Shattered (20 page)

He’d adjusted to having lost his leg. Well, as much as he figured any guy ever could. But if he’d been unlucky enough to get his dick blown off, he’d rather have been left behind in the Kush, where the weather or bad guys could’ve finished him off.

“One flaw in that outrageously sexist statement is that I’m not your woman,” she pointed out.

“Well, see, now this is where I give you fair warning that I’m going to be doing my damnedest to change that.”

He waited for her to say that tangos would be ice skating in Fallujah before that happened.

For not the first time, she surprised him. “Consider me warned.” She looked on the verge of saying something.

Maybe something personal.

Then the moment was lost as she glanced down at her watch. “You’d better be going if you’re going to make that meeting,” she said.

“Yeah.”

He knew that wasn’t what she’d been about to say. Letting out a breath Shane hadn’t even been aware of holding, he stood there, just drinking in the sight of her, looking all mussed and soft, like a woman who needed to be dragged off to bed.

“What?” she asked when he didn’t, couldn’t, move.

“I was just thinking how goddamn gorgeous you are.”

“Yeah. I’ll bet.” She dragged a hand through her hair. “Not only do I have jet lag; I’m probably carrying enough baggage beneath my eyes to fill the cargo hold of a C-17 and—”

He caught her hand as it made another swipe through her short, sleek hair. Lifted it to his lips and brushed a kiss across her knuckles.

“The first time we made love, you’d been on a twenty-hour rotation and were wearing BDUs and bloody boots, which wasn’t exactly an outfit favored by a Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover model or Playboy centerfold,” he reminded her. “But when you walked into your hootch, sweetcakes, damned if you didn’t make me harder than an entire years’ worth of naked Playmates.”

Because he’d never said anything he’d meant more, he gave her his most sober, sincere look over their linked hands. “You still do.”

Christ, that was corny. He wouldn’t have been surprised to hear a bunch of violins start playing. No way was this woman going to buy that claim. Even if it were true, which it was.

“Well.” Rather than call him a low-life scum liar who’d use any line he thought might work to get into her panties, she blew out a breath. Retreived her hand and folded her arms across her breasts. “We can’t let whatever this is between us screw up the mission. Rachel’s too important.”

“Agreed. But I don’t think we necessarily need to put sex entirely off the table.”

“Doesn’t it just figure sex would be the uppermost thing in your mind?”

Finally. There was the scorn he’d been expecting.

“Not the uppermost.”

Even back when they were having crazed monkey sex, when the time came to fly a mission, he’d been able to stay absolutely focused. Enough, he thought, to have successfully landed that broken helo on the side of a Afghan mountain in a damn blizzard, with terrorists with big guns turning it into a camouflage-painted colander.

“But we’ve always had this . . . thing—chemistry, attraction, whatever the hell you want to call it—going,” he said. His voice had gotten deep and rough. It wasn’t an act. It was a grinding woman-hunger that was turning his balls blue. “We’re like TNT and nitroglycerin, Kirby. The question is not if we’re going to get hot and blow up. But when.

“So,” he said, noticing that she wasn’t exactly rushing in to deny that statement, “it seems to me that trying to keep our hands off each other could prove more of a distraction than just going with the flow. And giving in to what we both know is inevitable.”

She shook her head. But he could tell she was thinking about it.

“There’s got to be a flaw in that reasoning somewhere,” she said finally. “But I’m too wiped out to figure out what it is.”

“Give it some thought.” He skimmed a finger down her nose. Touched his lips to her frowning ones in a brief, hot kiss that ended way too soon.

Then, before he could change his mind and just drag her onto the too-inviting lacy bed, he left the room, forcing himself not to look back until he was in the truck and headed down that oak alley toward town.

After shutting the door behind him, Kirby could not resist going to the window, watching as he strode out to the truck, on much the same sexy, hip-forward way she remembered.

Again, she thought that anyone not knowing the details of his injury could well be unaware that he’d lost that leg.

Get him naked and you can see it, the doctor in her thought.

The problem with that, the woman in her countered, was that if she got him naked, his medical condition was going to be the last thing on her mind.

It wasn’t fair. She’d never been comfortable showing emotion. Not because of any deep-seated childhood problems, or having grown up with cold, unfeeling parents. Just the opposite. Her mother and father were the most warm, loving, outgoing individuals she’d ever met.

Perhaps she’d been more reserved because she’d been an only child, which meant that much of her time had been with adults rather than kids her own age. Perhaps it was just her nature, the way her molecules had entwined together in her DNA. There’d actually been times growing up when she’d wondered if she could have been adopted. Or perhaps some absentminded nurse had made a critical mistake and mixed up the infants in the hospital nursery, sending the wrong one home with Kathleen and Duncan Campbell.

Whatever, that innate ability to emotionally distance herself had proven helpful during medical school, her internship, and residency. And even more so in her practice, particularly during her time at the CSH. Although inside she’d wanted to weep on a daily basis, often several times a day, she’d known that giving in to a crying jag was the last thing her patients needed. What they’d needed was for her to stay cool, calm, and decisive.

