And he was absolutely right, the men she’d dated didn’t like being outperformed by a mere slip of a girl—she’d heard that a thousand times too many. In high school, the strength and agility from her summers and weekends on the family lobster boat had placed her at the top of most teams. That she could outplay any of the forty-three seniors in her class—female or male—in volleyball, soccer, and softball hadn’t won her a lot of good will either. When she’d graduated at the top of UMaine Orono’s ROTC program and the Honors college, the instructors and professors had expressed their appreciation. Her classmates not so much.
She’d been ready for an enjoyable passage at arms with Derek; he would be shipped back to Fort Bragg soon enough as it was. But she didn’t know how to react to his interest in learning more about her. Abby had still been trying to process Trisha’s comment encouraging her interest in Derek. It had seemed weird, except Trisha had married a D-boy herself, so perhaps it wasn’t so strange. Except it was. Picturing the woman—whose nickname among the troops was PITA, Pain in the Ass—as a matchmaker because she wanted Abby to be happy was beyond laughable.
Except with Derek’s dark eyes watching her, she wasn’t much in the mood for laughing. Unlike most men, he was waiting for the next cue from her. Well, she definitely needed a shower after the night’s extended operation—the five-site roll-up had taken seven hours at full intensity. Especially as she’d still been ragged from the prior night’s flight. As the sole female in a house of men, the shower was her private place. It was the one place she could, whether happy or needing a good cry, be truly alone. She’d never before let a man join her in the shower.
On the verge of overthinking everything and changing her mind about letting Derek join her, she shrugged out of her jacket and hung it on the hook by the door.
“Army spotless,” Derek didn’t make it a judgment.
Her boots were next, squared-up and laces untangled in case she needed to don them quickly. Sock-footed, she headed for the bedroom. A half-glance showed Derek doing the same. A part of her wanted the mayhem of clothes tossed aside in a frenzy of coming together, but a bigger part liked not only the sense of order but the sense of being ready for action. That was only emphasized when she spotted him tucking his backup piece in one coat pocket and unstrapping his ankle knife to slip it in his boot. She’d creeped out civilians when doing that herself; to a Spec Ops Forces soldier, it was very sexy—a top warrior setting aside his cherished weapons to be with her. Like being welcomed inside the careful shield, closer to the man crouched inside it.
With his back momentarily to her, she did shed one sock at the threshold to her bedroom and another just inside as a tease. Not quite a scatter of rose petals, though she doubted neither of them had romance on their minds. Her jeans and turtleneck landed either side of the bathroom doorway. As she leaned in to start the hot water, his Delta-rough palms landed on her hips. Derek’s approach had been as silent as it was welcome.
He didn’t slide her panties down or drag aside the sports bra that her figure only needed when working out or flying. He simply pulled her back against his still-clothed chest into an enveloping embrace. She reached to turn off the light switch that habit had turned on.
Derek blocked her and nipped her ear again. It was silly. It tickled. And…it made her want to giggle with delight in the ridiculous way she’d heard other girls do sometimes but she’d never descended to. After turning her to face him, he didn’t grab between her legs or crush down on a breast. Instead, those callus-rough hands remained lightly on her hips. The slightest shift and he had her back against the glass, heated from the other side by the pounding hot water, as he picked up the earlier kiss where he’d left it at her collarbone.
It was the last time for a long while that she wasn’t running short of breath.
27
Emily traded seats with Michael. The Tac Room remained quiet as she and Claudia began doing what this team did best—tracking stray threads of information. Except Emily’s skills had grown rusty with disuse. She could feel Claudia racing down the data pathways while she was still trying to refresh her login credentials. Had it been so long a gap that they’d been reset? Apparently yes. Once she was in, even the screen interface was unfamiliar. She hated software updates almost as much as she hated being back here doing this. If she could teleport Lauren back from Hawaii and into the second chair, she’d do it in a heartbeat. Not that there was room in the small office for another person—one detail she’d overlooked in the design, having three observers.
What she knew was flying helicopters. Except she didn’t anymore—not at the level she had as a Night Stalker or even flying to fight wildfire as she’d done for a half decade. From her first flight at sixteen, every waking minute of the next twenty years had been about flight. Well, not every minute. Mark, Tessa, and Belle had entered her life near the end of her flying career. Soon after she’d landed her last helo, the Protection Force team had spun up here at the ranch.
They’d eventually connected with Miss Watson inside the White House, which had largely been Dilya’s doing. Ever since, the Protection Force had anonymously provided threat information to the US Secret Service protection details. They’d even identified and recommended recruitment of truly exceptional individuals who now filled roles such as the head driver of the President’s limousine among others. Their mandate was small, focused on supporting Executive Branch protection in ways that they didn’t already cover themselves.
However, with Claudia and the vacationing Lauren, backed up by Colonel Michael Gibson, Emily had become redundant. In that limbo after being done with this group but before she’d reached the decision to retire, she’d been offered command of the Night Stalkers.
After a year, she almost had a handle on running the three thousand personnel and two hundred aircraft of the 160th. But she didn’t have a whole lot of?—
Someone nudged her shoulder.
Finally logged in, Emily focused on?—
The next nudge was harder, enough to twist her chair. She spun to face Dilya. “What?”
This time Dilya pushed against her shoulder with a single finger. Finally catching up with the message, she rose to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Mark and Michael as Dilya slid into her seat.
“I may have grown up in the pre-tech world as a Southwest Asian war orphan,” Dilya didn’t turn as she began poking through the data structures. “But being inside the White House bubble for a decade, I caught up a bit.”
Emily tried not to think about just what systems Dilya would have the opportunity to infiltrate during her years there. If she didn’t know that Dilya would never do anything to hurt her adopted parents, adopted country, and the First Families, she’d be scared stiff. Should she be anyway?
In under a minute, she was having trouble following the threads Dilya chased and lost track entirely within two. By three, Dilya was trading one-word sentences with Claudia about which ideas they were each chasing.
“Dilya. You shouldn’t…”
Mark placed a finger on the bottom of her chin and pushed her jaw closed. When she glared at him, he opened the door and gestured for her to lead the way out. Old habits, left over from when he’d been her commanding officer and later the wildfire Incident Commander, made her step out of the room. Mark closed the door behind them.
He nudged her toward the stairs.
“But…”
“We need to wake the girls for breakfast and school soon.” Taking her hand at the bottom of the stairs, he led her out of the barn into the November darkness. “I was thinking of giving them a sick day to see you, but I don’t know how long you’ll be here this time, so we’ll play it by ear.”
“The Lieutenant Colonel Mark Henderson I knew was never one for playing it by ear.”
“Accept that perhaps I learned a few things watching you.”
