Damage Control (Valiant Knox) (25 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

G
od
damn
it. Of all the people on this ship who could have caught them, it had to be Steve Robinson.

Leigh met Mia’s horrified gaze as he straightened, slipping his hand from beneath her shirt. Moving away, he kept a steady hold on her shoulder as she slid down from the desk. There was no way he could turn around to face Robinson yet, not until he got himself under control. He would have thought the imminent demise of his life as he knew it would have been enough to cool his ardor, but apparently not.

“I knew it.” Steve gave a short, vindictive laugh. “I’ve been watching the two of you, waiting for the slip up. I knew something had to be going on. But this…? Well, I couldn’t have made up anything better. I never thought I’d be so happy I had to come up here to get my day’s extra duties from Brenner.”

Mia had gone pale, and she stared up at him with unconcealed panic. Yeah, this was bad, but right now, he was more pissed off than alarmed.

He bent to pick up his shirt, buying himself more time as the last of his heated blood started draining from the region of his groin.

“This doesn’t concern you, Robinson, so I suggest you forget you ever saw anything and get lost.” He shrugged into his shirt and turned to stand partly in front of Mia, re-fastening the few catches that hadn’t been damaged in his haste to get himself naked with her.

“Or what? You’ll beat the hell out of me again? No way. You
owe
me, Alphin, for every hour of crap-ass grunge duty I’ve pulled for the last weeks.”

Leigh pinned Robinson with a hard stare, one that usually sent recruits scurrying for the relative safety of anywhere that wasn’t in his vicinity. Unfortunately, the guy didn’t take the hint.

Robinson took several steps forward. “So here’s how it’s going to work. No matter what happens in the next couple of days, even if I fail some of the final exams, you’re going to make sure I pass, got it, Captain?”

“No, actually, I don’t.” He’d cop to the mess he’d made with Mia, but he wasn’t going to give this bastard one second of power over him.

Robinson’s expression darkened. “Its simple. You make me a fighter pilot or I tell every single person I see between here and Commander Yang’s office exactly what I found you doing.”

“I’m not going to make you a fighter pilot, Robinson. That’s something you either earn or don’t, on your own.”

Steve smashed a fist against the nearby bulkhead. “Didn’t you hear what I just said? I’ll tell everyone your secret!”

Leigh slapped a bored expression onto his face, even though his heart hammered against his ribs. Part of him wanted to bow to Robinson’s demands, if only to protect Mia. But he couldn’t do it, even if it meant annihilating himself in the process. He’d made all the choices that had led him to here and had to live with them. Plus after everything that had happened with Lawler, now more than ever, he couldn’t saddle his tight-knit squad with a substandard pilot.

“Go ahead, and see where it gets you.”

Robinson swore, then slammed back through the door.

Mia grabbed onto his arm. “Leigh, he wasn’t bluffing. He really will tell everyone. We have to do something.”

He dragged a hand down his face, feeling light-headed for an unsettling moment. “I know he will, but I wasn’t going to stand here and let him blackmail me. Robinson is a bully, and I can’t let a guy like that through the program if he doesn’t get there on his own steam.”

She stared at him with an expression of disbelieving horror. “So instead you’re going to let him
destroy
you? Leigh, this will end your career. You might be court-martialed. You could wind up in a military prison.”

He caught her face in his hands, cutting off her panic with a short kiss.

“I told you before, it won’t come to that, Mia, trust me. Everything will be fine.”

Okay, so he had no way of knowing that for sure, but it sounded reassuring, which was exactly what he needed for her.

She grabbed the front of his shirt, moisture in the edges of her lashes. “Are you sure? How do you know?”

“Because I found you. And I can’t believe that anything that makes me feel like this is a bad thing. Yes, I’ll have some explaining to do to Commander Yang, and I’ll probably be looking for another posting, but none of that matters in the end.”

A tear escaped and slipped down her cheek. “But it does matter. This is your whole life we’re talking about here.”

“No, Mia, it’s not. It’s just a job. I’ve recently started seeing that there are more important things in life than my posting.”

