setting up my clipboard so I could call roll as soon as class started.

  It was five minutes to the start of class and cadets were already arriving. Brenna hadn’t made her appearance yet.

  I was beginning to wonder if she didn’t value punctuality, if she wasn’t planning on coming, or if she had somehow managed to get herself reassigned, when she arrived. She looked pleasantly flushed, like she’d been rushing to make it on time.

  “Morning, Doctor,” I said when she approached, her feet tapping on the old linoleum floor.

  “Morning, Major,” she murmured, her voice soft, making me think of early mornings and midnight confessions.

  I passed copies of the paperwork in her direction. “I assume you’ll be sharing some basic info with the class about how they should handle themselves and their bodies in a survival scenario?”

  “That’s correct,” she said, still not meeting my eyes and flipping through the paperwork she had brought. “Basic things they should know already, but we’ll go over it anyway.”

  Her dark eyes found mine for the first time that morning, and I immediately thought of that last heated moment in front of her car at the bar, before she’d driven off into the night reminding me that I meant nothing to her.

  Which was probably the cold, hard truth.

  “Besides,” she continued, one finely shaped eyebrow lifting upwards, “I expect you’ll be going over everything I’d planned to cover anyway.”

  I couldn’t help the grin I gave her, because she was correct. Whatever trauma protocol she was interested in giving them, I would cover without a filter.

  I was going to go ahead and tell them all about emergency trachs and compound fractures. They deserved to know the worst of the truth before finding themselves wading through it all. Whatever clinical definition and direction Brenna was planning on giving them wasn’t going to do them a damn bit of good in the field.

  I knew from experience. She had only controlled environments under her belt.

  She probably hadn’t done half of the things I’d had to do, in environs beyond unsuitable for the task, with no tools to speak of.

  But we weren’t in class to talk about my achievements or experiences. We were there to prepare the cadets for the career they’d chosen and the worst of the unforeseen circumstances.

  Wherever we differed in opinion, I was sure we were on the same page there.

  The clock struck the hour, and I turned to the class. I gave a brief introduction of both the doctor and myself before running roll.

  With everyone accounted for, I outlined the expectations, further class locations, appropriate clothing and foot wear, and the syllabus.

  Teaching cadets is sometimes like staring at a classroom full of children. You know they’re trying to process the information, but they’re distracted by every freaking thing.

  Worse than children, maybe.

  And if I caught one more fucking cadet staring at Brenna, I was going to be sending him into a survival sim he was most assuredly not going to enjoy.

  I might not be able to make many promises during a survival class, but that was one thing I could state with certainty.

  CHAPTER 4

  Brenna

  I’d somehow
managed to make it through the first two weeks of the class without killing Matthews.

  Or having sex with him.

  So, as far as I was concerned, we were in pretty good shape.

  We would meet wherever we were scheduled to meet, and it changed every time. Sometimes we were in a flat field. Sometimes we were in the shade of the craggy mountain. Frequently, wherever we were, we were caught in the growing heat of the Colorado summer in full gear. Hot and uncomfortable.

  Everyone, that is, but Matthews who seemed to thrive under those conditions. The man looked like he was basking in the damn heat.

  Meanwhile, I was melting into a pathetic puddle of existence. But I was just here as the consult, anyway. With a man like Matthews, that meant my position was entirely a formality.

  A fact which he never let me forget.

  Now that we were well into the program, we were coming up on our first overnight, and I had the sinking suspicion things were about to get real.

  Our role as facilitators was clear. We weren’t there to hamper or interfere. We weren’t there to give direction.

  We were there to navigate emergencies and give them a grade, and if they deserved it, a recommendation.

  I was dreading the trip.

  And, part of me was looking forward to it. Whether I liked to admit it or not.

  I arrived on time with my duffel, just as expected, packed with all the things I was supposed to bring and nothing more. Major Matthews wasn’t one that would take kindly to fancy makeup brushes and clay facial masks.

  I wasn’t surprised to find Matthews on site already, waiting for everyone else. He was shading his eyes against the sun, looking for all the world like he had just sprouted out of the earth, and was waiting for his moment to return to it.

  He was breathtaking, if I were being honest, and it wasn’t the first time I had noticed. His clear grey eyes, the hard line of his jaw and strong brow.

  He was exactly the kind of man you imagined might teach a survival course. Right down to that scruff on his cheek that had him constantly looking like he’d shaved twelve hours earlier. Not to mention his tan.