They’d been called in around three this morning. When his beeper had sounded, Rina had turned in bed and pushed her head under the pillows to muffle the sound. He’d been up and out within fifteen minutes, unable to leave her much of a note. In the end, he’d only written got called in, because she’d been in such a deep sleep he wasn’t sure if she’d remember the beeper going off when she woke. And really, he couldn’t tell her if it was training or a real call because he wouldn’t know himself until he got to the base. Even then, it would be classified.
He wasn’t used to worrying about stuff like this.
Dammit, it was easier being alone. Easier, but not nearly as satisfying. How was it that, in less than one week’s time, he’d become used to having Rina show up at his door, spend the night in his bed and wake up holding her? So used to it, that his gut actually ached at the thought of it stopping.
He comforted himself with the notion that, if he did have to tell Mac, he could tell him honestly that this meant something. What, exactly, was something he wasn’t prepared to delve into now, especially as it seemed more and more likely that Rina would get that grant and head to Africa. And that was going to do more than put a damper on things.
You knew this had an expiration date.
“Hey, you’re not sleeping, are you?” Justin yelled over the din, hitting him in the shoulder at the same time.
“If I was, would it have mattered?” he yelled back.
“No.” Justin grinned. “But maybe if you checked your messages more often, you’d already know that you’re our team’s new XO.”
“You’re kidding?” Cash rubbed his face with his hands, bent forward and let the satisfaction slide through him. He’d done it. Justin and Hunt clapped him on the back, and Rev let out a whoop from across the helo. His CO was smiling and so was the senior chief, and that was no mean feat.
“Tonight, we celebrate,” Hunt yelled.
Cash smiled, nodded and put his head back against the vibrating helo. Relief flooded him. He’d worked his ass off to get where he was in his career, and he’d always had a lot to show for it. But this, this was something that pushed his limits. And he wondered what it meant that the first person he felt like sharing this with was Rina.
He also wondered if Hunt was this whipped with his surfer girl, and realized that, in all fairness, it didn’t feel half-bad. No, not half-bad at all.
DAWN HAD ARRIVED when Rina and Stella arrived on the base, past the now familiar guard station. Rina threaded the car around the maze of parking areas to the one that was closest to the beach. And when she pulled into a spot, she realized that the lot was too empty for this time of morning.
By six, the entire SEAL team had usually been on a run or a hike or through various other training exercises. This week, Zoot and Keith had agreed to take the night shift with the team. This split the work so they could cover every aspect, and they could all get some sleep.So far, it was working well. The night footage they had was incredible, and Rina loved watching Cash, the way he moved on film, the way he threw himself into his mission, full-on. He never seemed to have any problem pushing his limits.
“It’s quiet here today,” Stella said softly. They’d both opened their doors and stood there. Now she looked at her friend over the roof of the car.
“Why are you whispering?” Rina asked, realizing that she was whispering, too.
“I don’t know. I feel like something’s happening and I don’t want to disturb it.”
“I guess they’re not back from wherever they got called to.” Rina had woken to the note from Cash. She vaguely remembered ringing, and wasn’t sure how she felt waking up and not knowing where he was, or when he was coming back.
So much for no strings. Even though they’d both agreed that that wasn’t true, they still hadn’t discussed what was between them.
Over the last few days, Rina had thought a lot about what Cash said, about facing danger head-on, about how taking risks was an important part of any job, including hers.
Had she been holding back, relying on others to make her videos work? She hadn’t thought so, but she knew that the thought of actually getting the grant both thrilled and terrified her. She’d admitted that fear to Stella in vague terms, but her friend had always had a much better sense of adventure.
Her own adventures happened more in her imagination than in real life, but maybe, just maybe, now was the time to change all of that. She’d gotten enough of a rough cut done on the grant proposal film, a ten-minute clip that she and Stella agreed was their best shot. And, after she spent another night polishing it up, she and Stella were prepared to send it off and then use the next few weeks immersed in making the Navy SEAL video the best it could be. Which, if what they had was any indication, was going to be spectacular.
So yes, that fear was evaporating fast. She was taking that risk. And she had Cash to thank for it.
The next step was facing up to her family, and she’d figured that sooner than later was the best approach. Better that she was out of state and at phone’s reach, rather face-to-face.
“Since they’re not here, why don’t we spend the day at the hotel getting the grant work done?” Stella suggested. Rina agreed and that’s what they did well into the early evening.
She begged off when Stella, Zoot and Keith headed out to dinner, saying she needed sleep. She knew they didn’t believe her, knew she was going to see if Cash was back. And she did want to do that, but first, she gathered up her courage and dialed a familiar number.
“Carina! We haven’t heard from you in two weeks. I had to call Jenny to make sure you were all right.”
“You could’ve called my cell phone, Mom.”
“I didn’t want to bother you if you were working.”
