“Yeah, this was the perfect cushy assignment,” Lucky added. “Lots of R and R with the added bonus of a chance to really mess with some Finks’ minds.”
Joe Cat was steamed. “Yes, pulling this assignment was supposed to be a reward,” he told them. “But silver bullet or not, our job was to train a team of FinCOM agents in counterterrorist techniques. We can’t possibly train these people effectively if our hands are completely tied—which is the only way the top brass will let us do it.”
“Aw, come on, Cat. So we let the Finks sleep in their fancy hotel and we let them do their twenty-mile run from the back seat of a limo,” Wes urged. “It’s no skin off our noses.”
“Yeah, Captain, we can cope with their rule book.” Lucky pulled his feet down off his desk. “It’s no big deal.”
“It’ll probably make the job that much easier for us,” Bobby argued.
“These agents we were supposed to train,” Harvard countered in his rich bass voice, “are going to be used in the field to back up or work with SEAL units. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to go up against a crazy-assed pack of ‘Brothers of the Light’ terrorists with some badly trained FinCOM team of fools as the only thing preventing Alpha Squad from being shipped home in body bags.”
There was no argument anyone could make against that.
“So where’s Alpha Squad going, Cat?” Cowboy broke the gloomy silence.
The dark-haired captain looked up at his men and exhaled a single burst of extremely nonhumorous laughter. “Barrow,” he enunciated with extra clarity.
“Alaska?” Wesley’s voice cracked. “In the winter?”
“You got it,” Cat said, smiling grimly. “The pencil pushers upstairs are not happy with me right now, and they’re making sure I know it—and you poor bastards are going to pay.”
Alaska. Cowboy closed his eyes and swore.
“Not planning to come with us, Junior?” Harvard never missed a thing, no matter how subtle the comment. And Cowboy had said “Alpha Squad,” not “we.”
Cowboy lowered his voice. “I have a situation, Senior Chief. I was hoping to talk to you privately. I need to take an extended leave. A full thirty days if possible.”
Wesley overheard. “Leave? Hell, yeah, H., I need to take some, too. Anything to get out of going to Alaska.”
“Let’s get this gear packed and stored,” Joe Cat ordered. “Our new assignment has us going wheels up in less than two hours.”
Harvard shook his head. “Sorry, Jones. There’s no time. We’ll have to deal with it after we get to Barrow.”
“Senior Chief, wait.” Cowboy stopped him short. Suddenly, the answer to this top-brass-induced snafu seemed obvious. “Don’t you see? That’s the solution. Leave. For everyone.”
Understanding sparked in Harvard’s dark brown eyes and then he laughed. “Harlan Jones Jr., you have the devious soul of a master chief. Cat, guess what Junior here thought up all by himself? The Answer, with a capital A.”
“We’ve probably all got lots of time coming to us. Hell, I’ve got a full 120 days on the books,” Cowboy continued. “And if we stall long enough, say maybe two or three weeks, they won’t want to ship us up to northern Alaska because of the risk of bad weather. There’s no way they’d send Alpha Squad someplace we could be snowed in—I’ve heard of people going up there and not getting back until spring. No matter how ticked off they are at the skipper, they won’t do that to SEAL Team Ten’s top counterterrorist squad.”
Everyone else in the room was listening now, too, including Joe Cat.
Blue McCoy laughed softly, shaking his head. “What do you think, Joe?” he said to the captain. “A vacation in the Virgin Islands with your wife and kid, or cold-water exercises for the squad in Barrow, Alaska?”
Joe Cat looked at Cowboy and smiled. “I’m gonna get hammered for this, but…who wants leave?”
The curtains were up and hanging in the nursery windows.
Melody had meant to do that project before she got too large to stand on a chair. She’d put it off for too long, of course, and had been meaning to ask Brittany to help.
It looked as if Britt had beaten her to the punch.