“Oh my God.” She dropped her head against his chest, a short sob escaping.

He shushed her, cradling her against him, wanting to protect her from every bad thing in the universe, especially the censure their relationship would bring once Robinson spilled his guts.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled against his chest. “I’m sorry, I kept telling myself this was going to end in disaster, but I couldn’t stop myself from falling harder for you every day since we met.”

He cupped her jaw and lifted her face to his, her velvet eyes sparkling with tears.

“Mia, you have nothing to be sorry for. I don’t regret anything. Trust me when I tell you things are going to be okay in the end.”

He slowly lowered his head to hers, taking her lips in a tender, unhurried kiss, until he felt her relax in his hold.

“Now, we’ve got a class to get to, and you’ve got your maiden flight to take today. I don’t want you to worry about anything else.”

She nodded, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. Unfortunately, no matter how much he reassured her, he couldn’t do anything about the anxious shadows in her gaze until after they’d gotten through the fallout of Robinson blabbing.

He pulled her in for one more quick kiss and then let her go before his libido decided that since they’d already been caught, finishing what they’d started couldn’t possibly get them in any more trouble.

Instead, he told her good-bye and headed down to crew level, making a quick stop in his quarters to change into a new shirt. But then, since he was most definitely still half standing at attention, he put himself into a cold shower, forcing himself to disconnect from all thoughts of what he’d been doing with Mia.

He should be considering what the hell he was going to do with himself once Commander Yang canned his ass and booted him from the FP squadron. Grunt work on Ilari—that was the most likely scenario in his immediate future. But none of that mattered. As long as he had Mia, he’d work out the rest.

If someone had told him a month ago he’d be willing to give up his career—the single thing that had driven him since joining the UEF—for the sake of a woman, he would have laughed in their face and then probably slapped some sense into them.

Except here he stood, suffering through a cold shower, at the precipice of falling into the unknown, and he was strangely calm about it all.

By the time he’d spent long enough under the icy spray to give himself hypothermia while killing off the last of his damn lust and then gotten himself dressed again, time was cutting close to oh six hundred.

He hurried back up to squadron level and strode into the classroom right on oh six hundred on the dot.

Mia sat in the front row, her expression tense. Nicka sat on one side of her, while Kayla sat on her other side, shooting glances over her shoulder where Robinson held court in the far corner of the room, conversation buzzing. When Leigh stopped next to the lectern, the room fell silent.

Hell
. Robinson hadn’t even waited an hour. Even though he’d taken the guy’s threat at face value, part of him had thought the kid would wait and make some kind of announcement at a moment that was guaranteed to cause maximum damage. Instead, the bastard had come in here and started shooting off his mouth to all of the other recruits.

Leigh clasped his hands behind his back and clenched his fists. “Find your seats, recruits. We’ve got an exam to get through if you even want to think about flying a jet later this morning.”

Tense silence reigned as the recruits sat down, while Robinson grabbed a desk in the back, shooting him a triumphant grin.

Leigh ignored him, explaining the exam before starting the clock.

As soon as he could get away, he’d head up to the command center to see Commander Yang. The truth would be better coming from him, rather than Yang hearing it thirdhand off some random crew member.

The two hours allocated for the exam dragged by while Leigh paced restlessly at the front of the room. He half thought about calling Bren or Seb to take the class for him. Now that he’d be coming clean, he was impatient to get it over with. But Seb had taken the news of Lawler hard and requested some personal time, while his XO was busy with other duties.

Still, he sent Bren a message to meet him on port level alpha. She’d have to take the recruits out on their first training flight, despite the fact that he’d done it with every new class of recruits since becoming the CAFF.

“Time is up, recruits.” Leigh grabbed the master datapad, where results of the tests were downloading. He skimmed the list looking for one name in particular. Damn it, Robinson had passed, though only by the thinnest margin. He’d held out one last hope that the guy wouldn’t succeed.

“O’Connor, Brooks, and Gibson, you haven’t scored the required mark so you won’t be joining us for this morning’s training. You’ll have one last chance to re-sit the exam tomorrow, and if you fail that, then you’re out of the program. Everyone else, on your feet, you’re about to take your first flight.”

