Army of Two, page 9
Then her mind filled with images of what she’d seen through the Aerie’s front window yesterday morning, and reality descended with a thud.
It had been more than a day since those men had arrived. Were her friends still unharmed? Had they eaten or slept? Were they being mistreated? What would happen when their three days were up?
As if he’d followed the direction of her thoughts, Mitch touched her arm.
She jerked at the contact. Her hand obliterated half the sketch. She smoothed out what she could and started to redraw it. “Sorry,” she mumbled.
“You won’t need to do anything except be my lookout.”
“I’ll do whatever I have to. It’s my home. The people there are my responsibility.”
“I won’t knowingly put you in danger.”
“We’re a team, Mitch.”
“Right.” He took the stick from her hand. He was careful not to touch her this time. “And because we are, before we get started there’s something we need to talk about.”
She brushed off her hands and resumed her seat on the driftwood log. “What?”
“Our kiss.”
She should have known he wouldn’t let it slide. When had he ever hesitated to speak his mind? “There’s really nothing to discuss. It was a mistake.”
“Yes, it was. It was reckless and irresponsible. I have no excuse. I apologize.”
It would be easy to allow him to assume the blame. He appeared to want to. He’d always had a noble streak. “I started it, Mitch. You did your best to discourage me. I’m the one who should apologize.”
“If it makes you feel better, go ahead, but you couldn’t have been expected to understand what was happening.”
“You mean the adrenaline.”
“Yes.”
“So it’s happened to you before?”
“I’ve experienced an adrenaline rush during a hazardous situation on a mission, yes.”
“And have you channeled that rush into a kiss?”
His eyebrows shot upward. “Hell, no.”
He seemed so dumbstruck, she was surprised into a smile. “Sorry. I wasn’t questioning your…uh…preferences…” She closed her mouth before she could say more. Considering his enthusiastically heterosexual response to their kiss, casting any doubt on his sexual orientation would be ludicrous.
He appeared to think so as well. He blew out his breath on a low chuckle. “Right. I walked straight into that one. The fact is, we seldom have females present during a mission.”
“I suppose not.”
“Although on a few of the occasions when we have, it’s led to similar problems. Not with me, of course, but I’ve had to caution some of my men to maintain their objectivity.”
“Really?”
“Even tough-as-nails Delta Force commandos have human urges.”
He’d used her own words. She made a face. “Do you remember everything I said?”
“It’s important to me. I’m trying to get to know you.”
“For the good of our army of two.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I assure you that I’m not in the habit of forcing kisses on unwilling men. You just seem to have a way of bringing that out in me.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I wasn’t unwilling.”
“No, not this time anyway.”
“Chantal—”
“Please,” she said, holding up her hand. “Don’t explain again. We covered that yesterday. I do understand why you walked out the last time. It was the only honorable thing you could have done.”
“You were too young. And I was concerned about my career.”
“Yes. Really, I do understand. I only brought that up because I don’t want you to think I’m trying to relive the past or anything like that. As a rule, I’m fully in control of my impulses these days.”
“I noticed you’ve changed. You’re more reserved.”
“I’ve learned to be.”
“Is that because of me?”
For once, a sharp retort didn’t come to her lips. Maybe it was the grilled fish. Or maybe she was finally putting her issues with him into perspective. She shook her head. “Only partly. I latched onto you because I was searching for someone to take me away from a life I didn’t know how to change. I saw you as my fantasy hero. I gave you capabilities that no man really has.”
“Why did you want to change your life?”
She hedged. Her new comfort with him didn’t extend that far. “What teenager doesn’t? I had to learn that I needed to rely on myself, no one else. I had to take charge of my own life.”
“Is that why you came to the Aerie?”
“I have everything I need here. I love my job. I love this place. My staff are like my family. Most of my clients become friends.”
“It’s a drastic change from how you used to live.”
“Not entirely. Don’t you remember how much entertaining my mother used to do? I learned how to be a good host and how to take care of guests from the time I was a child.”
“Okay, I can see that.”
“But you’re right about one thing. The Aerie itself is the complete opposite of a military base. It’s beautiful and peaceful. Out here, the troubles of the rest of the world don’t seem to matter. There’s no rank to keep in mind, no protocol to worry about and few schedules to keep. For six months of the year, I’m able to live in a place where I feel totally free.”
“Six months,” he repeated. “Where do you live in the winter?”
“I have a small apartment in Bethel Corners. It’s a lovely little town, but can’t compare to living on the lake.”
“Doesn’t the isolation bother you?”
“No, it’s invigorating. Look around you,” she said, sweeping her hand in a wide arc. “There’s more power in the natural world than in any amount of man-made constructs. This hill and this lake will be here long after all the army bases I grew up on are nothing but ruins and no one remembers why all the wars were fought.”
A hawk cried overhead. Mitch tilted his head back to follow its flight for a while before he spoke again. “How come you ended up hating the army, Chantal?”
Once again, he had managed to zero in on a thread she wasn’t comfortable pursuing. “It was probably the guns.”
“Sure.”
“How did we get onto this topic, anyway?”
