Risk Taker (4 page)

A number of the other men watched her, too. She probably felt like a piece of meat, all those eyes on her. He wouldn’t like it, either.

“I’m taking five,” Ethan told his LPO, wiping his face again, then throwing the towel over his shoulder.

Sarah felt Ethan’s presence even though she never heard him approach. She’d just sat down on a bench with a ten-pound weight when Ethan appeared before her. He gave her a slight smile of hello and crouched down a few feet in front of her.

“Hey, how are you feeling today?”

Sarah felt heat race up her throat and into her face. The man had hardly any clothes on. Her eyes widened momentarily. “I didn’t see you when I came in,” she said, stiff and on guard. He was incredibly well built with powerful shoulders, dark hair across his chest and a line going down across his hard abs and disappearing beneath the waist of his dark blue gym shorts. Lean. He was built like a swimmer, and then she realized he was a frogman. So, yes, he did indeed have a swimmer’s amazing body. Finding her voice, she said, “I woke up this morning stiff and figured an hour of working out will help me loosen up.”

Ethan nodded, his heart contracting. “You have a helluva bruise on your temple. That’s enough to give me a headache just looking at it.” One corner of his mouth lifted. Her right eye was bruised and slightly swollen from the strike the bastard had given her. The bridge of her nose was also swollen. She had pulled her shining black hair into a ponytail, and he appreciated the clean, classic lines of her face, still beautiful even with her injuries.

“I took some aspirin and I’ve only got a mild headache now.” She started repetitions with the weights, counting how many times for each arm. Panic seized her. He was a man. And he was so masculine that it triggered old memories. She almost asked him about the poem. If he had written it.

“What did the doc have to say? Are you all right?”

Sarah heard the care in his low, husky tone. She swore those gray eyes were looking straight through her. She felt off balance with him, yet she felt his protection, too. It was a crazy feeling, not one she had ever experienced before. Maybe SEALs exuded that kind of protectiveness toward others? She’d never met a SEAL before except to pick up wounded ones on the battlefield. Black ops tended to keep to themselves. It left her confused and wary.

“Just a lot of pretty bruises.” She pointed to her wrist. “And my nose isn’t broken, thank God. The doctor forced me off the flight roster for four days.”

“Mmm,” Ethan said, nodding. Sarah rarely met his eyes. She seemed shy, unlike the tigerlike demeanor he’d seen in action yesterday. He could see only fear in her eyes.
Why?
Ethan also wondered how she’d become a medevac pilot. They took risks every day out in the field and were considered aggressive pilots. “Did she think you might have a concussion?”

Sarah sat on the anxiety that bubbled just beneath the surface and started counting again as she lifted the weight in her other hand. “Yes.” She tilted her head and met his warm gray eyes. “How did you know? Are you a combat medic?”

Shaking his head, Ethan murmured, “This is my fourth rotation out here and you get used to seeing certain kinds of injuries. My specialty is comms—communication—not medicine.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward Tolleson, who was doing some bench-pressing in his absence. “He’s my LPO. Tolleson is one of the combat medics in our platoon.”

“I see.” Sarah watched him for a moment. “I’m really ignorant about SEALs,” she confided. Ethan was easy to talk to, and she didn’t see lust in his eyes as he observed her. For whatever reason, she found herself tense, unused to a man treating her like this.

“How long you been here at Bravo?”

“Three months. Got six more to go before I get rotated stateside.” Sarah wrinkled her nose. “I’ll probably get four to six months home and then they’re going to send me right back over here.”

“How long you been flying?”

She frowned. “Joined the Army at twenty. I had two years of college under my belt and they wanted me to shoot for warrant officer status. My foster father, Hank, was an Army Black Hawk pilot during the Gulf War. I was lucky and got into their family when I was twelve years old. He’d take me flying in his helicopter duster. By the time I went into the Army, I had about five hundred hours of flight time, so the Army pushed me in that direction. I chose to become a medevac pilot.”

“The Army doesn’t like to waste talent,” Ethan agreed. He had a tough time seeing her in the cockpit of a medevac. Those pilots were ballsy risk takers. Why was she looking at him like he was going to hit her? “You seem pretty laid-back for a medevac pilot.”

