Model Soldier (9 page)

Emily and Jai had found a great spot to eat out after that. They’d had a quick but sumptuous dinner before, jetlagged, they crashed early. The hotel wasn’t bad, either. Too bad she’d barely slept.

“Why did we decide to meet so early?” she whined, yawning.

“Because the Army starts their day early, and because we need to set up the shots and be ready to go when and if the sun finally comes out today.” Jai looked up at the overcast sky darkening the pink-tinged sunrise. “I hope it doesn’t snow.”

So did Emily. It was bad enough that, though exhausted, she needed to be on her toes to handle Hawk. The last thing she wanted to deal with was snow during their outdoor shots. She had on her good leather boots and she hated snow…and cold, and early mornings, no matter what time zone they happened to be in.

Sunrise!
Honestly, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen one of those.

Tired, dreading the day ahead and feeling a need for sugar as well as caffeine, Emily grabbed some sort of rich-looking Germany pastry and added it to their two coffees on the counter.

She yawned again as, sustenance paid for, they left the warm shop for the frigid walk to their rental car.

Jai frowned at her as he turned the key in the ignition and waited for the car to warm for a minute before throwing it into drive. “Why are you so tired? We turned in at like seven o’clock local time. You should have had plenty of sleep.”

“I didn’t sleep well,” she supplied, and hoped Jai would leave it at that and not question her further as to why.

Not sleeping well was an understatement for last night’s torture. First, Emily had called Katie’s office line to leave a message when she got to her room and had to lie on the voicemail that everything with Hawk was going perfectly and that she could handle him no problem.

Then she’d fallen into bed, only to be tortured with more thoughts of Hawk as she relived each and every uncomfortable, disappointing word exchanged between them, which is probably what led to her dreaming about him. She hoped that was it anyway. Whatever the reason, dream she did.

The dream started with a photo shoot, which was understandable considering they’d had one that day. However, the model was BB and Katie was there. To her horror, Katie began to take BB’s uniform off until he was nearly naked, then they started kissing each other pretty heavily as she watched.

Emily cringed even now at the thought. In her dream, she tried to look away but couldn’t. And then something even more disturbing happened. BB morphed into Hawk, and the woman the mostly nude Hawk was making out with was suddenly no longer Katie, but Emily.

She’d woken up totally freaked out, and alright, she’d admit it, a little bit aroused. That was it for sleep. Her brain spinning and her body clock messed up from the time difference, Emily had given up on bed and took out her laptop.

Jai had downloaded the day’s shots to her computer so she spent the rest of the time until she had to get ready to meet Jai playing with Hawk’s photos and laying out some potential print ads.

“I woke up really early so I mocked up a few ads. I’ll show them to you when we get there,” she told him, happy to center the discussion on business.

“How’d they look? Do you think we have all we need for the interior shots and close-ups?” Jai asked.

Emily had to admit, she was pleased with what she’d come up with. “I think so. Although, since he’s so far away,”
and such a pain in the ass
, she added silently, “we may want to take some extras. And I never did get him into his dress uniform yesterday.”

Or out of it, except in my dream…

“Mmm. Right. Make sure I’m in the room when you ask him to put his ‘dress outfit’ on. That should be fun.” Jai grinned in her direction.

“Thanks,” Emily scowled. So much for her supposed ally.

Surrounded by the photographic equipment that had been left set up from the day before, Hawk observed through the window as Goldilocks and Rasta-photographer parked in front of the Head Shed and got out of their car. He studied her more closely today than he had yesterday when he’d dismissed her as a young, silly, though cute, annoyance.

This morning, watching her juggle a large briefcase and an extra-large cup of coffee as she came through the door, he realized his nocturnal imaginings had given her a slutty sort of makeover. She didn’t wear “fuck-me” high heel shoes or butt-bearing mini-skirts and her nails weren’t long, red talons at all.