Melody went back into her bedroom and quickly dialed her sister’s number at the hospital. As she waited for Brittany to come to the phone, she sat on her bed and wriggled out of her panty hose. Even with the stretch panel in the front, they were hellish to wear for more than an hour or two.
“Brittany Evans.”
“Hi, it’s me,” Melody said. “I wanted to let you know that I’m home from Ted’s photo op.”
“It took longer than you thought.”
“It was late getting started.”
“You weren’t standing up that entire time, were you?” Brittany asked.
“No, I wasn’t,” Melody said. She hadn’t been standing, she’d been running. She lay back on the bed, exhausted. “Thank you for hanging the curtains.”
“You’re purposely changing the subject,” Brittany accused her. “It was awful, wasn’t it?” she guessed. “You spent half the time with your ankles swelling and the other half of the time in the ladies’ room, throwing up.”
“Not half the time.”
“Sweetie, you’ve got to give Ted Shepherd your notice. This is crazy.”
“I told him I’d work up to the election. I promised him.” Melody liked the hectic busyness of her job. All day today, she’d only thought about Harlan Jones a few dozen times rather than the few million times she’d caught herself thinking about him yesterday.
She closed her eyes, feeling a familiar surge of regret. Jones had left. He’d actually gotten into his car and driven away. But that was what she’d wanted, she reminded herself. It was for the best.
“Look, I’m bringing home Chinese for dinner tonight,” Brittany told her, “so don’t even think about cooking. I want you to be in bed, napping, when I get home.”
“Believe me, I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’ll be home around six. I’ve got some errands to run.”
“Britt, wait. Thanks—really—for hanging those curtains.”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “Yeah, you said that before, didn’t you? What curtains?”
“The ones in the nursery.”
“Mel, I haven’t had the time or energy to even go into the nursery over the past few days, let alone hang up any curtains.”
“But…” Melody sat up. From her vantage point on the bed, she could see up the stairs into the tower room she’d made into a nursery. The bright colored curtains she’d bought to match the animals she’d stenciled on the nursery walls were moving gently in a breeze from an open window.
An open window…?
Melody stood up. “Brittany, my God, I think he’s back!”
“Who’s back?”
“Jones.”
“Oh, thank you, Almighty Father!”
“Hey, whose side are you on here?” Melody asked her sister indignantly.
“Yours. The man is to die for, Mel. He’s clearly got his priorities straight when it comes to his responsibilities, he’s impossibly polite, he seems very sweet, he’s got excellent taste in jewelry and he’s built like a Greek statue. And oh, yeah. As if that wasn’t enough, he just happens to look like Kevin Costner on a good hair day! Marry him. The rest will sort itself out.”
“I’m not marrying him. He doesn’t love me. And I don’t love him.”
“Why not? I’m half in love with him myself already.”
Melody crossed to her bedroom window and looked down into the yard. “Oh, God, Britt, I’ve got to go! There’s a tent in the backyard!”
“A what?”
“A tent.”
“Like a circus tent—?”
“No,” Melody said. “Like a camping tent. Like…”
Jones pushed his way out of the tent and into the yard. The sun glistened off his bare chest and shoulders. He wore only faded jeans, a pair of worn-out cowboy boots and a
beat-up baseball cap. His hair was down loose around his tanned shoulders.
“Like an army tent,” she finished weakly.
Melody knew that the Dockers and polo shirt Jones had worn the day he’d arrived in Appleton had been similar to his gleaming white dress uniform. He’d worn both outfits in an attempt to be more formal, more conservative. But these clothes he was wearing now—this was the real Jones.
His message was clear. He was done playing games.
As Melody watched, he bent and made an adjustment to the tent, and the muscles in his back and arms stood out in sharp relief. He looked dangerous and hard and incredibly, mind-blowingly sexy.
Despite his long hair, he looked much more like the man she’d first come face-to-face with in the middle of a terrorist-controlled embassy all those months ago.
“A tent?” Brittany was saying. “In our yard?”
