“I think,” he began in a strained voice, “that almost dying this morning is still with me.” He wanted to take full responsibility for the kiss, even though she’d come willingly into his arms. “I’m sorry, Pepper. Really sorry…”
Trembling inwardly, she nodded and pressed her hand against her breasts, fighting for control of her frayed emotions. “I—yes, I think it was that….” she answered shakily. After all, there had to be some reason she’d done something so foolish!
“If you’ll excuse me? I’ll be back in a minute.” Jim turned without waiting for her permission. If he didn’t leave now, he feared he would walk right back over to her and take her. The vision of carrying her to his bedroom and making hot, hard love with her clamored in him. His leaving would break that damnable tension that seemed to stalk their interactions. And he’d take the opportunity to splash cold water on his face and get a grip on his unruly emotions.
When Jim had left the room, Pepper grabbed her glass from the counter and lowered herself to a chair. Her knees were shaking so badly she wanted to sit before she fell. In three gulps, she downed the wine. The alcohol took the edge off her frazzled emotions, soothing some of the shock out of her system, and Pepper was grateful to have time to pull herself together.
By the time Jim reappeared, nearly ten minutes later, he seemed back in control. No longer did she see undeniable hunger in his eyes. Instead, his mouth was an unhappy slash as he slowly walked to the sink and picked up his glass. Without a word, he drank the contents, then poured them both a second glass.
“I think,” he began gruffly, “I owe you an apology for a lot of things regarding my behavior—”
“No,” Pepper whispered. “It’s all so crazy, Jim. I’ve had close calls before. I know what they do to me—to other people.” She was blathering to cover her real feelings—her genuine need for him. It was totally inappropriate. Insane. “Stuff like this happens. Let’s just chalk it up to the day, can we, and forget it?”
Working his mouth, Jim stared down at the wine in his glass. “Yeah—okay, you’re right, of course.” Forget? How the hell could he forget her warm, flowing response to his kiss? But she was right. Somehow, he had to put it behind him. Savagely, he reminded himself that Laura was the important one right now. At the thought of her, he felt his body shutting down, becoming less sensitized to Pepper’s presence. Relief raced briefly through him.
Pepper took another gulp of wine. “It’s already forgotten,” she said, but her voice came out unexpectedly husky. Liar. Unwilling to analyze why she’d blindly walked into his arms in the face of everything she believed—no, knew to be true, she lifted her glass. “Let’s toast to something. Anything.”
Jim nodded. “Good idea.” He frowned and thought for a moment, then touched the rim of his glass lightly against hers. “To a lady with more brains and courage than I gave her credit for.” He lifted his glass, his gaze steady on her widening eyes. Taking a sip, he waited for her to drink. “Well?”
Pepper shrugged and tried to calm her alarm over his continued intimacy. “Bygones are bygones, Jim. It could just as easily have been me in trouble this morning.” Her face serious, she lifted her glass to him, then took a small sip of the light, oak-flavored wine. The sincerity in his eyes and voice shook her, and she didn’t want him to see the depth of her reactions to him. Casting around for some safer topic, she noticed a wonderful scent emanating from the oven. “Whatever you’re cooking, it smells good,” she said, forcing a cheerful smile. Right now, eating was the last thing on her mind.
Jim remained serious as he sat down opposite her. Something was driving him to remain intimate with Pepper. He ignored her attempt to lighten the mood. “I think you hold a lot of secrets,” he said quietly, meeting her startled look. Setting his glass aside, he added, “I’ve had all day to think about you—us—and I’ve come to the conclusion that I know very little about you, Pepper.” One corner of his mouth curved upward. “I do know that you’re smart, gutsy and humble. You could have told Perseus about my attitude, the problems we had before and during the HAHO, but you didn’t.” He drilled her with a look. She colored fiercely. “Why? You had every right to.”
