Model Soldier (13 page)

Emily inwardly cringed. Hawk wasn’t exactly a relatable personality.

Outwardly, she saw Katie cringe as she jumped into the conversation. “I do have to agree with Emily on one point. There is a war on. The model is a professional soldier and is already over there. But we would have to send over Emily and at least one cameraman, ideally two, one for still shots and one for video. As untrained civilians, can we keep all of them safe? I’ve heard conditions can get pretty bad in some spots.”

Emily considered that and had to think that living in New York City was probably pretty good training for the war zone.

Todd suddenly joined the conversation. He was obviously feeling bold since Emily, also an assistant, had spoken up earlier. “The USO sends people to the war zone all the time. Important people, too. Celebrities. Robin Williams just got back and that Irish Tenor guy. There are always bands and singers over there performing for the troops at their bases.”

Emily frowned at him, willing him to shut up.

The last thing she had expected was to ever see Hawk once more since the bastard hadn’t even bothered to email her and say he was still alive. Given that fact, she was not in any rush to fly to Afghanistan and have to work with him. He obviously didn’t want to see her again or he would have emailed or written. And besides further bruising to her wounded ego, flying into the middle of the war hadn’t been on her immediate agenda, either.

“Perfect! Great idea, Todd.” Mr. Howard smiled at his underling, who glowed under the praise, probably while he envisioned getting his own big solo assignment and moving up in the company.

“Marci,” Mr. Dean shot at his assistant who sat silently with her laptop open on the conference table clicking away as she took notes for him. “What can you find about the USO?”

Marci’s fingers flew into action and didn’t it figure? She had the website up in no time.

“They are a not-for-profit, privately-owned organization. Ooo, this is good. They offer what they call a ‘handshake tour’. Besides comedians and musical acts, they’ve had authors, sports figures, and politicians on tour. Here’s a picture of that bicyclist Lance Armstrong with the troops. It says they have a USO center set up at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.”

“Where is our boy Hawk?” Mr. Dean asked Emily directly, shocking her out of her trance.

“Kabul,” she reluctantly supplied, feeling her cheeks blush at the mention of “her boy Hawk”.

“Marci. How close is that to Bagram?” Mr. Dean asked Marci.

“I think they’re pretty close,” know-it-all Todd jumped in, uninvited.

Emily sat silently as Marci’s fingers clicked, knowing damn well since she’d already obsessively studied the Afghan map that Bagram and Kabul were
very
close, on the map at least.

Before Marci could tell them that, Emily’s hand shot up again. “But Hawk isn’t a celebrity like Lance Armstrong. Why would the soldiers want to shake hands with just another soldier?”

Mr. Howard answered her. “There are two goals for this tour, Emily. First, we have to try and make Hawk a celebrity among other soldiers. But more importantly, this tour really isn’t for the entertainment of the troops. It’s for the people back home who need to feel good about where their young men and woman and hard-earned tax dollars are going. Photos and videos of him there, properly placed in the media here at home will accomplish that.”

“Bagram Air Base is an hour drive north of the capital city of Kabul, Mr. Dean,” Marci piped in.

Damn efficient Marci.

This could not happen. They had agreed they would never see each other again. He hadn’t made contact, so she had to assume he hadn’t changed his mind. Emily simply could not face seeing Hawk and having him blow her off, not after he’d occupied her mind night and day for weeks now.

“Hawk isn’t in the city. I believe he and his soldiers are in some primitive camp somewhere in the Kabul Province in the mountains along the Pakistan border,” Emily quickly supplied, realizing too late that was an awful lot of information for her to have about a model she’d worked with only once.

Mr. Howard raised an eyebrow, his coffee mug poised halfway to his lips. “I take it you can get in touch with him somehow?”

Emily blanched. She’d also only emailed him once, totally for work, of course, while he was still in Germany.

“Um, I don’t know. I suppose so. I can try emailing him but the satellite internet can be iffy there, I believe.” Yeah, she didn’t sound too much like she’d become a stalker and read everything she could get her hands on regarding the troops in that area. “But again, it will be up to his superiors to allow him to come to Bagram.”

“The client is the US Army,” Mr. Dean pointed out, tapping his copy of the client folder on the conference table. “If they want their own campaign to succeed, I don’t see that they’d have a problem working with us by loaning out one soldier for a few days.”

“True,” Mr. Howard agreed. “But it never hurts to cover all the bases when dealing with the military.” He swiveled his chair to face Katie. “How about your contacts? Can you get this Hawk ordered to do a USO handshake tour?”

Katie smiled. “I’ll call Hank Miller from CentCom and see what he can do. That man is amazing when it comes to making people do things.”

Mr. Howard donned a satisfied smile. He loved nothing more than pulling strings. “Excellent.”

Smiling, Mr. Dean nodded. “This may actually work out perfectly. If we can hook him up with a celebrity already on a scheduled tour, we can piggyback on their publicity and the troop support. There’s our missing star power that we had with the Milano-SpecOps joint campaign. Marci, can you forward the USO information to Emily?”

“Already emailed. And they have contact information and phone numbers listed right here on the site.”

Oh goody.
“Thanks, Marci,” Emily said, trying to sound sincere.

Mr. Dean started shuffling papers into a pile and stashing them into various folders, which he shoved at Todd. “Emily? Can you handle coordinating the USO aspect?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll get right on it.”

“Great. Keep us informed,” Mr. Dean ordered.

“This is an important client,” Mr. Howard added, as if Emily didn’t already know that paralyzing detail. “I want to be apprised every step of the way.”

And with that, Howard and Dean both rose and the meeting was over.

As the room emptied, Emily remained frozen in her seat. This was going to happen. She would have to see him again, do her job and do it well and all while pretending that everything was perfectly okay. Great.

