What I Fight For: A Bad Boy Military Romance (Easy Team Book 1) (6 page)

              I sighed, giving up. “I was going to sit on that tree,” I said pointing towards it. “Is that illegal?”

              Cooper pursed his lips, tilting his head to the side, as if considering my words. “Well, yes,” he said simply.

              I stared at him. Or
up
at him, really.

              “Really,” I said flatly. “It’s illegal to sit on a
tree
.”

              Cooper shifted his hold on my so that instead of holding onto the back of my shirt, his arm was now around my shoulders. I tried to step away to put some space between us but his arm held fast, keeping me pressed right up against him. It was odd to see his calm face belie the clear physical strength he had and was using against me at the moment.

              Keeping his arm around me, he pointed at the ground a foot away from the fallen tree. I noticed wooden stakes ground in a few feet apart. In the dark and in my huff, I hadn’t seen them at all.

              “That,” Cooper said, lowering his head towards my ear. My pulse increased at feeling his hot breath against my cheek, “is the perimeter of camp. And if I recall correctly from your first day here, I said no one was allowed to leave camp without the escort of an Easy Team member.”

              The tree was literally one foot behind the stakes. “Really?” I said, quirking a brow at him. “I would need an escort to take literally just one step out of this camp?”

              Cooper gave me a look of mock offense. “Doctor, we are military men. Protocol is everything to us. And protocol states, for your protection, that you are not allowed to leave camp without an escort.”

              I sighed but was cut off before the air could even fully leave my lungs.

              Cooper suddenly squeezed me closer. “Luckily though, you happened to have run right into one!” he said, grinning down at me, even though I tried to pull away from this even more intimate hold. I was getting all too hot and bothered at his touch. But he held fast.

              “And not just
any
member of Easy Team. The
best
member of Easy Team,” he said. “You hit the jackpot tonight.”

              The word ‘tonight’ snapped me awake. It
was
night. And I was tired. And I was still feeling so incredibly confused about Cooper Hawking. Of course I was attracted to him. There was no way to deny that.

              But physical attraction couldn’t be enough for me now. It might’ve been in L.A., to help distract me from Edward. But now in Qunar, physical attraction alone seemed too empty. I needed something…more.

              But holy hell, I wasn’t going to try and figure that out right now.

Alone.

With him.

In the dark.

“Err…” I started. “I think I changed my mind. I should get some rest for tomorrow.”

I tried to pull his arm off of me but although the arm rested casually on me with the hand easy and open, the arm stayed like a steel weight that would not budge.

“Are you sure, doc?” Cooper said, already walking us towards the tree. I gulped as we crossed the stakes.

I knew we were in too remote a location to be in any danger but regardless, after seeing those stakes, I couldn’t help but feel a little nervous crossing the divide. It felt as if I was leaving some kind of force field of safety.

Guiding me to a good spot on the trunk, he sat us down.

“It seemed like you needed some quiet time to yourself before you went and hit the hay,” he said.

It was a full moon and I could still see make out his face. I looked up at him sardonically. “Well, yes,” I admitted. “That had been the idea. Some time to
myself
would’ve been nice.”

Cooper shrugged, letting his arm fall from my shoulders. But it rested right behind me as he leaned back a little on his hands. I suddenly felt cold without his touch.

“You still can have that. Just think of me as part of the tree,” he said, looking out into the barren desert. The moonlight struck his profile perfectly, highlighting his straight nose, his chiseled and square chin. “I’m just here to make sure you’re not snatched up by some mountain lion.” His firm lips twitched in amusement.

I rolled my eyes but pulled my legs a little closer to myself. “
Are
there mountain lions here?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

Cooper chuckled. “No,” he admitted. “Just trying to make you feel like it’s worth keeping me around for reasons other than protocol.”

I could think of a handful of reasons of keeping this man around but none of them were appropriate to say out loud. But I appreciated how he tried to put me in a position of power—as if my needing him made him important and more necessary than he already was. I knew he did it to make me feel less resentful towards the fact that I had no choice in the matter. I needed an escort and he was going to be that escort, no matter what.

“So…you’re a soldier,” I said after a beat. He was clearly not going anywhere and it did feel nice to sit somewhere cool and quiet for a moment.

“I was a soldier,” Cooper corrected. “Now I’m…well, what you would maybe call a freelance soldier.”

“A mercenary.”

“That too,” he said with a curled smile.

“You didn’t…umm…follow me here, to Qunar, did you?” I asked, voicing out what I knew was a ridiculous notion but couldn’t help but ask.

He seemed genuinely startled by my question before giving me an amused stare.

“You mean, did I fly out here weeks in advance, bringing all my men, fake a contract with a NGO, set up a whole base, mission outline, and protocols, hire a man to contract doctors from your very hospital, fly all of you out so I could lure you out to this tree that you were already heading towards by yourself?” he said dryly. “Uh, no.”

“You could’ve just said no,” I said throwing him a dirty look to cover up my blushing cheeks. I knew it had been a stupid question but the coincidence of us meeting again was just too crazy not to ask.

Cooper chuckled at my embarrassed annoyance.

              Another beat of silence fell between us as we took in the moonlit desert. This time, Cooper broke the silence.

              “You’re a good doctor,” he said.

              He said it simply, without any emphasis, as if stating a common fact. His unembellished tone made the remark seem somehow even more complimentary.

              “What makes you say that?” I asked, surprised.

