She turned over his observations in her head as they hiked in silence for a while. If she was not mistaken, he was gradually picking up the pace of the their hike. She was having to work harder to keep up with him, now.
Abruptly, Ford declared, “You think too loud.”
“Excuse me?”
“I can hear you thinking back there. What’s running through your head?”
She was startled. Her instructors to date hadn’t had the slightest interest in knowing what she was thinking. They had just wanted to run her into the ground and force her into a physical collapse.
“Why do you want to know what I’m thinking?”
“Most civilians think of SEAL training only as physically grueling. But the mental aspects are actually more important. I have to find your brain’s breaking points and teach you how to overcome not only fatigue and physical pain but also fear, stress, anger, or any other thought or emotion that could get you killed on an op. I know how guys think. But I’ve got no clue how you think.”
She frowned at his back and answered slowly, “I’m not afraid of physical pain. I ran my first full triathlon ten years ago, and I’ve done at least one a year since then. I learned a long time ago how to use my mind to overcome my body’s limitations. That part of SEAL training was never going to be a problem for me.”
“That was Perriman’s assessment of you, also.”
“Really?” she exclaimed. “He noticed?”
“The guy’s like a spider sitting in the middle of his web. Nothing escapes his notice. He’s nearly one-hundred-percent accurate in forecasting who will and won’t make it all the way through BUD/S.”
“What else did he have to say about me?”
“Do I look stupid?” Ford threw over his shoulder. “I’m not giving up all my secrets to you.”
She laughed quietly behind him. “I thought that was my line.”
Ford’s only answer was to pick up the pace. Significantly. Cautious after her misstep earlier, she struggled to splash along behind him and keep herself from taking another full-blown swamp plunge. The afternoon heated up even more, and the air was so thick with humidity and so utterly still that she felt like she was swimming through it. The stench of the swamp clung to her hair and clothes, reeking powerfully enough that it started to make her sick.
She drank all her bottled water and began to consider where she was going to get more clean drinking water. It was frustrating being surrounded by so much of the stuff and none of it drinkable. The swamp water would need to be filtered, distilled, and treated with purification tablets before she would even think about giving it a try. Setting up a distilling rig would take some time and a fire. A fire would take dry kindling to start, and there was precious little of that out here.
Suspicious of Ford after he’d let her flail in the muck alone, she started collecting dry, dead twigs as she came across them and stuffing them in a pocket of her rucksack. At some point in the miserable race through the bayou, they passed a cedar stump poking above the water line. It was heavily decayed and crumbling. Gleefully, she stashed handfuls of resin-soaked cedar wood shards in her pack. Even wet, the highly flammable cedar would light off with a simple match to start it burning.
She was just zipping the last pocket on her rucksack when Ford startled her, speaking directly in her ear. “What are you doing?”
She jumped about a foot straight up in the air and whipped around to glare at him. He loomed so close she could see his individual eyelashes. They were thick and dark and long. Why was it guys always got the great lashes and not girls?
“Nice startle reflex you’ve got, there.”
“Screw you, Lambo,” she muttered.
“Seriously. What are you doing?”
“Gathering bits of this cedar stump.”
“Why?”
“Fire starter. I figure you’re going to make me get my own water, and I plan to distill it before I drink any of that filth.”
“Thinking ahead and contingency planning will save your hide.” He added casually, “Hate me, yet?”
She blinked up at him, surprised at the question. Deliberately, he stripped off his gloves and tucked them in his belt. Then he shocked her by reaching out to tuck a wayward strand of her hair behind her ear. His fingertips traced the rim of her ear lightly, and her gaze snapped up to his. Whoa. His eyes flared as hot as a blast furnace as he stared down at her. An ember of something equally molten ignited low in her belly, incinerating her from the inside out.
