Course of Action: Out of Harm's WayAny Time, Any Place

by Lindsay McKenna

  Auntie smiled wistfully and spoke a few soft words. Anna’s expression seemed to fold in on itself. For a moment she looked so lost that Duke felt something twist inside his chest.

  Auntie broke the moment with a spate of lively chatter. Her head bobbed in Duke’s direction several times, obviously demanding a translation.

  “It’s her wedding quilt,” Anna explained, coming back from wherever she’d been. “Auntie says she and Uncle made many babies under it. She, uh, hopes we will, too.”

  “Right.” Duke knew an exit line when he heard one. Deciding discretion was the better part of valor, he stretched an arm into his backpack and extracted his shaving kit. “I’ll hit the head first.”

  The bathroom opened off the kitchen and was barely big enough for a sink, stool and shower with plastic accordion-style doors. He didn’t try to squeeze into the stall, opting instead for a quick shave and scrub down.

  When he left the bathroom, the door to Auntie’s bedroom was closed and Anna waited for him in theirs. Duke checked at the sight of the nightgown that draped her from neck to ankle. Like the spread, it was beautifully embroidered. Unlike the spread, it was damned near transparent.

  “It’s Auntie’s,” she said with a forced shrug. “She insisted.”

  She edged past him with toothbrush in hand. Duke tried to keep his eyes off her backside and long, slender legs silhouetted through the thin linen. He really tried.

  When the door closed behind her, he shed his boots and downy vest. He retrieved the KA-BAR from the inner vest pocket and slid it between the mattress and the bed frame. That done, he edged the bed a few inches away from the far wall.

  “It’s the only way this is going to work,” he said when Anna returned and frowned at the crack between the mattress and the wall. “We won’t both fit otherwise.”

  “This is crazy. I should have told Auntie we would just spread our sleeping bags on the floor in the other room.” Still frowning, she yanked back the quilt. “If we stay another night, I will.”

  Duke couldn’t resist. “Good luck with that. She’ll tell you it’s hard to make babies zipped up in separate sleeping bags.”

  She shot him a venomous look and slid under the quilt and top sheet. Wiggling, she spanned the gap with her hips and wedged her butt against the wall.

  “Get in.”

  She peeled back the quilt, but not the sheet. The thin barrier was merely symbolic. She knew it. Duke knew it. The kiss this afternoon had altered the chemistry between them. Before that kiss, brown-eyed, brown-haired Anna Solkov had stirred his interest and unabashed lust. Here, with her dark, silky hair fanning across the pillow and those doe eyes tempting him to sin, she stirred a helluva lot more than interest.

  Forcibly reminding himself they were here to search out and destroy a known terrorist, he shed his boots, long-sleeved microfiber shirt and jeans. The weight he’d lost during rehab left his skivvies riding low on his hips.

  A small frown creased Anna’s forehead as she studied the still-red scar from his wound. A second or two later her gaze slid up to the snake tattooed around his biceps. She didn’t mention either, though, and Duke backed into the bed. Hanging half off the near edge, he reached for the switch to the lamp.

  “Talk to me,” he instructed when darkness engulfed them. “Tell me what you picked up from all that chatter tonight.”

  “Not much. Someone—the grandson of Auntie’s friend Tasha, I think—mentioned that the logging company that employs half of the men in the village recently cut back. Several locals lost their jobs.”

  “Does the company have ties to Russia?”

  “I don’t know. If it does, do you think laid-off loggers could be angry enough to align themselves with Chechen terrorists and blow up a section of Russian pipeline?”

  “It’s a stretch,” he admitted.

  She shifted, angling for more room. Her front was jammed against Duke’s back. Her breath was warm on his neck.

  This, he decided, was going to be a long night. Gritting his teeth, he tried to block the sensations coming at him from every point of contact.

  “What about that woman?” he asked. “The blonde? Something sure lit her fuse. Was her husband one of the men who lost his job?”