None of which she’d ever felt with Shane Garrett.

He’d had her from the moment she walked into that examining cubicle and seen him on that metal examining table. And, dammit, from the way she’d felt earlier, as if he’d lit a bunch of Fourth of July sparklers beneath her skin, that hadn’t changed.

She’d given a lot of thought to their wartime affair over the past several months and come to the conclusion that, as much as she honestly believed she’d loved him, they were still pretty much a wartime cliché. If they had stayed together, the attraction undoubtedly would have grown old, the sex cooled.

“Yeah. Right.”

God. She’d had an orgasm—the first in ages involving a partner—up against the bedroom door in the home of a woman she’d just met. With her clothes still mostly on.

And, if he’d even pushed just the slightest bit, she probably would have gone all the way with him right on that pretty, lacy bed.

Damn.

Kirby leaned her forehead against the glass and sighed as the truck headed down the road beneath the row of ancient oaks, away from the plantation house. Away from her.

He was right. Together they were as explosive as an IED. And definitely every bit as dangerous.

He might also be right that attempting to stay away from each other, to deny this sexual attraction that had always existed between them, could prove a distraction.

The good news was that they’d only be forced into close proximity for a few days. Once they hooked up with the others at the ruins, they’d be traveling with a team of chaperones.

As much as she appreciated the Army for her education and was grateful to have been able to experience so much more than she ever would have been able to in a civilian hospital in the States, Kirby had always chafed against all the rules and regulations.

During her work with WMR, she’d become an expert at punting. At going with the flow.

Which, she decided, as she went into the adjoining bathroom to freshen up before she joined Sabrina Swann Tremayne downstairs in the kitchen, was the best way to handle Shane.

Other than getting Rachel out of Monteleón safely, Kirby had no idea what was going to happen over the next few days.

So, she’d take things as they came. Or, as her superior, the golf-addict colonel used to say, play it as it lay.

Besides—she tried to justify her inability to resist the man—the more chemistry between them, the more likely Vasquez would be willing to buy their cover story.

The trick, she reminded herself firmly, was to remember that it was just a story. A game.

As long as she didn’t lose track of that one constant, she should be able to come out of this adventure with her heart intact.

The meeting wasn’t that different from other premission planning sessions Shane had taken part in. The difference was, this time, instead of Country Captain Chicken from a brown MRE bag—which, supposedly, were Meals Ready to Eat, but were better known as Meals Rarely Edible, Meals Rejected by Everyone, and even Meals Rejected by the Enemy—supper consisted of loaded pizzas with a side order of bread sticks. And the icy beer was a gazillion-percent improvement over a mix-it-yourself lemon carbohydrate electrolyte beverage.

“You know Kirby Campbell better than anyone else,” Zach said to Shane. “How do you think she’s going to react under pressure?”

“Like a rock,” Shane said. “I watched her demonstrate amazing control during some brutally tough situations at the Cash in Baghdad. You probably remember a lot more about how she handled things at the refugee camp than I do, but she’s one tough cookie.”

“That sure as hell was my impression,” Quinn agreed. “Not many people—male or female—could have stood up to those armed tangos.”

“What about the history between you two?” Zach asked. “Will it get in the way?”

Shane thought about that kiss—and more—they’d shared. And how much it might have complicated an already dicey situation. But they were both experts at compartmentalizing. If he didn’t think they could pull this off, there was no way he’d risk blowing the mission just because he didn’t want to let her get away again.

“If she were a civilian, it might prove a problem,” he allowed.

There was no point in holding back. Not when lives were at stake. Besides, he’d already shared the story while they’d all been hunkered down in a bunker shortly after the crash and firefight. A young Marine scout sniper had been fatally shot, but Christ, it had taken what seemed like forever for him to pass on.

So they’d all sat around shooting the bull, talking about women, like they were back in the barracks instead of an ice-cold bunker with a bunch of wild-eyed terrorists out there just waiting to kill them if they got the chance.

Quinn had talked about Cait, the woman he was now going to marry. And how she’d always seemed to hate him, except for when she’d gotten drunk at a wedding reception and they’d had their hot one-night hotel-room stand. Zach, who’d once dated her roommate, had ragged Quinn about Cait having always liked him just fine.

Shane had gone next, and while he’d never been one to kiss and tell, the situation seemed to call for it. So he told them about his and Kirby’s time together in the sandbox.

Then Dallas O’Halloran had chimed in with his rules of female engagement. Which had pretty much been to figure out how to juggle his many lovers. “It’s not an easy job,” he’d said with his cocky, bad-boy wink. “But someone’s got to do it.”

After the SEAL medic Chaffee shared, it had been the wounded kid’s turn.

He hadn’t had nearly an easy time of it, with his mom dying of ovarian cancer when he was nine. Which was when he’d been sent to live with his grandmother in Salt Lick, Kentucky, because his dad was career Marine, like all the men in his family going back to the Revolution, and a gunnery sergeant couldn’t very well defend America’s freedom if he had to stay home to take care of Opie, which was what Zach had dubbed him, because he’d reminded them all of that freckle-face kid from Mayberry, USA.

