“Come on.” Harvard took her arm and led her toward the road. “I confiscated a jeep. You look as if you could use about twelve straight hours with your eyes shut.”
“My car’s at the base.”
“You can pick it up tomorrow morning. I’ll give you a lift back.”
P.J. glanced at him, wondering if she’d imagined the implication of his suggestion—that he would still be with her come morning.
He opened the door of the jeep and would probably have lifted her onto the seat if she hadn’t climbed in. She closed the door before he could do that for her.
He smiled, acknowledging her feminist stance, and she had to look away.
As Harvard climbed into the jeep and turned the key in the ignition, he glanced at her again. P.J. braced herself, waiting for him to say something, waiting for him to bring up the subject of that incredible, fantastic and absolutely inappropriate kiss.
But he was silent. He didn’t say a word the entire way to the hotel. And when he reached the driveway, he didn’t park. He pulled up front, beneath the hotel overhang, to drop her off.
P.J. used her best poker face to keep her surprise from showing. “Thanks for the ride, Senior Chief.”
“How about I pick you up at 0730 tomorrow?”
She shook her head. “It’s out of your way. I can arrange to get to the base with Schneider or Greene.”
He nodded, squinting in the late-afternoon sunlight as he gazed out the front windshield. “It’s not that big a deal, and I’d like to pick you up. So I’ll be here at 0730.” He turned to look at her. “What I’d really like is to still be here at 0730.” He smiled slightly. “It’s not too late to invite me in.”
P.J. had to look away, her heart pounding almost as hard as it had been when she was hanging in that tree. “I can’t do that.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, surprising herself by saying it aloud. She unlatched the door. She had to get out of there. God knows what else she might say.
“I’ll see you at 0730,” he said. “Right here.”
P.J. nodded. She didn’t want to give in, but it seemed the easiest way to get him to take his bedroom eyes and those too-tempting lips and drive away. “All right.”
She pulled her aching body from the jeep.
“I was really proud to know you today, Richards,” Harvard said softly. “You proved to me that you can handle damn near anything. There’re very few men—except for those in the teams—I can say that about.”
She looked at him in surprise, but he didn’t stop. “You’ve done one hell of a good job consistently from day one,” Harvard continued. “I have to admit, I didn’t think a woman could cut it, but I’m glad you’re part of the CSF team.”
P.J. snorted, then laughed. Then laughed even harder. “Wow,” she said when she caught her breath. “You must really want to sleep with me.”
A flurry of emotions crossed his face. For the briefest of moments, he looked affronted. But then he smiled, shaking his head in amused resignation. “Yeah, I haven’t given you much to work with here, have I? There’s no real reason you should believe me.” But he caught and held her gaze, his eyes nearly piercing in their intensity. “But I meant what I said. It wasn’t some kind of line. I was really proud of you today, P.J.”
“And naturally, whenever you’re proud of one of your teammates, you French kiss ’em.”
Harvard laughed at her bluntness. “No, ma’am. That was the first time I’ve ever had that experience while on an op.”
“Hmm,” she said.
“Yeah, what’s that supposed to mean? Hmm?”
“It means maybe you should think about what it would be like to be in my shoes. You just told me you think I’m more capable than most of the men you know, didn’t you?”
He held her gaze steadily. “That’s right.”
“Yet you can’t deal with me as an equal. You’re impressed with me as a person, but that doesn’t fit with what you know about the world. So you do the only thing you can do. You bring sex into the picture. You try to dominate and control. You may well be proud of me, brother, but you don’t want those feelings to last. You want to put me back in my nice, safe place. You want to slide me into a role you can deal with—a role like lover, that you understand. So hmm means you should think about the way that might make me feel.” P.J. closed the door to the jeep.
She didn’t give him time to comment. She turned and walked into the hotel.
She didn’t look back, but she felt his eyes on her, watching her, until she was completely out of his line of sight.
And even then, she felt the lingering power of Harvard’s eyes.
