Big Sky Dog Whisperer, page 22
“Tonight,” his prompt was as gentle as his thumb brushing over her knuckles.
“Tonight I did. Lying in your arms. Chatting with Luke, Zoe, Mac, Michael, and Emily as if I knew them. Understood them. And they understood me. They treated me as if I was one of them. You all did.”
“Because you are.”
She turned and placed her face against his shoulder. All she could do was shake her head in disbelief.
“Mac was right about you. People see you so fast. Chelsea said Ama sat you next to her at that very first meal.”
“Sure. I was a guest.”
“There’s no sure about that. And that’s not why she did that. She did it for Emily, of course; she adores her daughter-in-law. She’s never done as much for Chelsea or Lauren. For Julie she did though. Apparently she and our resident cowgirl go back twenty years to the day Ama and Mac took over this property. When Julie came to work on the ranch a couple years back, I thought they were both going to die of happiness. Some one of Ama’s cycles had come complete and she couldn’t stop smiling. Ama did that again from the moment she met you.”
“Why?”
“You’d have to ask her.”
“Oh, like that’s going to happen.”
Stan shrugged and they resumed walking through the moonlight.
“I think we’re too tired to do anything, but I’d like to sleep with you tonight.”
“I don’t leave much space in a bunkhouse bed.”
“I want to sleep with you tonight.” It wasn’t desperation, but it was more than just a whim. She wanted—needed the anchor that was Stan’s embrace. Because that had been the true miracle of the evening.
For a woman who had never belonged anywhere, belonging in his arms had stolen more than her breath.
It just might have stolen her heart.
Chapter Twenty-One
The predawn light of Test Day pinked the sky outside his bunkroom window.
Nerves. SEALs had nerves, especially pre-mission nerves. They’d just trained to the point where they felt less nerves about a mission than tossing out a pick-up line in a crowded bar.
“Will she, won’t she” felt no different from “HALO jump from thirty thousand feet, take out Viktor Roskoff and any guards in your way, gather intel, and hike five klicks to extraction point alpha.”
But still the nerves were there.
Despite all his training, Stan’s nerves had been building throughout the week. Would he let down Mac? Would he disappoint the Teams? And what the hell was up with him and Jodie?
This morning he woke just as he’d gone to sleep. His back against the bunkhouse wall, Jodie spooned back against him with her head on his stump, and his meat arm around her waist. And in that instant, all the nerves became meaningless.
This was a pre-mission moment. All the prep was done. Weapons checked and rechecked until all that was left to do was wait. Any seasoned Spec Ops warrior with his ass stuck on a pre-mission flight slept. By that time, they were to the point where planning no longer mattered and all that remained was action. Nerves washed away and a good nap was called for—whether it was a thirty-hour jaunt to a war zone or a thirty-minute helo ride into hell.
Having Jodie in his arms, asleep and trusting, shifted that entire world. It wasn’t ignoring pre-mission nerves, she simply washed them away. He’d had a good life, with only a few brief exceptions. He and Pa hanging together most every night of his childhood, the willing women, making ST6, and even Henderson’s Ranch despite being half broken.
Waking with his face in her hair and her dressed in nothing but one of his t-shirts that had gathered around her waist in the night made everything okay. Everything. And how could it not? The words he’d been ready to say last night were as nothing.
“I love you” was easy. Women wanted to hear it, so it was easy enough to give because everyone knew it didn’t mean anything.
Not to Zoe. It had changed her world. As if the words had meant more coming from Luke than “I do.”
The surprise was, he did love Jodie. For real. If love meant that he’d die without her and he’d gladly trade his life to save hers, then he loved her like no woman before. He knew she wasn’t ready to hear that though. So, as he had the night before, he’d wait. SEALs were good at waiting. Waiting for the right intel, the right moment to attack, or the exfil moment when you were still wondering if the helo would show before the enemy patrol.
