One of the Boys (10 page)

Maura didn't object. With Jake's strong thighs moving against hers and his hand making lazy circles on the bare skin of her back, all she wanted to do was close her eyes and savor the feel of him. And
when he lowered his head to nuzzle her cheek with his chin, the rasp of his bristly skin against hers sent tiny shivers of sensation along her cheek, down her neck, across her shoulders, through her arms. Tingling from her ears to her toes, she wondered just how long these fancy shindigs lasted.

They lasted a long time, she discovered. When one of the single officers at their table respectfully asked her to dance, then shed his dignified facade in wildly energetic movements that took her all around the floor, Maura found herself the center of attention. The other dancers fell back to form a loose circle around her and her partner, clapping and cheering and whistling encouragement. Taking care that her halter top stayed in place, she nevertheless managed to shimmy and shake and thoroughly enjoy herself.

After that, one or another of the young officers would ask her to dance whenever she wasn't in Jake's arms. He filled the time when she was otherwise occupied with what he termed his “duty” dances. She noted that the general's wife did a mean cha-cha, but she didn't care at all for the way Carol Hansen plastered herself against Jake during one number.

When he winked at her over Carol's head, Maura swallowed her fierce surge of jealousy and managed to wink back. After that, she saved all her dances for Jake.

Except one. Around midnight, the guest speaker caught her while Jake was at the bar refreshing their
drinks. Luckily, it was a slow number, since Maura wasn't sure either her shoes or her breath would hold out much longer.

“I enjoyed your talk tonight,” she told Captain Anderson. Out from behind the microphone, he had a devilish grin and a gleam in his eye she was coming to recognize as endemic to Eglin's test pilots.

“It's a lot more fun to talk about it than it was to do it,” he joked.

“Did you really eat sand?”

“Ma'am, I was so scared, you wouldn't believe the things I stuck in my mouth to keep my teeth from chattering. Colonel McAllister… Well, he was Major McAllister then. He taught us tricks to stay alive that would shock your socks off.”

“He was your instructor at survival school, wasn't he?”

“No, ma'am,” Captain Anderson responded, shocked. “He wasn't an instructor. He built the current course, from the ground up.”

At Maura's inquiring look, the young man shook his head. “Didn't you know?”

“Know what?”

“Colonel McAllister spent nearly a week on the ground behind enemy lines as a lieutenant. He busted a leg and an arm when he ejected but managed to crawl miles every day. The man lived off things that wiggle in daylight and glow in the dark. To escape detection, he buried himself in mud and rotting leaves, and once even in a pile of cow dung to throw
some dogs off the scent. What that man doesn't know about survival probably hasn't been learned yet.”

“Good heavens.”

Maura gulped and glanced over to the tall, elegant man chatting easily with a group of lieutenants at the bar. She tried to envision him buried in cow dung.

“He's my hero,” Anderson said softly, following her glance. “Colonel McAllister is just the kind of officer we need to lead us into the future.”

Maura nodded, too overwhelmed to say anything coherent. When Jake reclaimed her, she melted against him. Wrapping her arm around the strong column of his neck, she molded her body against his solid warmth. And she didn't let go until nature and the wine she'd had at dinner forced her to the ladies' room.

Thankfully, the line wasn't too long. She'd washed her hands and was reapplying her lipstick when Maggie Wescott materialized in the mirror.

“Hello, again,” Maggie said brightly.

“Hi back at you. How are you enjoying the festivities?”

“I always enjoy these bashes. As Mac would say, they're—” She broke off, covering her mouth over a fierce hiccup. “'Scuze me! I rarely drink, and all these toasts go to my head every time I attend a dining-out.”

“Well, this is my very first dining-out,” Maura confessed. “Wine or no wine, it's quite an experience.”

“Isn't it? I'm glad you're having fun. I noticed you and Jake seemed to be going great guns. You two are obviously meant for each other. I'm glad he didn't take the general's advice.”

“I beg your pardon?”

A startled expression came into the woman's green eyes. “Oops. I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?”

Biting her lip, Maggie glanced around the powder room. The two women temporarily had it to themselves.

“Mac said… Well, he heard the general advised Jake to cool things with you until after the investigation.”

“What?”

Obviously wishing she hadn't let the matter slip out, Maggie grimaced. “I guess I can understand where the general's coming from. Jake's a fine officer. He'll be up for a star on the next go-around. It would be a shame for anything to ruin his career.”

