The SEAL's Rebel Librarian

by Anne Calhoun

  “Thanks,” she said, preparing to make her escape for the stairwell no one ever used that led to the storage rooms.

  “Wait,” he said. “I made an appointment for your tandem jump. A friend of mine can take us up on Friday morning. The weather looks great.”

  She blinked, felt a smile flicker across her face. “You did? You made the appointment.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I hope that’s okay.”

  “You’re not going to talk me out of it.”

  He bent his head and kissed her. “Never,” he said. “I will never try to talk you out of something that matters to you.”

  She reached up and ran her hand through his hair, making it come up crazy cowlicks. “Thank you,” she said. “Friday’s my day off, so that sounds great.”

  * * *

  Friday found Jack standing in a hangar, watching Erin as she zipped herself into a borrowed jumpsuit. “Laces tight?” he asked with a nod at her running shoes.

  “Double knotted,” she answered.

  “I’ll take those,” Jack said, pointing at Erin’s earrings. They were pretty, long and gold and nestled into her hair, and definitely a hazard.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “At a hundred and twenty miles an hour, they could get tangled in your hair, or the harness, and rip right out of your ears.”

  “Ouch,” Erin said, obediently taking them off. Jack stowed them in one of his cargo pockets. She then pulled her hair back into a ponytail, catching his eye as she did. “That was my next instruction,” Jack said, smiling. She thought ahead. He liked that, liked how she stayed with him, every step of the way.

  Tandem dives were a piece of cake to arrange and pull off. Jack already knew how to orient his body and control the canopy during free fall; the trick was making sure the passenger knew what to do to basically be nothing more than extra weight. Erin paid close attention as he guided her through how to position her body under his, how to keep her arms extended from her shoulders, her legs tucked together, between his, because he was so much bigger than she was. He walked her though the actual jump moment, how to cross her arms over her chest and trust her weight to his, getting nods of understanding at each step.

  “Thumbs up?” he asked.

  “Thumbs up,” she replied, giving him two and a big grin.

  He’d packed their chutes himself, layering the tandem parachute into the deployment bag, then loading the deployment bag into the pack. Hefting the pack in one hand, he kept a firm grip on her harness as they walked to the waiting plane. Disdaining the stairs, he cupped his hands for her foot and boosted her into the plane’s cargo area, then planted his palms and swung himself aboard. The pilot fired up the propellers and taxied to the end of runway, and in moments they were airborne. A delighted grin on her face, she watched out the window as the ground dropped away at a sharp angle.

  She was fine while he shrugged into the pack and secured the straps.

  She was fine when he beckoned her to sit in front of him so he could secure her body to his at the shoulders, chest, and hips.

  Of all people, Jack knew how someone’s mind could change in an instant. In his case it took a firefight gone wrong for his mind to wig out. In Erin’s case, it was the moment he shuffled their harnessed bodies across the plane’s floor to the hatch. She took one look down at the patchwork fields below them, and went rigid, bracing her sneakered feet and pushing back.

  “Jack!”

  “What?” he shouted back, running through his mental checklist. He’d packed the drogue chute himself, and the main tandem chute, and the reserve chute, too. Cords hung freely. Harness secure, Erin’s harness secure, the straps harnessing them together. He adjusted his mirrored goggles, then tried and failed to wiggle a finger under the strap of Erin’s pair, borrowed from the jump school’s equipment. Her hair was secured at her nape in a ponytail, leaving her elegant cheekbones and stubborn chin visible.

  “I can’t do it.”

  The body’s instinctive reaction to heights was to either back away slowly or tip over the edge. “It’s going to be fine,” he said.

  “No, it’s not!” she shouted.

  “One minute!” the pilot shouted back toward them. Jack checked the altimeter on his watch and gave him a thumbs-up.

  She reached back, blindly grappling for something. To keep her away from the chutes, he guided her hand to the loose fabric of the jumpsuit. It went taut as she fisted her hand in it, all color blanching from her face.

  “We’re above the clouds!”