Sarah shrugged and switched hands with the dumbbell. “I think the word you’re looking for is
shy.
I’m a terrified introvert living in a world of in-your-face extroverts.”

He chuckled, liking her dry sense of humor. “Nothing wrong with being an introvert.” He shrugged. “I’m one, too.”

“Could have fooled me.” Sarah wiped the gathering perspiration off her brow with her towel. “You were the first guy to stand up to stop those three Delta dudes from coming over to my table. The look on your face scared the hell out of me.”

Ethan absorbed her praise. He wanted to know what she thought of the poem he’d slipped beneath the flap of her tent that morning. The expression on her face kept him from asking. “No one said an introvert can’t be a mean mother when they need to be,” he said in defense, liking her hesitant smile. That mouth of hers was sending his body a damned heated message.

“That’s true.” Sarah rolled her eyes. “Every time we get a new copilot in our squadron, the major sends him to be trained by me. I think he does it just to screw around with the newbie. They take one look at my face and I guess I don’t look like a warrior. Then they get hyper because I don’t fit their idea of a medevac pilot. I’m a woman and—” she sighed “—I have to prove my abilities every day in the right seat. It takes a new copilot a couple of weeks to settle down in the left-hand seat with me at the helm. Like a woman can’t fly a damned helo? Give me a break.”

“I like your feistiness.”

“More than one pilot has seen me under fire coming in for a rescue, and I’m as cool as ice when I need to be.”

Ethan believed it. He held up his hands. “Hey, I’m on the receiving end of you medevac pilots. I couldn’t care less what your gender is. If I’m bleeding out, all I want to know is you’re going to get to me as fast as you can and save my sorry ass.”

Sarah laughed for the first time. “That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?” She
wanted
to like him. That shocked her. And instantly another kind of cold fear settled in her stomach.

Ethan saw the happiness shining in her eyes for just a moment. Her laughter was husky, and his flesh rifled beneath it. His body had a mind of its own, reacting to her sweet smile and shy demeanor. That’s great, all he needed was an erection in a pair of gym shorts.
Not good.
He remained where he was, controlling his body. Above all, he didn’t want to scare Sarah off. Providence had given him an opening with her, and he damn well wasn’t going to squander it away like a teenager run by his hormones. “Listen, can I buy you a beer over at the canteen without you going into your black belt routine?”

Her lips curved. “Ah, I see my karate abilities have gotten around the base?” Thanks to the pilots in her squadron, who were gossip queens that put women to shame.

“I think you could have saved yourself yesterday with that bastard because you knew how to fight back,” Ethan said solemnly. He saw her eyes narrow a bit, her soft mouth become pursed.

“I busted his nose and blackened his eye. I was hoping to kick him in the crotch, but he took me down and started dragging me around the corner of the building.” Sarah pushed some strands of hair off her damp brow. Giving him an earnest look, her voice low with emotion, she said, “If you hadn’t come along, Ethan, he’d probably have been able to rape me. He tried to knock me out. No one would have seen him do it behind that building and he would have gotten away with it. I wondered this morning if he had, would he have killed me afterward? You didn’t give him a second shot at me.”

The fear banked in her eyes grew. Sarah’s emotions were right there on the surface, and damned if he didn’t want to straighten up, walk over and haul her into his arms. Ethan found himself wanting to protect her. But this woman was clearly able to fight a two-hundred-and-forty-pound hulk. “You sell yourself short, Sarah. I think, all things being equal, if I hadn’t come along, you’d have found a way to knock the hell out of him and escape.”

The look in the SEAL’s eyes went along with the deadly sound in his hard voice. Sarah shrugged. “We’ll never know.” She set the dumbbell down on the bench. After picking up the towel and wiping her brow, she said, “Actually, I was trying to figure out a way to find you and then ask if I could buy
you
a beer to thank you. It’s the least I could do for you coming to my aid.” She owed him that, scared or not.

Ethan slowly rose, making sure his towel was strategically in place over his gym shorts. This woman turned him on in a heartbeat. “Name the place and time.”

“Noon? I’ll buy you lunch, too.” Ethan gave her a very male look, and this time, Sarah felt her heart flutter. This SEAL was incredibly confident, easygoing as if he didn’t have a care in the world. And she liked his mouth because it was expressive and he wasn’t acting like he was going to slobber all over her.