Like a bucket of cold water, the comment doused the hot anger that had begun to build in Maura.

She remembered the young captain's voice tonight as he spoke of Jake. His reverence for the senior colonel was quiet, but absolute. Maura herself had admired Jake's skilled leadership of their little team, but until that moment, she'd never realized how many lives Jake touched in his career.

Maggie Wescott was right, she thought. It would be a shame for anything to ruin Jake's career.

Aching inside, she glanced at the clutch of women who emptied out of the washroom into the powder room. Maggie frowned and murmured under the cover of their chatter.

“God, I'm sorry I brought this matter up here.”

“I'm glad you did. I needed to know.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Maura lied. “I'm fine.”

Hands shaking, she tucked the lipstick in her bag. A crowded, noisy party was no place to sort out her chaotic thoughts. Not with Jake waiting for her and the raucous beat of
Proud Mary
shaking the rafters. Plastering a determined smile on her face, she left the small powder room.

Jake was waiting with his shoulders propped against the wall. “I thought you fell in or something,” he teased. “One of your young conquests tonight volunteered to lead a search-and-rescue party, but I convinced him you could handle whatever disaster might occur.”

She managed a smile, but a headache had started to pound just above her eyes. Thankfully, Jake suggested they leave shortly afterward.

Maura said nothing as they drove away from the club. The miles slid by until Jake broke the stillness of the car's dark interior.

“Are you all right?”

“I'm not sure.”

“What do you mean?”

Dragging in a deep breath, Maura swiveled in the
bucket seat. “Did the general advise you to stop seeing me? Because of the investigation?”

“How in the hell did you…? Oh, never mind. This base is worse than any small town.”

“Did he, Jake?”

“Yes, he did.”

Maura blinked at the short, clipped response. And then again when he took his eyes off the road to offer her a taunting question.

“So?”

“So maybe you should take his advice. Maybe your career is too important to risk for a few nights in bed.”

“I'll tell you the same thing I told him. My private life is just that, private. No one's going to tell me who I can and can't love.”

A thousand hot words trembled on Maura's lips. Words of hurt and denial and love. But she didn't utter any of them. This was too important for an impulsive, emotional response. She had to use the objective, analytical side of her brain to think this through. Jake's career was at stake.

He shot her another hard look, but refrained from further comment until he pulled into her drive. Coming around to help her out, he would have followed her into the cottage, but Maura stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“Please, Jake, I'm too tired and too confused right now to talk, or even think. Let's let it go tonight.”

In the bright porch light, she saw his face settle
into harsh, sharp angles. Impatience and restrained anger flared in his silver eyes. She waited while he fought down his emotions with his characteristic iron control.

“All right,” he ground out. “No talk. No thinking. Not tonight, anyway. But I want you to keep two things in mind as you lie in bed tonight, Ms. Phillips. The first is that I know damn well you didn't have anything to do with sabotaging our project, and so does the general.”

“All right. What's two?”

“This.”

His kiss was unrelenting, and Maura poured every ounce of her love into her response. When his lips slanted over hers, she wrapped both arms around his neck, reveling in his strength, his primitive possession. When his tongue slid in to dance with hers, she met the thrusts with urgent ones of her own. And when he pushed her out of his arms, she had no doubt about his commitment or his love.

Only later, as she curled her legs up under the light sheet and stared into the darkness, did she question her own love.

Bea gave a low, rumbling growl from her side of the bed as her mistress shifted restlessly under the covers. Maura patted the cat absently and struggled with the thoughts tumbling through her troubled mind.

Could she let Jake sacrifice his career for her? He'd told her the air force was his life. It was in his
blood, in his heritage. He was one of the finest officers she'd ever met. Would he come to resent her if she cost him the profession he loved?

She drew a painful parallel to her own career situation. She remembered how miserable she was during those months she'd struggled in a management position. For more than a year, she'd juggled people and schedules when all she wanted was to bury herself in new designs and engineering projects. She'd done it for her fiancé, and Maura knew now that compared to what she felt for Jake, her passion for Brian was a pale, insubstantial thing.