  “Yup,” he said. “Gonna be a good jump.”

  “Nope. Nope, nope, nope. This is crazy. This is insane!”

  He gripped the bar bolted above the door, as did she. Her knuckles popped through the thin fabric of her gloves, giving away the death grip she had on the bar.

  “Thirty seconds!” the pilot yelled.

  She had to let go in order for them to jump. “Erin,” he shouted next to her ear. He could see the whites of her eyes as she stared at the ground under them. “The fear is normal. But think ahead! If we call this off, what will you feel the moment we touch down, and you walk away from the plane? Relief?”

  “Yes!”

  “Or regret?”

  Silence. “Yes,” she shouted, “but I’m scared, Jack! I’m really, really scared.”

  “I know, sweetheart,” he said, patting her abdomen. It fluttered under his palm; she was all but hyperventilating. “But you’re not alone. I’m going out of this plane with you.”

  A crazy, high-pitched cackle trilled from her mouth. “Then we’re both crazy! How many jumps?”

  “Hundreds,” he said. High-altitude, low-chute deployment, for training, into enemy territory, into jungles and deserts and urban areas. “Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of jumps, sweetheart.”

  “Hundreds?” she repeated, like a mantra.

  “Hundreds. Erin,” he said, then reached up and gently turned her chin so she could look over her shoulder at him. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing, but that’s not really the point. No regrets, sweetheart. No regrets.”

  “Go time!” the pilot yelled, and the light overhead went green.

  The pilot could make another circle if they needed him to, so Jack waited. “Trust me,” he said again, breathing the words into the skin of her cheek.

  Silence. She was exhibiting all the signs of extreme duress, with a side order of terror thrown in. Accelerated heart rate, eyes the size of plates, fast, shallow breathing, full body tremors. “No regrets,” she breathed, eyes huge. “Yes.”

  “Go?” he asked.

  “Go.” She let go of the bar bolted above the hatch, folded her arms across her chest. “Don’t make me say it again!”

  He cupped her forehead and tipped her head back against his shoulder, then wrapped both hands around the bar, rocked back, and flung them forward out of the plane. The first few seconds out of the plane in unabated free fall were such a powerful rush. He expected ear-splitting screams, but all he could hear was the shriek of the wind against his ears. He knew she hadn’t fainted because her arms were still tightly crossed, and she was straining to keep her legs lifted between his. Holding position. All in.

  He tapped her shoulders, and she flung her arms out, fingers stretched wide, and let out a scream of pure joy. “Oh my God, this is amazing!”

  He laughed, then glanced at his watch, where the altimeter recorded their descent. Forty seconds and he’d deploy the main chute for a five-minute drift to the landing zone. He held out his hand, palm down, in front of Erin’s face, and she slapped it hard, giving him an exuberant, very high five.

  “Arms in!” he shouted.

  She jerked her arms back in, and he pulled the main, rocking them hard against the harness as the chute expanded, slowing their fall considerably. As they drifted toward the landing site, a powerful possessiveness thrummed inside him, vibrating like the cords connecting the chute to the harness. He was the one who protected her while she pursued her dreams. H
e was the one who set her free.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she called back to him.

  “Yeah,” he said, looking at the color high in her cheeks, the grin splitting her face. “Beautiful.”

  When the ground rushed up to meet them, she lifted her knees to her chest and let him make the landing. He stuck it, taking three big steps forward until he got his balance and the chute drifted down behind them. Crouching a little so Erin could get her feet on the ground, he yanked the chute down out of the breeze, then released the straps holding her to him. She sprang away with a whoop and ran in a tight circle in front of him.

  “Holy cow!”

  “Uh huh,” he said, wrestling with the chute.

  She shook her clenched fists and bounced on her toes. “That’s better than the Duc,” she said, emphatic, shoving the goggles up to her hairline. “That’s amazing. Exhilarating.”

  “Pretty much,” he said.

  She reached out and grabbed his harness, hauling him a little off-balance. “Arousing,” she said, and kissed him.

