Placing his hands on his hips, Clay glared down into her frightened eyes. Blue eyes he could fall into and seek warmth from in his freezing, empty world. His voice came out in a low snarl. “I don’t give a damn what your excuse is, Lieutenant. I’m your training officer. What I say, goes. I told you to take those manuals home and study them over the weekend. I didn’t tell you to come here of your own volition and sit in the right seat of a P3.” He saw his words land with the desired effect upon her. Why should he care if they hurt her? Fighting any sympathetic reaction to her flinch, Clay added savagely, “Lady, you may think you’re copilot material, but until I sign that piece of paper attesting to it, you don’t deserve to sit in that seat. Now get the hell out of here and go home.”
Aly sat stunned, incredible pain welling up in her chest. Clay was like an avenging angel, hovering darkly above her in that gray cockpit. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing would come out. Her throat was suddenly clogged with tears.
She blinked and bowed her head, afraid that Clay would see her tears. She didn’t dare let him know how badly he’d wounded her. Fumbling with the manual, she accidentally let it slip from her fingers, banging to the steel deck with a thump.
“Dammit, can’t you do anything right?” he snarled, jerking the manual off the deck and tossing it her direction.
“Hour’s up, Miss Trayhern,” Ballard sang out from the ladder. “I’m ready to help you with start-up and shutdown proced—”
Clay turned, ominously facing his chief engineer, who stood frozen in the middle of the P3. “Just what the hell is going on here, Ballard?”
“Well…uh, Mr. Cantrell, I thought I’d help Miss Trayhern learn the instruments….” The rest of his explanation died in the icy silence of the aircraft. Ballard shrugged, seeing how upset his skipper was. “I was just trying to help her, sir.”
Clay’s nostrils flared with fury, and he advanced upon the AE. He opened his mouth to deliver a verbal tongue-lashing to his chief, who had no business helping train any copilot unless he gave the order.
“Don’t you dare chew him out!”
Clay heard Aly’s strident cry. He halted, halfway between both of them. Jerking his head toward her, he saw that she had risen to her feet and climbed out of the cockpit. Her eyes were hauntingly large, pleading.
“This isn’t his fault, Mr. Cantrell. I asked Dan to come and help me in about an hour.”
“But,” Ballard admitted, obviously noting the mounting rage on the officer’s face and not wanting Aly hurt further, “it was my idea, skipper.”
Clay didn’t know whom to bite first. It was obvious Ballard was covering up for her. That made him twice as angry. “You’re dismissed, Ballard,” he ground out. “I’ll deal with you later.”
Hesitating, Dan looked toward Aly uncertainly before grudgingly saying, “Yes, sir.”
Waiting until Ballard had disappeared, Clay slowly turned back toward Aly. She was still frozen at the entrance to the cockpit, her face shadowed and tense in the dim light. His smile was withering. “You’ve already wrapped Ballard around your finger,” he began silkily. “But it won’t do you any good. This is my plane and my crew. You try pitting any of them against me, and you’ll pay, Trayhern. And in ways you never thought possible. Do you understand what I mean?” His eyes bored into hers.
A quiver ran through Aly. The sick, injured animal was biting again. It would do no good to fight back, he’d only rip her into more pieces than he had already. She tried to remember her father’s words of wisdom, tried to rise above her own pain. Deliberately breaking the sizzling tension strung between them, Aly bent down and retrieved the second manual on the throttle case. She clutched both of them to her breast and slowly walked toward him. When she was within a foot of him, she halted.
“Your engineer had nothing to do with me being in this cockpit. It was my decision and my fault,” she said, keeping her voice calm.
Clay stared down at her. Her jaw was set, her lips compressed with very real anxiety. He hated himself in that anguished second. And he could barely meet her shadowed blue eyes, riddled with hurt and confusion. “Ballard gave you permission to come on board because he’s the duty chief this weekend. I’m not going to chew him out. Now get the hell out of here. Be at the Link trainer at 0800 sharp, tomorrow morning, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir,” she ground out.
Clay moved aside, not wanting contact with her. But the aisle of the plane was too narrow, and his breath lodged in his chest as she brushed past him. He saw her eyes narrow and heard a small gasp of air escape her. She hated him so much that she was disgusted by minimal contact with him, he thought wearily.