Opie had a girl he planned to marry after his deployment, and they were going to have two kids and a couple bluetick hounds, because his granddaddy raised them and he wanted his boys to be able to go hunting with them, same as he had growing up.

They’d been laughing about how, if he and his girl had daughters, he might have to turn Catholic and send them off to a convent, like, yeah, a Kentucky Pentecostal was going to do that in this lifetime, when he’d suddenly, out of the goddamn blue, asked them to pray with him.

Thanks to his altar boy days, Shane had remembered the twenty-third psalm, which seemed appropriate, given its message of being comforted while walking through the shadow of death, which they all knew was the trip the young Marine was embarking on.

Then they’d recited the Lord’s Prayer together, which made the kid smile.

Then he was gone. Just like that.

Although, despite his injuries and possible TBI, which seemed to be affecting some memories, Shane hadn’t come home with PTSD like so many vets had, that particular event was still as vivid as if it had happened this morning. And it still slashed at a private place he suspected everyone who’d experienced war up close and personal had deep down inside themselves.

He realized everyone was looking at him. From the shadows in Quinn’s and Zach’s eyes, he suspected they were thinking back to that conversation, as well.

He shook off the memory and dragged his mind out of Afghanistan, back here to Lowcountry South Carolina and the matter at hand.

“Kirby might have been in the medical corps,” he said, “but that didn’t mean she wasn’t military down to her fingertips. No way would she let personal stuff interfere with a mission. Especially when we’re talking about rescuing her best friend.”

“Okay. Good.” Zach nodded and turned to Gannon. “I know it’s been a lot of water under the bridge since you worked with Dr. Moore in a combat situation, but how do you think she’s holding up? Might she unravel under pressure?”

“She thrived on challenge,” the former priest answered without hesitation. “Rachel Moore has the heart of a lion. And, if necessary, ice water in her veins. She’s also going to be doing her best to figure out a way to escape. Which is why we need to get to her as soon as possible.”

“We’re working on it,” Zach said.

“At least you should find some way to let her know you’ve got a man inside,” Michael said.

Zach shook his head. “I don’t want to do that. The fewer people who know he’s our guy, the better the chances will be of him keeping her alive.”

Shane could tell Gannon didn’t like that idea. But apparently he’d spent enough time in the military himself to understand the chain of command. The members of Phoenix Team may be civilian these days, but Tremayne would be calling the shots for this mission.

Which, after seeing how the guy had handled that goatfuck in Afghanistan, was just the way Shane liked it.

He’d worked with enough SEALs to know the officers came up with the mission, which, to Shane’s mind, was often the easier part.

Once the mission was decided upon, the chiefs figured out how to make the mission work. And Chief Zachariah Tremayne was the best Shane had ever worked with. In fact, were it not for the SEAL, he probably wouldn’t be alive, sitting here.

The SEALs were daring, born risk takers, but they also were really, really intelligent. And Tremayne had always been one to plan down to the gnat’s eyebrow. Which was a good thing, because when the plans went to shit, as they always did, at least there was some aspect of the larger picture they could cobble together to make things work.

“Another thing,” Zach said to Gannon. “I totally understand how you feel. If anyone was holding Sabrina hostage, I’d want to torch the entire planet, if necessary, to get to her. But we’ve got enough dicey players already in the mix down there. I don’t want to have to worry about you going Rambo on me.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

Zach narrowed his eyes to what Shane always thought of as his Clint Eastwood squint, as dark and deadly as gunmetal.

Which was what they were now. Shane gave the former priest huge props for calmly meeting the look he’d seen plenty of men—even big, bad D-boys, and even badder tangos—squirm beneath.

“Okay,” the former chief decided. He swept his gaze over all of them seated at the table. “There’s one more thing I need to say,” he said. “I don’t think it’s any secret that I came home from that Operation Enduring Freedom Clusterfuck with some issues, as they like to call it these days.”

No one responded, but every guy in the room knew the SEAL had returned Stateside with a rough case of PTSD. Partly, Shane had always felt, because he’d carried the guilt of responsibility. Which he shouldn’t have, since he’d done better than any other guy Shane could think of to ensure the most men survived. But wasn’t he proof that it could take time to sort things out in your mind?

“I’ve worked through that,” Zach said. “The shrink at the V.A. said I’m good to go. Hell, I can even listen to The Doors without needing to get drunk, and I watched both Apocalypse Now and Platoon last week without wanting to shoot the TV. And I haven’t had a flashback for months.

“If I wasn’t absolutely positive that I’m qualified, in every way, to lead this mission, I’d bail. Because there’s no way in hell I’d ever risk the lives of any of the members of this team.”

Quinn raised his beer bottle. “Hooyah.”

“Hooyah,” Shane and Michael Gannon corrected, repeating it in the Army way as they raised their bottles, as well.

“Okay.” That uncomfortable bit of conversation behind him, Zack snagged the last piece of pizza from the box. “Looks like we’re good to go.”