Jake (3 page)

              “It’s a little more than that.”

              “I wasn’t looking forward to Vegas,” he admitted. He stood and didn’t mind at all that he was in her personal space. This close, his skin flushed with heat. His heartbeat kicked into staccato. He watched her lips part a little breathlessly before she spoke.

              “Why not?” Her voice was heavy with skepticism. “Isn’t that every soldier’s hot spot?”

              “There you go again,” he said. “Talking like that.”

              He laughed when her cheeks filled with color.

              “I just meant in terms of destination.”

She tried to look down her nose at him, but he was a good six inches taller than her.

              “Exactly.” But he let her off the hook. “My ‘hot spot’ is the complete opposite of Vegas and other similar places. I don’t take a lot of time off, but when I do I prefer to spend it away from civilization.”

              “So why Vegas?”

              “It was an order,” he admitted reluctantly. He stepped back, leaned against the roof of her car, and watched her face adjust to that news. Surprise made her wide lips open and pause on the edge of laughter.

              “You were ordered to go to Vegas?”

              “Exactly. Four days of R and R.”

              The laughter came then, full and throaty and Jake felt that ache build again, pull along his shaft. God, she played him and she wasn’t even aware of it.

              “You say that like it’s a prison sentence. Four days of show girls and all-you-can-eat—isn’t that a soldier’s dream come true?”

              “Not this soldier,” he assured her.

              “So you’re looking for an excuse to turn around?”

              “I was told not to help little old ladies.” The General had said nothing about young, gorgeous, sin in every line of her body woman.

              “I’m not old.”

              “Exactly,” he agreed. “I think I might squeak through.”

              “You’re disobeying a direct order,” Ivy said.

              “It’s complicated.” He felt and heard the tightness in his voice. His throat ached every time he thought about Arturo, the one he lost. His first. God willing, his last.

              “You can’t go back,” the General had reminded him. “You can’t change the outcome for

one. You remember you made the world better for many. You remember that sometimes there are sacrifices. McAllister’s life and death were meaningful. That’s what we all want. You let him rest with that.”

              And Jake believed that. If it came down to losing his own life, that’s exactly the way he wanted it. It’s the way they all wanted it—for their lives to add up to greater than one.

              Still, Jake had lost a man. A good man. A man with a wife and two children. It’d been three months since the fire shower, the missiles exploding and shaking the earth, hard and close and knocking them to their knees, but the memory had only begun to fade around the edges. They had reached their target—an Israeli operative and two U.S. contractors—and brought them to safety. The human cost—two shot, but none left behind enemy lines.

              “The first loss is always the toughest. But I’ll tell you this, son, the fact that you’ve been doing this for eight years now, with two tours through the Middle East and forays into Benghazi and Uganda—scuttling into enemy territory, rife with booby traps and land mines—and you just now suffered a casualty tells me a lot about the kind of leader you are. Born into it, you were.”

              And that might be true.

              “I’m capable of higher order thinking,” Ivy said now. When Jake refocused on the present he noticed that her face had softened, and not with the warmth of attraction. She had changed, in response to Jake’s shift in mood. He felt the tension in his shoulders and knew he’d worn his feelings. “And I have a good ear.”

              You’d think his shift into the past would wipe out his state of semi-arousal. Not so. But in addition to responding to her on a physical level, he felt pulled to her softness in spirit.

              “I’ve made my confessions,” Jake said. He tried to make his words easy but they sounded anything but.

              Ivy shrugged. “I have, too,” she returned, “but talk is good for the soul.”

              Jake had done his time with the resident shrink. It was a requirement of every field officer who lost a man in battle. And the truth was, it had been good for him. Still, Ivy was getting too close, too fast. Jake didn’t let anyone even tiptoe into that area and here she was driving a bus through it.

              “If you have a soul,” Jake returned.

Chapter Three

              Ivy pulled on the shoulder harness of her seat belt and eased it back into place. She was turned so that her back was against the door and she could watch Jake drive. He had a strong profile and when he smiled, which didn’t happen often, the stiff cast of his face relaxed. She noticed that his eyelashes were gold, that he had a small scar shaped like a starburst over his eyebrow, and that beneath his solid build he had a soft heart.

              “So why, exactly, were you ordered to Las Vegas?” Ivy returned to their roadside conversation because she found it fascinating—that someone would resent a little time off. Her life was so hectic now, and had been for so long, that travel, exotic places and long hours of nothing to do, had become her favorite daydream.

              “R and R,” he returned.

              “Because. . .?”

              “I haven’t been on vacation in two-plus years,” he revealed.

              Ivy nodded. “Me, either.” There was a wistfulness in her voice. She was happy with her life. She loved where she lived, the job she went to everyday. She loved every moment she could spend outdoors with the sun and the sea on her face. She had it good. But she’d also taken on a lot of responsibility after the crash. For the first year, Holly hadn’t been able to work. She’d gone through her savings and Ivy had taken on extra hours to help out. Other than her time in Vegas, she hadn’t had even two days off back-to-back. A vacation sounded nice. It sounded sinful.

              She tipped her head back and sank into the moment—hot sun, warm sand, pale green water. The Caribbean, definitely. She’d been only once. A week in the Grand Caymans.  She’d learned how to scuba dive and had parasailed. Exhilarating. She collected five pounds of shells she’d taken home with her and kept in a glass vase on a table in her tiny apartment. There were moments, when she inhaled deeply, that she believed she could still smell the soft scents of the Caribbean. It reminded her of the easy days and sultry nights, and though she had spent them alone, there had been something carnal in the stroke of the water against her flesh and the caress of the ocean breezes.