Cocking his head to one side, he wondered about why his brain would do that because the blonde before him—nose pink from the cold, unruly curls tousled by the wind, all bundled up in her thick wool sweater and looking like the girl next door, was pretty damn cute in her own right, just as she was.

He moved to the open door of the room, where he had a view of the main entrance of the building, just in time to see her blustering through the front door with a burst of cold air.

Goldilocks met his gaze and said quickly, “Morning,” before concentrating overly hard on passing him in the doorway and setting down her briefcase on one of the tables.

If Hawk wasn’t mistaken, she was avoiding eye contact with him as she set up her laptop.

Had he been such a beast the day before that she couldn’t even look at him today? Thinking about it, he realized the answer was most likely yes, and that made him feel pretty shitty. The new “face of the Army”, like it or not, and he was portraying himself as an ass. Probably not the best idea since performing even this bullshit assignment badly could negatively affect his chances at a promotion to first sergeant, and he was due for one.

Smiling, Rasta-man’s greeting was quite a bit more welcoming than Goldie’s. “Hey, have you heard the weather forecast for today? All I could get on the television in the room was in German.”

Predicting the weather here in winter was a no brainer. “Cold,” Hawk answered simply.

Unwinding an incredibly long and multi-colored scarf from around his neck and dreadlocks, Rasta grinned. “Yeah, I gathered that already. But what about snow?”

The answer to that he had actually heard from one of the guys at chow. “No snow.”

Rasta grinned. “Good! See, Em. Nothing to worry about.” He turned toward Hawk. “City girl here reacts badly to snow. What about you?”

Hawk raised a brow, remembering his recent fun in the four-foot deep drifts in the Alps. “Don’t worry about me.”

Goldilocks aka Em looked as if she wanted to take Rasta’s scarf and strangle him with it.

Hmm, wasn’t that interesting.

Very pointedly, she changed the subject. “Jai, can you take a look at the ad mock-ups so we know what more we need to get today?”

“You mean besides the dress…uniform?” Rasta-man laughed as he walked to a pissed-looking Goldilocks.

Hawk’s ears perked up, not about the dress uniform part, but about Goldie having the ads done already. She did move fast. He’d assumed these frigging embarrassing photos wouldn’t hit until after next week when he was safely gone, but maybe he had been wrong.

Trying to not look overly interested, Hawk used all of his vast skill and prowess learned over multiple tours of duty and sidled stealthily behind the two bent heads at the laptop. Glancing past Rasta-man’s dreadlocks, he caught a glimpse of a portion of an ad.
His
ad. That was his eye glaring back at him off the screen.

Damn, no wonder Goldie wouldn’t look at him today. He did look kind of scary in that one.

Goldie turned in her seat, glimpsed his face, and let out a frustrated huff of air. “You don’t like it.”

It wasn’t a question, but a resignation filled statement of fact.

“I didn’t say that,” Hawk defended.

“You didn’t have to. You’re frowning.”

“No, I’m not.” Hawk consciously smoothed his brow muscles.

Goldie turned back to the screen but he thought he heard a mumble sounding like, “Yeah, right.”

With the click of her short pink nails against the keyboard, the picture on screen changed to another one.

The two marketing gurus were discussing some fine points of demographics and target markets or something and didn’t even notice him until Hawk readjusted his stance to try and see around them, which caught Rasta’s attention.

“Hey, man. Sorry. I’m in your way. I’m sure you wanna see.” Moving aside, Hawk got his first full-glimpse of himself.

He heard Goldie sigh. “I’m sure you hate this one, too.”

Hawk considered the photo before him on screen for another second. Legs planted wide, he stood wearing his tan t-shirt and digital desert camouflage ACU pants, arms crossed in front of his chest, chin set, no smile on his lips, his nose showed and part of his eye, but that was it. She’d cropped the photo so you couldn’t see the rest of his face or even identify it as him. He loved it.

Realizing he stood in that same pose now, Hawk had to admit, Goldie and Rasta had really captured his essence.

