High-Stakes Playboy (18 page)

She jumped out of the tub, dried off and dressed quickly, shivering. If she knew what was good for her, she would limit her feelings to no more than a crush on him. She would keep their relationship as close to purely physical as she could. Just sex.

No attachments.

No strings.

No problem.

No way.

Chapter 11

A
rcher looked up quickly as Marley emerged from the bedroom, her skin rosy and her hair curling in soft little blond tendrils around her face. She looked so sweet and innocent, but his firsthand knowledge of her voracious sexual appetite made that innocent look so sexy he could hardly stay in the armchair and not throw her down and ravish her all over again.

“Feel better?” he managed to murmur blandly enough.

“As good as new,” she said brightly.

“I heated up some baked beans for us. They’re not fancy, but better than nothing.”

“Man, it seems like I’m eating continuously today,” she groused. “I’m going to be as big as your truck by the time we get out of here.”

“Oh, I can think of a few ways to exercise it off you. Besides, it’s cold. Your body’s burning extra calories staying warm.”

She grinned at him. “Let’s go with that explanation.”

He offered his lap to her and she sank onto it readily. Satisfaction coursed through him that she was so comfortable with close physical contact between them. He fed her the beans, alternating taking spoonfuls himself.

“Who’d have guessed eating beanie weenies could be so nice?” she commented. “I gotta say, the Girl Scout handbook left this part out.”

“I should hope so,” he said with a chuckle.

They polished off the beans, and he set the pan aside. The fire hissed a little as snow dried off the latest batch of logs, and the silence was as deep as the snow outside. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this much at peace.

“So, here we are with nothing but time on our hands,” she said tentatively. “How about you tell me more about that last flight of yours before you came home? I swear on a stack of Bibles that I won’t ever breathe a word about it to anyone else. Maybe if you talk it out with me you’ll be good and over it before you go back to your unit.”

Peace shattered.
Dammit.

He tensed. “I’d really rather not.”

She laid her palm on his cheek. “I understand. But I think maybe you need to talk about it. You get really uptight whenever you’re reminded of it.”

He stared at her, a sinking feeling in his chest. She was right. Besides, who else was there to talk to? He refused to come within ten miles of a shrink who could take his wings from him. And the other military pilots he served with were busy fighting their own demons. Not to mention, none of his colleagues wanted to hear the uncomfortable truths of their profession. Better to stay in a nice, safe state of denial, and pretend that good men and women didn’t suffer and die in their line of work.

He sighed. “What do you want to know?”

“Not sure. What can you tell me without breaking the rules over classified material?”

“Not much.” He considered his words for a few seconds and then began to speak slowly. “It was a rescue mission. In a place no Americans were supposed to be. Which meant neither the guys we were rescuing nor we were officially there.”

“And it went bad, right? You got there and it was some sort of ambush for you, too.”

He shrugged. Honestly, he wasn’t sure if it had been an ambush for him, or an unlucky coincidence that he flown right into the teeth of a rebel stronghold to rescue that American patrol. “We got a distress call, and I was the guy on alert, so I responded.”

The frantic radio call for help from the ambushed unit crackled in his head, and the sudden tension of a clock ticking on a bunch of Special Forces troops’ lives tightened his gut.

“We came in for a landing and were hovering about thirty feet in the air over the team we were pulling out. That’s when we got shot out of the sky.”

A log broke in the fireplace with a shower of sparks and he jumped, startled.
Firelight. Cabin. Marley.
He was
not
in a helicopter hovering over hell’s doorstep.

Her hand alighted softly on his arm, a look of concern in her eyes.

He shook his head. He was okay. And she was right. He did need to relive that night. To work through how he felt about it.

Grounded in the present once more, he continued, “We crashed, and my bird was a mess. Not gonna fly again. A hell of a firefight broke out as soon as we came down in the LZ, and we were suddenly in need of rescue, too.”

She frowned. “LZ?”

“Landing zone.” She nodded and he continued. “Rockets and bullets were flying all over the place. We were pinned down in a valley with rebels in the hills on either side of us. We were fish in a barrel. It was uglier than you can imagine.”