He shifted to sit sideways, leaving his left leg stretched out and drawing his right foot onto the log. He rested his forearms on his up-drawn knee and leaned toward her. “We were talking about our kiss.”
“Oh.”
“You said you only kiss willing men.”
“As opposed to throwing myself at men who run away.”
“There must be a lot of the first kind.”
“What does that mean?”
“Willing men. Men who would consider themselves lucky to be kissed by you. I can’t imagine there being a shortage.”
“Is that a convoluted way of paying me a compliment?”
“It depends. If you’re going to get prickly about it, then no. That was actually a convoluted way of asking you about your personal life.”
She frowned. “I don’t see that it’s relevant to our continued functioning as a team.”
“It’s not. I’m just curious.”
“I’m not currently seeing anyone special.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, I’m far too busy. During the season we’re usually booked solid. Running the Aerie is a long-term commitment. For another, I like my life the way it is. I’m not interested in having a relationship.”
“Neither am I,” he said. “Everything you just said goes for me, as well. My work is too demanding to leave much time for a personal life, and that suits me fine. I don’t have any desire for a serious relationship.”
“Then we have something in common.”
“Uh-huh. But we also have a problem.”
“What?”
“It’s broad daylight, and we’re not particularly stressed or in imminent danger, so there’s no adrenaline in play here, but I still want to kiss you.”
His declaration triggered another round of triumphant arm pumps from the girl deep inside Chantal. She turned her head aside, unwilling to let him see the pleasure that surely must show in her eyes.
She’d just told him that she didn’t want to relive the past. And she didn’t. She never again wanted to be that needy girl who loved him. The mere thought of being that vulnerable brought on a quick jab of panic.
Yet that wasn’t what was happening between them, was it? Nor was it what she felt. It was one good aspect that had come from their kiss in the boathouse. She could never confuse the lust it had aroused with the sweet, pure love that had once filled her heart. Yesterday’s kiss had been about sex, plain and simple. It had been entirely physical. “We’re both adults, Mitch,” she said. “We should be able to control our hormones.”
“We. Is that your way of saying you’re attracted to me?”
The question was ludicrous. How could a woman not be attracted by the way he looked this morning, with the tangled forest as a backdrop and the churning sky overhead?
His cheeks were darkened with a day’s growth of beard in a way that accentuated the dramatic lines of his face, yet his tousled hair looked appealingly boyish. He’d discarded his jacket, and the loose neckline of his sweatshirt had pulled to one side, revealing the strong ridge of his collarbone. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, showing off forearms that were contoured with ropy muscle beneath a dusting of soft, black hair. His pants were stretched in tight folds of cotton that fingered across his thigh like a caress. He’d left his gun leaning on the log behind him, and his improvised stove rested at his feet.
Not only was he a rugged, drop-dead-sexy specimen of manhood, he also cooked.
Chantal had a mad desire to laugh. “To be honest, Mitch, you’re the last man in the world who I would want to be attracted to.”
“You’re ducking the question.”
“Did anyone ever tell you that you can be too direct at times?”
“In my line of work, it’s an asset.”
“I can imagine.”
“And you’re still ducking the question.”
“Fine. Yes, I find you attractive, but that shouldn’t interfere with our ability to work together any more than our history did.”
He pulled his foot off the log and stood. “I know. We have bigger priorities.”
“Too many people are depending on us.”
“Absolutely. I’ve thought the same thing myself.”
“Not to mention the fact that neither of us is interested in any kind of relationship.”
“That’s true.” He regarded her steadily. “And even if you were, I’m the last man in the world you’d want one with.”
“Exactly.”
He nodded. “Swell. I’m glad we cleared that up.”
Chapter 8
The clouds scudded low and fast, coming in from the northeast in dark-bellied banks of gray. Chantal could see the blurred outline of a squall as it worked its way across the lake, driving rows of whitecaps in front. So far, the rain hadn’t reached the crest of the hill, but it would be here before long. She could taste the moisture in the air. She curled one arm around the pine she stood beside and continued her scrutiny of the cleared rock.
The black helicopter sat in the center of the painted landing circle, as ominous-looking as the clouds. Its massive main propeller vibrated in the wind, giving off a low-pitched drone. No bright paint or corporate logo relieved the dull finish of the fuselage. According to Mitch, it was an old Huey, which had once been the workhorse of the army. Judging by the gun mounts beneath the nose, he speculated it could have originally been used by the military and sold off as surplus equipment. He’d been pleased about that, since he was familiar with this model.
For what had to be the tenth time in the last two minutes, she tried to peer through the glass windows into the cockpit, but all she could see was the reflection of the rain clouds.
“Mitch, hurry,” she whispered.
During their slow climb up the hill, he’d explained to her how he would send a message. He didn’t need to start up the engine. He planned to use the aircraft’s massive batteries to power up the instrument panel and the radio, then tune to the emergency broadcast frequency. He’d made it sound simple.
As simple as remaining undetected while they looked through the Aerie’s front window yesterday morning? Or as simple as escaping in her truck afterward? Or taking out her boat last night?