  “I don’t think so. Auntie said he died in an accident. The blonde—Elena—claims it wasn’t an accident. She thinks he was murdered.”

  “By whom?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “Another stretch, but worth looking into.”

  He felt Anna’s nod. The slight movement, hardly more than the dip of her chin against his shoulder blade, shot fire along his nerves.

  “I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

  “What about strangers in the area? Anyone mention a man fitting Varno’s description?”

  “No.”

  Silence wrapped around them, punctuated by the broken snorts and wheezes coming through the thin walls. It hadn’t taken Auntie long to zone out.

  “What’s the story on your tattoo?” Anna asked after a few moments. “I need to have an explanation ready if someone sees and comments on it.”

  Duke suspected there was as much curiosity behind the request as a need to maintain their cover. He had no problem with either.

  “It’s a sidewinder. A breed of rattlesnakes common in the Southwest. They’re lightning-fast and deadly.”

  He closed a fist in an unconscious gesture he and his pals had perfected back in high school. The move flexed his biceps. Although neither he nor Anna could see it in the dark, the rattler showed its fangs.

  “There are six of us with this particular tat.”

  “All special ops?”

  “All special ops,” he confirmed, “although not all Air Force. We’ve been buddies since high school. Played football together and got a reputation for being fast on our feet.”

  “I bet that’s not all you got a reputation for,” she commented dryly.

  She’d bet right. Smiling in the darkness, Duke slid into memories of shoulder pads cracking like rifle shots and cheerleaders in short little skirts performing backflips whenever one of the sidewinders tackled a receiver or intercepted a pass. They’d made a few tackles off the field, too. Dan Taylor in particular could get those sweet young things performing more than backflips.

  Well, hell! Recalling those torrid encounters wasn’t real smart, Duke realized as Anna shifted again. The sweaty, aching urgency of his high school days didn’t come close to the hunger that grabbed him by the throat when Anna nested her thighs against his.

  He had to shut this down, and fast. He couldn’t afford to let both his brains and his balls turn to mush while on the hunt for Nikolai Varno.

  Eyes closed, Duke tried every skill he’d been taught and a few he’d acquired the hard way to separate his mind from his body. None of them worked. He stayed awake and hurting long after Anna had gone all soft and warm against him.

  Chapter 5

  The strident crow of a rooster pierced Anna’s hazy dreams. She lay with eyelids still glued together by sleep and winced as the rooster let loose with another raucous warble. The damned thing sounded as though it was right outside the window.

  Only after his cry faded did she wake enough to record several other sensations. One, the dim light of dawn was seeping through the blinds on the room’s only window. Two, her cheek rested on smooth, bare skin. Three, her nose was pressed against a whiskery chin. Four...

  Four sent a spear of heat through her belly.

  Sometime during the night she and Duke had dispensed with the protective barrier of the top sheet. It was now twisted around her waist. As was a heavy, hair-roughened arm. And instead of facing the solid wall of Duke’s back, she was cradled against his side.

  She inched back, slowly, carefully. When she put some space between her nose and the golden bristles, however, she saw his eyes were open and ridiculously clear. Hers still felt gritty with sleep, but she couldn’t miss the smile that crinkled those squint lines.

&n
bsp; “Mornin’.”

  She pushed back another inch or so, trying to ignore the smooth skin and taut muscle beneath her cheek.

  “How long have you been awake?” she asked.

  “Awhile.”

  The dry response left room for several interpretations. Anna chose to ignore the most obvious—that the same erotic sensations she was now experiencing had pulled him from sleep—and went with an alternative.

  “We have to call in an update this morning. Have you decided what to report?”

  “Not much to report, other than we’re in the AO and have initiated queries, but I’ll call it in.”

  “Okay. Well, ah, I’d better get up. I hear Auntie making noises in the kitchen.”

  She wiggled, intending to extricate her rear end from the gap between the mattress and the wall and climb over him. A terse command stilled her tentative movements.

  “Hold still. I’ll go first.”

