Page 12 of Down and Dirty

The chieftain, whose face was now purple, nigh screamed, “Either come down or ring out. Make up your friggin’ minds.”

“Those guys are jerks, aren’t they?”

Britta nodded, figuring that jerks must be comparable to crude, lust-filled males, which they definitely were. All men were, for that matter. “Yea, just because they have dangly parts somehow makes them think they are superior.”

Terri laughed. “I know they’re trying to get us to quit. None of them want women in the SEALs, but dammit, I’m not going to give them the satisfaction.”

“SEALs?” Britta homed in on that one word. She had heard of SEALs afore. They were an elite military force in a far-off land. “Dost mean we are in Ah-mare-eek-ah?”

The other woman’s forehead creased even more. “Are you okay? The sun is hot. Maybe you’re getting sunstroke.”

Britta shook her head. Nay, I just fell off a cliff, am suffering from the world’s worst ale-head, must needs avoid my father and his hirdsmen who want naught more than my sword dew on their blades or my maiden blood on a husband of their choosing’s cock, and then I might just find out if I am dead or alive. Being hot is the least of my concerns.

Then Terri said, “Oh, my God! Who is that? What a hunk!”

“A hunk of what?” Britta started to ask as she swung one leg over the top and was about to descend back down the rope wall. She glanced beyond the side of the sandy arena where a man was approaching with fire in his blue eyes… eyes she would recognize anywhere. Gesticulating wildly, he stopped to talk with another man who was laughing so hard he held his sides.

It was the lout, the very same loathsome lout who was responsible for all her troubles. Well, not all. But enough. Zack-hairy the Pretty Boy. He was a hunk, all right. A hunk of trouble.

Oooh, I am going to give him a piece of my mind… if I ever manage to get down off this bloody damn rope wall.

That was when she slipped, causing the rope wall to shake even more than it had been, and all twelve of the women climbing up and down the wall fell to the sand with a thud, shrieking with dismay. Most of the expletives were aimed at her.

“You women are the most clumsy dingbats I have ever had the misfortune to meet,” the chieftain sputtered. All the other men were laughing instead of helping the women to their feet or checking for injuries. Chivalry must be dead in this country. “Somebody is going to pay for this fiasco, ladies.”

And he gazed directly at her.

Chapter 3

Kiss me, baby… and that’s an order…

Zach was stomping his way from the bachelor officers’ quarters to the grinder after having changed into his PT clothes: khaki shorts, a blue T-shirt with gold trim and the SEAL emblem, and heavy socks folded down and over the tops of his boondockers.

The grinder was a blacktopped area used for a structured regimen of hard physical workouts. Almost totally surrounded by buildings, some two-story, it resembled a penitentiary yard, which was not totally without intent, he supposed.

Along the way he ran into Cage and Merrill “Geek” Good, the Beaver Cleaver of Navy SEALs. Zach was explaining his new assignment to them and enlisting their help.

Suddenly, there was a communal scream by about two dozen female voices as the women fell clumsily off the cargo net. This was followed by a series of squeals, groans, expletives, and at least one woman bursting into loud sobs.

He started to shake his head at the sorry examples of what the government expected them to turn into rough, tough military babes. But then he was blindsided, big-time.

On a day in which one disaster after another had piled on him, like NFL tackles on a quarterback, he was now faced with the biggest disaster of all.

Britta.

Among those women was the one woman who’d rebuffed him… the one woman who was like a thorn in his heart… or ass. Pick one. The implications were staggering, and they were hitting him like thousand-pound dominos. Whack, whack, whack!

Oh, my God! Britta is here.

Sonofabitch! Now, I have a thousand-year-old girlfriend to contend with. Ha, ha, ha.

Well, not really a girlfriend, but she would have been. Eventually. Probably.

Shit! She looks as if she’s baited for bear… and I’m the big ol’ grizzly.

Zach couldn’t help but grin at the picture he saw. For an eleventh-century, six-foot-tall, Viking warrior goddess kind of gal, Britta sure did look fine in a perspiration-dampened drab green T-shirt, nylon running shorts, and beat-up boondockers. The Navy had probably dismissed the idea of white T-shirts for the women because once sweaty they would become, well, wet T-shirts. Which might give the male instructors inappropriate ideas, ideas that were always close to the surface. Her blonde hair was pulled off her face into a single, straggly braid that hung down to the middle of her back. Her legs were sinfully long, giving a guy — this guy, anyhow — some really vivid ideas. Her breasts were nicely rounded; they gave him ideas, too. Even with sand on her face and her rump, she looked good enough to eat. And he meant that literally.

Unfortunately, Britta didn’t regard him in quite the same way. The first thing she did was shove him in the chest.