“Brittany, look, I have to go. He’s definitely here.” As she watched, Jones straightened up and said something. Said something to whom? But then, Andy Marshall scrambled out from inside the tent, laughing—apparently at whatever Jones had said.
“Sweetie, don’t be too quick to—”
“Goodbye, Britt!”
Melody cut the connection, and taking a deep breath she headed downstairs.
She went out the kitchen door and stood on the back porch, just watching until Jones looked up. He glanced at Andy but didn’t have to say a word. The kid disappeared.
Jones wiped his hands on the thighs of his jeans as he came toward her. He was smiling, but his eyes were guarded—as if he wasn’t quite certain of his welcome.
He was correct to be uncertain. “What do you think you’re doing?” Melody asked.
He turned to glance back at the tent as if double-checking exactly what he’d erected there. “The inn’s a bit pricey,” he told her. “I figured since I’m going to stay awhile, it’d be more economical to—”
“How long, exactly, are you planning to stay?” Melody couldn’t keep her voice from shaking. How dare he just set up camp in her backyard where she would be forced to look at him, to notice him, to talk to him if she wanted to tend to her gardening?
Jones propped a foot up on one of the back steps and rested his arms on his knees as he gave her his best smile. “As long as it takes for you to agree to marry me.”
She sat down on the top step. “Gonna get pretty cold in a couple of months, living in a tent. But after a few years, you’ll probably get used to it.”
He laughed. “Honey, there’s no way you and I could live this close to each other for even a few weeks, let alone a few years, without one or both of us spontaneously combusting.”
Melody snorted. “Get real, Jones. Have you looked at me lately? Unless you have a fetish involving beach balls, I’m not likely to set your world on fire any time soon.”
“Are you kidding? You’re gorgeous. It’s very sexy….”
Melody closed her eyes. “Jones, please don’t do this.”
She never should have closed her eyes. She didn’t see him settle on the step next to her, and by the time she felt him put his arms around her, it was too late. She was trapped.
She hadn’t forgotten how strong his arms felt, how safe she felt inside his embrace. And when she looked up at him, she found she hadn’t forgotten the little flecks of brown and gold floating in the always changing green ocean of his eyes either. And she hadn’t forgotten the way the mysterious darkness of his pupils widened, seemingly enough to swallow her whole, right before he bent to kiss her.
He tasted like coffee, two sugars, no cream. He tasted like Paris in the moonlight, like the rough feel of bricks as he covered her mouth with his and pressed her up against a house that had been built four hundred years before Columbus had sailed west to reach the Far East and discovered America instead.
He tasted like chocolate, like expensive wine, like a second helping of dessert. He tasted like everything she’d ever wanted but had taught herself to refuse for her own sake.
He kissed her so gently, so sweetly, almost reverently as if he had missed her as much as she’d pretended not to miss him. And, God, she had missed him. There was a place in her chest that had felt hollow and cold for all these months—until now. Now she felt infused by warmth, both inside and out.
She felt him touch her, the warmth of his palm lightly pressing against her extended belly.
“My God,” he breathed. “It’s really all you, isn’t it?”
Melody saw it then. Jones made an effort to smile as she looked up at him, but he couldn’t hide the fact that he was thoroughly unnerved. She was having his baby, and as long as he was with her, there was no way he was going to forget that. She could see from his eyes how disconcerted he was, how unsettled he felt.
And just like that, the hollowness was back, making her feel emptier than ever.
She knew with a dead certainty that if Jones were granted only one wish, it would be that he’d had a condom on that flight to Paris. She knew that being tied down with a wife and a child was the last thing on earth that this man wanted. She knew that the last place in the world that he wanted to be was here, sitting on her porch, talking her into doing something he himself didn’t want to do.
And yet here he was. She had to admire him for that.
She could see the determination in his eyes as he leaned toward her one more time. His lips were so soft as he kissed her again. She was reminded just how very astute he was when it came to reading her needs. He somehow knew that these gentle, almost delicate kisses would get him much further than the intensely passionate, soul-sucking inhalations of desire they’d shared time and again in Paris.