Mitch, please, hurry up and finish!
She returned her attention to the path that led down to the Aerie. She and Mitch had waited through two complete rotations of Knox’s patrol schedule to be sure they had it right. If the men followed the same pattern, no one would be due to appear for another ten minutes at least. That would give Mitch plenty of time. Unless someone decided to come earlier to beat the rain.
As if her thoughts had made it happen, a handful of drops splatted on the rock beyond the trees.
Chantal pressed closer to the pine as the squall finally arrived. Her jacket kept her upper half dry, but rain drilled against her jeans and her hair. Within minutes, water trickled down the back of her neck and her legs were numb. But no matter how wet she got, she couldn’t move. Mitch would be trusting her to be his eyes. He said he would be looking here for her signal. Her warning could save his life.
Yes, he trusted her. He no longer thought of her as an overindulged, impulsive child. They were beginning to function as a team, in spite of their past and the chemistry they’d acknowledged between them. The magnitude of that fact wasn’t lost on her, yet there was no imaginary celebration from her inner teenager this time. The stakes were too high.
She wiped the rain from her eyes and dropped her hand to her leg as she did another slow scan of the hilltop. It had rained the night Mitch had left, too. It had rained for the entire week after her mother’s funeral. Chantal had gone to the cemetery every day. She had stood for hours beside the fresh mound while the rain dripped from her black umbrella. Sometimes a gust of wind would drive the raindrops against her legs and soak her skirt—her mother had never liked her wearing jeans, it wasn’t ladylike. Mostly, though, the rain had pattered straight down, as if the sky was too exhausted to spend any extra energy on the task.
She remembered that detail about the weather, because she’d felt the same way. She’d wept, but her tears had seeped from her eyes gently, like the rain. To her mother’s friends, the other officers’ wives, she’d appeared the dedicated, grieving daughter. They’d all seen how close the pair of them had been. From the time Chantal had been six years old and had come home to find her mother with her father’s pearl-handled Webley in her hand, she’d been Bernadette Leduc’s shadow. And Bernadette had become the center of her daughter’s existence.
The general hadn’t gone with her on those graveside vigils. He’d grieved for his wife in his own way, a manly dignified-officer way, with a bottle of bourbon behind the closed door of his study. He’d been uncomfortable with her displays of emotion because they had reminded him too much of Bernadette’s. His withdrawal had frustrated her. Like their friends, he’d never understood the complex relationship between his wife and his daughter.
No one did, because she’d never told a soul. So they hadn’t guessed how much anger had been mixed with her grief, and how much resentment she’d felt over having a childhood that no child should have gone through. After a week of standing in wet shoes on the soggy grass, searching for a way to fill the void of her sudden freedom, something inside Chantal had finally snapped. She hadn’t wanted to be alone. She hadn’t wanted to be the strong one anymore. She’d wanted someone to take care of her for a change. Above all, she’d wanted to be loved.
So she’d turned to Mitch. She’d laid her heart bare. When he hadn’t wanted it, she’d bared her body, too.
The memory of that night still stung, even after their oh-so-adult conversation this morning and all the rationalizing she’d done since then.
Regardless of the pain, it was probably a good thing that the memories were being purged. She’d carried them around for almost half her life, along with her resentment. That couldn’t have been healthy. It was high time to let them go, wasn’t it? Let them heal. She and Mitch were different people now. That’s what she’d told him yesterday morning on the dock.
God, had it only been yesterday? It felt as if she’d lived another lifetime in one day. She wiped the rain from her face, then used her hand to shield her eyes from the downpour.
Someone was coming up the path from the lodge. A green, hooded rain poncho covered the figure from his head to his knees. It looked like one of the Aerie’s ponchos. They had a supply of foul-weather gear for guests who got caught without their own. Tommy and Rhonda had been making use of them during the rainy weather last month. The figure was Tommy’s height, and he moved with the springy step that was characteristic of the young student. Was it possible that he had slipped away?
For a moment, wild hope superseded logic and Chantal opened her mouth to call to him. But then a gust of wind flattened the poncho across his chest. She saw the outline of a gun that was held beneath the rubberized vinyl.
She fumbled inside her jacket for the flashlight, pointed it directly at the windshield of the helicopter and switched it on. She counted two seconds, turned it off for two seconds, then repeated the sequence twice more.
The rain was coming down like a curtain. What if Mitch couldn’t see her signal? She tried again, all the while making sure to keep the tree trunk between her and the approaching man. He was almost beside her now. He was making no effort to walk silently. She could hear his scuffing footsteps over the sound of the wind.
She clicked off the light and lowered it to her side. Her elbow caught the strap of the gun that hung from her shoulder. It started to slide. She grabbed it fast to keep it from falling to the ground. The metal clip that held the strap to the stock clinked.
Damn! She hadn’t wanted to keep this gun. She had good reasons to hate guns. It was completely useless to her. But Mitch had insisted. He hadn’t wanted to leave her defenseless. She’d had to go along with him because otherwise, he wouldn’t have agreed to her acting as his lookout in the first place.
