P.J. didn’t say anything. She just looked at him with those gigantic brown eyes.
Harvard couldn’t help himself. He lowered his mouth the last few inches that separated them and he kissed her.
He heard her sigh as his lips covered hers, and it was that little breathless sound that shattered the very last of his resistance. He deepened the kiss, knowing he shouldn’t, but no longer giving a damn.
Her lips were so soft, her mouth so sweet, he felt his control melt like butter in a hot frying pan. He felt his knees grow weak with desire—desire and something else. Something big and frighteningly powerful. He closed his eyes against it, unable to analyze, unable to do anything but kiss her again and again.
He kissed her hungrily now, and P.J. kissed him back so passionately he nearly laughed aloud.
She was like a bolt of lightning in his arms—electrifying to hold. Her body was everything he’d imagined and then some. She was tiny but so perfect, a dizzying mix of firm muscles and soft flesh. He could cover one of her breasts completely with the palm of his hand—he could, and he did.
And she pulled back, away from him, in shock.
“Oh, my God,” she breathed, staring at him, eyes wide, breaking free from his arms, moving away from him, scuttling back in the soft dirt on her rear end.
Harvard sat on the ground. “I guess you were a little glad to see me after all, huh?” He meant to sound teasing, his words a pathetic attempt at a joke, but he could do little more than whisper.
“We’re late,” P.J. said, turning away from him. “We have to hurry. I really screwed up our time.”
She pushed herself to her feet, her fingers fumbling as she unbuckled the harness and stepped out of the jumpsuit she wore over her fatigues and T-shirt. As Harvard watched, she took the rope attached to the chute and tried to finesse the snagged fabric and lines out of the tree.
Luck combined with the fact that her body weight was no longer keeping the chute hooked in the branches, and it slid cooperatively down to the ground, covering P.J. completely.
By the time Harvard stood to help her, she’d wrestled the parachute silk into a relatively small bundle and secured both it and her flight suit beneath a particularly thick growth of brambles.
She swayed slightly as she consulted the tiny compass on her wristwatch. “This way,” she said, pointing to the east.
Harvard couldn’t keep his exasperation from sounding in his voice. Exasperation and frustration. “You don’t really think you’re going to walk all the way to the extraction site.”
“No,” she said, lifting her chin defiantly. “I’m not going to walk, I’m going to run.”
P.J. stared at the list of times each of the pairs of SEALs and FInCOM agents had clocked during the afternoon’s exercise.
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Schneider said with a nonchalant shrug.
P.J. gave him an incredulous look. “Crash and Lucky took fourteen and a half minutes to check in at the extraction site—fourteen and a half minutes from the time they stepped out of the airplane to the time they arrived at the final destination. Bobby and Wes took a few seconds longer. You don’t see the big difference between those times and the sixty-nine big, fat minutes you and Greene took? Or how about the forty-four minutes it took Lieutenant McCoy because he was saddled with Tim Farber? Or my score—forty-eight embarrassingly long minutes, even though I was working with the Senior Chief? Don’t you see a pattern here?”
Farber cleared his throat. “Lieutenant McCoy was not saddled with me—”
“No?” P.J. was hot and tired and dizzy and feeling as if she might throw up. Again. She’d had to take a forced time-out during the run from the LZ to the check-in point. Her chicken-salad sandwich had had the final say in their ongoing argument, and she’d surrendered to its unconditional demands right there in the woods. Harvard had gotten out his radio and had been ready to call for medical assistance, but she’d staggered to her feet and told him to put the damn thing away. No way was she going to quit—not after she’d come so far. Something in her eyes must have convinced him she was dead serious, because he’d done as she’d ordered.
She’d made it all the way back—forty-eight minutes after she’d stepped out of that plane.
“Look at the numbers again, Tim,” she told Farber. “I know for a fact that if the Senior Chief had been paired with Lieutenant McCoy, they would have a time of about fifteen minutes. Instead, their time was not just doubled but tripled because they were saddled with inexperienced teammates.”
“That was the first time I’ve ever jumped out of a plane,” Greg Greene protested. “We can’t be expected to perform like the SEALs without the same extensive training.”
“But that’s exactly the point,” P.J. argued. “There’s no way FInCOM can provide us with the kind of training the Navy gives the SEAL teams. It’s insane for them to think something like this Combined SEAL/FInCOM team could work with any efficiency. These numbers are proof. Alpha Squad can get the job done better and faster—not just twice as fast but three times faster—without our so-called help.”
“I’m sure with a little practice—” Tim Farber started.
“We might only slow them down half as much?” P.J. interjected. She looked up to see Harvard leaning against a tree watching her. She quickly looked away, afraid he would somehow see the heat that instantly flamed in her cheeks.
She’d lost her mind this afternoon, and she’d let him kiss her.
No, correction—she hadn’t merely let him kiss her. She’d kissed him just as enthusiastically. She could still feel the impossibly intimate sensation of his hand curved around her breast.
Dear Lord, she hadn’t known something as simple as a touch could feel so good.
As Farber and the twin idiots wandered away, clearly not interested in hearing any more of her observations, Harvard pushed himself up and away from the tree. He took his time to approach her, a small smile lifting the corners of his lips. “You up for a ride to your hotel, or do you intend to run back?”
Her lips were dry, and when she moistened them with the tip of her tongue, Harvard’s gaze dropped to her mouth and lingered there. When he looked into her eyes, she could see an echo of the flames they’d ignited earlier that day. His smile was gone, and the look on his face was pure predator.
She didn’t stand a chance against this man.
The thought popped into her head, but she pushed it far away. That was ridiculous. Of course she stood a chance. She’d been approached and hit on and propositioned and pursued by all types of men. Harvard was no different.
So what if he was taller and stronger and ten times more dangerously handsome than any man she’d ever met? So what if a keen intelligence sparkled in his eyes? So what if his voice was like velvet and his smile like a sunrise? And so what if he’d totally redefined the word kiss—not to mention given new meaning to other words she’d ignored in the past, words like desire and want.
Part of her wanted him to kiss her again. But the part of her that wanted that was the same part that had urged her, at age eleven, to let fourteen-year-old Jackson Porter steal a kiss in the alley alongside the corner market. It was the same part of her that could so easily have followed her mother’s not quite full-grown footsteps. But P.J. had successfully stomped that impractical, romantically, childishly foolish side of her down before. Lord knows she could do it again.
She wasn’t sure she was ready yet to risk her freedom—not even for a chance to be with a man like Daryl Becker.
“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 a
nd 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.
9
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. That’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 down time.”
“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?”
Tall, Dark, and Dangerous Part 2 Page 12