Usually this was the point where the successful recruits cheered, and while there were a few exclamations, for most part the mood remained subdued. In fact, most of them seemed more interested in crowding around Steve as they headed out into the passageway.

Leigh led the recruits down the corridor to the transit, the chatter behind him swelling.

“Hey, Mia,” one of the recruits called out. Leigh glanced over his shoulder to see it had come from Carson, the only one of Robinson’s buddies who hadn’t washed out. “I heard you’ve been getting some personalized tutoring from the CAFF. Is that how you managed to pass all the tests and make it this far?”

A few of the other recruits laughed nervously, as Leigh slowly turned to face them. “Have you got something you need to share with the rest of the class, Carson?”

Carson shared a smug look with Robinson, and Leigh clenched his fists over the urge to smash both of their heads together.

“No, sir. I was just commenting on how
talented
Wolfe is.”

Robinson snickered, and Leigh swallowed down scorching rage as all his muscles hardened like rock. He’d made the choice not to give in to Robinson’s blackmail. This was the fallout he had to take. The only thing he could do now was protect Mia from the worst of it.

“I can see why you’d be impressed, Carson, since she’s got more smarts in her little toe than you’ve got in your entire brain. If you happen to make it through this program, you might want to keep in mind that Wolfe or any of the recruits standing here might be the pilot you need to get you out of a tight situation. Alienating any of them by shooting your mouth off is just one more way to get yourself killed.” That shut the moron up. He glanced over at Mia. “Recruit Wolfe, front and center.”

She shot him a worried look as she stepped in front of him. The transit-porter arrived and he ordered the recruits to pile in, waiting to go on last. Once inside, he put himself between Mia and the rest of the recruits. They could say whatever they wanted to him, but he wouldn’t let them insult Mia.

They arrived at port level alpha, and while he assigned each recruit to a jet with the help of the deck crew, he kept Mia at his side, leaving her until last. He walked around the far side of the ship, putting them mostly out of sight.

Mia crossed her arms as she stared up at him. “Leigh, what are we going to do? Everyone knows.”

He helped her into her flight jacket, though her movements were hesitant.

“Right now, you are going to take your maiden flight.”

“I’m serious. Maybe I shouldn’t go.”

He shook his head. “Why? There’s nothing you can do here. Take the flight and no matter what happens, you get through the next four days and graduate, okay?”

She latched onto his arm. “Don’t talk like I’m never going to see you again.”

He slid an arm around her waist. “Like I keep telling you, Mia, things will be okay. I’m going up to see Commander Yang to sort it out.”

“But what about the training flight?”

He smoothed a hand along the side of her face and cupped her chin, tilting her head up a little. “This is more important.”

“Alpha?”

Leigh glanced over his shoulder to see Bren standing behind him, a hard expression on her face.

“Just one second, XO.”

He turned back to Mia. “Just remember everything you’ve learned and don’t think about what’s going on back here.”

She nodded, though her gaze was still troubled. He pulled her in, grabbing her up for a swift, hard kiss. What did it matter who saw them now? The truth was out and would be all over the ship by evening messdeck.

He pulled back and stared down into her soulful brown eyes. “Fly safe and come home to me.”

Her grip tightened on him. “Good luck with Commander Yang.”

He nodded and then let her go, watching as she climbed up the side of the jet and disappeared into the cockpit.

“Alpha, what the hell is going on?”

Leigh turned to Bren, slowly reaching up to unpin the insignia on his collar that singled him out as the CAFF. “I need you to take the recruits on their maiden training flight.”

He reached out and took Bren’s hand, setting the pins in her palm. She glanced down at them, appearing confused for a moment. But when she looked back up at him, her expression was downright horrified.

“Leigh, no—”

“Apparently I wasn’t as smart as you thought I was, Bren.” He shot her the ghost of a smile. “Though, where Mia was concerned, I never stood a chance. Take care of the kids for me. I’ve got to go face up to my choices.”