Читать книгу Born To Protect - Virginia Kantra - Страница 9

Bald Head Creek glittered like a promise between banks canopied by cottonwood and lush with long grass. The winding water reflected glimpses of wide, blue Montana sky.

So beautiful, Christina thought, breathing deeply of the damp, cool air. More beautiful than anything but home. Regret brushed her. She ignored it.

“Everyone have their counting trays?” she called cheerfully.

The eighth grade science class from Meriwether Lewis Middle School, assembled on the banks around her, nodded and waved shallow plastic trays in response.

“Let’s go hunting then,” Christina said, and dipped her net into the stream bed.

Water sparkled as she scooped up her load and swung it toward the bank.

A girl in a blue sweater scrambled away from the dripping net of creek muck. “Eeeww!”

Other thirteen-year-olds crowded closer as Christina emptied her catch, mud and pebbles and creepy crawlies, into her collection bucket.

“Cool.”

“Gross.”

“Yuck.”

“What’s that?”

Smiling, she ladled samples into the students’ collection trays, describing what they were likely to see, explaining how to identify and count the tiny aquatic insects and record their finds on their clipboards. Downstream, she had another student team measuring water temperature. Later, they would calculate the creek’s flow using a stopwatch and a stick.

Like Pooh and Piglet, she thought fancifully, racing twigs from the bridge in the Hundred Acre Wood. A.A. Milne’s classic was one of her mother’s favorites. The Queen, a former governess, had always taken the time and care to read to her own children at bedtime. Christina remembered snuggling with her sisters while her brother, Lucas, lounged male and superior in the doorway.

Christina cleared her suddenly constricted throat and focused, as she always focused, on the work. On work and on the bright, interested faces of the students bending toward her as she knelt on the muddy bank.

“All right now.” She plunged her hand into the muck, winning groans and giggles from her audience. “This little fellow here…” Gently, she separated out a caddis worm with her thumb. “Can anyone tell me what he’s called?”

She wasn’t sure at what exact moment she felt the change, like a rise of temperature in the air around her. Like the kiss of a branch on the back of her neck. Like the glide of the sun on her cheek. As the students scattered with their counting trays, she rinsed her hands in the cold stream. Under the splash and calls of the children, she heard the whisper of her own breath.

She stood slowly, her gaze scanning the opposite bank. Nothing.

She paused to correct a clipboard entry and stop the girl in the blue sweater from tipping the contents of her collection tray down a boy’s back.

And when Christina straightened, when she turned to check on the other group of students taking water temperatures downstream, she saw Jack Dalton standing above her on the bank.

For a moment she couldn’t think, move, breathe. She froze like a doe in a hunter’s sights as he stood watching her, lean and tough and out of place in his light T-shirt and leather jacket. His face was hard. His eyes were slate-blue and unreadable.

Her blood drummed in her ears. And then her mother’s training kicked in. Chin up. Eyes straight. She drew a shallow, careful breath. You are a Sebastiani.

“You frightened me,” she said with dignity.

“Good.” He came down the bank, his boots slipping slightly on the wet gravel. “You should be frightened. What the hell are you doing out here?”

She raised her chin another notch. “Conducting a field trip on riparian ecology and the importance of the water-shed.”

From downstream, she heard a couple of yells, a yelp and a splash.

Fascinated, she watched as a corner of Dalton’s hard mouth kicked upward. “And here I thought you were under attack,” he said.

She smiled back reluctantly. “That may come later. Excuse me, I’d better go see what’s going on.”

He fell into step beside her. “I can tell you what’s going on. Somebody got pushed into the water. And you shouldn’t be out here alone, miles from town, miles from the university.”

She resented him setting limits on her activities. If she’d wanted to live by palace rules, she would have stayed in Montebello. If she could have stomached the constant scrutiny, she would have stayed at UCLA.

“Hardly alone, Mr. Dalton. I am surrounded by thirteen-year-olds.”

“Yeah, and they’d be big protection if Kamal’s guys decided to snatch you now, wouldn’t they? If you won’t think about your safety, you should think about theirs.”

Her mouth firmed. “I am thinking of theirs. Dr. Lyman was ill, and someone needed to come down here with the class. I assure you, the students are at greater risk of drowning than I am of being kidnapped.”

They rounded a bend in the stream and saw one of her charges floundering knee-deep in icy water while his friends laughed on the bank.

“Eric Hunter!”

The laughter subsided into fits and sniggers.

Eric looked up warily, all freckles and false innocence. “Yes, ma’am?”

Christina swallowed a bubble of amusement. “Get out of that water this instant.”

“I can’t.” He sounded pained. “My sneaker slipped, and I’m stuck. My ankle.”

She frowned. She hoped it was only stuck. The boy could walk the half mile back to the bus in wet shoes, but not with a sprained ankle.