Hawk decided to throw Goldie a bone for her efforts. “I like it.”

Visibly taken aback by the compliment, Goldie shook her head slightly as if she hadn’t heard him correctly. “You like it?”

“Mmm, hmm. You cut off half of my face. I like it.”

Couldn’t have her getting too cocky, now could he? At least Rasta-man appreciated Hawk’s humor, because he broke out laughing while Goldie’s face twisted into an angry frown.

“I agree. Not seeing your face is preferable. Perhaps I’ll crop them all like that.” Insult delivered, she spun back to the laptop.

“You do that, doll, and I’ll owe you a big kiss, plus some.” Hawk heard Goldie emit something resembling a disgusted snort and he smiled. She was sure fun to play with. In fact, reevaluating his former opinion of Goldie, Hawk decided he wouldn’t mind at all playing with her some more. In all sorts of ways.

“I think we’re good for the indoor shots for now,” Rasta called from across the room where’d he’d moved to play with his stuff.

“What about the dress uniform ones?” Goldi shot Hawk a look. “Are you going to have any problems with us shooting you in your dress uniform?”

“As long as you don’t use real bullets. No. No problem. Shoot away.”

Hawk smiled as she rolled her eyes at his corny joke. He was pretty certain using real bullets had crossed her mind at one point that morning.

“The photos in here we can take anytime using the lights, Em. I’m anxious to get outdoors and scout some locations for the exterior shots while the weather is good,” Rasta-man suggested.

Hawk really, really did not want to be helpful for this thing he was being forced to do against his will. But also against his will, his brain had been in overdrive and he actually had an idea for the outdoor shoot. And shit, he was going to share his idea and he was sure Rasta would love it and take a hundred more photos of him because of it.

Oh, well. Here it goes
, he thought.
“I had some thoughts about the outdoor shots.”

Looking amused, Goldie turned to him. “Really? You? Had thoughts?”

Hawk raised one brow at her and rose to her challenge. “Mmm, hmm. I do that occasionally. Think. Be real nice to me, Goldilocks, and I might share some of my more interesting thoughts with you sometime. I guarantee you’ll enjoy it.”

His pet name for her went over like a fart in a spacesuit, judging by the look on her face. He smiled again. Yeah, he definitely was enjoying this verbal foreplay. But time to get back to work so he could get this assignment over and done with.

“Anyway, I don’t know what you’re looking for exactly, if you want authentic-looking combat shots or not, but troops come to Hohenfels for realistic force-to-force combat maneuver training,” Hawk began.

Rasta nodded excitedly. “So you do mission rehearsals and stuff like that here.”

Hawk nodded. “Exactly.”

“What do you use in the simulations? Lasers?”

Well, well. Rasta-man wasn’t just a pretty face with a lot of hair. He had some sort of military experience, probably from behind the lens of his camera but at least Hawk wouldn’t have to explain everything to them both like children.

“Exactly. We have a laser engagement system and COBs—Civilians on the Battlefield—who help us train. There is a village set up, totally realistic, perimeter razerwire fencing, guard towers, MPs on patrol, and civilian housing where the COBs live. You’d never know you weren’t in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

Rasta looked excited enough to jump right out of his skin at that thought. “And we can get permission to shoot there?”

“Captain said whatever you wanted, he’d approve. Within reason,” Hawk added.

Eyes wide, Rasta began grabbing some of the equipment and stowing it in bags. “Great! Let’s go.”

Goldie watched him and said wryly, “I guess it’s all set then.”

Hawk grinned. So she didn’t like not being in control. Interesting and something to remember for future.

Rasta paused and glanced at her. “Sorry, Em. Did you have an idea for something else?”

“No. I think we should trust Hawk’s experience.”

Goldilocks was going to trust him. Mmm, mmm. He liked that idea and he’d also stow that fact away for later use.

Today was turning out to be pretty interesting all around.