Читать книгу At Her Service: His Baby! / Major Attraction - Julie Miller - Страница 5

In the moonless night, bullets bit into the ground and snatched at the bushes and trees around him. Jeff Hunter knew the enemy was firing blind. They sure as heck couldn’t see him, hidden as he was. But that didn’t mean that one of them couldn’t get lucky.

He kept his head down and a tight grip on his weapon as he used his elbows and knees to move closer to shore. To the boat that was waiting for him. The rest of his Recon team was already on board, he knew. He was the last man out. As always.

As the next in a series of explosions rocked the night, Jeff grinned briefly and kept going. Elbows, knees, through the plants, closer to escape. He didn’t look back. Didn’t have to. He knew his job and did it well. Everything was blowing up right on schedule. Flames lit the darkness, and flickering shadows jumped around him like shadows of the damned. Mission accomplished, he thought and shifted his focus from the job to the matter at hand—getting the hell out of Dodge.

Belly-crawling faster now, he ignored the slap of bullets, the roar of the inferno behind him and the frantic shouts of the enemy as they searched for him. Slipping out of the tangled undergrowth to the sand, he rolled, came up onto his feet and crouching, dashed the last few feet to the boat. Here it was most dangerous. Here he was unprotected by the foliage. A straight, clean stretch of beach lay between him and safety, and Jeff set a new world’s record in running while bent nearly in half. Instinct drove him and he ducked as a couple more charges were detonated, crashing into the hot night air.

Even as he rushed clumsily through knee-deep water and dived headfirst into the safety of the rubber Zodiac boat, the outboard motor was firing up. Eager hands reached for him, grabbing hold of his Kevlar vest and yanking him the rest of the way into the boat. He lay flat for a long minute, catching his breath. Safety. His team members. His friends. Hell, his family.

“Called it close enough that time, Gunny,” Deke muttered, shoving the throttle forward and sending the Zodiac into a screaming takeoff that left white foam plumes of water in its wake.

Damn, but that engine sounded good. They’d had to row in when they’d arrived, but now, it didn’t matter how much noise they made. Get in quiet—get out fast.

He slanted the other man a look and smiled. Shouting to be heard over the full-out motor, he said, “Yeah, yeah. Quit whining. You ladies were safe in the boat while I’m out saving the world for humanity.”

Deke laughed, throwing his head back and whooping a little just to celebrate surviving.

“Oh, I like that,” J.T. quipped loudly, “here we sit around waitin’ for him—lookin’ like targets a boot recruit couldn’t miss and he insults us.”

“Yeah,” Travis drawled, keeping his mounted gun trained on the retreating shore to cover their escape, just in case some of the enemy survived all of the explosions and were just a bit testy. “Sounds to me like the Gunny’s getting a little cocky in his old age. Maybe we ought to throw him out and make him swim.”

Deke steered for the ship waiting just out of sight around a point of land a few miles off the starboard bow. “Nah,” he countered, gaze locked ahead, “some shark would take a bite out of him and get poisoned. Doesn’t seem fair to the fish.” Jeff chuckled to himself and lay back. The other guys had it handled. In a few short minutes, they’d be picked up by the ship, and five days from now, they’d all be on leave. Their first leave in way too long. The moon peeked out from behind a trail of clouds, and in the brief flash of silvery moonlight, Jeff looked at the faces around him. Camouflage paint obscured their features as well as his, and their eyes and teeth shone weirdly against the darkness. Jokes aside, he’d trust any one of them with his life. And had. Too many times to count.

Then his gaze shifted to the other man in the boat. The reason for the team’s presence. The man they’d been sent in to rescue.

Some diplomat who’d stayed too long in an unfriendly country and worn out his welcome, he’d been taken hostage a month ago. No doubt he’d given up hope of ever going home again. Until Deke had slit open the back of the guy’s tent and whispered, “U.S. Marines.” Hell, the man had nearly wept and Jeff was pretty sure if he’d been able to, he would have given them a brass-band welcome.