“All right,” she said, unzipping her nylon field jacket, preparing to wade in after him. “Stand as still as you—”

But before the words were out of her mouth, Jack Dalton was in the stream. Pushing his sleeves back to his elbows, he bent down.

“Put your hand on my shoulder,” he ordered.

The boy’s mouth dropped open. Christina suspected hers did, too.

“For balance,” Jack explained, plunging his arms into the water. “Your hand on my shoulder. Now.”

Tentatively, Eric obeyed.

“Okay, your sneaker’s wedged under this rock,” Jack said calmly. “I’m going to shift it, and I want you to pull your foot out. Got it? On three. One, two, three.”

Christina glimpsed Jack’s mask of concentration and the boy’s hand clutching the brown leather of his jacket. The clear, dark water surged and splashed. And then Eric, supported by Jack’s arm, staggered out of the stream and collapsed onto the bank.

“Let’s take a look,” Jack said.

But Christina was already kneeling, the gravel sharp and cold through her twill slacks. She was picking at the boy’s sodden laces when she noticed the water streaming from Jack’s boots. His jeans were soaked to the knee.

She looked up ruefully. “You got wet. I’m sorry.”

“This isn’t wet. You should have seen me in BUD/S.” Her face must have betrayed her lack of comprehension, because he grinned sharply. Her breath caught. He really was most attractive when he smiled.

“SEALs training. Basic Underwater Demolition,” he explained.

Christina nodded, still not really understanding. “Can you wiggle your foot?” she asked Eric.

“He won’t have a fracture,” Jack said as the boy moved his foot cautiously from side to side. “Ligament will give before bone.”

“Which means what?” Christina asked, pushing down the wet, sagging sock. She pressed her lips together. The ankle was already puffy.

“If the ligaments are stretched, it’s a strain. Partly torn, it’s a sprain. Either way, all you can do is elevate the ankle and ice it.”

“I don’t have ice.”

“Did the kids pack lunches?”

She frowned. “I—yes, I believe so.”

“We put our drinks in coolers,” Eric volunteered, leaning back on his hands. “Ow. There’s ice in the coolers.”

Jack shrugged. “There you go, then.”

“The coolers are on the bus.” She sat back on her heels, looking up at him. “I can’t leave the children unsupervised. Could you…?”

“Sorry. I can’t leave you unsupervised, either.”

Her pleasure at his quick, practical response vanished. “I am not thirteen, Mr. Dalton. I am well able to take care of myself.”

“That’s what you think. You two.” The boys still on the bank straightened abruptly. “Can you find your way back to the bus?”

They looked at him. At each other. Back at him. They were little boys, Christina thought. Not soldiers. But as instinctively as any palace flunky, they responded to his tone of command.

“I guess.”

“Sure.”

“Do it, then. Take one of those tray things and bring back ice.”

“It’s half a mile to the parking lot,” Christina objected. “Besides, they’re responsible for measuring—”

“They’re responsible for seeing that their buddy is all right after landing him on the rocks. Go on, now,” Jack ordered, and they went, crashing and sliding along the trail.

Christina drew a tight breath. She would not be dictated to like one of the children. “We should move Eric up the bank. And raise his foot.”

“Right,” Jack said, surprising her by his cooperation. “I’ll take care of it. You do the teacher stuff. Measuring, was it?”

“Temperature and current flow,” she confirmed. She studied Eric, his freckles stark in his pale face. Uncertainty fluttered in her stomach. He was her responsibility. Should she cancel the field trip now?

“We’ll be okay,” Jack said quietly. “I’ll keep cold water on the ankle till the kids get back with the ice. Is there something this guy can do in the meantime? You got another of those clipboards?”

Christina seized the idea thankfully. Activity would distract Eric from his discomfort and make the wait easier. “He can record times for the rest of the class when they measure currents. I’ll go wrap up the water life project, and bring the kids here.”

“Don’t be gone long,” Dalton warned.

Irritation pricked her. Outdoors in Montana, she didn’t need anyone to tell her what to do. This was her place, her area of expertise, and no fish-out-of-water seaman with blue eyes and big muscles was going to order her around.

Still, she was obliged to him. She stifled a sigh. Queen Gwendolyn had instilled in all her children a very strong sense of their obligations.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said, and made her escape.

She was as good as her word, Jack thought.

Christina strode back within five minutes, her charges strung out behind her like a bunch of baby ducks, wading and wobbling off course. And instead of doing her princess-in-a-tower routine, all distant and aloof, she laughed and listened and encouraged them, and splintered his perceptions. Again.

He’d been wrong about her. Once upon a time that kind of misjudgment could have gotten him killed. Now it got him interested.

There were grass stains on the knees of those fancy catalog pants and a streak of mud on her cheek. Her eyes were bright. Her face was flushed, and she smiled often. She looked like one of the damn kids.