Clay stood, feeling little shocks move through him, long after she’d disappeared. Her arm had barely grazed his chest. But the contact had been electric. He was sure they’d both felt it, whatever it was.
Such a stupid, trivial thing, Clay upbraided himself as he turned toward the cockpit. How could a woman’s arm merely brushing his chest make him go hard with longing? Running his fingers through his hair, Clay muttered an oath and settled into the pilot’s seat. As he sat examining the LAA, he couldn’t escape pangs of guilt.
He shut his eyes, rubbing them tiredly. Sleep hadn’t come at all the past two nights—only dreams of the past involving his mother and Stephen. Alyssa Trayhern’s entrance into his life had stirred up all the buried grief and loss. And yet, as he sat, leaning heavily against the seat, he knew Aly didn’t deserve his hatred and anger. One look into those distraught blue eyes and he knew….
Chapter Four
Damn! He was late for work! Clay rolled out of bed, glaring at the alarm clock. It read 0745. It was Monday, and he wasn’t going to be on time to meet Aly at the Link trainer.
As he staggered toward the bathroom, rubbing his eyes, he stubbed his toe on the edge of a rocker he kept in the corner.
“Ouch!” He hobbled the rest of the way, his left toe smarting. Fumbling for the electric razor in the drawer, he finally found it and shoved the plug into the outlet. He had to hurry. He tried to shave without looking in the mirror.
The rest of his Sunday had been spent at his apartment, studying some new training procedure manuals for the P3. Dismayed by his cruelty to Aly, he’d wanted to hide from those feelings of guilt, shifting his mind to technical demands. Last night he’d tossed and turned, unable to erase Aly’s hurt features from his mind. Getting up at 0200, he’d downed a shot of Scotch, thinking it would numb the dirty feelings inside himself. It hadn’t. Somewhere around 0400 he’d finally dropped off. Vaguely, Clay remembered the radio alarm clock beeping at 0530, his usual time to get up, but he’d hit it, shutting off the alarm.
His hand shook now as he placed the shaver on the tile expanse. Risking a look into the mirror in order to quickly comb his short hair into place, Clay winced. He looked like hell. He felt like hell. What was he going to do about Aly?
“Dammit!” he breathed, throwing the comb down on the counter. It skipped along the tile, falling into the washbasin. He didn’t want to think of her as Aly. She was Trayhern—just another pilot. Pilots always called one another by their last names or by the nicknames they’d received at Pensacola, denoting some special feature. When Clay graduated at the top of his class, his squad mates had dubbed him Wolverine, because he was relentless and tenacious in the air.
Placing his palms against the surface, Clay ruthlessly studied himself in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot and there were puffy bags beneath them. With his mouth pulled into a slash, he looked like a grim reaper, in his estimation. Why couldn’t he just refer to her as Trayhern? Why did some miserable part of him automatically call her Aly? Clay turned away, automatically going through the steps of donning the loose-fitting olive-green flight suit.
The sun was already up, and the Bay Area was going to enjoy one of those cool but sunny January days. Clay drove hell-for-leather, pushing his Corvette along the Bloody Bayshore, weaving expertly in and out of traffic. So, okay, he’d g
rudgingly call her Aly to himself, but never out loud. If some part of his mind refused to coldly classify her by her last name, he wasn’t going to fight it anymore. But she was still the sister of the man who had murdered the two people he loved most in the world. And for that, he could never forgive her.
Rubbing his eyes because they ached, Clay wondered what Aly would think of his being late for their first training session. Would she automatically think he was arriving late on purpose? Another ploy to make her nervous and unsure of herself? His conscience needled him. His hands tightening on the wheel, Clay felt backed into a corner as never before. Ordinarily, he was never cruel. It wasn’t his nature. But every time he got around Aly, he was aware of an incredible tension that sizzled like fire between them. He rejected the idea of being drawn to her. She was the sister of a murderer. And so, there was no alternative but to treat her coldly and jam the rest of these new and unexpected feelings down into some deep, dark corner of himself—as he had with his grief for the past five years.