  He slid his arm out from under her and rolled off the bed. Anna made a determined effort not to watch as he dressed in the same clothes he’d worn yesterday. He helped by keeping his back to her. Mostly. When he zipped up his jeans, though, he angled to the side just enough to give Anna a glimpse of a world-class erection.

  The prominent bulge stirred an instant response. She could feel the muscles low in her belly tighten. Feel herself getting wet. The hunger that grabbed her was instinctive and unthinking. For the first time in longer than she could remember, she let herself imagine the feel of a man thrusting into her.

  No! Not just any man. This man.

  The intensity of her reaction to Duke Carmichael dismayed her. It was only their enforced proximity that stirred this absurd hunger, she told herself sternly. That, and the fact that he was six feet two inches of raw masculinity.

  So different from Jeremy.

  The thought hit with a punch and made her feel like a traitor to the man she’d once planned to spend the rest of her life with. Scowling, she waited only until the door closed behind Duke to scramble off the bed and into her clothes.

  * * *

  Auntie Oksana insisted on preparing breakfast for her guests. Duke’s belly rumbled in appreciation when she plunked a heaping plate down in front of him. Four eggs sunny-side up. Four fat black sausages. A stack of sliced tomatoes. A wedge of pungent goat cheese. And thick chunks of dark, grainy bread to spread it on.

  Duke cleaned everything up but had to hold up a hand when Auntie tried to spear more sausages onto his plate.

  “No, no more. Dakoyu.”

  That “thank you” pretty much exhausted the Ukrainian he’d picked up so far. He turned to Anna for the rest.

  “Tell her she puts my Granny Jones’s biscuits and gravy to shame.”

  Smiling, Anna complied. She still felt a little uncomfortable from that moment in the bedroom, but she was determined to get past it. Duke’s compliment helped. It led to an interested query from Oksana on how this granny of his made the biscuits and gravy he spoke of. After they’d exhausted that subject, Anna took a sip of her coffee and turned the conversation to Elena.

  “I feel terrible that I upset her last night, Auntie. I thought I would go see her this morning and apologize.”

  “She upsets easily, that one.” Sadness seemed to pull the older woman’s wrinkles into long folds. “Ever since Marko died, she grows more and more angry.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “An accident, as I said.” Sighing, Oksana poked a wisp of white hair under her flowered kerchief. “He learns to drive the big tractors and bulldozers in the Army, yes? After the Army he comes home to the mountains but there are no jobs, so he tells Elena they must wait until he finds work to have babies.”

  “And that upset her?”

  “Of course! Every wife wants babies.”

  Anna left that part out when she translated the conversation for Duke.

  “Marko grows tired of her weeping and goes to Odessa,” Auntie continued. “He finds work with a construction company, but his bulldozer hits something.... A cable or a power line or some such. There is an explosion, and Marko dies. Elena cannot blame herself for sending him to Odessa so she blames the company that hired him.”

  “Do you know the name of the company?”

  “No.”

  “What kind of construction project he was working on perhaps?”

  “What does it matter what the project was?” Oksana gave a gusty sigh and voiced a saying Anna had heard many times from her babushka. “The wind will blow whether the dog barks or not.”

  “I don’t get it,” Duke said when she caught him up on the conversation. “What does a barking dog have to do with the wind?”

  “Beats me.” She pushed away from the table and started to gather the empty plates. “But I might as well follow up with Elena.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll help clean up and we can go.”

  “Not we. Me.”

  “I don’t think so, babe.”

  “Elena doesn’t know you. She’s not as likely to talk with a stranger present. Besides, Auntie intends to parade you through the village.”

  “Huh?”

  She took genuine delight in his sudden, deer-in-the-headlights expression. “She wants to show you off to the few folks who didn’t cram in here last night. I know your Russian’s rusty, but most of the older folks here still speak it. You might pick up some useful information while I’m at Elena’s.”