Still, she had almost married the man. Yet her unhappiness on the job ultimately overrode her feelings for Brian. Or maybe it was resentment because he couldn't appreciate her career aspirations. In any case, Maura had firsthand experience with the impact of professional decisions on her personal life. In the deepest recesses of her heart, she knew Jake would be miserable out of the air force. It was his element, his natural milieu. Could she ask him to make a wrenching career change for her?

The alternative, of course, was to give him up. Maura shied away from the thought. Surely there had to be another way, some middle ground. She tossed in frustration, trying to find an out. Try as she might, she couldn't think of a way through the maze. The investigation could take months. By then Jake would have lost his chance at promotion.

It wasn't fair, Maura thought mutinously. Of all
the colonels she knew, Jake was the best. He deserved to be promoted. Heck, even the young captain tonight recognized his leadership skills. In frustration, she gave the bed an angry thump with one clenched fist.

“Umph!”

Her breath left in a whoosh as a heavy, furry body landed on her stomach. Bea growled a warning that she was at the end of her patience, then kneaded soft stomach flesh with heavy paws. Circling twice, she settled her bulk squarely on Maura's middle.

With a half laugh, half sob, she soothed the disgruntled cat. Gradually her soft strokes and Bea's low purr had a calming effect. Willing herself to sleep, Maura closed her eyes. She needed rest, and time, and a fresh perspective to think this thing through.

T
he next morning, Maura felt like something Bea might have tried to bury under the oleander bushes. Despite her stern injunction to herself the night before, she hadn't been able to sleep. In desperation she'd wandered out to the patio to watch the night sky slowly turn purple, then pink.

The sun rose in a blaze of color, shimmering bright red against the horizon. Maura sipped coffee from a battered mug, her knees tucked up under her sleep shirt. She murmured the old nursery rhyme about red skies in the morning, sailors take warning.

No kidding! As if she needed the sun to tell her this would be a horrible day. Her butt dragging, she abandoned the lounger and went to dress for work.

When the team filed in for their morning meeting, she met Jake's hard look over the conference table, but knew her wan smile didn't come close to answering the question in his eyes. Deliberately she opened her briefcase and fiddled with some papers. Knowing Jake, she only had a brief reprieve. He'd want some answer to his unspoken question before he let her out of the room.

Jake stood and faced the team. “We're going to fly our next test shot tonight.”

His quiet announcement startled the weary team. A chorus of excited voices filled the small room.

“Tonight!”

“You're kidding!”

“We can't be ready by then!” Pete exclaimed with a fierce frown.

“We can, and we will.”

One of the test engineers leaned forward, his face furrowed with concern. “We just got the modified missile supports certified by maintenance yesterday. The crews will have to load the weapon using new technical data.”

“They're loading now.”

“We'll never get range time,” Pete insisted.

“We've got it. Range Seventy is ours from seventeen hundred hours on.”

Maura's quiet voice cut through the excited chatter. “Will we be able to get the shot in before dark? Five in the afternoon is late to launch a mission like this. It doesn't give us much margin for error or time for recovery.”

“We should have plenty of time if the daylight holds. There's a storm out in the Gulf we're watching that could impact the launch. But as of a few minutes ago, the weather detachment is predicting it to remain outside of Range Seventy's safety envelope.”

Maura nodded and settled in as Jake ran the team through the final test parameters again. Then again. They all knew them by heart, but he was relentless.

He had all team members present, their analyses of the best-and worst-case probabilities for the shot, and drilled them all to see if there was anything they might have missed to minimize the risks. When he finally released the team to their last-minute tasks, Maura's palms were damp from a mixture of excitement and nervous tension. Pete was in even worse shape. His white face and worried frown reflected the strain they all felt.

“Dr. Phillips, would you mind waiting just a moment?”

Maura glanced at Jake, knowing he wasn't about to let her plead the need to get back to the office and scurry out with the rest of the team. She leaned back in her chair and waited.

Jake rounded the width of the conference table and approached her slowly. Sliding one hip onto the table edge, he studied her face.

“You look like hell.”

“Thank you very much, Colonel McAllister. Nothing like cheering up the troops before the big battle.”

“I take it from the dark circles under your eyes you didn't work through your problem.”

“
My
problem! I'm not the one whose career is going down the tubes.”

“My career isn't going down the tubes because of our relationship. And if it were, I'd say to hell with it.”

