Hotshot

by Jo Leigh

  With renewed vigor, she walked to the diner and one quick look told her Luke wasn’t there. Good. Excellent. How absurd that she’d thought, for even a moment, to avoid him.

  She slid into a booth, glad she didn’t have to eat liver again. She didn’t hate it, no, but she didn’t particularly like it. Another thing she’d never do again.

  She was a captain. Even without her rank, she was proud of who she was, and how she conducted herself. That he—that any man—could rattle her made her a little sick to her stomach.

  “What can I get you, Captain?”

  She smiled up at the older waitress, impressed by her savvy. The woman recognized rank designations on sight, and not only air force insignia. Sara had noticed that on two occasions when the waitress had addressed both army officers and marines. “Was your family in the service?”

  Bonnie—according to her name tag—shook her head. “From San Diego.”

  Sara glanced at her own right shoulder epaulet. “Smart.”

  “I always thought so,” Bonnie said, sharing a wry smile.

  “I’d like the chef’s salad with oil and vinegar on the side, please, and a large lemonade.”

  “You got it, Captain.”

  Sara opened up her newsletter, grinning at the woman’s ingenuity. No reason Sara couldn’t be equally clever in her own situation. Just as Luke knew a great deal about her, she knew a great deal about him. What she had to do was use that knowledge to her advantage. She would capitalize on his strengths, downplay his weaknesses.

  Luke was at his best playing to an audience. The team itself was good, but there weren’t enough of them to use as an accurate gauge. The tour was almost upon them, and she had to get him up to speed, and fast. So she would give him an audience. No visuals to interest a crowd, no auditorium to set expectations. Just Luke. Yes. She’d take him out for a test drive. See exactly what he had under the hood.

  AFTER ANOTHER poor night’s sleep, Luke had made it into the office two hours early and had heard all the revised talks by two o’clock. As the critiques progressed, he’d realized how greatly he’d underestimated his role. An extemporaneous talk in a group setting was one thing; a recruitment speech with targeted goals, another. Everyone on the team had better skills, had had time to work out the details. He would mostly be shooting from the hip. No question he did that well, but—apples and oranges.

  What he had to do now that he was alone in the conference room while the rest of the team was at dinner, before he even knew precisely what to study, was narrow his focus. The reason Sara needed a fighter pilot was to talk about being a fighter pilot. Sounded simple enough, but he’d already gone off on unnecessary tangents. The speech had to be streamlined, tailored, a laser beam highlighting not merely the good parts, but also the difficulties, the dangers, the odds.

  Thank God for Wiley’s notes. They were a tremendous asset, but Luke couldn’t use most of the speech as written. Not that it wasn’t accurate or even that he thought he could do better. It just wasn’t him. He wasn’t Wiley and it would be a mistake to try to be.

  He’d worked through lunch and planned on working until midnight. He wasn’t writing anything as organized as a rough draft, not yet. This was the first cull, that’s all; what he could keep from Wiley’s material, what had to go, what he’d use to replace the missing parts. He could do this. If he could keep his mind off Sara.

  He’d gotten used to thinking about her way before he’d arrived in San Diego. Ever since he’d joined up with Alf, his weapons system officer, back in the F-15. Civilians didn’t get what it was like for a pilot and his WSO. In any two-man jet, especially in war, a bond formed, one that everyone who flew understood was as important as the fuel or the engines. He and Alf had become a team, and even though it had started out all about the flying, the hundreds of hours they spent together had turned them into brothers. Alf was better at the bonding thing than Luke. He’d made it easy for Luke to talk about the important stuff, the stuff that wasn’t jets.

  Weirdly, once Luke had started, he’d had a hard time shutting up, and most of the conversations had been about Sara. Even before that night in Khwaran Ghar. Alf had been the one who’d pointed out that Luke had been saving up stories for her. It hadn’t mattered that they’d broken up years before. Luke had somehow figured that one day he’d be able to take out all the tales, the funny ones and the frightening ones—and especially the proud ones—and lay them out before her like a string of pearls. Alf had also pointed out that Luke’s ego was way the hell out of control.

