“It’s true!” Muldoon laughed, but it sounded defensive. “I can’t help it if it’s true! When I’m with a woman, I let her set the pace, the mood—it’s all up to her. Is that so wrong?”
“No,” Stan said. “No, it’s great. It’s . . . actually exactly what Teri needs right now.”
What Teri needs . . . ? To use what appeared to be one of Stan’s favorite expressions, how the fuck did Stan know what Teri needed?
“It’s just, some women need . . . a little encouragement,” Stan continued. “A little obvious pursuit. They need . . . Look, don’t you ever picture her naked?”
Teri nearly spilled her coffee down the front of her shirt. What?
“I don’t know,” Muldoon said.
“How could you not know?” Stan countered with a laugh. “I mean, either you picture her naked or you don’t, Mike. That’s not a real tough question.”
Teri couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“I do, but I don’t want to admit it,” Muldoon admitted. “It’s not very nice to—”
“Are you a man?” Stan asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you straight?”
“Well, yeah. Jeez—”
“Don’t you find her attractive?”
“Of course. She’s beautiful. And she’s nice—”
“Fuck nice,” Stan said. “The woman is fucking hot, Muldoon. There’s not a single heterosexual man in the Troubleshooters Squad who hasn’t pictured her naked. Well, okay, maybe Nilsson because he’s a newlywed. But everyone else . . . And I’m not saying anyone should tell her this. She doesn’t need to know. Because it’s not a disrespectful thing. No one’s undressing her with their eyes. At least they better not be. It’s just, you know, you’re a guy, you’re daydreaming, and whoops, there she is. Naked.”
“Senior, I think I’m too tired for this conversation right now.”
“Give me just a few more minutes, Muldoon. Please.”
Teri held her breath, about to bolt for the door.
Mike sighed. “All right.”
“Look, sometimes that’s what a woman needs,” Stan said. “She needs to know that the guy she’s attracted to is out there picturing her naked—you know, that he wants her, too. So that’s what you do.”
“You want me to picture her naked.”
“For a genius, you’re one hell of an idiot.”
“Yeah, I’m kidding. I’m following you, Senior. I need to let her know that I want her. I got it. Except . . . I mean, I like her and all. I like her an awful lot. It’s just . . .”
“It’s just what?” Stan was completely exasperated. “How could you not be head over heels in love with this woman? She’s incredible, Muldoon. She’s got a body to die for, a face like an angel. Her eyes are . . . Have you even looked into her eyes? She has eyes that make you just want to, I don’t know, Christ, die for her if she asked you to.”
Teri’s heart was in her throat. The way Stan was talking, it sounded as if . . .
“I don’t understand why the hell you are hesitating here,” he continued. “Why are you not with her right now? What are you doing standing here talking to me? You should be outside her room right this very instant, knocking on her door, asking if she needs help scrubbing her back while she’s in the shower.”
Silence.
“Is it okay if I get some coffee first?” Muldoon asked.
Stan said a string of words Teri had never heard quite in that order before.
And then he completely killed any hope that had started growing inside of her with his poetic description of her eyes. Then he delivered the final death blow to her already tattered pride.
“Mike. Please,” he said. “I’m asking you to do me this favor. This girl—”
Girl. Oh, God, he called her a girl, and he was asking Muldoon to do him a favor.
“—needs someone like you in her life, someone willing to spend the extra effort both physically and emotionally to—”
Teri couldn’t stand to listen to another second of this. Stan—the senior chief—was virtually begging Muldoon to be with Teri. To be with Teri. He was trying to talk Muldoon into being her boyfriend, into sleeping with her. As a favor to him.
God, did he really think she was that completely desperate?
How hideously mortifying.
“Just ask her to lunch,” Stan was saying. “Just start there and see where it goes. Okay?”
Teri ducked out the door and into the lower lobby, just outside the restaurant doors. She could hear Stan and Mike coming down the stairs.
Shit. She had to hide.
One look at her and Stan would know that she’d overheard all of that. And the only thing more mortifying than overhearing that conversation would be having Stan know that she’d overheard.
There was a ladies’room across the faded red carpeting, and Teri ran for it, bursting through the door.
It was like the rest of the hotel. Tacky and faded, with broken tile and stalls that had out-of-order signs taped to the them. The single fluorescent bulb that still worked flickered.
She counted to a hundred. Splashed water on her face. Counted to a hundred again.
She tried to drink her coffee, but her hands were shaking too badly.
Stan asked Mike Muldoon to do him a favor, no doubt to get her off his back. Except what had all that been last night before they’d flown out to the airfield? Night or day, he’d told her. She should come to him night or day—if she wanted to talk.