Her hand reached out involuntarily to grasp his knee. “That's just it, Jake. You can't say to hell with it. You've put your life into the air force. You're a natural leader, you belong in uniform. You can't just toss all those years away!”

“Listen to me, Maura. I lost a wife because I thought my blasted career was so all-fired important. Through some incredible quirk of fate, I'm getting a second chance. I'm not about to lose you to the air force, too.”

Maura felt her heart begin to pound. With every ounce of her being, she wanted to slide out of her chair and into his arms. But she forced herself to sit rigid and unmoving.

“This is too important to decide so quickly. We need to think it through, weigh the pros and cons.”

One dark eyebrow hooked. “Is this the same woman who relocated from California to Florida on a whim?”

“Oh, for pity's sake, will you let go of that! This is different. You're different. I won't let you just shrug off your whole career.”

“If it comes to a choice between you and the air force,” he said simply, “there is no choice.”

“Jake…”

“We'd better get to work.” He bent down and kissed the tip of her nose. “And don't worry.”

 

As if there were any way not to worry, Maura fumed hours later. She couldn't remember ever feeling so tense and racked by doubts. Jake's stubborn insistence that his career didn't matter warmed her romantic heart, but chilled her professional mind. In a crazy role reversal, she'd have to be the one to approach this problem with cool, detached logic.

Adding to her personal worries were her concerns over the test. In the deepest recesses of her mind she was convinced the accident had to have been the result of carelessness, not deliberate sabotage. The thought haunted her that something she did, or didn't do, might have caused it. Some calculation she failed to interpret correctly, some clue she missed about the properties of the materials used to construct the missile racks. Some error she made could have caused Jake's death.

Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she ran every analysis twice, then ran it again. She hunched over the computer all morning long, all through lunch, and then throughout the afternoon. Jake would fly this mission, as well. It had to be perfect.

By four o'clock, she'd reviewed her input into the test parameters a half dozen times. With a small sigh, she switched off her computer. Stretching her aching shoulder muscles, she strolled over to Pete's
desk. To her surprise, he was in the process of stuffing his briefcase.

“Are you leaving?”

“Yeah. I have to pick up Carol's folks at the airport.”

“Aren't you going to watch the shot?” Incredulity laced Maura's voice. “After the stress and strain we've been through these last weeks, how can you stand to miss it?”

“I guess the investigation took some of the thrill off it all for me.” Bitterness tinged Pete's reply. “Believe it or not, I'd rather spend the evening with my in-laws than sit through another session in the control facility.”

Maura watched him gather his things and leave a short time later. Too keyed up to go out for supper, she dug through her oversize straw carryall for a little plastic bag full of pottery pieces. She hadn't been able to go sharding with Lisa in more than a week, much to the girl's disappointment. Still, their find for the summer included some incredibly beautiful bits. If you could call dull gray-and-red-tinted chunks of clay with barely discernible squiggles on one side beautiful.

Fingering the indented patterns in a determined effort not to dwell on the evening to come, Maura let her mind rove back over these summer months. A smile tugged at her strained features as she thought about how rich and full the weeks were before the investigation had put everyone on edge. She'd never
dreamed when she left California that she'd find so much enjoyment splashing around in the shallow blue waters of the bay with a precocious teenager—and thrashing around in bed with the girl's father. She loved Lisa's company and looked forward to a string of golden summers with the girl.

And Jake. God, how she loved him.

She wanted him in the summer, in the winter and every day in between. She wanted him in bed and out, naked and clothed, laughing and panting with his own particular, all-consuming desire.

Maura's hand closed around the pottery piece, jabbing the sharp edge into her palm. Did she want Jake so much she was willing to risk his future happiness?

She still hadn't found the answer to that question when she left the engineering facility and crossed the grassy lot to the control facility. Eyeing the dark thunderclouds piled up over the Gulf, she felt her adrenaline begin to pump. Not only would they have all the inherent dangers in the test to contend with, as well as the ominous threat of sabotage, but now they'd have Mother Nature to worry about.

As long as the storm remained out in the Gulf, they should be okay.

 

“Oh, come on, Lisa. Don't be such a prude.”

“I don't want to do this.”

Lisa's soft voice barely carried over the boisterous shouts and laughter of the crowd of teenagers.
She glanced toward the group congregating at the water's edge. As the more daring of the group began to strip off their shorts and T-shirts, she looked away again quickly. A tinge of red crept up her cheeks and she faced Tony squarely.