At exactly 0800 Aly arrived at the Link training facility, which was located at the rear of Hangar One. The room was large and spacious. The control booth, which held hundreds of computerized disks, was enclosed with glass. Chief Bill Random, who sat at the large computer terminal, came out and introduced himself. He was about fifty-five, small and brisk. But a smile wreathed his face when he pointed toward the two-seat Link trainer that would serve as her home for the coming months on a daily basis.
“I think somebody’s already sweet on you, Lieutenant Trayhern.”
“Oh?” Aly saw Random gesture toward the opened canopy on the Link. The trainer sat on a single movable steel pylon. When they climbed in and closed the hood, that pylon would move in any direction, simulating flight.
“Yes, ma’am. Go take a look at what’s on the copilot’s seat.”
Mystified, Aly walked over to the trainer. Her eyes widened considerably when she saw a single red rose lying across the seat. There was a small white envelope tied to the stem with a pink ribbon.
“Clay…” she whispered, and reached down, gently cradling the rose in her hands. Having slept poorly last night, Aly had wrestled with a gamut of feelings. She had seen Clay’s eyes go from anger to regret once during their explosive confrontation Sunday in the P3. Some part of him didn’t want to be the bastard he was to her. Was this his way of apologizing?
Eagerly, Aly opened the envelope. Inside, neatly printed were the words: I’m sorry. Her heartbeat quickened, underscoring her unleashed emotions. Turning away so that Chief Random couldn’t see her face, she caressed the rose, inhaling its delicate scent. Her fingers trembled as she followed the smooth curve of the large red bud. Maybe there was hope after all. Maybe…
Turning, Aly walked to the control room where Random was setting up the computer tapes that would be played for them during the training session.
“Chief, where’s Mr. Cantrell?” she asked, deciding that she wanted to thank him in private.
Random punched in a program and glanced in her direction. “Oh, I’m sure he’s around here somewhere. Mr. Cantrell practically lives in this place. He comes in around 0630 every morning. Probably got caught up in some last-minute scheduling problems over at his office.” He waved her toward the trainer. “Why don’t you climb aboard the trainer, strap in and get comfortable? I’m sure he’ll be here any second.”
Pressing the rose to her breast, Aly nodded. “Okay, Chief.” Much of her nervousness had abated with the knowledge that Clay had chosen such a wonderful and romantic way to apologize for his behavior yesterday.
In the cockpit, Aly began to refamiliarize herself with the instrument panel. Just having an hour in Gray Lady had helped her confidence immensely. From time to time, she glanced down at the rose in her lap. More of her anxiety dissipated as she began to focus on the dials and gauges in front of her. By 0830, Aly had relaxed a great deal in the mock-up of the P3 cockpit.
She heard the door to the training room open and close. Glancing out of the Link, she saw a harried Clay Cantrell come through the door dressed in his flight suit. There was a scowl on his face and his eyes were dark and angry. Automatically, Aly tensed. What was he upset about now?
Not wanting to risk being seen, she ducked back under the hood and waited patiently for Clay to come over to the trainer. She heard him and Chief Random talking in lowered voices. Clay sounded positively irate. What had happened? Her fingers tightened around the stem of the rose, her heartbeat racing.
Clay stalked over to the trainer. He ran his fingers through his hair as he approached the pilot side of the Link. Unable to ignore his unraveling feelings as he arrived at the trainer, he tried to steel himself to work with Aly.
“Good morning,” she said cautiously.
Her voice was husky. Warm. Clay looked at her. How had Aly grown more lovely? Her cheeks were flushed pink, her blue eyes seemed soft, and her red hair was copper and gold beneath the bright lights. He tossed a manual into the trainer.
“It’s morning,” he growled, climbing into the left seat and strapping in. God, it was impossible to ignore her! The scent of her perfume encircled him, and unwillingly Clay inhaled it. She smelled so good, so clean in comparison to how he felt inside.
Nervously, Aly lifted the rose so that Clay could see it. “I—uh, I wanted to thank you for this….”
Clay stared at the rose and then up at her. Shaken by her vulnerability, he growled, “What’s this?”