But a man didn’t wake with a woman like Jodie in his arms and just ignore the situation.
He slid his hand up over her t-shirt and cupped a breast. That perfect balance between athlete and woman, generous enough to make a man greedy yet small enough to not be an issue if she chose to go braless. She released a soft sigh in her sleep as he slowly rolled a circle with the flat of his palm.
Down her length, ribs, hip, thigh, then back up the inside.
Now half awake, he was able to coax her legs apart and cup her. Just hold her there. He’d done similar things with women before to arouse them and make sure that they enjoyed the moment as much as he did.
But with Jodie, it was the most intimate thing he’d ever done. She lazily shifted, closing her legs once more, pinning his hand in place. She seemed ready to fall back into deep sleep with his hand pinned against her.
He wished for his other hand so that he could bring it around her shoulder and cup a breast at the same time, but it wasn’t going to happen. Instead, he angled his stump down so that it half-pinned her shoulder against his chest, then he went back to waking her up with his meat hand.
Her transition from asleep to awake was slow and smooth. Rather than jolting up, or trying to jump him as she had yesterday at the lake, she simply shifted more strongly against his palm, turning her face down into the remains of his biceps.
When her hand slid up over his and rode lightly on the backs of his fingers, he felt as if he could do no wrong. She didn’t guide or direct. It was simply her hand, feeling his hand as he softly massaged her body to life. He retraced his way up to her breast, and her touch floated on his as he traced and retraced the amazing shapes there. Back down, she groaned so softly even he could barely hear it, yet it was as loud as an old stair creaking during the last moments of an infiltration before all hell broke loose. It sounded like some long-abandoned part of her was being forced open for the first time in years.
Once, she tried to turn to face him. But this wasn’t about him, this was about her. He didn’t know why. Showing her how much he wanted her? Or maybe demonstrating how she made him feel?
No. This was about giving something to her that was all about Jodie. It didn’t sound as if much of her life had been that way. The black-sheep daughter—not rejected, but definitely not understood or supported. The SEAL who wasn’t a SEAL. She’d given so much to others. He could see that in Davy Golding, now that he thought about it. Sure, he’d been a good guy to come out to Montana because she was feeling down. But Stan knew that Davy had also come because of how he’d seen Jodie fitting into his life, not his life fitting into hers.
So, Stan pinned her in place with his hand until she stopped trying to turn and finally let herself just feel.
Not once did she turn her face from his sad excuse for a left arm. Instead, the hand that had been curled under her chin in sleep reached up and took his stump as if she was holding his hand, pinning it between her cheek and palm. She hooked her upper leg back over his, offering him greater access that he gladly took advantage of.
Jodie rode her way up against his palm. He could feel muscles clenching in anticipation. Her breathing rapid, then ragged where her back pressed against his chest. The pulse pounding in her throat as he leaned in to kiss her there. Her fingers hung on to his left arm, digging in as she struggled to hang on. And when the slam of her release took her, it was almost violent. The tighter he pinned her in place, the harder the shocks slammed through her, through them both.
Stan could only watch in awe.
Jodie kept her face buried against Stan’s left arm. Her hold there and her hand riding on the back of his were all that kept her anchored in this world. The rest of her body rode on a storm-tossed sea like none she’d ever known existed.
Storm-tossed sea? How damn cliché was that—except for a Navy SEAL. Maybe it was a SEAL cliché. Maybe she really needed to have the word part of her brain excised.
The night before last, up at the lake, that had been about sating their bodies and even their minds. This… This had been about stripping those away. Barriers she hadn’t even been aware of had been torn down, not by some blast of raw power, but by the kindness behind them. By the man who held her through the night and woke her like this.
The releases had been awesome; the only word she could come up with for it. Them. Whatever.
But the miracle was Stan’s strength. His steadiness. He had held her so close that fear couldn’t get to her. That doubts weren’t allowed. Being a good Brooklyn Jew—other than dodging Hebrew school and synagogue whenever she could—meant that she worried about everything.