“I should be home sometime next week if all goes well here.” Rina drew a deep breath. “But I’m calling for another reason. There’s something I want to tell you.”
She didn’t give her mother a chance to guess at what that was, dove right in and told her about the proposal and the grant possibility and, finally, she told her mother where the first filming location would be. And then she held her breath at the silence on the other end.
“You can’t go, Carina,” her mother said finally, as though that would be the end of the discussion. “I know Jenny had something to do with this. Her and that husband of hers—”
“His name is Mac, and they didn’t talk me into anything,” she said. “Look, it’s not even a sure thing yet.”
“It’s not enough for me to lose one member of my family to that country, that profession, but now you’re going to follow in his footsteps?” her mother said, and Rina sighed inwardly. The woman always had a way to cut right to the chase and lay on the guilt. “You can’t go.”
“Mom, I might not even get this grant.”
“Do you want to know what happened to your Uncle David? What really happened?”
“I know what happened….”
“You don’t know the full story because I thought it was better to keep that from you. I didn’t want everyone knowing the ugly details of what happened to my brother, what they did to him before they killed him.”
Rina swallowed, hard, and realized she really needed to sit. She stumbled over to the bed, barely made it as her mother began to tell her, without mincing words, what exactly David went through in his final days after his capture by rebel soldiers.
“But he wasn’t going to hurt them…. I don’t understand,” she whispered. “You’re making this up—it was never in the papers. The press would’ve gotten a hold of this—”
“No, they wouldn’t have. The whole matter was deemed classified. So much so, we never got his body back,” her mother said with a choked sob that tore Rina’s heart.
“I can’t do this now, Mom. I’ve got to go,” she said, her own voice shaky, and she hung the phone up and just tried to breathe.
None of it made sense. Why hadn’t her aunt told her any of this?
B
ecause she knew you were scared enough already.
She looked at the packet of letters from her Uncle David that her aunt had loaned her. She hadn’t opened them yet. So she opened the last letter Jenny had ever received from him, written about five months before he was killed. It was obvious that the letter had been read and reread numerous times, and that the paper was in serious danger of ripping. She unfolded it gingerly, didn’t attempt to smooth it down when she placed it on the bed in front of her, and began to read.
Her uncle sounded happy with his work, but he also sounded…lonely. He was twenty-five when he died, and she couldn’t ever remember the mention of a relationship, serious or not. She supposed he got his pleasure through women he met who traveled the way he did. No strings.
She knew firsthand how well no strings didn’t work. Not if you cared about someone. The problem was, what happened to her uncle could easily happen to Cash. Could be happening this very second because she didn’t know where in the world he was.
How did Jenny live with this?
BEFORE RINA KNEW what she was doing, she was in the car, driving to Cash’s house. He was coming out the front door when she pulled in the driveway, and he walked down and met her by her car. The instant relief she felt was quickly replaced by fear again.
“You’re leaving again,” she said through the open window.“Just got back a little while ago from the training exercise. I was going to meet the guys,” he said. “Sort of a mini-celebration.”
“For getting through a training exercise?” she asked, still staying inside the car, hoping the darkness would conceal the fact that she’d been crying.
“No. For making XO,” he said.
“Oh, Cash, that’s wonderful. I know how hard you must’ve worked. Please, go meet your teammates. I’ve got plenty of work…”
But he opened the car door in the middle of her speech and half hauled her out. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing. Please…you’ve got such good news and I…” The tears welled and she tried to break free from his grasp, but he wasn’t letting her.
She didn’t say anything else, gave up trying to escape and instead wrapped herself around him. He held her and kissed her until the tears stopped and she’d stopped thinking about anything but him. And then he closed the car door and walked her into the house and up the stairs with her in his arms. Part routine, even though there was nothing routine about their passion and, for now, she didn’t want to think. Just wanted to feel, and Cash was very good at making her do just that.
He laid them both down on the bed, and for a while they kissed, touched, rubbed together in the darkened room. But when she reached between them for his zipper he stopped her.
“Why did you come here tonight?” he asked.
“For you. For this.” She tugged his shirt up, let her palm move up the rippled muscles of his abs and back down again toward his zipper. “Please, Cash.”
“That’s not why you came here. That was a by-product. An excuse. A way to stop thinking about what’s really bothering you.” He didn’t say it unkindly. Just the opposite, in fact. He pulled away from her and, God, he looked amazing. So much so, that it would be easy to forget about everything else again. But she needed answers.
“Did Mac ever talk about my Uncle David?” she asked finally.
“Yes,” he said, but his voice was guarded.
“I know everything,” she said. “Well, I didn’t, until tonight.”
“What exactly do you know?”
She tried to bite back the tears as she repeated what her mother had told her on the phone, but the thought of what David had gone through before he died was too much to handle. By the end of her story, she was sobbing openly.