He grinned. “Yes, sounds good. I’ll see you over at the canteen.”

Chapter 4

S
arah was nervous as she sat at her favorite table in the noisy canteen. Lunchtime brought everyone out, and those who wanted American food like pizza and hamburgers came here instead of eating over at the chow hall. She’d decided to wear civilian clothes instead of her flight uniform because she wasn’t on duty. After changing into a pair of loose jeans, sneakers and a pink tee with a long-sleeved white blouse to hide her curves, she nervously waited for Ethan. Sarah wanted to get up and leave. He was an unknown. And the unknown scared the living hell out of her.

She glanced at her watch; she was five minutes early. The men at the bar were looking her up and down. Sarah wished she could stop being so sensitive about male stares. Maybe it had to do with her childhood. Who knew? She was drinking beer from a sweaty glass, a pitcher in the center of the table, when she felt Ethan’s presence.

She found him smiling down at her.

“I never heard you coming.”

“You won’t,” Ethan said by way of greeting, pulling a chair out next to her and sitting down.

“Thanks for coming. I’ve already ordered us hamburgers and French fries.” Sarah tried not to be affected by Ethan, but that was impossible. He was wearing a red T-shirt that showed off his incredibly fit body. The jeans he wore made her lower body stir, and that shocked her. She’d now seen two sides of him, the poet and the SEAL. She noticed a number of scars, white and more recent pink ones on his lower and upper arms as well as on his large hands. When he moved to pick up the pitcher of beer, she watched his biceps flex. Every move he made was graceful, and Sarah knew only someone in very good shape could have that boneless kind of grace.

“There’s that risk-taker attitude of yours,” Ethan teased, grinning as he poured himself some cold beer.

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me you don’t like hamburgers and French fries.” Sarah wanted to ask him if he’d really written that poem. She didn’t have the courage.

Ethan pushed the chair back on two legs. “I’m a red-blooded American male. Relax, it’s fine. I can never get enough hamburgers.” He grinned, seeing relief come to her eyes. Damn but he wanted to know everything about Sarah. He was afraid that if he fired off too many questions it would scare her away. All morning after coming back from the gym, Ethan had tried to figure out the best way to gain Sarah’s trust. Given that a man had just beat the hell out of her, she probably wasn’t too trusting toward any guy. Not even him.

“The workout go okay?” she asked, trying to get herself to relax. Sarah liked looking into his amused gray eyes, the way his chiseled mouth drew up into a hint of a smile. Heat flashed through her, stronger this time than at the gym. There was no question Ethan was sexy. Sensuality oozed out of his pores and it sure had a giddy effect on her. Actually, he could have been a cover model for a fitness magazine with his athletic body and rugged good looks. Why would she suddenly be interested in this man? Sarah quietly tucked her question away.

This guy had saved her from being raped. She should focus on him, not her own scarred past. “You aren’t like a lot of these other guys.”

Ethan shrugged, sipping the beer, holding her blue gaze. “If you haven’t had much experience around SEALs, I’d say that’s why.”

Tilting her head, Sarah said, “Educate me.”

It was easy to talk about his own kind. “We have an ethos, a way of living and conducting ourselves in the world. We’re a band of brothers and a family. We’re professionals, Sarah. We don’t have to swagger around, boast or tell the world about ourselves. We let our work speak for us.”

She felt the coolness of the frosty glass between her fingers as she listened to his low voice. “When I saw you coming up to hit that guy, I thought you were a shadow. I didn’t even hear you coming.”

Ethan’s eyes dropped to her parted mouth. He struggled to keep his body in line, but damn, it was tough. “SEALs take the fight to the enemy, and they’ll never hear us coming until it’s too late.”

The bartender brought over two huge platters of food and set them down in front of them. Sarah thanked him and put her beer to one side. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.” After the assault, she’d had no appetite. Now she did, and she wondered if it was because of Ethan.

“I don’t get over here too often, but when I do, this is my order.”

Sarah placed the pickles, onions, tomatoes and lettuce on the huge half-pound hamburger. “I don’t get over here too often, either. Heavy flight demands.”

Picking up his burger in both hands, Ethan grunted. “I must have gotten lucky seeing you the other day then.”