Gazing down at her wineglass, Pepper murmured, “Look, I had that stuff pulled on me all the time in the army, Jim. It got worse when I demanded to take Ranger training. Every man there, almost without exception, was just waiting to gig me on something, to report me, to show my weaknesses to the world. I know what it’s like to be singled out, to be the underdog.” She gazed into his dark, somber eyes and saw another, hard-to-define emotion that set her heart to beating harder in her breast. “It would have been different if you hadn’t realized your mistakes. But you did. Why pour salt in your wounds? I knew you were hurting.” The larger, more encompassing truth was that she had been hurting for him, too.
“Maybe that’s the difference between a woman being in charge and a man.”
Relieved that the talk was turning more toward professional generalities, Pepper sighed inwardly. “There are many differences between the genders,” she agreed slowly, tracing the rim of her glass with her fingertip. “I can tell you I don’t treat my team of twenty the way I was treated in the army.”
“Good leaders are rare, and you’re one of them.” Jim rubbed his jaw and said, “You made me feel ashamed of myself out there today, Pepper. It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I’d been a first-class jerk to you from the moment we met.” He sighed, then smiled tentatively. “I wanted you to come over tonight so I could tell you that. To say I’m sorry and mean it. I didn’t want to say it at Perseus, where we might get interrupted.” He couldn’t explain away their kiss, though, and he didn’t even try.
Pepper felt the heat in her cheeks again, but this time she didn’t care. The dark green warmth in Jim’s eyes was sincere, blanketing her with a wonderful range of emotions that made her feel so incredibly alive. How long had it been since she’d felt that wonderful rush through her heart, which made her take a long, unsteady breath? Too long. “I knew you were sorry, Jim. Thanks for having me over, but it wasn’t necessary.”
He slowly got up and moved toward the kitchen cabinets. “I disagree. When I got home this afternoon after the debriefing, I kept asking myself who is Pepper Sinclair? Where’d she get her nickname? Does she have another name? What about her personal life?” He brought down two china plates edged with gold and placed them on the table.
When he turned and met her steady gaze, Jim saw real anguish, combined with fear. Why?
Pepper sat very still beneath Jim’s heated inspection. She was seeing another surprising facet to this unusual man. His voice had gone low and husky, and her heart responded powerfully to his gentle inquisition. “I don’t know that any of that matters,” she said defensively.
“It matters to me,” he said. Pulling out a drawer, he chose some flatware and brought it over to the table. “Rangers and Recons have a lot in common. They work as teams, and I know you understand the importance of that. You can’t be on a team for any amount of time without getting to know your buddies, warts and all. There’s a kind of unspoken marriage that happens—a personal closeness that binds the team together.” He straightened and looked into her uncertain gaze. “You know what I’m talking about.” And she did. He knew she understood very clearly what he was saying and what he was asking from her. But would Pepper drop that invisible wall between her professional life and let him in? Jim believed that sort of melding would be absolutely necessary if they were to survive the coming mission. But was she willing?
The silence in the kitchen seemed deafening to Pepper. She watched as Jim drew a Yankee pot roast, replete with potatoes and carrots, from the oven. He said nothing further as he proceeded to make a thick, brown gravy. Part of her wanted to bow to his request. It wasn’t an extraordinary one, under the circumstances. At 0300 they would make a high-risk jump over the island in complete darkness—a jump that amounted to “out of the frying pan, into the fire,” given wha
t awaited them on the ground. Jim was right: they had to establish that bond now, no matter how painful it was to her.
Although dinner was delicious, Pepper ate little. She began to appreciate Jim’s social abilities as an officer when he kept up a steady stream of polite small talk during the meal. Inside, she felt wary, knowing that after dinner the polite talk would turn serious—and personal. Her decision never to become personally involved with a man again was under assault. Pepper reminded herself what was really important in her life: her family, her friends and her team. The only thing she knew of that could stop her from accomplishing her goals was a romantic relationship. For that very reason, she had to fight her alarming attraction to Jim in order to maintain her promise to herself.
