“Try a few hundred,” he told her. “Like, three hundred.”
What? “How could that have happened?”
“We didn’t spend a lot of time speculating,” he said with an adorable smile. There was no doubt about it, Muldoon was gorgeous with that chiseled face—a nose that was the closest thing to perfection she’d ever seen, those cheekbones, that sensitive mouth and strong jawline and chin. It was not a hardship to sit here and watch him tell his story, watch his eyes light with amusement, watch emotion and candlelight play across his face.
“We were in the middle of the jungle, near this mountain road. It was raining so hard visibility was down to eight inches, communications had crashed, our team leader was missing, and we had four hours to travel three hundred miles to meet L.T.—Lieutenant Paoletti—and his squad for an op that was . . . Well, let’s just say we needed to be there. But the senior chief is undaunted. He goes out to find us a truck. We need wheels because we’re running out of time—so he’s going to get us wheels. Our job is to find Lieutenant O’Brien, our missing CO.
“Stan set up a rendezvous point where we’re all supposed to meet—him with a vehicle and us with O’Brien. And then we start search patterns. It was a big jungle—I’m talking a needle in a haystack situation.
“But Izzy and I found him. He’d hit his head and was way out of it. I remember thinking, thank God—because the last thing I wanted to do was show up at that rendezvous point empty-handed.” He laughed softly. “I also remember think-ing, thank God he’s unconscious. Now the senior chief will remain in command, and he’ll get us out of here. I mean, I outrank the senior, sure, but I didn’t have the experience, so . . .”
“Let me guess,” Teri said, her chin in her hand as she watched him. “While you found O’Brien, Stan managed to find a truck.”
“He did.” Muldoon grinned. “It just so happened that it was filled with cocaine and being pursued rather relentlessly by the angry drug runners he’d stolen it from. So suddenly we’re in a firefight, and the senior chief’s like, ‘Well, I couldn’t just leave the drugs behind, could I?’ As calm and matter-of-fact as could be.”
Teri had to smile. She could just picture Stan. . . .
“Did I mention the volcano?” Mike said.
She laughed. “You’re making this up, aren’t you?”
“I swear to God, I’m not. This really happened on my first op with the team.”
“A volcano,” she said. “Where did you say you were?”
“I didn’t. But you can probably guess.”
“I’d bet it wasn’t Hawaii.”
He laughed—a flash of white teeth. “You’d win. Anyway, there we are. We’re being chased by forty angry men with automatic weapons, and Mount Kumquat or whatever the heck it was called chooses that moment to erupt. Now, it’s not quite in our neighborhood, but it’s close enough for some pretty intense earthquakes as we’re zooming down this mountain, heading for some little one-hut town in the valley. The road is crumbling beneath our wheels and Senior’s like, ‘Oh, good. This way security’ll be down on the airfield.’ Turns out there was a map in the truck—he’s pinpointed where we are and where we need to be, and there’s a nearby airport where we’re going to steal a plane so we can get there.”
“Of course,” Teri said with a laugh. “I should have guessed.”
“Yeah,” Muldoon said, grinning back at her. “It won’t be easy, but we’re SEALs. We can do it. At least that’s what the senior chief tells us. He has me and Jimmy rig enough C-4 to blow the truck and the drugs to Kingdom Come. Turns out—oops—the airport is a military air base, but Senior turns that snafu to our advantage, too. We drive that truck right through the locked gate and trigger the explosives—and we’ve got ourselves a nifty little diversion. We get off the ground in a military transport, complete with jump gear.
“By now O’Brien is awake and pretty embarrassed that he missed most of the action. He swears he’s feeling up to making another jump, so Senior tells Cosmo to set the plane on autopilot—it’s got just enough fuel so that it’ll go down over the ocean—and we get ready to make our second jump of the day.
“Visibility sucks because of the ash and dust from the volcano, but the senior chief says he knows where we are. He says jump, so we jump.”
“And . . . ?” Teri said. This entire story was pure Stan. Missed LZs. Rainstorms, volcanos, earthquakes, drug runners, trucks filled with cocaine. He would glower about the PITA factor, but then he’d go about taking it all in stride—and making things right.
“And he was right. He knew where we were,” Muldoon told her with another smile. “This time we hit the ground an eighth of a mile from the LZ. We made it to the rendezvous point with Lieutenant Paoletti with ten minutes to spare.
“And L.T. says, ‘We expected you here sooner. Did you have any problems, Senior?’ And the senior chief doesn’t bat an eye. He kind of shrugs and says, ‘Nothing the team couldn’t handle, sir.’ ”
Nothing he couldn’t handle was more like it. And it was true. There was nothing that Stan couldn’t deal with. Nothing he couldn’t fix.
Except maybe for the fact that Teri couldn’t stop thinking about him—couldn’t stop wanting him. Even when she was sitting here with Muldoon, who was undeniably gorgeous and incredibly sweet.