Aly tried to ferret out the confusion in his voice and the sudden shock registering in his dark gray eyes. “The rose,” she offered huskily. “It’s beautiful…and a beautiful way to apologize for yesterday.”
“But—”
A shy smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. “I’m sorry, too, Clay. All I want to do is fit in around here, not fight with you.”
Her admission tore a scar off the festering wound in his heart. The rose trembled in her hand as she held it out to him. Her shyness shattered his anger. And when she called him by his first name, a tendril of longing sang through him. Aly had a voice that would tame the fiercest of wild animals.
Clay had no idea who had given her the rose—a fact that irritated him more than he cared to think about. But he wasn’t going to let her think he’d given it to her. He opened his mouth to speak.
“Hey!”
Aly tensed at the sound of Starbuck’s booming voice. She closed her eyes momentarily. Why did he have to show up just when there was a tentative truce between her and Clay?
Starbuck strode around to the front of the trainer, a triumphant grin on his face. He was dressed in tight-fitting G-suit chaps that hugged his lower body to masculine perfection. His helmet bulged beneath his left arm. A pair of red eagle wings had been painted on either side of it, and the name Iron Eagle was visible.
“Just thought I’d drop by, Cantrell, and visit your good-looking student.” Jeff winked at Alyssa. “How’s my favorite girl doing this morning?”
Clay glared at the fighter pilot. “Lieutenant, this trainer is off-limits to anyone not on the training roster.”
The F-14 pilot’s smile disappeared, his brown eyes hardening. “Ease off the throttles, Cantrell.” He put back his winning smile for Alyssa’s benefit, and patted the trainer. “I just wanted to steal a minute and get her reaction to the rose I left her.”
“Oh, God,” Aly blurted. She glanced over at Clay; his face was thundercloud-black with anger. Heat flamed from her neck into her face, and she wanted to die of mortification.
“A beautiful rose for a beautiful lady,” Starbuck said. He turned to Clay. “For once, buddy, you lucked out. After that crash that took your RIO’s life, I thought a black cloud was hanging over you. T’ain’t so, anymore, is it? You’ve got this luscious-looking woman who’s going to be flying with you. I’m jealous as hell, Cantrell.”
Clay gripped the manual. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to feel. Starbuck’s malicious attack reared memories of the crash and John’s death. �
�Starbuck, get the hell out of here,” he snarled softly.
Aly tensed, hearing the raw anger in Clay’s voice. Instinctively, she reached out, her hand resting on his arm, as if to stop him from rising to climb out and hit the fighter pilot. She handed the rose back to Starbuck.
“Lieutenant, I don’t approve of your tactics, either. Why don’t you go play in the sky with your F-14? Mr. Cantrell and I have some serious work to do. I don’t appreciate your barging in.”
Starbuck took the rose, his expression suddenly stiff. He smiled, but his eyes were cold upon her. “Sure thing, Alyssa.” He lifted the rose and gave them both a mock salute with it. “I’ll see you later, boys and girls.”
Aly suddenly remembered her grip on Clay’s arm. She jerked her fingers away as if burned. The training room was quiet after Starbuck’s departure.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cantrell,” Aly whispered, too embarrassed to meet his eyes. “I thought the rose was from you. It was a stupid assumption.”
Clay’s mouth softened as he watched Aly. He was just as embarrassed. If he was any kind of sensitive human being, he’d apologize to her. But apologies came hard when so much hurt and pain filled the past between them.
“Don’t worry about it,” he growled, trying to take the harshness out of his tone. He saw her head snap up, her eyes trained on him. Did he see tears in them? Swallowing against a sudden lump, Clay motioned toward the manual that he placed between them. “Starbuck’s a pain in the ass sometimes.”
“He’s insensitive.” Breathing with relief that Clay wasn’t going to snarl at her, Aly was anxious to move ahead and forget her faux pas. What must Clay think of her now? His face was pale, his gray eyes narrowed and dark. He must be furious with her and it could mean only one thing: more tension and hatred vibrating between them for the duration of this training session. Suddenly, all her hope was destroyed and her exposed nerves jangled.
Clay handed her the copilot’s preflight checklist. “Yeah, he’s insensitive all right,” he ground out.
No Surrender Page 6