Of course, it was entirely possible that he was kissing her without that explosion of passion because he no longer felt passion for her.
And why should he? She was a constant reminder of his obligations and responsibilities. And on top of that, she was about as sexy as a double-wide trailer.
Still, he kissed her so sweetly, she felt like melting.
Melody was in deep trouble here. Lt. Cowboy Jones was a warrior and a psych expert. While other men might well have been put off by her constant rejections, he was unswervable. And it was more than obvious that he had a battle plan as far as she was concerned. He’d figured out that she wasn’t immune to him. He’d realized that he was still firmly entrenched under her skin and he’d dug in to wait her out. Time and her traitorous hormones were on his side. She was going to have to be even stronger.
She was going to have to start by pulling away from this delicious kiss that was making her knees feel even more rubbery than usual. She was going to have to unlock her fingers from the thick softness of his hair. She was going to have to be tougher than this.
Melody stood up, slipping free from his embrace. “Excuse me,” she said. It was amazing how she could sound so calm when inside she was experiencing an emotional tornado. “I have to go inside.” He stood up, too. “Alone,” she added.
He tried to hide his frustration by taking a deep breath and smiling. “Mel, honey, what do I have to do to convince you—”
“I think the presence of your tent on my property constitutes trespassing. I’ll thank you very much to remove it.”
He laughed at that. “I figured this way it was hidden behind the house. I thought the fewer people who knew about it, the better. But if you insist, I’ll move the tent over into the Romanellas’ yard. Vince said that would be okay. Of course, then everyone in town will be able to see it from the street.”
“I don’t care,” Melody said. “Odds are everyone in town knows it’s there already.”
He took a step toward her and she took a step back. “Mel.” He held out his hands, palms facing down as if he were calming a wild animal. “Think about this for a minute. We’re both on the same side here. We’re both trying to find the best solution for this situation.”
“Jones, I know you don’t really want to marry me,” she said. “What I don’t know is h
ow you’d be able to make yourself say those wedding vows. It would all be a lie. ’Til death us do part. Yeah, right. Until divorce us do part is more like it. You know it as well as I do.”
He leaned back against the porch rail, folding his arms across his chest. “You’re right about the fact that I don’t want to get married,” he admitted. “But if I’ve got to marry someone, I’d just as soon have it be you.”
“And I’d just as soon have it be someone normal—” She cut herself off. “God, haven’t we had this conversation already?”
“Yes,” he said. “And I’m going to say it again. I’m no different from any other man.”
“Except for the fact that when you get in a knife fight with four-to-one odds against you, you win.” Melody shook her head. “Jones, don’t you see how incredibly out of place you are here?”
“I’m a SEAL,” he said. “I’ve been trained to adapt to any environment or culture. Appleton, Massachusetts, shouldn’t be that big a deal.” He straightened up. “Where’s the edge trimmer? In the garage?”
She blinked. “What? Why?”
He adjusted his baseball cap as he went down the steps and started walking backward along the path toward the garage as he talked. “You said you couldn’t picture me using an edge trimmer. I’m going to help you out by actually letting you watch me use one.”
Melody’s laughter was on the verge of being hysterical. “You’re not going to leave, are you? You’re just going to stay here forever and torment me.”
He stopped walking. With the sun shining down on him, glistening off his tanned skin, gleaming off his gold-streaked hair, he looked invincible. “That depends on your definition of ‘torment.”’
Melody sat down on the steps, fighting the urge to burst into tears. She was so tired. She had all that she could handle working three-quarters time during these past few months of a difficult pregnancy. There was no way she could do that and go one-on-one in a battle of wills with a man who’s vocabulary didn’t include the word quit.
Jones came back toward the porch, his eyes darkening with concern. “Honey, you look a little tuckered out.” His voice was soft. “Maybe we should skip the lawn-care demonstration so you can go on upstairs and catch a nap before dinner, huh?”
Tall, Dark and Dangerous Part 1 Page 87