“You okay?” he asked.
She looked up to find concern in his pretty eyes. What was wrong with her? It was obvious that this man was interested in taking their budding friendship and tweaking it up a level. Or ten. But when she looked at him, she felt . . .
Exhausted.
And maybe a little flattered.
That was the best she could do. Maybe after a good night’s sleep . . .
“You look beat,” Muldoon said gently. “We should get out of here so you can get some rest.”
Teri didn’t argue. She let him lead her out of the restaurant, let him carry her heavy flack jacket. Together they went up the endless stairs and into the dimly lit hotel lobby.
“Which tower are you in?” he asked.
“West. You?”
He rolled his eyes. “South. But it’s not that far—I’ll walk you up anyway.”
“That’s okay,” Teri told him, shaking her head no. She didn’t want him to. She didn’t want to stand awkwardly with him outside of her room, praying that he wouldn’t try to kiss her good night.
She didn’t want to kiss him. Not after kissing Stan earlier this afternoon.
God, she’d never been kissed quite like that before. With so much passion and power and ferociousness. She gazed up at Muldoon, watching his mouth as he said something to her, something she couldn’t hear over the memory-induced roaring in her ears.
No, although he had a very nice mouth, Teri didn’t want to . . .
He kissed her.
Muldoon kissed her. Right there in the lobby, where anyone could see them. Shock made her just stand there, so he kissed her again, settling his mouth against hers. As far as kisses went, it was nice—warm and soft and sweet.
And Teri realized that she’d asked for this. By looking at his mouth the way she had, he’d no doubt assumed that she wanted him to kiss her.
Oh, damn.
She stepped back, away from him, pulling out of his arms.
They were standing in the gloom of a lobby that was more shadows than light, thanks to the current brownout. And it was an empty lobby, too, thank goodness. No one had seen them.
Muldoon was looking at her as if he were thinking about kissing her again, so she quickly held out her hand to him. “Good night.”
He laughed as he shook her hand and opened his mouth to speak. “Teri, I—”
Teri didn’t want to hear it. So she did what she did best. She took her jacket from him and ran away.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fifteen
Teri nearly sprinted to the stairs, leaving Mike Muldoon gazing after her.
Stan sat down in one of the hotel lobby’s battered easy chairs, suddenly exhausted.
He eased himself farther back into the gloom as Muldoon crossed to the south stairwell, praying that the ensign wouldn’t see him, wouldn’t stop to say hello.
Stan didn’t think he could stand exchanging pleasantries with anyone while he was so goddamn tired.
Yeah, right. That was it. His sudden aversion to Mike Muldoon had nothing to do with the fact that he’d just watched the guy kissing Teri Howe.
What the hell was wrong with Stan? He wanted Mike and Teri to hook up.
But he didn’t want to have to watch them kissing.
Have to? Yeah, he really had to stand here and watch. He couldn’t possibly have slipped deeper into the shadows and silently walked away. He couldn’t possibly have used another stairwell to get up to his room.
No, instead he had to stay and watch and freaking torture himself. Because the sad truth was that he wanted this woman for himself. He wanted to take advantage of her trust, of the way she looked to him for advice and help. Screw the fact that a guy like Mike would be good for her. Screw what she needed, because Stan burned for her.
That kiss Muldoon had given her—that was no real kind of kiss. Teri hadn’t leaned into it, hadn’t leaned into him. She hadn’t reached for him at all. She’d backed away, shaken Muldoon’s hand. And he’d just stood there when she walked away.
Christ.
Wasn’t the fact that Stan had gotten the two of them together enough? Did he have to teach Muldoon how to kiss the woman, too?
That kiss had been nothing like the way she’d kissed Stan just hours earlier.
God damn it, he should just give up. He should just go to her room. He should knock on her door on the pretense of making sure she was okay after all that she’d told him that afternoon.
It wouldn’t take much effort on his part to get her clothes off, to get her naked and eager beneath him. And that wasn’t ego talking—it was years of experience, of coming to conclusions after gathering evidence and facts.
All he had to do was stand up, walk the few extra flights of stairs up to her room instead of his.
That was all he had to do.
That, and throw away his belief of what was right, of what it meant to be a man of honor.
God damn, he still couldn’t believe what she’d told him, what had happened to her when she was only eight. It wasn’t as terrible as it might have been, thank God for that. But it was still awful. And it still made her vulnerable, that was for damn sure.
Knowing that made him more convinced than ever that someone like Mike Muldoon—sweet, funny, sensitive Mike—was exactly what Teri needed.
Stan put his head back and closed his eyes, trying to figure out the best way to approach Muldoon and offer him advice without offending him.
Helga couldn’t find her room.
She knew the number—it was written in her notepad: 808. She’d climbed all the way up to the eighth floor. She’d followed the numbers all the way down to 805, but then the hallway ended. There was a door, but it was locked. She couldn’t go any farther.