CHAPTER NINE
HARVARD DIDN’T CATCH UP TO P.J. until after lunch. She’d left messages on his voice mail—both at home and in the office—telling him not to bother giving her a ride to the base in the morning. She was going in early, and it worked for her to catch a ride with Chuck Schneider.
He’d tried phoning her back, but the hotel was holding her calls.
Harvard had thought about everything she said to him as she got out of the jeep last night. He’d thought hard about it well into the early hours of the morning. And he thought about it first thing when he woke up, as well.
But it wasn’t until they were both heading to a meeting at the Quonset hut after lunch that he was able to snatch a few seconds to talk to her.
“You’re wrong,” he said without any ceremony, without even the civility of a greeting.
P.J. glanced at him, then glanced at Farber, who was walking alongside Joe Cat. The two men were a few yards ahead of her. She slowed her pace, clearly not wanting either of them to overhear.
But there was nothing to overhear. “Now’s not the time to get into this discussion,” Harvard continued. “But I just wanted you to know that I’ve thought—very carefully—about everything you said, and my conclusion is that you’re totally off base.”
“But—”
He opened the door to the Quonset hut and held it for her, gesturing for her to go in first. “I’d be more than happy to sit down with you this evening, maybe have an iced tea or two, and talk this through.”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t say yes, but she didn’t give him an immediate and unequivocal no, either.
Harvard took that as a good sign.
The main room in the Quonset hut had been set up as a briefing area.
Harvard moved to the front of the room to stand next to Joe Cat and Blue. He watched as P.J. took a seat. She made a point not to look at him. In fact, she looked damn near everywhere but at him.
That was, perhaps, not such a good sign.
P.J. paid rapt attention to Joe Cat as he outlined the exercise that would take place over the next few days. Day one would be preparation. The CSF team would receive Intel reports about a mock hostage situation. Day two would be the first phase of the rescue—location and reconnaissance of the tangos holding the hostages. Day three would be the rescue.
Harvard looked at the four finks sitting surrounded by the men of Alpha Squad. Schneider and Greene looked perpetually bored, as usual. Farber looked slightly disattached, as if his thoughts weren’t one hundred percent on the project being discussed. And P.J…. As the captain continued to talk, P.J. looked more and more perplexed and more and more uncomfortable. She shifted in her seat and glanced at Farber and the others but got no response from them. She risked a glance in Harvard’s direction.
There were about a million questions in her eyes, and he suspected he knew exactly what she wanted answered.
She finally raised her hand. “Excuse me, Captain, I’m not sure I understand.”
“I’m afraid I can’t go into any specifics at this time,” Cat told her. “In order for this training op to run effectively, I can’t give you any further information than I already have.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” P.J. said, “but it seems to me that you’ve already given us too much information. T
hat’s what I don’t understand. You’ve tipped us off as to the nature of this exercise. And what’s the deal with giving us an entire day to prepare? In a real-life scenario, we’ll have no warning. And everything I’ve learned from you to date stresses the importance of immediate action. Sitting around with an entire day of prep time doesn’t read as immediate in my book.”
Joe Cat moved to the front of the desk he’d been standing behind, sat on the edge and looked at P.J. He didn’t speak for several long moments. “Anything else bothering you, Richards?” he finally asked.
As Harvard watched, P.J. nodded. “Yes, sir. I’m wondering why the location of the terrorists and the rescue attempt will take place over the course of two individual days in two different phases of activity. That also doesn’t gel with a realistic rescue scenario. In the real world,” she said, using the SEAL slang for genuine real-life operations, “we wouldn’t go back to our hotel for a good night’s sleep in the middle of a hostage crisis. I don’t understand why we’re going to be doing that here.”
The captain glanced first at Blue and then at Harvard. Then he turned to the other finks. “Anyone else have the same problems Ms. Richards is having?” he asked. “Mr. Farber? You have any problems with our procedure?”
