LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 2

      Tessa jolted awake as the plane bumped onto a runway. It was dark outside the small window at her elbow. She was disoriented. Groggy. Airplane. Kicked out of the Special Forces pipeline. Orders from Torsten. A god sent along to deliver her to Phoenix.

      She peered out the windows and saw the tall, black silhouettes of trees crowding an unlit runway. Trees? In Phoenix?

      She’d been to Arizona before. It had been a thousand degrees outside, and all that grew in the sandy desert were rocks and cacti. She peered out her window again. Not only were those trees, they also looked like a mix of moisture-loving deciduous species and conifers. Totally not trees that would survive the hellish heat of summer in Arizona. And the air in the plane was muggy. Humidity in Phoenix often ran in the single digits. It was warm wherever they had landed, though. And the air smelled strongly of...plant decay.

      She glanced over at Lambert. “Do you know where we are?”

      “Yup.”

      The man had the conversational skills of a caveman.

      She waited for him to share, but nada. He just stared out his own window, jaw set and a grim expression on his face. “Well?” she demanded. “Where are we? This is obviously not Phoenix.”

      “Are you always this impatient?” he asked laconically.

      “Guess I am. I have this funny thing about liking to know, oh, what state I’m in.” One thing she knew for sure. This was not Arizona.

      His lips twitched, but he didn’t deign to enlighten her. Apparently, he was as stubborn as his boss. Jackasses, both of ’em. Yeah, well, she could play that game, too. She’d be darned if she asked him any more questions.

      The jet came to a full stop. Deep silence fell as the engines shut down. The copilot came back to open the clamshell hatch and lower the steps. She smiled flirtatiously at the young Air Force officer and asked him, “Could you please tell me where we are?”

      He glanced up at her in surprise. “Louisiana.”

      What on earth was there for her?

      At least she’d caught what felt like a couple hours–long nap. If only she felt better after it. Not that anyone in the history of aviation had ever napped comfortably in an airplane seat. She hoisted herself out of the chair, every bit as stiff and agonized as she expected. Bent over in the low-ceilinged cabin, she hobbled to the exit.

      She eyed the stairs warily. There were only four steps, yet that was enough to be problematic in her current state of pain. But no way was she going to ask Lambert, waiting impatiently at the bottom of the steps, for help. She made it down the first couple of steps, but her entire right leg cramped on the third step and collapsed out from under her. She pitched forward, straight into the arms of her SEAL babysitter. Again.

      Dad gum it.

      He growled in her ear, low and sexy, “Do you always throw yourself at men like this?”

      His low voice sent a thrill rippling down her spine and vibrating deliciously through her lower abdomen before she remembered he was a jerk and she hated his guts.

      His chest was hard, slabbed in resilient bulges of muscle, warm under the soft cotton of his black T-shirt. And he still smelled good. Which ticked her off to no end. She smelled like a landfill on a hot day, but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it until she crossed paths with water and a bar of soap.

      It never failed. She always ran into the sexy guys when she was a total mess or being a complete dork. She was not one of those girls who managed to be pulled together, poised and make positive first impressions on men. Ever.

      “Are you done trying to face-plant?” he asked.

      Crud. She was still plastered against him. She yanked free of his strong, supporting arms and forced her legs to bear her weight no matter how much they protested. The copilot passed her rucksack down to Lambert, and she didn’t have the strength or give-a-crap factor to take it from him. She was already kicked out of training. She didn’t have to try to impress anyone with how tough and self-sufficient she was anymore.

      Which scared the bejeebers out of her. Her entire life had been devoted to convincing herself and everyone around her that she was the real deal. That she could hang with the big boys. That she was tough. Invulnerable. Safe from harm or abuse.

      What was she supposed to do now? Trade in her combat boots for flowered dresses and aprons? Who was she supposed to be? She had no idea how to be a regular woman. Knowing Major Torsten, he’d seen to it she would be stuck in some secretarial job fit only for a June Cleaver wannabe, in his misogynistic estimation.

      If she had to make coffee for anyone, she swore she was going to poison the stuff.

      Waterworks threatened again, and she breathed deeply, repeating over and over to herself, I will not cry. I will not cry. But hopelessness washed over her, anyway. What had all the years of work and sacrifice been for in the end? God, the time she’d wasted on a hopeless dream.

      Lambert took off, striding toward an open-topped Jeep parked at the edge of the tarmac. He limped the tiniest bit on his right leg. Had he not been moving directly away from her like that, she probably wouldn’t have spotted the subtle anomaly in his motion. Not that the knee brace showing under his camo fatigue pants made him any less lethal.

      She looked around the airfield, and the place was deserted. It was just a strip of asphalt in a clearing among the towering trees, not even a real airport. There were no buildings, no other vehicles, no people. If this guy was an ax murderer, he was totally going to get away with his crime.

      “You comin’? Or are you just gonna stand there countin’ mosquitoes?” he tossed over his shoulder. If she was not mistaken, his voice had taken on a distinctly more Southern drawl.

      She hurried after him, sucking in a sharp breath as a thousand hot knives stabbed her body from every direction. One thing the past few months of training with the big boys had taught her. There was sore, and then there was sore.

      Lambert tossed her pack in the back of the Jeep and swung easily into the driver’s seat, waiting impatiently for her to catch up and climb in. She couldn’t help groaning a little as she levered her body into the vehicle, using the roll bar to help lift herself. She felt like death warmed over, for real.

      “You always this creaky?” he asked.

      “Not usually. Training was a little rougher than usual the past few days. No downtime to rest and recover. Nothing’s wrong with me that a hot shower and a decent night’s sleep won’t fix.”

      A single chin lift was all the acknowledgment she got. At least he didn’t feel obliged to comment that if she thought initial Spec Ops training was bad, she should try the real deal. Whether he was showing sensitivity to her having just been thrown out of the program or he figured it went without saying that real operations were worse, she was glad for his forbearance. Her patience was way too thin right now to deal with man-snark.

      He turned on the headlights and she squinted into the illuminated swath, making out only a thicket of vines, brambles and more trees. “Where in Louisiana are we?”

      “Southern Louisiana. Not close to anyplace you’ve ever heard of.”

      “What’s here?”

      “The next step in your career.”

      “What career?” she asked sourly.

      He glanced over at her, his expression inscrutable. They bumped across a sandy field and turned onto an asphalt road crowded by towering trees. Cypress, mostly. The night was noisy. Crickets and frogs and God knew

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