Marley shivered against him and he tightened his arm around her waist a little. God, she felt good in his arms. A reminder that this other world, where people didn’t shoot at and kill one another, existed.

“Before we went down, I got off a Mayday—that’s an emergency call for help. We took hellish incoming fire for about the next half hour. We were running out of ammunition and medical supplies, and when, from over the ridge, I heard a chopper. That was just about the sweetest sound I ever heard.”

“That must be how all the people you’ve rescued felt when they heard you coming,” she murmured.

“I suppose so.” He’d never thought of it in those terms.

“Go on,” she urged gently.

“A pair of choppers came in first and made a strafing run. Softened up the rebels so a rescue bird could come in and land.”

“By softened up, I gather you mean it shot up the rebels?” she asked soberly.

He nodded. “Lit them up like the Fourth of July. The second rescue bird landed practically on top of us. We loaded up the injured and piled aboard in about ten seconds flat.”

He could see and feel it all again. The tracers and explosions too damned close to them. The smell of blood, the moans of the wounded and the shouts of the others to
Go! Go! Go!
He felt the rescue helicopter shaking beneath him as gunfire raked its light armor.

“We flew like a bat out of hell and cleared the ridge. Our helicopter took some hits but held on. We limped home, but two more guys died in the back before we could get to a field hospital. There was blood all over the place. And there was nothing we could do to help them. They both had internal bleeding that would have taken a damned fine trauma surgeon to stop.”

“So there was nothing you could’ve done for them,” Marley stated.

Archer winced. And there it was—the inconvenient truth he and all his fellow pilots tried so hard to avoid. Sometimes, bad things happened to good people. There was no fancy explanation, and it sucked rocks. Sometimes a combination of uncontrollable circumstances just lined up wrong and killed people.

“There was nothing you could have done, right?” she pressed.

“I could’ve been the one to take a bullet,” he replied.

“Thank God you didn’t,” Marley retorted with a world of empathy in her eyes.

He smiled a little in spite of himself.

“Seriously, Archer. What could you have done differently?”

“Nothing. The call would have come in and I would still have gone even if I knew I was going to get shot down. It was my job. Those guys on the ground were depending on me to come get them. I had to at least try to pull them out.”

“There you have it. You’d have done the same thing again. And the same thing would have happened. It wasn’t your fault, and you couldn’t have changed the outcome.”

There was something therapeutic in hearing someone else say the words, in someone else absolving him from responsibility.

“As crappy luck would have it,” she continued, “some guys you were trying to help took unlucky bullets.”

“About as crappy as luck can get.”

“Nonetheless,” she pressed, “we’re talking about bad luck, not any specific mistake you made. Right?”

“Look. I know that in my head. But it’s going to take a little time to convince my gut.”

“Fair enough,” she said calmly. “Have you grieved for the guys who died yet?”

He stared at Marley. “Come again? I didn’t know any of them.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t feel bad over their deaths.”

Right. Like he and the other guys sat around singing “Kumbaya” and boo-hooing every time some poor sod got shot and bled out in combat.

It was the pits. But it was war.

“I’ve had no time to even think about the mission, let alone grieve for anyone. As soon as I filed my written report on the incident, the flight surgeon put me on mandatory leave for a month. I packed my bags, got on a plane, and here I am.”

“I’m no expert, but even I know you need some time to absorb what happened and deal with it.
Anyone
would feel guilty surviving under those circumstances. No wonder they made you come home for some leave. The flight surgeon must have known you would need time to work through this.”

He stared at her. Was she right? Was survivor’s guilt the source of his problems? Was the cure as simple as making peace with those guys’ deaths?

“You should talk with Steve Prescott.”

He started. “Why him?”

“I heard he was a Marine. Some kind of combat commander. I’ll bet he knows exactly what it feels like to lose troops he felt responsible for. Maybe he’d have some suggestions for getting past it.”

He’d never thought of his brother in those terms before. As a kid, he’d looked up to Steve. Seen him as his invincible big brother. He’d never considered that Steve might have scars and emotional baggage of his own from his military career.

Archer turned over the idea thoughtfully, and abruptly he felt restless. Caged in. “I need to take a walk. Stretch my legs.”