And then, in response to the slowly rising temperature, she took off her nylon jacket with all the pockets, and his whole body tightened.

Okay, not like one of the kids, Jack acknowledged. Those were bona fide adult female curves under that plain T-shirt in an expensive fabric blend. But she was no less off-limits than one of the munchkins.

Yeah, she was a blonde, and he dug blondes. Her legs, in tailored khaki, tempted a man to imagine them naked or wrapped around his waist or resting on his shoulders.

But Jack knew his limitations. He didn’t “do” good girls. He didn’t go after the chardonnay and postgraduate degree type. And if he’d ever had any fantasies about making it with a princess, they hadn’t gone beyond tenth grade, when he’d wrestled off Valerie Hardison’s bra after the Boone High School production of Once Upon a Mattress.

Christina Sebastiani was a job. Maybe not even that, if he didn’t like the look of the intelligence packet the old man put together.

Still, Jack could watch and admire and, in his own fashion, pay tribute.

He eased his camera from his pocket. It was a nice little Nikon, light and compact. Nothing like the sleek, inconspicuous numbers he’d carried on missions, with their high-speed film and low-light capabilities, but he’d left his toys, his cameras and guns, behind. Now he shot pictures with a thirty-five millimeter aperture and shot targets with a nine.

He played for a moment with framing and focus and then let his lens see for him. Whir and click on Christina, her profile sharp and perfect as a queen on a silver coin. Click on the slant of sunlight drifting through the trees. Whir and click to catch Eric, fingers cramped and tongue stuck out in concentration as he printed on a chart. Click on Christina again, her blond head bent forward as she conferred with two girls. Click on a willow, leaning down from the bank to trail pale leaves in the dark water. On Christina, laughing. Christina, stretching. Christina… glaring at him.

He lowered his camera.

She stalked toward him, her long legs making a statement of their own. “What are you doing?”

He couldn’t figure what had tweaked her tail. But she was definitely upset. He answered honestly. “Taking pictures.”

“Why?”

“Habit?” When she didn’t smile, he shrugged and elaborated. “I used to be a photographer’s mate. Only then it turned out the Teams needed a photography specialist, so I graduated to intelligence ops.”

Her eyes widened. “You were spying on me?”

“Princess, if I were spying on you, you wouldn’t catch me at it. I was taking pictures, that’s all.”

“What kind of pictures?”

“Trees. Water. Kids. What difference does it make?”

Her gaze slid sideways toward Eric, hunched over the clipboard a few yards away. His right ankle was stretched in front of him, propped on Jack’s jacket and draped with a cold, wet sock.

“I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “I don’t like having my picture taken.”

So, maybe now was a bad time to confess that he had more than one shot of her. “Yeah, I could have guessed that,” Jack drawled.

She blushed. He didn’t know many women who still did that. He would have bet princesses didn’t. “How is he?” she asked.

Jack tore his attention from the pretty pink color in her cheeks. Who? Oh, yeah. The kid. Eric.

“Not bad,” Jack said. “Hard to tell how much damage was done until the swelling goes down. It hurts, and his toes are getting cold, but that’ll teach him not to mess around near water.”

“Will he be able to walk back to the bus?”

“Comfortably? Probably not. We’ll see how he does once we get some ice on that ankle.”

She nodded absently, her smooth, blond brows drawing together.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Jack said. “It was an accident. Could have happened on anybody’s watch.”

“I know that. It’s just the children are my responsibility, and I feel…”

“Guilty?”

She frowned. “Concerned.”

Jack leaned against the tree trunk at his back, satisfied he’d provoked her into forgetting all about his camera and her worries. “I didn’t want you to fret about what I was thinking, that’s all.”

She looked at him like he was something scraped off the bottom of her royal shoe. “I am completely indifferent to what you think.”

He grinned. “You don’t look indifferent. You look—” he paused, enjoying her frost “—annoyed.”

Another woman would have blown up at him. But Princess Cupcake held it together, held it in. Training, he thought. Not his kind of training, but he could still respect her discipline.

“Not at all. I appreciate your help with Eric.” Her smile glinted, cool as water over rock. “And if he can’t walk, I’ll appreciate it even more.”

An hour later, it was time for the kids to return to the bus for lunch and the ride back to school. And Eric couldn’t walk.

Shouldn’t walk, Jack told Christina. The pain was his body’s way of warning him against putting weight on that ankle.

“All right.” She didn’t argue. He liked that about her, too. “Can you get him to the parking lot?”

Jack wanted to tell her it would be a piece of cake. He used to run holding a one-hundred-seventy-pound rubber boat over his head. He used to do sit-ups cradling a two-hundred-pound section of telephone pole. But then he’d been able to rely on his swim team. Then he’d been able to rely on his shoulder.

He looked at the white-faced Eric. One hundred thirty pounds, tops. “I can try.”

“What can I do to help?”