An invisible rope between them tightened, and she swayed toward him. He seemed to feel the pull too and he moved a step closer to her, bringing them practically chest to chest. His lips parted slightly, and damned if hers didn’t do the same. His breath touched her temple as lightly as his fingers had touched her ear. How her right hand came to rest on his cotton t-shirt directly over his heart, she had no idea. But she felt his heart thudding slow and steady beneath her palm. Vital. Masculine. Strong. As strong as the man.
“Christ, you’re tempting,” he breathed.
“Says the pot to the kettle,” she murmured back. He shifted restlessly beneath her palm, and his hands came up to encompass both sides of her head, tilting her face up slightly. At just the right angle for kissing. His heartbeat leaped erratically beneath her hand, and her breath hitched in response.
She wanted to kiss him so bad she could hardly stand it. Did she dare? All she had to do was stand on her tiptoes, lean in a little more, plaster her body against the smoking hot length of his and touch that sexy mouth with hers. To breathe him in, to taste him, to take off his shirt, shove her hands down his pants and—
He stepped back sharply.
Dammit! Was the guy a mind reader or something? Lust raged through her, clawing at her angrily.
One corner of his mouth quirked up knowingly, as if he sensed her sexual frustration. “There’s more than one way to get you to hate me.”
“Why do you want me to hate you?”
“You’ll figure it out.” He shrugged. “Guess I’ll have to pick up the pace.”
Of what? Seducing her? Please God, yes, pick up the pace!
“Let’s go,” he ordered briskly, whirling and striding off into the swamp.
Mentally, she groaned. Her legs were not in top shape after yesterday’s run and this morning’s, and the boggy terrain was forcing her to lift her feet unnaturally high with every step, often having to pull her boot free of the clutching muck under the water in the process. It was exhausting going. It made the most exhausting stair climbing machine she’d ever tried look like kid stuff. Not that she would ever voice a complaint aloud to him, of course.
After announcing his intent to provoke her hatred by speeding up, he kept his word. He easily doubled his speed from before, and she had to splash along clumsily, trying to keep up.
The man was freaking machine. Marching and running were areas she pretty much always kept up with the boys, but Ford made mincemeat of her out here. Twice he had to stop and wait for her to catch up lest they lose sight of each other entirely in the dense vegetation. He was not happy either time she caught up with him, his lips pressed tightly together and his dark eyes glinting in disapproval, but he didn’t say anything. He just turned and pressed on.
Not that it even entered her mind to quit. He would have to kill her to get her to stop trying to keep up.
Okay, she was starting to hate him a little. It wasn’t fair for any one person to be that strong or have that much stamina. Her mind boggled at the prospect of sex with a man like him. He would wear her out. Imagining it was enough to keep her slogging along after him for at least another hour.
In spite of the awesome distraction of fantasizing about epic sex with him, the afternoon stretched on interminably, a slow roasting oven that cooked her alive. It didn’t help that she had no water to drink. A dehydration headache pounded at the back of her skull, her thighs screamed in protest, her stomach tried to gnaw a hole through her spine, she was covered in
dried, black, swamp gook, she itched, she stunk, and she hurt from head to foot. To top it all off, she was horny as hell. In a nutshell, it was the mother of all suckage.
But hey. She could be doing sit-ups in the icy cold Pacific Ocean with her classmates while holding a wet, slippery log overhead, hypothermic, swallowing gallons of salt water, and puking her guts out. She supposed it was just a matter of picking her poison. Either way, her trainers were going to see to it she was as miserable as humanly possible.
Desire to cry uncle warred with knowing that Ford was trying to get her to do precisely that. Which pissed her off. She didn’t like it when anyone got inside her head, particularly her personal, smoking hot SEAL.
She’d had more than enough of that as a child. Her mother’s string of crappy boyfriends had specialized in messing with her, and she’d learned early to throw up heavy emotional defenses against their teasing and outright cruelty. Who’d have thunk the day would come when she would actually be grateful to the slimy bastards her mother’d had a gift for finding and bringing home?