  She paused with the stack of plates in hand, her face thoughtful. “Auntie says Elena’s husband, Marko, was in the Army. We know there are factions within the Ukrainian armed forces who believe the Russian pipelines are a slap in the face to their national sovereignty. Maybe Marko was aligned with one of these factions. Maybe his death is in some way connected to the plot to blow one up.”

  “Maybe,” Duke agreed reluctantly as he cleared the rest of the table. “Just be sure you keep your cell phone with you. Call if you turn up anything, anything, that feels off to you.”

  “Will do.”

  They put the dishes in the sink and Anna got ready to leave. When she pulled on her windbreaker, she caught Auntie watching them with a knowing smile. Sighing, she went up on tiptoe to do her wifely duty.

  “This is just for show,” she murmured as her lips brushed Duke’s.

  She should have known he’d take full advantage of the situation. Sure enough, his arm came around her waist and a wicked glint lit his eyes.

  “That little peck won’t fool anyone, sweetheart. You need to show a little more enthusiasm.”

  “Careful, cowboy.”

  Ignoring her low warning, he brought her up against him. “Okay, I’m ready. Give it another shot.”

  With a look that promised serious retribution, Anna used both hands to grab the collar of his vest. She yanked him down and delivered a kiss that left her breathless, Duke grinning and Auntie cackling with delight.

  * * *

  Thrown off balance by her reaction to Duke Carmichael yet again, Anna zipped up the yellow windbreaker and stepped out into a mountain morning. The sun had crested the higher peaks but had yet to burn away the morning mist. Spirals of gray rose from the frost-rimmed ground and cloaked the birches like a lover’s kiss. The cold fog carried with the scent of woodsmoke that spiraled from the chimneys of the houses Anna passed on her way out of town.

  She barely noticed the fog or the chill. Auntie said Elena lived in a house about five kilometers outside the village. She needed every one of those kilometers to clear her head.

  She wanted to talk to Elena, true, but the driving force behind her insistence that she go it alone was the need to get away from Duke. They’d been in each other’s company almost around the clock for the past five days. The line between reality and the role they’d assumed for this mission was beginning to blur.

  Those damned kisses didn’t help. Or waking up to find herself cradled against his naked chest. Or the all-too-visual evidence that he was feeling the same effect of their enforced proximi
ty. The mere memory sent heat spearing through her belly.

  She shook her head. This was ridiculous. She needed to analyze her growing hunger for Duke Carmichael with the same dispassionate objectivity she brought to her job. Looked at that way, she didn’t have to search hard to find the root cause for her edginess. The simple fact was that it had been too long since she’d had sex.

  Jeremy would always occupy a corner of her heart. Anna knew that. She also knew that she’d used sixteen-hour workdays to help her get through the past three years. Ironic that the career she’d thrown herself into night and day had landed her in another man’s arms. Worse, it had stirred a need she hadn’t felt in far too long.

  So what could she do about it? She had the answer even before the question fully formed in her mind. She couldn’t do a damned thing. Neither could Duke. Not while they were here in the Ukraine. Maybe not anywhere.

  They were too different. His career took him all over the world at a moment’s notice. Hers was rooted in Washington. Normally rooted in Washington, anyway. The point was, she wanted stability and monogamy in a mate. From the first moment Duke had come on to her in Colorado, she’d known darn well it was because she represented a challenge. Certainly not because of any desire on his part for a serious relationship.

  To be brutally honest, he’d never shown any indication he was interested in any kind of a relationship, serious or otherwise. Not back in Colorado. Not here. Anna had to give him that. The intimate moments they’d shared had all been for show.

  Hadn’t they?

  She was damned if she knew, but the question occupied her for the rest of the trek to Elena’s home.

  That turned out to be a prefab structure set in a small clearing. As colorful as the other dwellings in these mountains, this one boasted pale aqua siding and red wooden shutters decorated with an explosion of brightly painted wildflowers. Tall grasses crowded the front stoop, though, and tightly drawn curtains gave the house a brooding air. A car was parked in front of the house, one of those toy-sized European minis that Duke couldn’t have shoehorned into.