“Hey, Rina, it’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay.” She pushed away from him roughly, scrambled off the bed and stood by the window. Cash didn’t come after her, and she held her arms around herself and stared out the window. “How do you do it? Handle all that death and destruction so easily?”
“I never remember telling you that it was easy. Not at all.”
“So what, you get used to it?”
“If you get used to it, it’s time to get out. At least that’s what Mac always said.”
“Do you think he suffered?”
“I don’t know. But it sounds like he was the type of guy who didn’t regret a single thing he did in his life. It sounds like he wouldn’t have done anything differently.”
“I guess not,” she said slowly. “He was so cool. When I was seven or so, he popped in for an unexpected visit.” Rina’s checks glowed with the warmth of the memory. “It was Christmas Eve, and we weren’t expecting him. But he walked through the door right before midnight, with his scruffy beard and beat-up bomber jacket and dust all over him. Said he caught a ride….”
“You were really close to him.”
“I guess, as much as anyone was. He was kind of a loner, and honestly, he wasn’t around much at all. But he always sent funny postcards and letters. He bought me my first professional camera when I was twelve. Taught me how to develop my own film.”
“I’ve seen some of his work. Especially his Africa shots.”
“At Mac’s house?”
“Yeah. I spent a lot of time over there when I first joined his team. Since he joined JAG, our schedules don’t mesh that well. Whenever he’s back in town, we’re usually out.”
“You’re gone a lot, then.”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that hard on relationships?” she asked.
“Yeah, it is. That’s why I typically don’t let myself get involved.”
“But you let yourself with me.”
“I guess I couldn’t help it. And how did all this about your uncle come up?” he asked.
“I told my mother that I was trying for this grant. If I get it, the first place I’ll be filming is the same area where my uncle was when he was killed,” she admitted, thought she saw a slight flash of pain in his eyes. But it was gone instantly, and she blamed the dim light and her exhaustion. “I can understand why she’s worried, but I’ve lived so much of my life afraid to take risks…and yes, you were right when you said that about me earlier. But I’m tired of being scared, and I don’t want to hold anything back anymore. In anything.”
“Then don’t.”
“Maybe I’m not good enough.”
He stood, walked over to the window and hugged her from behind. “I’ve seen enough of your work to know that’s not true.”
“Not that you’re prejudiced or anything.”
“Hey, I wouldn’t lie to you. I don’t blow smoke.” He rubbed her shoulder lightly. “I know that you’re scared that you’ll get the grant and you’re scared that you won’t.”
She gave him a small smile. “That’s what I do best. I worry.”
“That’s definitely not what you do best,” he said as he brushed her cheek with a thumb and leaned in for a kiss. “And it’s not what I do best, either. But there’s something else bothering you.”
“No, it was the stuff about my uncle. It hit me so fast and the first person I thought about…” She stopped, bit her bottom lip for a second. “The first person I thought about going to was you. And that’s not good.”
“Why not?”
“Because you got a major promotion, and you hadn’t even told me.”
He chuckled. “I figured I’d be back in time to see you for your nightly visit,” he admitted. “This is much earlier than your usual late-night booty call.”
“This, the sex, is so good,” she said. “But I don’t think that’s all there is between us.”
“We can carry on a pretty good conversation, too, when you’re not yelling at me.”
She hit him playfully on the shoulder, then let her breasts brush against his bicep while she ran her tongue lightly along the outside of his ear.
“I can’t think straight when you do things like that,” he said.
“I don�
�t want you to think, just want you to feel.”
“I like feeling,” he said, his hand reaching up to cup her breast.
“That’s not the kind of feeling I was talking about. I meant feeling here.” She moved his hand up and placed it, palm down, over her heart. “What do you think?”
WHEN RINA was in his arms, Cash didn’t think about Mac or films or anything but her, and how he enjoyed where he was. Content. He barely recognized that feeling. But he recognized that he liked it, especially when Rina sprawled on top of him, her dark hair strewn against his chest, her breathing calm and relaxed enough to steady him.
He was in so much friggin’ trouble, he should be headed for the hills instead of shifting his body under hers, just enough to stir her, just enough to see that sleepy, sexy smile he remembered from Hawaii.He didn’t know what the hell to do with love. But sex? Oh, yeah, he knew. And, for now, for tonight, he’d focus on that, and that would be enough.
“I think we shouldn’t push our luck,” he said. “I think you need to finish a video and go where you need to go for your career. Jenny’s right. Don’t let anything or anyone get in your way.”
“Jenny married a SEAL,” she reminded him.
“Jenny married Mac before she knew what she was getting into. Times were different. Your opportunity’s different.”
“Suppose you’re my opportunity?” she asked, her voice serious, her eyes wide, trusting. Too damned trusting.
“Suppose I’m not,” he said.
“Suppose I’m willing now to take that chance?”
She was so open, about everything, including experimenting with her wilder side in the bedroom. She trusted him, and he was starting to trust her, which put him in a very dangerous position.
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