“Let’s go in the living room and have dessert,” Jim suggested. Pepper had barely eaten anything on her plate. He’d felt the unmistakable tension in the kitchen after he let it be known he wanted to get to know her, the woman, not the smoke jumper. Oddly, the shoe was on the other foot, he thought, frowning as he cut two slices of freshly made cherry pie. Placing them on dessert plates, he took them into the living room.
His pet had already made himself comfortable on Pepper’s lap when he came in, and he chuckled.
“Frank’s got an unerring instinct about people who love cats.” Jim handed Pepper the pie, fork and paper napkin. Sitting down on the couch less than a foot from her and the contented alley cat, he noted Pepper’s wary expression. Could he blame her? “It’s a good thing you left the army,” he said slowly.
“Oh?”
“You don’t hide your emotions very well.” He gestured to her eyes. “You broadcast everything in them.”
With a groan of desperation, Pepper continued to stroke the cat, setting her pie aside on a nearby lamp table. She wondered if the animal had sensed her trepidation and come over to assuage it. Cats and dogs were psychic in that sense, and Pepper was grateful for Frank’s comforting presence and the excuse to do something with her hands. Jim was too close, and she felt trapped. Clearing her throat, she said, “I did find it a minus in my work in the army, but it’s been a plus in my job as a team leader with the smoke jumpers. Maybe because I’ve got five other women on my team, and we’re used to looking into one another’s eyes and reading how we’re feeling or what we’re saying, on almost a telepathic level. Over time, the men have learned to communicate the same way.” With a shrug, she added, “My team functions as one body, one brain. They’ve been with me two years or more…and we more or less grew up together out there in those forest fires. They’re like my extended family.” Smiling a little, she noted, “They are my other family.”
“I see….” Jim noticed the softening in her eyes when she spoke about her team. Without thinking, he reached out and touched her hand—and saw the fear come back into her eyes. “We’ve got less than nine hours to develop that level of communication, Pepper. The mission we’re going on could easily kill us. I want us to survive, and I know the mechanics of that kind of survival.” He moved his hand back to his lap. “We need to talk about ourselves. Us.”
Pepper’s mouth went dry. Her skin tingled pleasantly where Jim had so briefly touched her hand. Despite her fears, a part of her wanted his continued touch. It had been so long. So long…“It’s hard for me to just sit down and talk about myself.”
Wryly, Jim said, “I can tell. How about if I go first?”
Pepper met his gaze and felt a kind of warmth she’d never encountered before. What magic was going on here? Was the inner Jim Woodward really so different from his Marine Corps image? “A-all right.”
He set his dessert plate on the coffee table and placed his hands on his thighs. “I was born in Maryland—very near Annapolis, as a matter of fact. My father owned his own software company, and my mother enjoyed staying at home. I wanted to become an engineer like my dad, so I went to OhioState, where they were known for excellence in that area. When I graduated, my dad convinced me to put in six years as an officer. He said his six-year hitch in the corps had served him well for the rest of his life.
“I agreed, and went into the Marine Corps, following his footsteps.” With a grin, Jim said, “It turned out to be a career. I like my work. I prefer field assignments to sitting behind some officious desk at the Pentagon, but this is what I have to do right now to punch the ticket to get to general someday. Well, that’s pretty much my background.” He opened his hands and gave Pepper an encouraging smile. “How about yours?”
Her hands stilled on the gray-and-white tomcat in her lap. “Well…I was born in Montana. Actually, Cam came first—my brother. Our dad was a silver miner near Anaconda.”
“And your mother?” Jim was curious about Pepper’s role model. He couldn’t imagine her mother as a woman satisfied with being a housewife and parent only.
Pepper grinned. “She was a real hell-raiser, born way before her time. Mom is a CPA—that’s how she met my dad. She worked for the silver company that gave Dad his paycheck. He found a mistake on his check one time and went into the front office to find out who’d made the error. Mom told me later the sparks flew.”