They ate in companionable silence. Ethan was always aware of the space around him. More than a few dudes looked longingly toward Blue Eyes and then scowled, jealousy written on their faces because she was allowing him to sit with her. He had to keep himself in tight check; he had a hundred questions for her.

“I imagine being back home on such a short rotation plays hell on your family demands?” he asked. Another way to find out if she was married, engaged or single.

Shrugging, Sarah said, “My foster parents love to have me at home. They live in Dallas, Texas, and I’m always sent to an Army base elsewhere. I do take my thirty days of leave to be with them.”

“No other family?” he wondered.

Sarah hesitated. Should she get personal with Ethan? There was something about him that inspired her confidence. Stiffly, she said, “No. I was given up at birth. I’m sure I have family, but I don’t know who they are. My foster parents, Hank and Mary Benson, adopted me when I was twelve years old. They’re my life. They took me in and I’ll always be grateful.”

Ethan heard the tension and emotions behind her husky voice and saw pain as well as fondness in her eyes as she spoke. “That had to be tough. I mean, being given up at birth.” Ethan couldn’t wrap his head around that one. There was momentary anguish in her eyes, and then she quickly hid it from him.

“I’m okay with it. Hank and Mary made up for it. They gave me love and stability and supported me.”

“What happened the first twelve years of your life?”

Her mouth crooked, as if to avoid answering his question. “It wasn’t pretty,” was all she said, her voice clipped and growing hard. “I am who I am today because of Mary and Hank. That’s all that counts.”

Ethan tried to translate what he saw in her dark glance, but he couldn’t. There were a lot of layers to Sarah, a complexity, and he wanted to figure it out. His nature was to delve, understand and see the larger picture. It certainly served him well as a SEAL in black ops.

She finished her hamburger and picked at her fries. “Are you an officer?”

Ethan knew where this conversation was going. Warrant officers in the Army lived in a netherworld between officers and enlisted people. The Army considered them officers, higher in rank than any enlisted person. And he was enlisted. What was Sarah thinking? Was she interested in him personally? Checking out his rank or rate status to ensure the fraternization order wasn’t broken? Officers and warrants were not allowed by UCMJ law to fraternize with enlisted people. There was to be no affair, no personal relationship between the two parties.

He squirmed. “I’m a petty officer first class.”

“I see,” she murmured. In a way, Sarah was relieved he was enlisted. It would make it easier to stop the burning connection between them. Sarah wasn’t going to risk her career on an affair with an enlisted man. And yet, as she studied Ethan’s somber expression, that was exactly what she wanted to do. He had a kindness to him, a curiosity and intelligence. They all appealed strongly to her, but she couldn’t get beyond that wall of distrust she had toward all men.

Ethan continued eating his French fries, no longer tasting them. He could see Sarah had already made her decision about him. She was single; that much he knew. Was she available, though? In his SEAL world, which blurred the lines between enlisted men and their officers, he didn’t see this as a deal killer even if Sarah did.

Over the years, Ethan had seen plenty of officer-and-enlisted romances. If the two people involved were discreet, no one said anything. Only those stupid enough to flaunt their affair brazenly out in front of their commanding officers got the order to stop it or else. He’d seen, in some instances, the woman renouncing her military career in order to marry the officer she’d fallen in love with. And sometimes not. He understood what Sarah was thinking about. Weighing and measuring him because she was attracted to him or she wouldn’t have asked the question at all. He could sense her considering the costs to her career and to herself if she allowed their attraction to grow.

“Do you have a wife and kids?” Sarah asked him.

Ethan felt himself smile. “No, I’m not married.” He pushed the empty plate away and picked up his beer.

“Do SEALs replace the need for a woman in their life with their team family instead?”

He chuckled. “No way. About half the guys in our platoon are married and have kids. The rest of us are alpha male wolves without a partner yet.”

She smiled at his description, pushing a few of the last French fries around with her index finger. “Maybe your job, the black ops part of it, stops you from having a serious relationship?” she wondered.

Ethan could feel her trying to grasp the world he lived in. Was this a personal question? Or just a more generalized question about the SEAL community because Sarah knew little about them? He wished it was personal, but he didn’t think it was. “I don’t think most women can take the nature of our business,” he told her seriously. “There’s a ninety percent divorce rate among SEALs. Most marriages last only ten years. It’s like a disease.”