  At least Luke understood that part now. The humiliating truth had hit him with the power of a mortar shell. It was no coincidence that every fighter pilot he knew thought they were God’s gift. You needed to be this side of overconfident to fly into combat. But there had to be a balance.

  The fact that he’d been willing to do whatever it took to fly the fast-movers had gotten him through training. Holding life and death in his hands had been a towering lesson in responsibility. But he’d only discovered bone-deep fear last year.

  After the crash, when he was safe once again, the pendulum had swung the other way, too far. He’d blamed himself for every damn thing. It had slowly come back near center, but he wasn’t there yet. The sweet spot kept eluding him. All he knew for sure was that Sara’s forgiveness wasn’t mandatory. His apology was.

  If he hoped for more, it was that she might help him find the final piece of his puzzle, that she would help him make sense of who he was now, because he didn’t have a clue.

  But he couldn’t apologize if she sent him packing, so it was back to the books, back to making his talk the best it could be. He could do this.

  IT WAS EIGHT-THIRTY when Sara got to the conference room and saw the light bleeding under the door. This after leaving multiple messages for Luke on his room-phone voice mail and his cell.

  She opened the conference room door ready to read him the riot act until she saw Luke with his head bowed over a notebook, papers spread out in a fan before him. He was completely focused on what he was writing. Even from the door she could see the tension in his neck, in how he held himself. She never thought of Luke like this. Even when he should have been tense, during finals, before important games, he’d always been loose and easy, his confidence as infuriating as it was enviable.

  His posture changed and he turned to face her, still gripping his pen tightly. He didn’t smile. In fact, if anything he seemed more tense. “Hey.”

  “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  His slow blink was followed by a glance to a pile of papers. He huffed a sigh as he uncovered his cell phone. “Shit. No bars.”

  “I see,” she said, stepping inside. “Working on your speech?”

  He nodded. “I’m trying to get it into shape. I thought it would be easier.”

  The admission caught her off guard. In the years she’d known Luke, he’d never made a statement like it. There had been plenty of times she’d suspected…known he was having trouble. He’d simply brushed it off, made a joke, changed the subject. This was different and unsettling.

  “Every word counts,” he said. “There’s a science to this. I’m going to have to lean on your expertise, I know that.” He pushed a tired hand through his short hair. “I’m trying to narrow down the field. Separate what matters to me from what would matter to a civilian.”

  “That’s right,” she said. This wasn’t the moment to think about her personal reaction. She focused on the speech, the job. The rest of the evening. “But it’s also important to trust your instincts. If they weren’t important, we would have hired speech writers. The personal stories are what capture the imagination.”

  He nodded slowly, putting his pen down. “You were trying to reach me?”

  She’d planned a test for him tonight, and now, seeing him grapple with such sincerity, she wondered if it was the right move. But yes, it was, because tonight would be about his instincts, and they both had to find out what he did with them. The real
question was, should she clue him in?

  “We have somewhere to go,” she said, deciding to let it play. “I’d like you to put that aside for now. Come with me.”

  He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Sure. Where to?”

  “You’ll find out,” she said.

  His gaze met hers, and again she saw his uncertainty, and again she hadn’t expected it.

  LUKE SAT IN THE BACKSEAT of a rental van. It was white, utilitarian and crammed with boxes. O’Malley drove, Sara sat shotgun. Neither one of them so much as glanced his way.

  He wanted to know what was going on, where they were headed, what the assignment was, but he’d been in the service too long to be impatient. At least as far as assignments went.

  The more pressing issue seemed to be his inability to sit still. He’d been fine for the first fifteen minutes, and then his gaze had caught on Sara’s right shoulder. She’d rolled it, as if she were trying to release some tension. He ended up stretching his own neck, but it didn’t do much good. Because after that, he couldn’t get his mind off Sara.