  He remembered this, too, from his first few jumps, the adrenaline rush triggering a predictable male response, but it had been a long time since he’d gotten hard jumping out of a plane. But when Erin’s mouth crashed into his, hard and open and so completely alive, he went from blasé to aroused in three heartbeats. Blood bloomed hot and coppery on his tongue. He fought off the chute and wrapped his other arm around her shoulders, holding her close for a hot, possessive, tongue-tangling kiss. Something was different deep inside him, something he hadn’t predicted or expected, but what his body was telling him was true and there and real.

  She shoved away with a delighted gasp, then shook her hands hard and held them out for his inspection. Her fingers visibly twitched, even in the gloves; if he took them off, she’d be trembling. His body recognized the hot, wild look in her eyes that boded very, very well for an incredible afternoon in bed.

  “Look,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said, and held his hands out in response.

  His were rock solid. Not a twitch, tremor, or ripple in them. He blinked, and pulled off his gloves, tucking them under his arm, then did it again.

  Granite. His hands were back, and not just his left, but his right. His trigger hand, his rifle hand, his dominant hand. He was as steady as the foundations of a skyscraper.

  His body knew. His body knew it was ready to go back to work. He searched deep within himself and found it to be true.

  Not recognizing that anything was different, she gripped his hands and peered into his eyes. “I want you. Now.”

  He gripped the back of her head and pulled her in for a hard, swift kiss. “I know exactly how you feel, sweetheart, but trust me on this one. You want this back at your place, in a bed, curtains drawn, total privacy. Because I’m going to take my time and make you scream.”

  A full body shudder ran through her. She nipped his lower lip, then looked around. “I don’t know,” she said. “Out here, in the field, under the sun?”

  “Bed,” he said firmly, because once the adrenaline wore off she would be sore from the harness. He had plans for her: a bathtub and a hot oil rub before round two started.

  She pouted prettily for a second, then brightened. “The ride home is going to be electric.”

  One eye on the horizon, he said, “We need to turn in the gear,” he said, and pointed. The pilot was lining up for a landing.

  Together they gathered the chute and helped the pilot push the plane into the hangar that doubled as the storage facility. After they turned in their harnesses, jumpsuits, and goggles, he waved them out, staying behind to finish up some paperwork and close the place down.

  Erin swung her leg over the Duc. “Race you home?”

  He laughed, and pushed the start button. “I know you love your pretty new bike, but it doesn’t stand a chance against mine,” he said.

  “So give me a head start,” she said, and settled her helmet on her head.

  This woman. She wanted to race and win, race and lose, race and be caught, race the sunset. “You’re going to lose,” he warned.

  “I bet I’ll like it,” she said and goosed the throttle. Not much, not enough to send the bike out of control, but enough to show him how she felt. He followed at a leisurely pace, thinking through the straightaways along the country roads, the curves that followed the river into Lancaster. By the time he caught up with her, she’d settled down, riding at a sedate five over the limit. They rode up onto the overpass and down the other side, then approached the curve where the straight-line country road yielded to the river, banking left. It was a pretty curve, the water glinting forty or fifty feet below, trees lining the banks sloping from the road to the river. Other than the trips to the airfield, she probably hadn’t taken many big curves on the motorcycle yet, so he hung back, watching her with an eye toward giving her some tips when they got to her house. She slowed to well below the limit, keeping the bike a little too upright, but comfort leaning into a turn would come with experience. He thought about that experience … she’d come a long, long way in a couple of weeks, from a research librarian dreaming of owning a motorcycle to a woman who owned an Italian sportbike and jumped out of airplanes.

  A brown blur shot out of the tall grass in the ditch, straight into Erin’s path. Jack shouted, knowing it was useless, then watched helplessly as she made the rookie’s worst braking mistake: underbraking the front tire and overbraking the rear. The bike wobbled, laying down a skid mark, then tipped over, sliding in a straight line down the two-lane highway while Erin slid on her side under the guardrail and into the trees.