Apparently if she wanted anything else, she should go to Mike Muldoon, who would take care of her as a favor for the senior chief.
God damn it.
Teri stared at her face flickering palely in the cracked bathroom mirror, willing herself not to cry.
At least she wasn’t throwing up.
Alyssa looked at herself in the mirror of Sam’s bathroom. She actually had tears brimming in her eyes, caught on her eyelashes, ready to spill over the edge and down her cheeks.
How pathetic was that? How pathetic was she?
She wiped them away with the heel of her hand.
Look on the bright side. At least she wasn’t throwing up and handcuffed—naked—to the asshole, the way she’d been the last time she’d spent the night with him.
This time, she was barely even hungover. Her head ached, but that was it.
Because, despite what Sam thought, she’d barely even been drunk last night.
Oh, she’d had a buzz on, that was for sure. She never would have had the courage—or the foolishness—to come to his room if she hadn’t.
Alyssa hung her towel on the rack and put on her clothes, cursing herself out soundly all the while.
What was wrong with her? Why on God’s green earth did she find herself so attracted to a man who didn’t give a damn about her? Sam Starrett was selfish and rude—shockingly so at times. The mouth on that man should have been—alone—enough to keep her far away from him. Forget about the fact that he was infuriating and egotistical and overbearing.
He was also the best lover she’d ever had.
He was funny and capable of being incredibly, impossibly tender.
And the way he’d kissed her good-bye this morning, as if he loved her with all his heart and soul, still took her breath away.
But it didn’t serve her well to remember that. What she should remember was the look on his face as he sat on his bed, taking off his boots. It’s my fucking room. Like he was an eight-year-old with a trash mouth—yeah, he was about as attractive as that. That’s what she should remember.
The heartless son of a bitch.
She opened the bathroom door, and Sam was standing there, holding her sandals. As if he wanted her to leave, fast. As if, now that it was morning, now that they were no longer going at it, he didn’t want anything more to do with her.
Anger burned her throat, her eyes, her chest, but she said nothing. Anger was better than the hurt, than the self-disgust. She took her sandals from him silently
and slipped them onto her feet.
He stood there watching her, big and grimy, his face smudged with the remains of camouflage paint, most of it sweated into a grayish mud. As she straightened back up, he cleared his throat. “So. If you ever want to do this again—”
Yeah, right. “I don’t,” she said coldly. “Trust me, I won’t be back.”
“Well, that’s kind of what I thought last time, sweet thing, but—”
Sweet thing. He was purposely trying to get her angry. Purposely baiting her, the asshole. She kept her voice cool and controlled. “Believe me, next time I’ll save myself the aggravation. I’ll just hook up with Rob Pierce.”
He took a step back as if she’d punched him in the stomach. Good. She was glad.
“Jesus,” he said. “That’s just great, Locke. That’s just . . . fucking perfect. You do that, babe. A married man is just your speed.” He turned and walked toward the window, standing there with his back to her, looking down through a crack in the curtains at the swimming pool below.
Rob Pierce was married? And what about “Don’t do it, Alyssa. You’ll feel awful in the morning”? Sam had sure changed his tune now that it was the morning.
Some of the hurt and misery leaked through Alyssa’s anger.
He’d been right. She did feel awful.
She should have taken his advice and applied it to all of the men she knew, Sam Starrett included. Sam Starrett especially. She should have gone back to her room alone last night.
Because lonely and restless was a hell of a lot better than this empty hurt she was feeling right now.
She went out the door without another word, closing it gently and permanently behind her, not even giving the bastard the satisfaction of hearing her slam it shut.
Sooner or later, Helga had to leave her room. She couldn’t hide here forever simply because she didn’t know what was waiting for her on the other side of that door.
Besides, she knew what was waiting for her—a bunch of Americans and Kazbekistanis, working together to bring those civilians safely off of that hijacked plane. World Airlines Flight 232—it said on one of her Post-it notes.
She had the names of all the major players in her notepad. The problem was, she wasn’t sure she’d recognize any of them even if she tripped over them in the lobby.
I know your secret.
She’d found the words in her notepad, written in Des’s strong handwriting.
It’s time to quit. Call Des and tell him.
That was written in her own hand, on a Post-it note that she’d put directly on the telephone at some point—probably last night.
She’d picked up the phone, but there was no dial tone.
Phone system sucks, said another of her notes, the word sucks underlined three times, with three exclamation points following it. Phone lines are not secure.
The Gunvalds had had no telephone.