“You’re thinking loudly again,” Ford announced.
She looked up at him, startled. He shot her a single, cocked eyebrow that demanded to know what was going on in her noggin.
“Umm, I was thinking about my mother’s boyfriends.”
“Do tell.”
She shrugged. “I never thought I’d be grateful to them for being assholes.”
Ford cracked a smile. “That’s more like it.”
“What do you mean?” she challenged.
“I was wondering how long I would have to run you around in circles out here before you’d finally get fed up.”
“We’ve been going in circles?” she exclaimed. Now, that actually did hack her off.
His grin widened. “Oh yeah. Round and round.”
“Okay, I hate you, now.”
He laughed outright. “Excellent. Let’s head for camp, then.”
Camp? Out here? Oh, joy. She generally loved being outdoors. In fact, she despised being cooped up behind walls as a rule. But this place had a squick factor that was hard to overlook. She hadn’t actually seen any alligators yet, but she knew they were lurking around. Same with poisonous snakes, scorpions, and a host of other biting and stinging critters. Ah well. It wasn’t like SEALs got to choose their environments. At least no one was shooting at her.
Yet.
Chapter Five
‡
The sun had gone down and twilight wreathed the mist starting to rise off the swamp in creepy ambience when suddenly, her feet touched solid ground. Thank God. This never-ending day had all but done her in. Her boots squished with each step and her feet felt totally waterlogged, but she couldn’t care less. She could actually walk without having to lift her feet knee-high.
She stopped and stared at the strange sight that greeted her as they moved farther ashore. Two arrow straight, parallel rows of huge, overhanging live oak trees stretched away into the gathering twilight in shades of gray and black. It was an incongruous sign of human civilization tucked away in the middle of nowhere. The ancient trees were thickly festooned with Spanish moss, like twin lines of stooping old women with long, straggly, witch’s hair.
Hints of gravel beneath her feet spoke of a driveway of some kind having once run between the looming trees. Man, those massive oaks had to be a couple of hundred years old. Who on earth could have planted them? And why would anyone settle in this godforsaken spot?
Ford strode confidently between the trees like he had a destination in mind. She followed along, intrigued in spite of herself. She made out a shape ahead, tucked in the deep shadow of a cluster of giant live oaks.
Square. Man-made.
She squinted into the gloom. Was that a house?
If it was, the thing was as old as the trees. If the wood siding had ever seen paint, it was long since gone. The structure stood unnaturally high off the ground, even though it appeared to be a sprawling, one-story structure. A wide, covered porch wrapped around the entire building, and a set of broad, graceful steps led up to it.
“What is this place?” she asked cautiously as Ford came to a stop in front of the plantation-style ruin.
“It was a hideout for pirates. Or rather their women. Story has it this place was originally built as a brothel for pirate doxies.”
“Cool! Which pirate?”
“One too smart to let his name get bandied about and get so famous the authorities came after him.”
Awareness of being entirely alone with a man who could easily overpower her and do whatever the hell he wanted to her washed over her. Cold fingers of fear crept up her spine at the notion. She’d been groped by men and been powerless to stop it too many times as a kid to be comfortable with this housing arrangement.
At least the motel had offered the illusion of other humans nearby who would hear her screams and call for help. But out here? She was completely at Ford’s mercy. And she didn’t trust him further than she could pick him up and throw him.
“Is it safe to go inside?” she asked, testing the first step cautiously with her foot.
“I repaired the steps before you got here. They’re safe. Just don’t explore beneath them. An aggressively unpleasant nest of cottonmouths is living there.”
While her mind wanted to dwell on the mention of snakes, she was more interested in the notion of him preparing for her arrival. “How long have you known I was going to be coming here?” she asked sharply.
“You’d have to take that up with Perriman.”
“I’m taking it up with you.”
He exhaled hard. “He gave me a heads up a couple weeks ago that he wanted me to bring a female SEAL candidate here for training.”