“I’ll bet they did.” Jim chuckled. He watched the way Pepper’s eyes and face became animated as she spoke of her family. How easy it was for her to plug into her emotions. He envied her that ability.
“My mother is also a horsewoman, and she rides to this day. She was twenty-nine years old when she met my father, so she already had a pretty independent life established.”
“You’re a real Montana gal, aren’t you?” Jim observed.
“I’m a Westerner not only by birth, but by heart, too,” Pepper answered. She petted the cat fondly. “My mom was born in Anaconda, so I guess it’s in my genes. My dad is a real outdoorsman, and he taught us to fish and hunt at an early age. I couldn’t enjoy killing those beautiful animals, so I quit hunting and fishing and stuck to horseback riding. Cam loved hunting, though, so he always went with Dad. I will say this—my father and brother hunted and used the food. They never killed for sheer sport.”
Jim realised how important that was to Pepper, and he found himself mesmerized by the graceful way she used her hands to punctuate her statements. Finally, he was becoming privy to the woman inside the confident smoke jumper. “What made you go into the army?”
“Dad asked me the same thing,” Pepper said wryly. “Mom thought it was a great idea. She said the military would teach me discipline and organization. She was right—it did. But it taught me a lot more. When the army wouldn’t let me attend Ranger graduation after I was the top student in my training group, I resigned my commission. I went back to Montana to find my roots and see if I couldn’t give back to the land that had bred me, in some way.”
“Why?” Jim asked quietly.
Startled, Pepper glanced up at him. In the shadows of the large room, his high cheekbones and square jaw seemed emphasized. She felt herself automatically acquiescing to his reassuring steadiness. “I guess…well, I’ve never really thought about it, but I love the wide-open, blue sky, the miles and miles you can go without seeing another person. It’s serene, but at the same time teeming with wildness and beauty.”
“Sort of like you?”
Shaken badly by his insight, Pepper frowned. “I don’t know about that.”
“I think I do,” Jim said, settling back more comfortably against the couch cushions. “It sounds like your mother and father really supported your being all you could be, not caring that you were a girl.”
She nodded. “My parents have always been way ahead of their time, that’s true. Cam and I were raised in a pretty even-handed way in that sense. Not that I wanted to play football in high school or anything.”
“But you didn’t go out for cheerleader, either.”
She laughed. “No, I didn’t. I was with the band. I played saxophone for four years. And, since I had my own horse, Mom and I would compete in shows on weekends.” Her hand stilled on the cat’s back, and she said, “I had a happy
childhood. I’m very close to my parents, and to Cam and his family.”
Jim sensed the tension still stalking Pepper. “So how’d you get the name Pepper?” he teased, his mouth curving into a smile.
Flushing, she laughed. “Oh, that…well, I guess I was a pretty active baby. Mom told my father about five days after I was born that I was like a hot pepper bouncing around in the crib. I wouldn’t lie still. I was always moving my legs or arms or rolling back and forth. So Pepper stuck.”
“What’s your given name?”
“Mary Susan.” Pepper wrinkled her nose. “I can’t imagine anyone calling me that, though. It sounds so foreign!”
Laughing, Jim shrugged. “It’s not a bad name.”
“I know,” Pepper grumbled good-naturedly. “My mother named me Mary, after her mother, and my father named me after his mother, Susan. Go figure.” Her laughter was husky. “However, I did know there was hell to pay whenever my mother or father used my given name instead of my nickname. That meant I was in big trouble.”
Jim chuckled. Then he sobered a little and said in a quiet tone, “Cam’s married, and it sounds as if you really dote on your family. How come you haven’t married?”
It felt as if a spike had been driven through her heart. Pepper sat very still, wrestling with her unleashed emotions. Her hands rested on Frank, and she stared down at the animal. Finally, her tone strained, she said softly, “I was going to get married…but that was a long time ago. Or sometimes it seems like a long time ago. Then again, sometimes it seems like yesterday….”
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