ChapterOne
“Master Sergeant,do you have somethingtosay?”
Leah Saunders gritted her teeth together. Yes, she did. But it wasn’t herplace.
If the spec ops guys wanted to sit a helicopter on the pad beside the range—her range—for the entire damn day, that was their damn prerogative, and sheknewit.
She didn’t like it, though. Notonebit.
So she squared her shoulders and stood even straighter as she nodded to her commanding officer. “No,sir.”
“Good. See that you continue to bite your tongue. What’s our revisedtrainingplan?”
The honest answer was that a good number of troops would miss out on all the variations they wanted to get through for the day’s planned range. Leah had learned long ago, however, that the honest answer was rarely the one the CO was looking for. She handed over a new printout she’d made after consulting the range safety officer. “The RSO has signed off on this. It gets everyone through if we extend the eveningshoot.”
“Makeitso.”
She managed not to roll her eyes at the CO’s slip-up. He always channeled his inner Captain Picard when he was proud of himself. God help her if he ever discovered she knew a bit ofKlingon.
It wasn’t that she was a die-hard Trekkie. More of a casual fan, really. But there were occasions when knowing Klingon lent a note of authenticity to role-playing scenes—and she had some friends who got offonit.
Goodfriends.
Dirtyfriends.
Secret friends, because she didn’t want anyone in the army to ever find out what she did in herfreetime.
None of theirbusiness.
She headed back to her office and spent the next four hours on the phone. When she finally got the heads up that the super secret joint task force training had ended and the range she’d arranged weeks earlier could finally proceed, she said a small, silent prayer of thanks. The day would be salvagedafterall.
So when two of her fellow NCOICs stopped by on their way out, she took them up on the invitation to join them at a bar & grill justoffbase.
That’s how she ended up two beers on the wrong side of being grumpy and stuck behind a group of Navy SEALs blocking the bar. If she hadn’t seen a couple of them earlier in the day on base, she wouldn’t have known they were SEALs…necessarily. But come on—they had bad-ass written all over their super-fit, super-confidentbodies.
At least she’d changed into an anonymous outfit of jeans and a t-shirt. And unlike the tall, tan, human superheroes in front of her, nothing about her looks broadcasted her career choice. She did a pretty good job of looking like a generic chick in a bar. She could shoot daggers at them all she wanted. Or ogle them. Maybe both at the same time, and all under the pretense of being justagirl.
Leah was never just a girl, though. Not even when she was in civvies. Not when she was half a mile off-base and surrounded by people who knew her as a senior NCOfirst.
“Excuse me,” she said for thethirdtime.
None of themnoticedher.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped around them and leaned against the corner of the bar, pushing herself up on her hands so the bartender could see her over the beer taps. “Could I have a bottle ofwater?”
One of the SEALs gave her a dirty look. Another, a big blond guy, smacked him in the chest and gestured for her to step in front of him. “You’ll have more luckoverhere.”
“I tried,” she muttered under herbreath.
He gave her an amused look. “Myapologies.”
It wasn’t for him to be sorry for, at least not individually. She gave him a grateful smile and scooted to the middle of the bar. “Thanks.”
“You alocal?”
Shenodded.
“Busyplace.”