Farber straightened up, snapping to attention. As Harvard watched, he saw the FInCOM agent study the captain’s face, trying to read from Joe’s expression whether he should agree or disagree.
“He’s looking for your opinion, Mr. Farber,” Harvard indicated. “There’s no right answer.”
Farber shrugged. “Then I guess I’d have to say no. A training exercise is a training exercise. We go into it well aware that it’s make-believe. There’re no real hostages, and there’s no real danger. So there’s no real point to working around the clock to—”
“Wrong,” Harvard interrupted loudly. “There’s no right answer, but there are wrong answers, and you’re wrong. There’s a list of reasons longer than my—” he glanced at P.J. “—arm as to why it’s vitally necessary to train under conditions that are as realistic as possible.”
“Then why are we wasting our time with this half-baked exercise?” P.J. interjected.
“Because FInCOM gave us a rule book,” Joe explained, “that outlined in pretty specific detail exactly what we could and could not subject the CSF agents to. We’re limited to working within any given ten-hour period. We can’t exceed that without providing you with a minimum of eight hours downtime.”
“But that’s absurd,” P.J. protested. “With those restrictions, there’s no way we’re going to be able to set up a scenario that has any basis in reality. I mean, part of the challenge of dealing with the stress of a hostage crisis is coping with little or no sleep, of being on the job forty-eight or seventy-two or—God!—ninety hours in a row. Of catching naps in the back of a car or in the middle of the woods or… This is ludicrous.” She gestured toward herself and the other FInCOM agents. “We’re big boys and girls. We’ve all been on assignments that have required us to work around the clock. What’s the deal?”
“Someone upstairs at FInCOM is afraid of the SEAL teams,” Joe said. “I think they think we’re going to try to drag you through some version of BUD/S training. We’ve tried to assure them that’s not possible or even desirable. We’ve been actively trying to persuade FInCOM to revise that restrictive rule for weeks now. Months.”
“This is just plain stupid.” P.J. wasn’t mincing words. “I can’t believe Kevin Laughton would agree to this.”
Harvard stepped forward again. “We haven’t been able to reach Laughton,” he told her. “Apparently the man has dropped off the face of the earth.”
P.J. looked at her watch, looked at the Baywatch calendar that was pinned to the wall near Wesley’s computer. “Of course you haven’t been able to reach him. Because he’s on vacation,” she said. “He’s got a beach house on Pawley’s Island in South Carolina.” She stood. “Captain, if you let me use your office, I can call him right now—at least make him aware of the situation.”
“You have the phone number of Laughton’s vacation house?” Harvard couldn’t keep from asking. P.J. and Laughton. There was that image again. He liked it even less today.
P.J. didn’t answer. Joe had already led her into his office, shutting the door behind her to give her privacy.
Harvard turned to the finks and SEALs still sitting in rows. “I think we’re done here for now,” he said, dismissing them.
He turned to find the captain and Blue exchanging a long look.
“How well does she know Laughton, anyway?” Joe murmured.
Blue didn’t answer, but Harvard knew exactly what both men were thinking. If she knew her boss well enough to have his home phone number, she knew him pretty damn well.
The call came within two hours.
Harvard was surfing the net, wondering how long he’d have to wait before he could head over to P.J.’s hotel, wondering if she’d agree to have a drink with him or if she’d hide in her room, not answer the phone when he called from the lobby.
Wondering exactly what her connection to Kevin Laughton was.
The phone rang, and Wes scooped it up. “Skelly.” He sat a little straighter. “Yes, sir. One moment, Admiral, sir.” He put the call on hold. “Captain, Admiral Stonegate on line one.”
Joe went into his office to take the call. Blue went in with him, closing the door tightly behind them both.
“That was too quick.” Lucky was the first to speak, looking up from his computerized game of golf. “He’s either not calling about the FInCOM project or he’s calling to say no.”
“How well does P.J. know Kevin Laughton?” Bobby put down his book to voice the question they all were thinking.