Her brows flew up. “Ninety? My God, that’s high!”

“Can’t disagree with you.” Ethan opened his hands. “Put yourself in a wife’s place, one who is married to a SEAL operator. She will never know where he’s sent, the danger he’s in, whether he’s coming back or not. She has to take care of everything stateside, the house, the kids, and he’s not there to support or help her do it. It’s a pretty daunting task when a husband is sent overseas for six months and you, as the wife, only get emails and maybe a Skype call monthly, if that.”

Nodding, Sarah whispered, “That would be really rough.” And then she looked at him. “Is that why you never married?” Because Ethan struck her as a man any woman would stumble all over herself to be with. He wasn’t like those ego-busting Delta operators. He was settled, mature, intelligent, and all those things appealed strongly to her whether she wanted them to or not.

“Just haven’t run into the right woman yet, I guess,” Ethan said, giving her a good-humored look. “Have you run into the right man?”

Sarah frowned. Her voice grew terse. “No.” Sarah rubbed her brow, and he could see her weighing whether or not she wanted to reveal any more of herself to him. Desperate, Ethan waited, wanting to know.

She shook her head and gave Ethan a confused look. “I’ll bet a lot of people confide in you....”

“I’m trustworthy,” he assured her. And he was. Ethan didn’t spread gossip around, and he held every relationship as sacred. Sarah was staring at him, unsure. His mouth pursed as he waited. This was a key to Sarah.

“I don’t have a very good track record, so let’s leave it at that.”

Ethan felt sadness blanketing her. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business,” he rasped. And he was sorry because he saw moisture come to her eyes and it tore at his heavily guarded heart. A woman’s or child’s tears ripped him wide-open and he had absolutely no defense against them. Ethan wanted to touch her but stopped himself.

God help him, he wanted to gather Sarah into his arms and hold her. She needed that right now, judging by the stark look in her eyes. He could feel how alone she was in this male world. In one aspect, Sarah looked fragile and too vulnerable to be a Black Hawk pilot. In other ways, Ethan sensed her steel backbone. She was complex. And that is what drove him to know her on a personal level. What moved her? What passion directed her life? Why was she in the military? There was so much more to Blue Eyes.

Sarah seemed to force a brittle smile. “It’s life. Everyone gets kicked around by it sooner or later.” She finished off her beer and pulled out some bills from the pocket of her jeans. “Thanks for letting me buy you lunch,” she told him. “I’ve got some stuff I gotta do over at my squadron whether I’m on the flight roster or not.”

It was a lie, but Sarah knew if she stayed there one more minute with this SEAL, she was going to give him her trust. And that just couldn’t happen. She owed Ethan for protecting her, but she didn’t owe him personal access into her wounded heart. That, Sarah guarded, because she couldn’t stand to have her life ever shattered again.

Rising, Ethan nodded. “Thank you.”

Sarah lifted her hand. “Stay safe out there, okay?”

Ethan knew a brush-off when he got one. He nodded and held her blue gaze, feeling the warmth and gentleness that was an intrinsic part of her despite the walls she erected. He also saw she was frightened. Of him? Why? Need for Sarah wrapped around his heart, and Ethan wanted to groan over his loss. “You, too,” Ethan told her, meaning it. “There’s only one of you, Sarah, and we need you here on this planet. Okay?”

Struck by his parting words, she blinked, assimilating his statement. There was a hidden depth to Ethan, and she saw it in his genuine care for her. That protective energy of his embraced her even more powerfully than before. “Yes...of course.”

* * *

Well that went swimmingly, didn’t it?
Ethan was angry with himself as he walked toward SEAL HQ. He had to be at a mission-planning session at 1400. He’d blown it with Sarah. She was wounded, grieving, and he’d just romped into her life like a sledgehammer shattering crystal.
Damn.
Running his fingers distractedly through his hair, he wondered how to repair the damage he’d done through his ignorance and impatience.

He heard a Black Hawk spooling up at Ops. The sun, hot and burning, fried and dried out everything in its path. Ethan hated it, preferring the cool, damp and humid Alaskan wilderness. That or jumping into the ocean, where he truly felt at home.