  He wanted to touch her. Her shoulder would do, but what called to him was the nape of her neck. It was a beautiful neck, and it didn’t surprise him that he remembered the feel of her skin. Or at least thought he did. It would only take a few seconds to confirm, his cool palm on that perfect expanse of warm flesh.

  Which would result in him being sent home with a large black mark on his record and a huge lost opportunity.

  So he sat and stared and tried to think of other things. Such as the fact that she hadn’t told him to bring his gear. Wherever they were going, it wasn’t to the airport. And they weren’t traveling south, so they weren’t going to knock him out and drag him across the Mexican border. Good to know.

  That was all he could glean from the trip so far. It was only natural, then, that his mind went back to Sara’s neck. He forced himself to look out his window. At the freeway. A freeway like all the other Southern California freeways, and he wasn’t familiar enough with the area for the signs to mean anything.

  The soft dark hairs that floated just underneath her neat twist pulled him back. It was long, her neck. He used to be able to fit his whole palm against it when he pulled her into a kiss. Sensitive, too. He loved to skim his fingertips down that delicate skin and feel goose bumps and shivers. So responsive. Vocal, too, when she could be.

  Her hand came up, touched the very spot he was staring at, and his breath held. The move only lasted a second, but damn, it took him a long while to exhale. She didn’t know, couldn’t know. She’d had an itch, that’s all. Nothing to do with him.

  Oh, Jesus, he had to stop. He was deep in boresight, unable to see the big picture, and that could get a man in trouble. They could pull off the freeway any second now, and he didn’t want to step out of the van with his cock at quarter-staff.

  He did the only thing he could. He closed his eyes and went through his pre-flight checklist. Slowly. And again.

  Finally, when they did exit the freeway, he had his wits about him, and he realized they must be very close to the beach in a touristy section of town. Despite the fact that it was past 10:00 p.m. the well-lit, wide boulevard was congested with slow cars and tanned people. The sidewalk patios had few empty tables, and when he lowered his window a little, music spilled out of the many bars like snapshots of sound.

  Curiosity pressed hard against his patience, and he was about to ask what the hell was going on when O’Malley pulled up in front of yet another restaurant bedecked with a large patio. It was a place called Lefty’s, and Luke saw that it wasn’t a restaurant exactly. It was a coffeehouse, open twenty-four hours a day. They served food along with coffee and other soft drinks, and they had open-mike nights from 6:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. seven nights a week.

  “This is us,” Sara said, the first words he’d heard from her since they’d gotten into the van.

  “We’re going to a coffeehouse?”

  “That’s right.” She opened her door, which let in a warm breeze and the scent of the ocean.

  “What are we supposed to do here?”

  Sara looked at him with the beginning of a smile at the corner of her lips. “Order coffee.”

  He hadn’t expected that, couldn’t make sense of it, and while he had a smart-ass response on the tip of his tongue, he held back. If there was one thing he’d been trained to do, even more than keeping his thoughts to himself while in uniform, it was to keep his eyes open. His life depended on his observational skills, absorbing the sky around him and the land below, always assuming there was someone or something out to kill him.

  No one here, thankfully, would want him dead, but the woman leading him into the coffeehouse might want him disappeared. Especially now that he’d confessed he was having trouble with his speech. But a café? He couldn’t even fathom a guess. Instead, he inhaled deeply the moment he stepped inside. Coffee. Real American coffee that always made him feel like home, whether it was in Kabul or on a transport flight. Just under that, suntan lotion. Not the thick sunblock they sold at the BX, but the kind that smelled like surfboards and beautiful women.

  He smiled, taking real pleasure in the moment. He was grateful to be right here, right now, no matter what happened next.

  She led him to a table for four. O’Malley would join them soon. Luke took the seat next to Sara after a brief internal debate. He wanted to look at her, of course, but she was facing the stage and he figured he’d better, too.