She’d almost sat down right there in the corridor and cried.
Instead she’d retraced her steps. She’d come back here.
All those stairs—both up and down—had been too much for her, and she sat now in a corner of the dimly lit lobby, disoriented, exhausted, and upset.
A group of military men, dressed for battle, went past her. She didn’t recognize any of them, but she knew she should. She should know their faces, know their names.
But she didn’t even know where she was. What city, what country even. What was wrong with her, that she didn’t know something so basic, so simple?
She shrank back into the shadows, her heart pounding, praying that the men didn’t see her. She was uncertain as to why she should hide her confusion, her disorientation. She only knew it was something that should be concealed from everyone.
She’d hidden in shadows from soldiers plenty of times before. She’d held her breath as she’d ducked behind the Gunvalds’henhouse, afraid he’d hear her gasping after she’d run all that way. She was careful to keep her eyes down as she listened for him—for Wilhelm Gruber—to march off down the street.
But he’d be back. The German soldier never patrolled far from Annebet’s house.
Helga scurried to the barn, where she knew she’d find Annebet and Marte, and maybe even Hershel, too. He’d left the house before she had, walking away from Poppi’s threats. But Helga had run as fast as she could, taking shortcuts through yards and muddy alleys that Hershel wouldn’t—not dressed the way he was in his good suit.
She burst into the barn. Just as she’d known, Marte was playing with the puppies, Annebet was . . . Helga didn’t know what Annebet was doing—she’d leapt up from her seat on a barrel and was concealing whatever she’d been holding behind her back.
“Helga, you scared me!” Annebet scolded. “What are you doing here at this time of evening?”
“Hershel,” she gasped, and Annebet dropped what she’d been holding. It fell with a thump onto the floor—a deadly looking gun. Helga stared at it, but Annebet knelt in front of her.
“Please tell me he’s all right.” Her face was pale, her voice shaky.
“I’m all right.” Hershel closed the door tightly behind him as Annebet sprang up with a cry of relief.
“Thank God!” She ran to him, threw herself into his arms.
Helga’s brother closed his eyes as he held her tightly.
It seemed such a private moment, Helga looked away. And found herself staring, once again, at the gun Annebet had been cleaning. Marte inched back, her eyes on her sister and Hershel as she pushed the gun behind the barrel Annebet had been using as a seat, hiding it.
“I thought you don’t believe in God.” Hershel pulled back to look into Annebet’s eyes.
“I think I might now,” she told him. “I was sure Helga was coming to tell me you’d been taken. Or killed.”
He touched her cheek. “I’m not the one who’s started carrying a gun.” He pulled away from her, crossed to the barrel, and nudged the gun out from behind it with his foot.
“Maybe if you did, I’d worry about you less,” Annebet countered.
“What I worry about are all those kids in the resistance, walking around armed and dangerous. Someone’s going to get hurt—there’s going to be an accident. Bjorn Linden is fifteen years old. He carries a Luger wherever he goes—” Hershel broke off, shaking his head. “I didn’t come here to argue with you, Anna. I came here to . . .”
“He came here to marry you,” Helga said.
Annebet laughed, but then realized that Hershel didn’t deny it.
“You fought with your parents,” she guessed correctly. “They forbid you to see me.” She turned away from him in frustration. “I’m not going to marry you in some kind of reaction to their anger. I’m not going to marry you, period. We’ve been through this before.”
“No, we haven’t,” Hershel said. “We haven’t been through all of it. You forgot to mention the part where you love me more than your own happiness. You forgot to say that you’d marry me in a heartbeat if you weren’t convinced that doing so would cause a rift between my parents and me.”
As Helga watched wide-eyed, Annebet steeled herself. She turned to face Hershel, to meet his gaze.
“That’s right,” she said. “I would. As much as I would hate it, I could live with the talk, the whispers from strangers. I could even live with you never getting that position at the university. I could live in America, as long as you were with me. But I can’t live with knowing that I came between you and your parents. I can’t—”
“But you haven’t,” he told her, stepping toward her, holding her by the elbows and all but shaking her. “Don’t you see? You haven’t done anything but love me, too. God, I love you, and I will until the day I die! Whether you marry me or not, my heart is yours.”
Annebe
t had tears in her eyes, and Marte was flat out crying.
But Hershel wasn’t finished. “He told me if I left the house, he’d disown me. I don’t want his money—that part of his threat meant nothing to me. As for his love . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t want that either, if having it means I’ve got to let him control me. This isn’t about you. Not really. It’s about me not living my life the way my father wants me to.”
“It’s just that he wants what’s best for you.”
“He wants what’s best for himself,” Hershel countered. “Love should be unconditional. He should have said congratulations, not—” His voice shook. “—you will be my son no more.”
Troubleshooters 03 Over The Edge Page 28