Now he sat, leaning forward in the boat, as if reaching toward home would get him there faster. And that was okay by Jeff, since he was in a hurry to get back to the States, too. It had been eighteen months since his last real leave. Eighteen months since he’d last seen Kelly.

In the darkness with only the hum of the engines and the distant roar of explosions breaking the silence, Jeff relaxed for the first time in ten hours and let his mind wander. Back to that night. The last one he’d spent with the woman who now haunted his every dream.

Kelly reached for him and he pulled her close, relishing the feel of her warm, naked flesh against his. It had been a hell of a two-week leave. Starting with that first day, when he’d pulled her, unconscious, from the ocean after a loose surfboard conked her on the head.

Once on shore, he’d given her mouth-to-mouth and they’d pretty much been that way ever since. He’d never experienced anything like it before.

Such a rush of emotion. Such a tangle of feelings. Such incredible want and need.

And now it was their last night together. He’d be shipping out in the morning, headed who knew where. And when he’d be back, even he didn’t know. He held her tighter, closer, in response to that thought and tried to block out the image of goodbye.

“These two weeks went so fast,” she murmured, and her breath dusted across his skin. Her fingers trailed through the dark hair on his chest, and his breath caught at the fire in her touch.

“Yeah,” he said, inhaling the light, flowery scent of her hair, “it did.”

She tipped her head back to look up at him. “How early do you have to leave?”

In the soft haze of candlelight, her long, curly auburn hair looked golden, streaks of light and dark color coming together to blend into a whole that made him think of fires at night. So soft, so … “Early,” he said. “Have to be on base at six.”

She looked past him at the digital alarm clock on her bedside table. “It’s only midnight. We still have hours.”

“Not nearly enough time,” he said, knowing it for fact. But then if he had fifty years at his disposal, he didn’t think it would be enough time.

There was something about this woman that made him want to forget everything else in the world existed. He’d like nothing more than to lock them both inside this room and stay there.

But that just wasn’t an option. So instead, he resolved to make the most of what time they had left. To not waste it in wishing for what couldn’t be. He cupped her face in his palm and stroked the pad of his thumb across her cheek. Then shifting, he rolled to one side and levered himself up over her. He looked down into those forest-green eyes of hers and asked, “You gonna miss me?”

One corner of her mouth twitched into a crooked smile. “I might,” she said softly, running her hands up and down his back with feather-light strokes that fired the need coiled dangerously inside him. “But maybe you should remind me again just what it is I’m going to miss.”

“Oh,” he said, sliding one hand down to cup her breast, “I think I could do that.” His thumb and forefinger tugged at her nipple, and he smiled when she arched into his touch, tipping her head back into the pillow.

“Okay,” she said on a sigh, “it’s coming back to me now.”

The words hung in the air for a long minute, and he waited until her eyes were open again and she was looking at him. Then he said in a low, throaty growl, “I’m coming back to you, too, Kelly. Not sure when. But I’ll be back.”

She took his face in her hands and pulled him close. “Promise?”

He turned his face into her hand and kissed her palm. “Oh yeah, baby. I promise.”

Then he kissed her, drowning in the taste of her, silently telling himself to remember. Remember it all. Her scent, her touch, her taste. He wanted it all so clear in his mind that no matter where he was or what he was doing, he’d be able to bring this moment back.

She sighed and he caught that small, escaped breath and drew it down deep inside him, taking a part of her into himself. Tongues met and clashed, tangling together as the fire grew and threatened to devour both of them.

His hands moved over her curves, defining them, burning them into his memory. He felt her slide one hand across his back, down along his spine to his butt, then around, to cup him in her palm. His eyes squeezed closed and his back teeth ground together as he fought for control. But her hands on him were too much and she damn well knew it. When she shifted, encircling the length of him with her fingers, he growled from low in his throat and caught her hand, drawing it up to the pillow beside her head and pinning it there.

“Problem?” she asked, with a spark of knowing innocence in her eyes.

“No problem here,” he told her, and moved to cover her body with his.