For maybe the thousandth time since Germany, Emily revisited her and Hawk’s final moments together.

“You going to be able to get back to the base okay?” she’d asked that morning, suitcase packed and zipped and ready to go to the airport.

“Yeah, I kept one of the cars we came in and made the rest of the guys cram into the other two.” Hawk had run a hand up her arm to cup her face and then said, “You know, I’ve been thinking.”

“Uh, oh. Are you sure that’s safe? You thinking?” Emily had teased him to avoid tearing up at their parting.

He’d grinned at her then and she remembered her heart skipping a beat. That was when she’d known saying good-bye and meaning it was not going to be as easy.

Then he said something that made her heart and her hopes surge.

“I was thinking that it might be kind of cool if you did email me the pictures. I’d like to have them, you know, just for fun.”

She’d nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, sure. I can definitely do that. No problem.”

Yeah sure, no problem at all, except that she’d emailed him the pictures the moment her feet had hit US soil and gotten exactly one word back from him by email. “Thanks.” That was it.

And that is what she got for hoping, for planning, for thinking that an agreed upon one night stand could be anything more.

“You gonna be okay with this? Em?”

Emily was yanked out from beneath her memories with a jolt to find Katie looking expectantly in her direction.

Katie clarified when Emily gave her nothing but a blank stare. “Going to Afghanistan, I mean. Are you okay with that?”

Emily joked to cover her discomposure. “Oh, yeah, sure. I’m great. Actually, I’ve always wanted to see Afghanistan.”

“Are you going to email Hawk with the news?” Katie asked perfectly innocently. Emily, though guilt-ridden about it, had chosen to keep her little indiscretion in Germany to herself.

“Um, no. No yet. I think I’ll get everything ironed out first with the USO and wait for you to get approval from the Army. No use getting his hopes up and then having to cancel.”

Emily nearly glanced up and waited for the lightning strike for that little lie.

Katie nodded. “You’re right. I’ll be interested to see how the USO feels about our idea.”

The other question remaining was how Hawk would feel about this. Emily could only guess it wasn’t going to be good.

Chapter Twelve

“Can I borrow your toothpaste later, Hawk?” Wally asked through a mouthful of food. “I’m out until my next care package gets here from Mama.”

Whenever the hell the next supply drop would be...

Hawk sighed. “Yeah, sure.”

Wally grinned. “Thanks. I’ve got an extra deodorant if you need.”

Hawk raised a brow. “Thanks.”

If the temperature reached above freezing in the near future, Wally’s antiperspirant might be a hot commodity, but at the moment the chance of sweating seemed pretty slim.

Things at the compound in the Kabul Province were, to put it mildly, scarce.

Hawk and his squad were far from anyone else, including their own unit. No base meant no store, which meant some basic necessities, things like toothpaste and believe it or not, forks, were hard to come by. Guys actually walked around with their fork in their pocket to make sure they didn’t lose it or no one swiped it.

You pretty much had to come stocked with everything you would need, borrow from one of the other guys or do without until more arrived from home. Hawk’s camp was so remote that supplies were sling loaded beneath a chopper,
flown in and then dropped. Unfortunately, you never knew when the supply drop would arrive.

It seemed the only convenience they did have on a regular basis was internet access. Go figure! A hell of a lot of good email did Hawk since he’d vowed to himself he wouldn’t maintain contact with Emily while he was downrange.

Basically, it seemed the only things to do there were fight, write (for those who had someone to write to), clean weapons or reload mags, fun stuff like that.

Oh, yeah, and think.

There was far too much time to think. And more often than not, Hawk’s thoughts turned to Emily and their one night together. Then his mind went to that day right after they’d been together when she’d emailed him in Germany with his photos.

She’d kept the email all casual and light, on the surface anyway. But reading between the lines, Hawk could tell she wanted more. He could have a girlfriend if he wanted one. He could have Emily if he wanted her.

Wanting
wasn’t the problem.

This was not the time or place to get himself tied to a new girl back in the States. One hundred and ten percent of his concentration had to be on bringing his men home alive. After he’d accomplished that, god willing, he’d worry about the other parts of his life.

“I’m gonna go get on the computer and email my sister for some toothpaste,” Hawk said, breaking his thoughts from Emily. “Looks like I will be needing some more soon.” He sent a meaningful look at Wally.

“Ask her to send some pictures,” Wally suggested with a waggle of his eyebrows.

With a sigh and a shake of his head, Hawk set aside his empty MRE—meals ready to eat being their main sustenance—and left his men to finish their respective meals.

He made his way to the tent where the shared computer was located. Since the rest of the guys were still eating, he was alone as he logged into his email account. He owed his sister an email anyway or there would be hell to pay. It was just easier to shoot her a quick hello than listen to her bitch for the rest of his life.

As expected, an email from his sister sat in his inbox.
“Would be nice to know my brother is alive and well. Write me! Susan”

Also, as per usual, were a good dozen jokes, pictures or funny videos sent to him by the guys back at the rear. Hawk deleted most of those without reading them.

But what was most unexpected after all this time was an email from Emily, buried in his inbox below all the others.

Surprised, Hawk clicked quickly to open it.

He found himself leaning forward closer to the screen to read it.

“Hawk. You’ll be getting orders for another assignment. I did my best to get you out of it. Sorry. Emily”

What the hell? Orders for another modeling assignment? Out here?

Hawk laughed. If they could get those orders to him through the snowdrifts, he’d gladly follow them. Emily probably wanted a picture of him in his white snow camo “outfit”. She’d have him standing outside in a blizzard for some new ad, as if that would make the young boys and girls back home jump right up and run to the local recruiting office to join up.