“How well do you have to know a girl before you give her the phone number of your beach house?” Wes countered.
“I don’t have a beach house,” Bobby pointed out.
“Suppose that you did.”
“I guess it would really depend on how much I liked the girl.”
“And what the girl looks like,” Lucky added.
“We know what the girl looks like,” Wes said. “She looks like P.J. Exactly like P.J. She is P.J.”
“For P.J., I’d consider going out and buying a beach house, just so I could give her my number there,” Bobby decided.
Harvard spun around in his chair, unable to listen to any more inane speculation. “The girl is a woman and her ears are probably ringing with all this talk about her. Show a little respect here. So she had her boss’s phone number. So what?”
“The Senior Chief is probably right,” Wes said with a grin. “Laughton probably gives his vacation phone number to all the agents he works with—not just the beautiful female agents he’s sleeping with.”
Crash spoke. He’d been so quiet, Harvard had almost forgotten he was in the room. “I’ve heard that Laughton just got married. He doesn’t seem to be the kind of man who would cheat on his wife—let alone a bride of less than a year.”
“And P.J.’s not the kind of woman who would get with a married man,” Harvard added, trying to convince himself, as well. He’d come to know P.J. well over the past few weeks. He shouldn’t doubt her, but still, there was this tiny echo of a voice that kept asking, Are you sure?
“I’m friends with a guy who’s working for the San Diego police,” Lucky said, opening the wrapper of a granola bar. “He said working with women in the squad adds all kinds of craziness to the usual stress of the job. If you’re working a case with a female partner and there’s any kind of attraction there at all, it can easily get blown out of proportion. Think about it. You know how everything gets heightened when you’re out on an op.”
Harvard kept his face carefully expressionless. He knew firsthand what that was about. He’d experienced it yesterday afternoon.
The captain came out of his office, grinning. “We got it,” he announced. “Permission to trash the rule book and permission to take our little finks out
of the country for some on-location fun and games. We’re going west, guys—so far west, it’s east. Whatever P.J. said to Kevin Laughton—it had an impact.”
“There’s your proof,” Lucky said. “She calls Laughton, two hours later, major policies are changed. She’s doin’ him. Gotta be.”
Harvard had had enough. He stood up, the wheels of his chair rattling across the concrete floor. “Has it occurred to you that Laughton might have responded so quickly because he respects and values P.J.’s opinion as a member of his staff?”
Lucky took another bite of his granola bar, thinking for a moment while he chewed. “No,” he said with his mouth full. “She’s not interested in any kind of new relationship—she told me that herself. She doesn’t want a new relationship because she’s already got an old relationship. With Kevin Laughton.”
Harvard laughed in disbelief. “You’re speculating.” He turned to the captain. “Why are we talking about this? P.J.’s relationship with Laughton is none of our damned business—whatever it may be.”
“Amen to that,” Joe Cat said. “The exercise start date has been pushed back two days,” he announced. “Anyone on the CSF team should take a few days of leave, get some rest.” He looked at Crash. “Sorry, Hawken. I know you’re going to be disappointed, but apparently there are a few Marines who’ve been working with the locals, and they’re going to be our terrorists for this exercise. You’re going to have to go along as one of the good guys.”
Crash’s lips moved into what might have been a smile. “Too bad.”
The captain looked at Harvard. “We’re going to have to notify P.J. and the other finks—let ’em know we’re heading to Southeast Asia.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Harvard said.
Joe Cat smiled. “I figured you’d want to.”
“Make sure you tell ’em to put their wills and personal effects in order,” Wes said with a grin that dripped pure mischief. “Because from now on, there’re no rules.”
P.J. finished the steak and baked potato she’d ordered from room service and set the tray in the hall outside her room. She showered and pulled on a clean T-shirt and a pair of cutoff sweatpants and then, only then, did she phone the hotel desk and ask them to stop holding her calls.
Tall, Dark and Dangerous Vol 1: Tall, Dark and FearlessTall, Dark and Devastating Page 113