“Glad to hear it.” She moved beneath him, parting her legs, lifting her hips in welcome.

Jeff accepted that invitation and pushed himself into the deep warmth of her. As her body surrounded him and her hands came up to encircle his neck, he rocked his hips against her. Retreat and advance. He moved within her, pushing them both higher, faster as they rushed together toward the completion that lay just out of reach.

He’d found something here. With her. Something unexpected. Something he wasn’t quite sure what to do about. Something he knew he didn’t want to lose, yet something he was going to have to leave.

His brain raced; every nerve ending in his body hummed. Then she clutched at his shoulders and held on for dear life, and he felt her body tremble and convulse just a moment before his own world erupted. And in that blinding flash, Jeff knew that being apart from her would be the most difficult thing he’d ever done.

And it had been. It had been a hell of a long eighteen months. But he was going back. He was keeping that promise to return. He only hoped she gave a damn. Wouldn’t it be a kick in the ass if he’d been thinking about her all this time and she hadn’t given him a single thought?

The Zodiac gun boat collided with the side of the destroyer, and the solid bump jolted Jeff from his wandering thoughts.

A rope ladder dropped from above, and as J.T. and Travis helped the diplomat clamber to safety, Deke looked over at Jeff and asked, “Thinking about that woman again, Gunny?”

Jeff shot his friend a look. Shouldn’t be surprised at the comment, he thought. The guys had heard plenty about Kelly on those long nights of inaction while waiting for the hoo-ha to start.

“Beats the hell out of thinking about you guys.”

“Guess so,” Deke acknowledged with a grin. Then he asked, not for the first time, “At least the way you tell it. So, this redhead of yours have any sisters?”

“Don’t know,” Jeff said, silently admitting that they’d never really gotten around to talking about family. They’d been way too busy with each other. “But I’ll let you know.”

“Good enough,” Deke said, and grabbed a handful of rope. “Five days and a wakeup and we’ll be stateside again.”

Jeff glanced at his watch. Ten minutes past midnight. “Four days and a wakeup,” he corrected, and slung his weapon onto his back before climbing the ropes. Four more days, he told himself. Then he’d wake up, grab the first flight to California and be knocking on Kelly’s door.

He swung his legs over the rail and clambered aboard. Good to feel solid ship under his feet again. Then, as he helped the swabbies pull the Zodiac out of the water, his brain started that slow wander again.

After eighteen months of sending her postcards and one too brief phone call, he’d be able to hold her, kiss her, taste her again. And he figured this time, maybe he would lock them both into her bedroom and not come out till they were starving to death.

Kelly Rogan stared at the latest postcard from Jeff Hunter. It had been mailed more than two weeks ago—from where, she wasn’t sure. He never told her where he was. Apparently that was a big no-no, militarywise. But occasionally she could figure it out from the picture on the card. Like say, the one she’d received with a lovely shot of the Eiffel Tower. But this one was simply palm trees and sandy beaches. Heck, that could mean anything from Hawaii to Fiji to Vietnam.

But it didn’t really matter, did it? It was what he’d written on the back that was important. She flipped it over and read again the words she already knew by heart.

Coming home. Be there by the end of March.

Have thirty days leave. Can’t wait to see you.

Jeff

End of March. That meant he’d be here any day now. And Kelly wasn’t at all sure how she felt about that. After all, his last two-week leave had changed her life forever.

Too many times in the past eighteen months she’d played the what-if game. What if she hadn’t gone surfing that day? What if Jeff hadn’t been the one to save her? What if she hadn’t looked up into those blue eyes of his?

What if—?

Well, that was a pointless game anyway. She had gone surfing. She had nearly drowned. Jeff had rescued her. And for the first time in her noneventful life, Kelly had given into spontaneity.

She’d lived in the moment. She’d had a two-week-long, incredibly passionate affair with a tall, dark stranger. And the rest, as they say, was history.

All that mattered now was facing Jeff and telling him what she’d been unable to tell him for so long. And hope she could get the words out before one of her brothers killed him.