  Chapter Seven

  Time slowed. Erin heard each distinct note in a bird’s song, the scrape of metal against concrete as her bike skidded away from her, the thud-bump of her body bouncing over the road, her leathers scudding into the gravel. Between the moment she knew she’d lost control of the bike and the moment she went airborne, she ran through John Donne’s “The Good-Morrow.”

  I wonder, by my truth …

  I’m in love with Jack Powell. Cerulean. That’s the name of the color of the sky. I’m head over heels in love with him. I told him … no … I gave him my word that this would just be casual.

  I gave him my word.

  I’m flying.

  Darkness.

  A sepia-toned tunnel opened suddenly to green feathered shapes drifted blurrily against blue, then darkness again.

  She strained toward the light widening through her visor to hear fuckfuckfuckfuck … don’tdieErin … staywithmesweetheart …

  * * *

  Jack’s bare head, hair cowlicked in seven different directions, his phone pressed to his ear as he hunkered down at her side. I need an ambulance. Motorcycle accident on Highway 6 …

  The tunnel closed in on her …

  * * *

  Blue again. This time she knew it was the sky, framed by her helmet, and the green things were leaves budding on cottonwood trees, and the white fluff was clouds. All of this was blocked in large part by Jack’s beautiful, weathered face, solemn and serious. “Did I hit it?” she asked, her voice shaky.

  “Hit what?” he said distractedly, his big hands pressing gently into her thigh.

  “The rabbit. I didn’t want to hit the rabbit.”

  “That fucking rabbit,” Jack said. “I’m going to find it, gut it, and roast it on a fucking spit,” he said as he peered down at her.

  “Poor little bunny,” she said muzzily.

  The hands pressed into her chest were rock steady, she realized. Why that occurred to her now rather than back at the airstrip she didn’t know. Maybe because a near-death experience clarified thinking? His hands were totally steady, heel resting on her sternum, fingers curled over her breast, covering her heart. She looked up into his blue-gray eyes, and knew she’d told this truthful, honorable man a lie. Yes, the rabbit startled her, but only because she’d been distracted by the one thing she’d promised not to do. It wasn’t adren
aline. It wasn’t the high of skydiving, or riding the Duc. She’d fallen in love with Jack Powell, U.S. Navy SEAL.

  “Stay with me, sweetheart,” Jack said.

  I can’t, she thought.

  “Where does it hurt? Anything broken?”

  Oh. He meant her body. She thought about that really carefully. “Everywhere hurts,” she said. “My hip, where I hit the ground. I feel like someone took a stick to me. My leg is throbbing. My back.”

  “You crashed through the underbrush, and you’ve got a serious case of road rash,” he said. “Stay still. You might have spinal cord damage. Paramedics are on their way.”

  “I hear sirens,” she said.

  “I called 911 then called a friend in the police department,” he explained.

  “How embarrassing,” she said.

  “Everything okay down there? Need me to call 911?”

  A strange man’s voice, calling down from over the guardrail. He was upside down in Erin’s field of vision, which made her dizzy. She closed her eyes again.

  “Already did,” Jack said tersely. “Can you get her bike out of the road?”

  “No problem,” the guy said, and disappeared.

  “That’s nice of him,” Erin said, “but he was making me dizzy. How’s my bike?”

  “You paid your insurance, right?” Jack asked.

  Yesterday. She’d dropped off a check with the agent on her way to work yesterday, looking for reasons to run errands, go out of her way, because she loved riding her Duc. “That bad?”

  “Your naked bike is now naked to the point of being totaled,” Jack said.

  “That’s really embarrassing,” she said, and closed her eyes again.

  The sirens finally stopped. Doors slammed, then two paramedics were crashing through the underbrush to drop to their knees beside her.

  “Female, thirty-four, laid down the bike and slid under the guardrail, awake and aware,” Jack said tersely, then rattled off her pulse, breathing, pupils, feeling and movement in fingers and toes. After what seemed like an interminable discussion she was on the backboard being carried up the embankment to the side of the road. “Where are you taking her?”