Not in Stan’s arms. He made it so clear that he wanted her. That he thought she was…magnificent. Magnificent? Not any Jodie Jaffe that she knew.
Yet here she was, her legs once more clamped around their joined hands as her body slowly calmed. His strength, even in what remained of his arm, let her hang on there. The smell of his skin, the feel of it.
For perhaps the first time in her life, she felt as if she was enough—just as she was. Somehow Stan had given her that gift. To glimpse it even for a moment opened a whole realm of possibility. If she could be whole in this moment, could she possibly learn to extend that feeling, knowing it wasn’t merely possible but undeniably real?
As the last long wave rode all the way up her body from his hand anchored against her to where she still kept her face pressed into his left arm, she could feel the heat of tears. Rather than fighting them back down, there was no need to be other than who she was in Stan’s arms, so she let them run.
“Whoa,” Stan twitched when they spilled hot on his skin.
She didn’t let him go. One hand clutching his left arm against her cheek, the other pinning his right hand exactly where she wanted it.
“I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“Only my heart, Stan,” she managed despite the flowing tears. “You are such a gift.”
He grunted in surprise at that. “A gift?”
“Sure,” she sniffled and turned just enough to plant a salty kiss on his skin and then lay her damp cheek back on it. “Pretty wrapping paper,” she rubbed the back of her shoulders against his chest. “A really nice bow,” she rubbed her behind against him (something she’d have to take care of soon). “And Patrick was right.”
“Patrick? What’s he got to do with this? Spreading rumors and lies?”
“That first day he said that you’re a really sweet guy, you just didn’t know it. I laughed, but he was right.”
“Lies. Complete and total.” Yet he gave her a hug even as he spoke by squeezing his upper arms together across her shoulders. “Boy is just trying to undercut my obvious manliness because it shames his wimpy little ass.”
“Can’t say as I noticed his ass.” She totally had and it was a good one. “Should it worry me that you have?”
“Only one ass I’m interested in. Now or ever.”
Her heart skittered across the next couple beats as she tried to catch her breath. There was that long-term thing again. But the worry was different this time. Rather than fearing ever, Jodie was fearing that there wasn’t ever. Because if it felt like this, lying in the safe circle of Stan’s arms, ever actually made some kind of sense.
There were soft sounds in the bunkhouse. A shower started down the hall. A door slammed open and boots treaded down the hall.
“How quiet can you be?”
She could feel Stan’s smile where he was kissing the point of her shoulder.
“That quiet?”
He let his silence be an answer.
There wasn’t much room on the bunk, so she had to improvise.
But true to his word, he was SEAL silent as she took him down.
They gave the dogs a light workout—just enough to make sure they were awake and feeling agile—then shut them back in with their breakfasts. They then spent an hour reconfiguring the obstacle course in ways the dogs hadn’t seen before.
Afterward, Stan tried to leave his crutches behind, but Jodie threatened to lock him in Bertram’s cage and throw away the key. Because he more than half believed her, he used the damn things.
Following Jodie up the path, watching the unconscious sway of her hips that must have nearly killed her squad to ignore as they kept an eye out for unfriendlies, Stan actually blessed the changes that had sent him here. Not that he wouldn’t give anything—short of another arm—to get his arm back. But that he was here, now, with Jodie. Whatever screwed-up path got him to this moment was paying off better than any VA benefits for service and loss of limb.
At breakfast Jodie, of course, got swirled up by the women. With the additional guests and all of the hands in for the meal, there wasn’t enough room at the big kitchen table. Jodie, Zoe, and Emily were soon seated together on one of the couches with their breakfast plates balanced on their knees.
“You don’t want to be messing with that,” Luke, half through a massive plate of French toast of cinnamon swirl bread, sausage, and real maple syrup, waved Stan over to a spot at the table that a ranch hand had just cleared. Nathan dropped a loaded plate and coffee there for Stan since he couldn’t fend for himself with the crutches.