“Last time you went out for a walk you came back sopping wet and hypothermic.”

“I know where the creek is now,” he retorted drily. “And it’s not like you could stop me. I outweigh you by a good eighty pounds, and I’m a lot bigger and stronger than you, pip-squeak.”

She tensed indignantly. “Who’re you calling pip-squeak?” Her gaze narrowed menacingly, and she held up the cutest, most ineffective fists he’d seen in a long time. “Call me that again. I dare you.”

He grinned broadly at her. God, she was good for his soul. “How about you help me bundle up? You can check to make sure all of my clothes are dry and that I’ll be sufficiently warm for you not to worry about me.”

He had to admit, his heart felt lighter after their talk as he put on his coats, hats, gloves and boots—all vetted and declared dry by Marley. Maybe talking about the mission hadn’t been such a bad idea.

What would he do without her? One thing he knew for sure: he didn’t want to find out. His return to active duty in a few weeks loomed large in his mind as he stepped outside into the waning afternoon light to run a quick patrol around the cabin and check just how impassible the driveway was.

First things first. He had to figure out who was stalking Marley before he could even think about leaving her side.

* * *

Marley waited impatiently for Archer’s return. The cabin felt empty and hollow without his huge presence filling it. She was relieved that he trusted her enough to talk about that awful mission with her. What must it be like to carry around terrible memories and pain and have no one to share it with? She shuddered to imagine it. It certainly put her stupid jinx into perspective. It wasn’t worth obsessing over any more.

Meanwhile, no more silent suffering for him. She vowed to herself to be there for him whenever he needed someone to talk to. Although how she was going to pull that off when he went back to his unit, she had no idea. She supposed soldiers kept in touch with their families over the internet these days. It wouldn’t be ideal, but she supposed it was better than having no contact with him at all.

Now, how to figure out if he was willing to give a long-distance relationship a try? Did she dare ask him outright? That seemed pretty bold, even for her.

She paced the interior of the cabin nervously while she waited for his return. Was this to be the shape of her future life, waiting and worrying about him for weeks or months on end? Was she strong enough to do it? For him? Would he wait for her, too? Could what they had between them grow into something strong enough to withstand the distance and separation? She desperately hoped so.

* * *

Archer stared down at the snow in horror. There was no doubt about it. Those were footprints.
Human
footprints. Right underneath the bedroom window of the cabin. And neither he nor Marley had been outside recently enough to have made the prints. The wind was still blowing fiercely, filling in the prints even as he stood there. Which meant whoever’d been peeking in the windows had done it very recently. Maybe recently enough that he could track and catch the bastard.

Quickly, he followed the line of tracks. It led around the back of the house and up onto the small back porch. Had the bastard tried the lock on the door? Attempted to get into the cabin? Or had he just stood there on the porch, peering in the door and spying on them?

Archer’s skin crawled at the idea of being watched like that. Had the stalker seen them having sex in front of the fireplace? Fury on Marley’s behalf ripped through him. It was the worst possible invasion of privacy to have their lovemaking spied upon.

No way could he tell Marley about it. She would flip out. He knew from his survival-school training that women took sexual invasions of their privacy much more personally than men.

He was going to kill this asshole when he caught up with him. Slowly and painfully. He followed the tracks around the far side of the cabin, past Marley’s snow-covered car, in a circle around his truck and back into the woods.

He’d traveled no more than a quarter mile into the heavy stand of timber around the cabin before he lost the trail. A combination of rapidly shifting drifts of snow and pine needles carpeting the forest floor where there was no snow made the trail impossible to follow.

If it had been bright daylight out and powdery gusts of crystalline snow not been blowing in his face and obscuring his vision, he might have been able to track the trail. But as it was, he had a pretty good idea where the stalker had headed, anyway. The trail had gone more or less in a straight line back toward the main road.

He was fairly sure the intruder must have had a vehicle, maybe a snowmobile, parked on the road and driven away. It was too cold out here for anyone to make camp and hang out in the woods for any period of time. At least not without extensive cold weather gear that would’ve been difficult to carry in through the deep snow and miserable to camp in for long.