              She lifted her hand and smoothed it over her arm, up to her shoulder and cupped her neck. She’d meant to ease her body’s response to the remembered experience, but felt her nipples bead and the satin material of her bra became too rough to her sensitive flesh.

              “What are you doing?”

              His voice was harsh and as powerful as an undertow. It crashed over her and pulled her out of her sweet memories.

              She opened her eyes and speared him with a glance.

              “Damn, you really ruined that,” she complained. She didn’t bother softening the sharp edges of accusation in her voice, either. She’d been enjoying the moment.

              “Sorry, but you should never look like that,” he warned. “Not unless you’re planning on

sharing it.”

              “What?”

              “Wherever you were,” he demanded. “My guess would be heaven.”

              Yes, it had been heaven. And she’d promised herself she would return, multiple times. She had hoped for once a year. But life was full of rude intrusions.

              “OK, I owe you that much,” she allowed. “But then I want to hear about your last vacation.” She reached back for the memory of her long ago travels. “The Grand Caymans, almost three years ago. Have you ever been?”

              She moved her gaze from his profile and over his broad shoulders, barely contained in the thin cotton t-shirt. She could see the outline of his pectoral muscles beneath the
NIKE
lettering stamped across his chest. She wondered if he had any tattoos. There were none visible on his arms. No scrolls working their way up his neckline. Still, she’d bet he had one somewhere. . .Her eyes drifted down his flat stomach to where his shirt fell over his jeans. Faded denim encased his hips and thighs. Her body was responding to his closeness, to her perusal of his body, by growing tight. Her breath hitched in her throat.  She followed the lines of his legs, back up to the juncture of his thighs.

              “No,” he said.

              It sounded like she’d strangled the word out of him and she reluctantly let her eyes lift to his face. His skin was flushed. He’d caught her looking. Well, undressing him really. And she didn’t know what had gotten into her, except that she was imagining him in a swimsuit, beside her on the white sand, and she had just let herself go. She wasn’t at all repentant about it, and she wondered about this, too. Where was the control she’d learned to harness? And from where did this new boldness come? It didn’t bother her so much as she found it exciting. Powerful, even. And she’d never felt that before. She liked it, wanted to hold onto it. But what would it cost her?                            

              She pushed that warning thought to the back of her mind and smiled into his discomfort.

              “That’s too bad,” she said. “I think you’d love it there.”

              “Hell, yeah,” he agreed and they both knew they were talking about a whole lot more than the Caribbean.

              She laughed and even to her it sounded like more of a purr. “I’ll tell you more about it.”

              “Start with the basics,” he ordered. “What color was your swim suit?”

              “They’re totally optional there.”

              She heard him swear, short and swift, and her smiled deepened with delight.

              “Torture,” he decided. “You’re pretty good at this.”

              “I am,” she agreed, surprised. “Though I didn’t know it.”

              He snorted.

              “Really.” She’d never indulged in word play, not during her short marriage to Trace. Not on the few dates she’d had since him. And she was finding that she really liked it. “And I was just kidding about that. The swimsuit thing. The Cayman’s are British owned. I brought several.”

              “Let’s stick to the facts.”

              “That’s no fun.”

              But he was relentless. “One piece or two?”

              “Both.”

              “Color?”

              “Red one piece, if you can call it that. I think most two pieces have more fabric.” He groaned and she moved on. “I used that one for diving. A floral tankini—that’s a two piece that looks like one—“

              “I know what it is,” he assured her.

              “That was my go-to for things like parasailing and windsurfing. A lot of movement and I wanted to be sure there wasn’t something private going public.”

              His lips thinned and Ivy watched his hands clench around the steering wheel.

              “I’m saving the best for last,” she announced.

              “Of course.”

              “A black barely-there bikini—strictly for tanning. All strings. Well, it did have a few triangles attached. Mostly for show.”             

              She turned the full brilliance of her smile on him.

              “You want to know what I wore to bed?”

              He shook his head.

              “You’re being very accommodating,” he said, and it was almost a complaint.

              “You’re going a lot out of your way,” she pointed out, and she had been having fun. But they did cross some kind of unspoken boundary. A small needle of discomfort pricked at her sensibilities.

              “Forget it then,” he said, and there was a firmness in his voice that said, ‘game over.’ “There are no strings attached to this ride.”

              “Meaning there are to others?”

              But he wouldn’t go there with her.

              She shrugged, suddenly unsure of herself and not liking it. “It was a little fun between strangers.”

              “That doesn’t bother you?” he asked.

              “It’s starting to,” she admitted.

              “Good.”

              “We got out of hand,” she admitted.

              “Definitely.”

              “Why?”

              “Attraction,” he said. “It’s intense and mutual.”

              She didn’t deny it. “That’s not a good thing.” She’d fallen for Trace fast and had hung on with a tenacity that was unhealthy and even life-threatening.

              “Hell, yes, it is.”

              “If we knew each other, maybe.”

              “We’re not strangers anymore,” he said. “We know more about each other than a lot of people do after a handful of dates.”

              That intrigued her. “What do you know about me, Jake?”

              “You’re strong, because you had to be,” he said. “And at this point in your life, you wouldn’t want it any other way. You had a major relationship go bad and you’re determined to use that as a compass. You’re a woman of action. You prefer to work on solutions than spend a single moment dwelling on your situation. You’re compassionate, intuitive, and responsive.”

              Ivy sat speechless. Many of the qualities he’d listed were exactly as she thought of herself.