“Probably right.” Stan eased down across from Luke and cursed his crutches and his ankle for the hundredth time—just today.
“How bad?”
“One week crutches, week or two of light duty.”
Luke nodded, acknowledging that it was going to be nothing more than a pain in the ass.
“What is it with you and…?” Stan tipped his head toward Zoe.
Luke glared at him narrow-eyed for a moment.
“No,” Stan cut him off. “Didn’t mean that. You gotta already know that you and Miss Five-four-and-a-hundred-pounds-soaking-wet make a hell of an odd couple. But what…” He wasn’t even sure what his question was. “How…” But that wasn’t it either.
“Looking for why?” Luke grimaced and went back to eating. “Damned if I know. One day she was this crazy butterfly thing flitting off to the side. The next we’re deep in a mission and I’m the one following her lead.”
“Her lead?” He glanced over, but couldn’t imagine it. She was petite enough to fit inside a SEAL’s mission pack.
“Hers. Proved it wasn’t a fluke on another mission a year later. Then I wake up one day with no idea how I ever lived without her. You want advice?”
Stan shrugged.
“Never assume.”
It was an old SEAL grind. Never assume anything about a mission, because if you did, you’d be wrong and it would kill you.
Luke sipped his coffee, making it clear he was done.
So Stan offered him a thoughtful, “Huh.”
Never assume that he knew what Jodie was feeling or thinking unless she told him—and maybe not even then. Never assume that just because he was in love with her that she was in love with him. Never assume that she had to be psycho to want to be with him.
“Huh!”
Luke grinned, “See? Damned if I know what that little woman sees in me, but I’m not filing a complaint with any review board. I can tell you that much.”
This time, Stan looked over at Jodie.
She glanced his way and shot him a smile that sizzled and reminded him all over again what that woman could do with her lips and hands.
“Dogmeat,” Luke remarked drily.
“Huh?”
“Exactly.”
Stan decided that maybe his CO was a wise man. Jodie could do anything she wanted to him and he’d happily agree. “Not a bad way to be,” Stan finally decided.
“Nope. Not bad at all,” Luke mopped the last of his maple syrup with the end of his French toast.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jodie wasn’t enjoying the audience.
The last two days of working the dogs had been mostly just her and Stan. That was the way she liked it. Now half the ranch staff—everyone not involved with a guest ride—was standing out in the pastureland beyond the dog training course.
At least for the moment, the attention wasn’t on her; but it soon would be. Instead everyone was looking aloft as the big twin-rotor Chinook helicopter swung into view. She’d been expecting a truck or maybe a Black Hawk from Malmstrom Air Force Base to the east. Instead it had been a pitch black, Night Stalkers Chinook MH-47G from the west. The only base they could be coming from was Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington, a three-hour flight away.
A glance over her shoulder showed that the horses in the corral were so used to Henderson’s Ranch’s small five-seater Bell 206 JetRanger that they didn’t even bother watching. The Chinook could lift ten JetRangers and had an internal capacity for fifty-five fully kitted troops.
Stan just shrugged when she looked his way in question. What were they going to be doing with such a big bird? Stan had said he expected ten candidates for his dogs, not fifty.
It settled with the perfect grace of a Night Stalkers pilot, then the rear ramp folded down. The first thing off was a pair of tan ATVs. But not just any ATVs, they were Polaris MRZRs (m-razors), each designed especially for moving four Spec Ops soldiers fast and quiet over rough terrain. Then came a dozen Deltas and SEALs. Last down was the Chinook’s five-person crew.
They lined up like troops ready for review, except for the Chinook’s pilot. He’d exchanged his helmet for a white cowboy hat and moseyed toward the ranch group—he actually moseyed. No one in New York would believe her that cowboys weren’t totally passé.
Then she eyed Stan and tried to picture him in a big Stetson hat and couldn’t help laughing.