“Stay out of our way.”

Jack dumped ice by the side of the stream and retrieved his jacket from the ground. The kid couldn’t hobble half a mile, even with support. A piggyback ride was out of the question. The docs who had stitched Jack together had carved a nice chunk from his back to replace the missing muscle in his left shoulder. But if he took the kid in a fireman’s hold, he wouldn’t need to rotate the shoulder. He could distribute the weight over his back and hips.

He lowered himself to one knee. “You’ve got to put your arms around my neck.”

Standing behind him, Eric hesitated. “Maybe I could walk.”

“Don’t be a hero, kid. You’ll regret it in the morning.”

He heard his own tone, harsher than he intended, and saw Christina’s eyes narrow. Watch it, Flash. Christina was sharp. Too sharp. He didn’t want her guessing what was wrong with him. He didn’t like her knowing there was anything wrong.

“Tell you what, next time you can carry me,” he suggested lightly.

He was rewarded when Christina relaxed and Eric leaned against his back. Jack gripped the boy’s arms against his chest and pushed to his feet.

And the first part of the trail was easy. He’d been working out, hadn’t he? Lifting weights, just like the physical therapist had told him. Developing his damn range of motion. His legs were strong. And he was pumped to be in action again.

After they passed the quarter-mile mark, though, he could hear Eric puffing in discomfort. The hold put pressure on the boy’s chest. It had to be pulling on his arms, too. He hung, a dead weight on Jack’s back, his left foot occasionally bumping Jack’s legs. Jack felt the stretch reach deep into his shoulder as scar tissue gave. Despite the cool temperature under the trees, he tasted sweat on his upper lip and felt it at the base of his spine.

Don’t quit. Don’t be a quitter. The words had kept him going during weeks of training on the beach at Coronado, during months of physical therapy in a well-lit room that stank of antiseptic and pain. And they’d worked then, because then he had believed that if he didn’t quit he could be everything he wanted to be. He could be a SEAL.

He knew better now. He wasn’t working for anything now. But he still didn’t quit.

“Can we stop a minute?” Eric huffed in his ear.

Jack unclenched his jaw. “Sure, kid. Let me get to that log up there…” Fifteen steps, he thought. He could do another fifteen steps. No problem. “…and we’ll take a break.”

It was twenty-two steps, and when Jack lowered the big eighth grader onto the fallen tree, pain knifed from his shoulder to his hand. “Referred pain,” the therapist called it. Jack had another word, but he couldn’t use it in front of the kid.

He glanced down at the boy. Eric’s face was really red. His mouth worked as he struggled not to cry.

Reluctant sympathy moved in Jack. “Breathe in through your nose,” he instructed.

The kid, near tears and embarrassed, kept his head down, focusing on his wet, bare ankle.

“Come on,” Jack urged. “In through your nose for a count of four, hold it for seven, breathe out for eight.” He demonstrated. “Helps with the pain,” he explained.

“How would you know?” the boy muttered. His eyes were wet.

“It worked when I was shot.”

Eric looked up, diverted from his sulks and his swollen ankle. “Really?”

“Yeah. Try it. In, two, three, four. Hold…and out slow, six, seven, eight. Good. Again.”

They matched breaths a couple more times, until the kid’s shoulders relaxed and his unhealthy color faded.

“That’s it,” Jack encouraged. “Never let ’em see you sweat.”

The boy swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. “You’re sweating.”

“Yeah, well, that’ll be our secret, okay?”

Eric gave him a shaky smile. “Okay.”

“Is everything all right?”

Princess Cupcake had backtracked along the straggling line of students. Intent on the boy, Jack had not heard her approach. God, he really was slipping.

Concern warmed her big blue eyes. Jack stiffened. He didn’t want her pity.

And he wasn’t sacrificing the kid to her compassion, either. He remembered too well what it was to be thirteen and afraid that your voice or behavior would let you down, to have a man-size ego and feet, and a child’s need to please.

“I needed a breather,” he said. “So we stopped.”

She studied them both, still with that gooey look in her eyes. How much had she heard?

“Is he too heavy for you?” she asked.

Jack would not be offended. She was being responsible, and he was—well, okay, he was a little offended. No SEAL had ever left behind a dead or wounded comrade. “What, are you going to carry him? He outweighs you by twenty pounds.” He shook his head. “We’re doing fine.”

“We could make a chair of our arms and carry him that way.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. She probably could have gotten Eric out like that, changing bearers, if Jack hadn’t happened along. But they were almost at the bus now. And a forearm carry would put a hell of a lot more stress on his shoulder than the fireman’s hold.

“I told you, we’re fine. I don’t need your help.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Very well. I certainly wouldn’t want to interfere with you flexing your very impressive set of muscles. I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

She swept up his jacket and stalked down the trail, leaving him behind to admire her classy comeback and her heart-shaped rear end.