  The comic behind the mike moved stiffly, spoke too fast and wasn’t very funny. Although the place was pretty full, few people paid much attention to him, with the exception of one rowdy group of kids Luke suspected were the comic’s buddies. It wasn’t a hostile audience, though. No heckling, no one tried to drown him out with loud talking. That would have been difficult, though, as there were speakers hooked up all the way out to the patio.

  Luke checked the counter. It was big and there were a lot of people behind it, more than just the baristas. Sandwiches and chips were for sale; bagels, muffins, salads. But the coffee was the star, and they made every concoction he could imagine. He thought of getting the two of them drinks, and then it occurred to him that he didn’t know what kind of coffee Sara liked. It used to be some hazelnut thing, but now? He had no idea.

  O’Malley joined them before Luke could ask her. He took the seat on the other side of Sara, barely giving Luke a glance. “You seen him?”

  Sara shook her head. “He’s here.”

  The sergeant didn’t respond, but Luke’s suspicion that the two of them were close was reconfirmed. He’d watched O’Malley watch Sara the other night. While Luke and the old guy had talked, O’Malley had kept checking in on her. He’d been cagey, but that kind of silent communication took time and trust. Tonight on the ride, the silence between the two of them had been comfortable.

  A brief nod from Sara made Luke look past the tables. A gray-haired man was heading for them, and Luke knew instantly that he was ex-military. No question about it. He was older than O’Malley.

  “Captain,” he said, as he sat down across from Sara. “Sergeant.”

  “Thank you for this, Chief,” Sara said.

  The man gave Luke a once-over, but there was nothing to read in his expression, although Luke gathered he’d been a chief master sergeant at one time. His attention went back to Sara. “You want the usual?”

  “Decaf for me,” Sara said.

  “Hell with that,” said O’Malley, with enough emphasis that it made Luke grin.

  Sara gave a brief nod in Luke’s direction. “He’ll have water.”

  “I figured.” Chief left as abruptly as he’d arrived.

  “So you gonna tell me what the hell’s going on?” Luke asked. Enough was enough. He’d wanted a damn coffee. “Pay attention.”

  The chief hadn’t gone behind the counter. He’d walked up the few steps to the stage and took his place behind the mike. He must have been up there a lot, given that the crowd quieted straight
off.

  “Tonight we’re doing something different. You can stay, you can go. Same as always. I’d appreciate it if you stayed.”

  That was it. He left the stage bare but for a microphone and a spotlight.

  Luke’s guts tightened. He turned to Sara.

  “You’re up, Captain. Tell these fine people about being a fighter pilot, and what an honor it is to serve in the United States Air Force.”

  4

  LUKE MADE HIS way through the tables to the stairs the same way he’d made it to the cockpit the first time he’d ever flown an F-15: trying like hell not to vomit. He kept his back straight, his gaze forward, and told himself he could ace this. So he’d been blindsided. It wasn’t the first time. He was good at improvising. Nobody was as quick on their feet. Nobody. All he had to do was find someone in the crowd who seemed interested. Just one person. One woman. As long as that woman wasn’t Sara.

  He surveyed the room. People were curious, but curiosity wouldn’t last long. He wondered if there was anyone in those chairs who’d seriously considered a life in the military. Most people were biased one way or another before they reached high school, based on family, friends, schools, the State of the Union. However, most people had no idea what opportunities were available in the military. So that would be his primary goal. Keep their curiosity piqued, then tell them things they didn’t know.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m Captain Luke Carnes. I’m an active-duty fighter pilot for the United States Air Force. I’ve just returned from my fourth tour in Afghanistan. I’ve killed people. I’ve saved lives. I’ve been shot at, cursed at, been given boneheaded orders and faced impossible situations that scared the living crap out of me, including standing in front of you right now.”

  There was a smattering of laughter, polite, primarily female. A-OK.

  “I’m preparing to do a recruitment tour, along with a lot of other fine officers and airmen, focusing on university students and those who might be looking for a career change. I suppose it doesn’t matter who I’m addressing, though, because the only story I have to tell is my own.”