“I want to go home.”

“For Pete's sake, haven't you ever gone skinny-dipping before?” Tony made no effort to hide his exasperation.

“No, and I don't plan to tonight. You should have told me that was the game plan before we left the pizza parlor. I wouldn't have come.”

Lisa tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice as she stared up at the sandy-haired youth next to her. After she'd worked on her dad until he relented and allowed her this date, Tony was turning out to be a real jerk.

Lisa had looked forward to this evening with tremulous anticipation. She'd hoped Maura would help her with her makeup, but she was working late tonight. Still, Lisa thought her own efforts weren't too shabby. When she'd dressed in a new pair of cream shorts and a hot pink silk top very similar to one Maura wore, she'd felt deliciously adult and sophisticated.

The first part of the evening had been fun. Tony had taken her to meet some of his friends from school at a local pizza joint, and Lisa listened shyly while the gregarious group shared horror stories of vacation trips with parents and summer jobs. She'd even over
come her initial reserve enough to contribute some of her own experiences. But her enjoyment slowly turned to dismay as the group discussed and discarded possible alternatives for the rest of the evening.

The movies were out—too tame. A suggestion from one of the girls to head out to the island for miniature golf met with hoots of derision. The beach was a possibility, but with thunderclouds threatening over the Gulf, they knew the lifeguards would be overly cautious and clear the public areas at the first sign of rain or lightning within ten miles. Finally the boys hit on the idea of driving out to one of the natural ponds on the base for a private picnic.

Lisa had started to get nervous when a bold, redheaded teen with a forged ID volunteered to get the picnic “supplies” and meet them at the site. Her uneasiness increased tenfold when their little convoy turned off a main highway onto an unpaved road, which in turn led through a wide clearing and onto a barely discernible dirt track through the woods. She sat beside Tony in the back seat of one of the cars and watched with worried eyes as they drove past prominently posted signs reading Government Property, Restricted Area, No Trespassing.

The track twisted and turned through the tall pines and heavy scrub until Lisa had lost both her sense of direction and the last of her confidence. With each jouncing mile, the pines cut off more of the summer twilight and enveloped them in whispering darkness.
The breeze had sharpened with the storm far out on the Gulf, causing branches to rustle and twist high above them. When they pulled up at the wide pond that was their destination, its waters were black and uninviting.

The other kids didn't seem to mind. They spread blankets at the edge of the water and began passing six-packs. Lisa sat beside Tony with her knees drawn up and arms locked around them. Unobtrusively she refused the beer, feeling more uncomfortable by the minute. But when one of the giggling girls coyly suggested they cool off in the water, she flatly refused to participate.

“I want to go home, Tony,” she repeated firmly.

“Look, we just got here. If you don't want to swim, fine. But I'm going in with the others.”

He shrugged himself out of his jeans and bent over the blanket to pull off his ragged, sleeveless sweatshirt. Lisa turned away when he reached for the waistband of his shorts.

Not knowing what else to do, she stayed still on the blanket and hugged her knees once more, wishing fervently she'd heeded her dad's warning regarding Tony. The dark night had surrounded her when the laughing teenagers finally splashed out of the pond.

“Hey, let's light a fire,” one of the girls suggested. “That water was freezing.”

“Good idea,” someone else echoed.

“No!” Tony's voice cut through the darkness. “My
dad mentioned there was a test tonight. The range patrol will be scouting the area and would sure as heck notice a fire.”

“Yeah,” one of the other boys concurred. “All we need is to get hauled in for trespassing. Come here, Joyce, I'll get you warm.”

Shocked, Lisa tried not to watch as a beefy, still-naked boy wrestled the girl to the ground and rolled across the blankets with her. She scrambled to her feet as another couple followed the first's example.

“Lisa, wait a minute.”

Ignoring Tony's impatient call, she headed for the car with the intention of sitting in the back seat until the incipient orgy was over. Thick darkness and her own welling tears blinded her. Her foot caught on a tree root and she went down on one knee. When Tony's hands closed around her arm to pull her up, she whirled on him.

“Let me go.”

“For crying out loud! Don't be such a baby.”

Tony held her by both arms. Even in the dark shadows, she could see his slick, bare chest. An odor of beer assailed her nostrils as he tried to gather her close against him.