              He shrugged casually, leaning still on his arms. “You’re good at talking to people. Anyone can ask someone where it hurts. But you seem to have a knack for connecting with people.” He paused, then grinned at me in something akin to admiration. “Even when it’s not even in your own language.”

              I could feel a warm pool of something fine and good spread through me, making me feel like I was soaking in a tub of melted chocolate. Four words and he made me feel like a Nobel Prize winner.

              So he had been watching me work throughout the day. Just as I had been watching him.

              I bit my lip as I stole a sideways glance at him. This man was dangerous. In more ways than one.

              “Plus, it’s always impressive to meet a doctor who claims to be able to treat her own concussion,” he said, his eyes glinting with teasing humor.

              “Huh?” I looked up at him in confusion. “Who said that?”

              A smile definitely tugged at his lips. “You did, doc,” he said. “I think you would be the only doctor in the world who could treat herself even after knocking herself unconscious. Or at least, so you claimed you could.”

              “I did not!” I said. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah, that’s what I pretty much thought as well,” he said, his lips twitching.

“I would never say something so ridiculous,” I persisted. But judging by the look he was giving me, I had a sinking feeling that I
had
said something that ridiculous that night at Reggie’s.

Well, no one ever said genius would come from the bottom of a tequila bottle,
I thought, trying to remind myself that I couldn’t be the only idiot in the world who said such stupid and outlandish things when flat out drunk.

His easy humor and teasing made me feel more comfortable in his presence. He began to lose a little of that odd familiar-yet-strange vibe which had put me off when meeting him again in Qunar. He instead seemed more familiar than strange. But not just familiar….

He felt good. He felt good to be around.

Swallowing, I said, “You wrote on my arm that night.”

Cooper nodded slowly before swinging his deep gaze towards me. There was no embarrassment from my mentioning that night. Those were the eyes of a man who was completely confident in himself. He knew he could babysit a drunk woman just as easily as diffuse a bomb or rescue a hostage.

“I did,” he agreed but said no more.

Screwing up what courage I could muster, I pressed, “I called the number you wrote.”

I could see his shoulders stiffen momentarily before relaxing back into his casual pose. “Did you?” he said, looking back out at the darkness. “I’m going to bet that the number didn’t work.”

“No, it didn’t,” I said.

He nodded. “That’s my civilian number. It’s only active when I’m in town. Literally right after I put you in your friend’s car, I got the call for this mission. That number was deactivated before you probably even woke up the next morning.”

“Oh I see,” I said, finding nothing else to really say. I had hoped that he had taken the hint.
You had tossed the ball into my court and I had responded.
Deactivated phone or not, I was pretty sure it was his turn now. But when he said nothing further, I looked down at my feet, giving a small pebble a kick. Clearly, he was going to let the ball just roll right out the court.

“Maybe it was for the best,” he said suddenly, jerking me out of my reverie.

“What?” I said, confused.

“Maybe it was for the best that your call didn’t go through,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on some point in the dark horizon.

I stared at him. “If you thought that, then why would you have written on my arm at all?”

He looked down at his lap with a rueful huff of a laugh. “Right,” he said. “Well, maybe that night I had thought differently. But now…after getting this mission….”

“I thought absence was supposed to make the heart grow fonder,” I said, taking my turn to tease.

Cooper snorted in appreciation. “Well, it does. But there’s also another saying,” he said. He looked up, pinning me with impenetrably dark eyes, made darker still by the night.

“‘Ignorance is bliss,’” he said flatly.

I bristled a bit, offended. “Are you calling me ignorant?” I said, my voice taking on a clipped tone.

Cooper didn’t blink. “Yes,” he said without rancor. “Most people are when it comes to what my occupation entails. Even
I
get surprised sometimes by what I deal with.”

“And what is it you deal with?” I asked a little breathlessly. I couldn’t move out from under his gaze if a bulldozer were to run me over.

“Death,” he said promptly. “Torture. Kidnap. Murder. Corruption.” His face twisted for a moment before adding, “Betrayal.”

“Easy Team is called only when absolutely necessary. So you can imagine how many levels of shit the situation must be under for me to be involved,” he said. “That means we see the absolute most base, primal form of men. I’ve seen true bravery but I’ve also seen the lowest, dirtiest fucking point a human could sink to. This is not a life for everyone. It can be a difficult life even for the ones that lead it. And it is definitely not a life for a partner. A significant other.”

He shook his head, looking back down at his lap. There was an expression of sardonic resignation on his face. “I’ve shot more men than you’ve shaken hands with,” he said. “Lead a life like that and you’re bound to make enemies. Both kinds of enemies—the ones in the real world and the ones in your head.” He shook his head again, as if a little depressed by the truth of his own argument.

“No,” he said. “You said it yourself—I’m a mercenary. I go where there’s a contract.” He gave me a humorless smile. “No contract, no me. That night in L.A. was the anomaly.” He gestured to the dead expanse before him. “This is my normal.”

I stared at him, speechless. Colliding feelings of confusion, embarrassment, desire, anger, pity, and fear roiled within me. I hardly had time to organize any of these emotions before Cooper suddenly rose to his feet, startling me.

He stretched out his hand. “It’s getting late,” he said. “I can walk you back.”

Without thinking, I put my hand in his, watching it get swallowed up in his large and capable grip.

What was that you said, Em? About him losing that mysterious/stranger vibe?
I sighed as we crossed the perimeter stakes.
Maybe I
am
an idiot.