“Weeks?” she squawked. “Why did he let me suffer through all that other crap in California if he was just going to pull me out and send me here?”
“Probably wanted to see how you dealt with the last set of training evolutions. They come pretty close to approximating the physical challenges of BUD/S.”
She snorted. “He had his guys ride my ass day and night.”
Ford looked over at her sharply, the beginnings of icy rage unfolding on his face.
“Not literally,” she added hastily. “But they pushed me constantly. Nothing I did was good enough for them. I have never been screamed at so much in my entire life.”
“Perriman liked what he saw when his guys pushed you, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Bastard,” she grumbled.
“You have no idea,” Ford grunted. He turned and strode up the long, sweeping staircase.
She followed him up to the porch curiously. “What did he do to you?”
“He sent me to a swamp to train a girl wannabe.”
“Aww, c’mon. It’s not that bad running around with a hot chick, is it?” she joked to disguise the pang of hurt his snapped reply caused her.
He threw open the front door and stood back to let her enter.
A sense of impending doom swept over her. Going inside, allowing herself to be trapped behind walls with a man like him, was madness. She forced her reluctant feet to move.
No surprise, the architecture was traditional. A wide hallway ran from front to back of the house with rooms opening off of each side of it. She turned right, slid between a mostly closed set of pocket doors and looked around what must have been a living room. A parlor, she supposed it would have been called.
Ford filled the doorway behind her as she examined a stunning fireplace carved from marble and in fantastic shape. The stone was cool and smooth and soothing beneath her fingertips. Everything the man behind her was not.
“It’s not you,” he admitted reluctantly.
She turned to face him. In the gloom of twilight, she could barely make out his features, and what she could see was giving nothing away.
“My being here has nothing to do with you.” A pause. “Well, it does, to the extent that I’m here to train you. But Perriman sent me here for re
asons that have nothing to do with you.”
“Care to share?” she asked when he didn’t continue.
“Nope.”
And the monosyllabic caveman was back. Great.
“Show me around the place?” she asked.
“Parlor,” he commented, gesturing to the room at large. She followed him back out into the main hall. He pointed at a set of closed pocket doors across the hall. “Billiard room.” He strode down the hallway, not checking to see if she followed. Which, of course, she did. He pointed to his right. “Dining room.” He pointed across the hall. “Sitting room. Converted to an office a while back.”
“Four bedrooms, two on each side of the hall.” He pointed at twin pairs of doors as he passed them. “Bathroom on the left. Toilet flushes if you dump a bucket of water in the tank. None of the other plumbing works. Staircase to the attic on the right. Four more bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs under the rafters. For maids or the new girls.”
Right. Brothel. Many bedrooms. Got it.
“Last two bedrooms in the back were converted to a modern kitchen and breakfast room in the 1920’s. They run the full width of the house.”
The layout was simple. Efficient. And as she recalled, this shotgun style allowed for maximum breezes to cool a home. “I gather it’s on stilts because of flooding?”
“Hurricane storm surges mostly.”
She wandered into the kitchen, which was a wreck, however, she spied something that made her smile. “A still?” she asked. “The pirates did a little moonshining on the side?”
“Squatters brought that in.”
“Where are these squatters?”
A shrug. “We’re here now.”
And the chill of apprehension at being alone with him was back. She moved over to the apparatus. “Copper tubing looks to be in good shape. With a little modification, I should be able to distill water with this.”
She spent the next half-hour modifying the still and moving it to the back yard, leery of burning the house down if she set a fire on the kitchen floor. Using her bits of dried cedar stump, she started a fire to heat the steel water drum. In the amount of time it took her to gather a good-sized pile of firewood and stack it beside the barrel, clean, potable water was dripping out of a copper tube into a glass moonshine jug. It would take a good chunk of the night to distill enough water to sustain them both, but once the whole set-up was running smoothly, they ought to get plenty of drinking water.
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