Helga had hidden with her parents in their house, sleeping on the floor of their kitchen for nearly two weeks in late September and early October of 1943. It was after the terrifying news had come out that the Gestapo was going to round up the Danish Jews. After a hot summer filled with acts of sabotage and Danish resistance, the “peaceful occupation” was peaceful no longer. Everything had turned upside down.
Mother and Poppi hadn’t believed it at first. This was Denmark! That couldn’t happen here! But Herr Gunvald had come to the house and had managed to convince them to pack their valuables and hide.
Herr Gunvald had brought them here.
Fru Gunvald had offered the Rosens their bed, but Poppi had refused to put them out that way. “You’re already risking so much, just having us here,” he’d said, humbled by their generosity. Poppi—humbled. It was a day, a moment, Helga would never forget.
Annebet and Hershel had gone to Copenhagen despite the curfew to see what they could do about getting the Rosens passage on a fishing boat that would take them—illegally, and at great risk to all involved—across the sound to Sweden.
Fru Gunvald had served Helga and her parents big bowls of her delicious peasant’s soup. “This is nothing we wouldn’t do for any of our neighbors,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s wrong, what they’re doing, and we won’t let those Nazis do it.”
Herr Gunvald lowered his big-boned frame into the seat at the head of their kitchen table. He smiled at Marte as he passed the basket of brown bread to her, and he winked at Helga. “Herr Rosen, may we trouble you for a prayer of thanks for what we’re about to receive?”
Helga sat there while her father spoke, aware that her mother was crying, and that Fru Gunvald had reached over and taken her hand.
“It’s an awful thing,” Marte’s mother had murmured to hers, “to have to leave your home.”
Under the table, Marte took her hand and squeezed it. “You can stay with us forever,” she whispered.
They ate in silence then, for several minutes.
And then Poppi cleared his throat. “We’ll pay you,” he said. “Of course. For our room and board.”
Both Herr and Fru Gunvald stopped eating, their spoons almost comically poised halfway to their mouths. Fru Gunvald looked at Herr Gunvald and then kept on eating. Herr Gunvald put down his spoon.
“A few coins now and then to help pay for food would be appreciated,” he said easily. “Because we all know that Helga eats like a horse.” He gave Helga another wink. He was kidding. He was turning Poppi’s insult into a joke. “But other than that,” he added quietly, “it’s best you save your money. Who knows what expenses you’ll run into in Sweden.”
Poppi nodded. He kept eating his soup. But he’d started to cry, too, just like Mother.
“And what do you girls have planned for this evening?” Herr Gunvald purposely drew their attention away from Poppi. Helga had been terrified. Poppi—crying!
“I think a wonderful feast like this and good company calls for some music,” Herr Gunvald proclaimed. “Marte, go with Helga and fetch your recorder. I think a concert is just the thing.”
Helga never knew what her father said to the Gunvalds after she and Marte had left the room.
She could only guess.
;
She’d left her fanny pack in Starrett’s room.
Shit.
Alyssa stood in the stairwell and tried not to cry as she cursed her stupidity and bad luck.
So much for vowing never to look at, think about, or talk to the man again.
Her room key was in that pack. Her wallet. And the painkiller she was planning to take to try to soften the edge of this headache that was throbbing inside of her skull.
You’d think she’d’ve learned after last time. You’d think she would’ve never touched a drop of alcohol ever again.
Well, she hadn’t had a drink in six months. Not until last night.
She also hadn’t been with a man, hadn’t taken another lover, since she’d last been with Sam. No, she just got by on six-month-old memories and dreams and wishful thinking. On focusing all of her energy into her work.
Which had caught Max Bhagat’s attention and brought her here to K-stan where she found herself face-to-face with Sam Starrett and his amazing eyes and mouth and hands. Face-to-face with her inability to forget about him, the way she’d told herself she had to do.
Alyssa retraced her steps back to his room more slowly, rehearsing what she was going to say. She’d knock on the door and be cool and businesslike when he answered. “Sorry to bother you, Lieutenant.” Yeah, she’d address him by rank. “But I left my bag in your room.”
And then there she was. Standing in front of his door. Forced to face her folly one more dreadful time this morning. Come on, just get it over with. She squared her shoulders and knocked. Softly.
And the door popped open.
Apparently it hadn’t quite latched when she’d left. She knocked gently again, holding it open, but again there was no answer. No Sam striding toward her, the devil in his eyes as he smirked at her humiliation, holding
her fanny pack out to her, dangling it off of one elegantly long finger.
Damn, the man had nice hands.
For a son of a bitch.
He was probably in the bathroom, about to get into the shower.
And there was her fanny pack. On the floor where she’d dropped it—apparently along with her brain—when she’d first come in last night.
Troubleshooters 03 Over The Edge Page 33