Heart Strike (10 page)

First Airborne, which put her in the one-in-thirty-seven category of front-line females, greatly decreasing the number of women whom she might have been friends with.

After that, Delta, where she was one of the two women out of eight hundred operators. Just her and Carla. Most men didn't want her there any more than Carla did—though she'd mellowed quite a bit after the we-both-lost-our-brothers thing.

Chad had seen her as a target, Kyle as a wait-and-see. If Duane had an opinion, he was keeping it to himself.

But Richie wanted her in a way that wasn't confined only to the bedroom. She remembered his rapt attention as he instructed her from the
Multi Engine
manual. Each time she'd proven that she could keep up with him, he'd gotten more, rather than less excited. When flying, he deferred to her seaplane skills easily, with no ego that she could detect. And there was no ignoring his true joy at her simple gift.

He was willing to accept her as she was.

As to the
more
that he wanted, the physical, she shouldn't be so willing to share. They were still unproven to each other in the field. Any disharmony their personal life caused could shatter into chaos once they deployed into the field.

Yet somehow Carla and Kyle were making it work…despite Army regulations to the contrary.

The dive boat jounced over hard waves as they rounded the southern point of Cat Island and the resort swung into view.

But they were both proven; they were both Delta. Sure, Richie had six more months in the field, but could it really be that different from the OTC? So far, it had just been some flight training.

In the last forty-eight hours she'd flown nine different models of planes, mostly at night, mostly below minimum FAA regulation limits. And she was about to crawl into bed with a man for the first time in over a year. Closer to two.

The boat eased up to the dock and Richie leaped out lightly to set the lines. Every motion was easy, fluid, and strong.

No, she wasn't going to crawl into bed with him.

She was going to dive in.

* * *

Richie would have been thrilled with a twin-sized bed in a cinder-block room.

It was the off-season and the clerk had promised him one of their nicest rooms at a reasonable rate. It was open just the one night between two rentals, so everyone came away happy.

He had stopped at the gift shop and bought her a matching doubloon that now dangled enticingly above her breasts. Then he swung through the restaurant and preordered the Angus beef and Bahamian lobster surf-and-turf for two for later.

“We'll be needing the calories,” he whispered to Melissa as he led her across the stone-paved courtyard toward their private bungalow under the gently swaying palms.

When he swung open the door, he'd been ready for the worst. Instead he found screened windows that allowed a gentle, palm-scented breeze to waft at the brightly-patterned curtains. The walls were sunshine yellow and the spread on the king-size bed was a stunning wash of coral red and ocean turquoise. It had an ornately carved headboard adding to the feel of exotic luxury. The carpet was thick beneath his feet and Melissa…

She stood close behind him, peering over his shoulder. “Ooo! Fantasy,” she whispered—that same tickle against his ear that reminded him she'd look even better out of her clothes than in…not that the bikini, or the dress shirt that she wore over it, unbuttoned with the hem that landed high on her thighs, represented all that much cloth.

Richie was trying to decide how to ease into the moment…perhaps wait for Melissa to take the lead if she wanted it.

But his body had other ideas.

He pulled her against him so that he could kick the door shut, though not before he hung out the “Do Not Disturb” sign. Even the thin bits of cotton that were between them was too much.

No luggage to unpack, just a bag with their pants and T-shirts…and a new box of protection—torn open and half its contents rammed into his shorts pocket. He dropped the bag and scooped her up. He held her in his arms and twisted around to fall backward onto the bed with her on top of him, still cradled close.

“I'm salty.”

“I'm Richie. Pleased to meet you.”

“No, I mean I should shower.”

“Sorry, I can't wait that long,” and he slipped her shirt off her shoulders and down to her elbows.

She shrugged it away. “Your loss. I bet the shower in this place is big enough for two.”

“We'll find out later.” He unclasped the catch on the bikini top and slipped it off her shoulders. Above her slender waist, she now wore only the small gold medallion.

“You're supposed to be kissing me when you do that.”

“Okay.” He tipped her back in his arms and kissed her breast. She hadn't been kidding—she looked magnificent out of her top.

Melissa wrapped her arms around his head and pulled him in tighter. And he lost himself in heaven.

When he laid her back on the bright bedspread, the powerful colors emphasized the icy whiteness of her skin, the palest gold crown of hair framing her face, and the frosty blue of her eyes. But her skin was warm, her eyes darkening with heat, and her embrace eager.

A Delta never lost control. Emotions never ruled. They were the clean-kill squad of elite counter-terrorism. They were sent in to rescue, but they weren't much for carrying handcuffs on their missions.

Richie maintained control of absolutely nothing from that first moment she lay there before him. He wanted to catalog this moment, just as when they had been swimming and he had recorded her every movement in his memory and even now could barely recall any of the marine life they'd come to see.

He wanted to be gentle, kind, tender. But that thin resolve was shredding as he looked down at her magnificent form. In moments it would break free and he would ravage this willing woman.

Sliding his hand down breast, ribs, and hip, he hooked a finger in the bikini bottoms.

Melissa raised her hips to aid its removal.

There was a distant pounding on a door.

He ignored it. He wanted to—needed to see all of her.

The pounding grew louder. It was on their door.

Melissa turned from studying his face to glancing over at the distraction.

“Go away,” he called out in a voice so hoarse and thick with need that he barely recognized it as his own.

“Sir. You must come quickly!” There was an urgency behind the shout. The desk clerk.

She lowered her still-covered hips and he took a moment to brush his hand back up her length, trace his fingers along the doubloon medallion resting between her breasts, and brush a thumb over her lips.

“Remember where we were.”

Melissa nodded mutely, the look in her eyes almost keeping him in place.

The pounding renewed. “Your plane, sir.”

With a nasty curse, he pulled away and stalked to the door, still wearing his shorts. Why were they bothering him about some slipped tie line or a misplaced dock bumper?

He cracked open the door, blocking any view back to the bed with his Ilsa on it, waiting for him.

The resort's clerk stood well off to the side.

Four Royal Bahamian Marines were arrayed in a spread across the small courtyard outside their bungalow. Two had shouldered M4s pointing directly at his chest. The other two had HK UMP submachine guns and were watching along either side of the building.

Through the trees he could see their plane floating quietly at the dock. And one of the country's few large patrol boats—all fifty meters of it—was waiting offshore. Its deck guns were aimed shoreward. The hotel's other guests must be sequestered somewhere out of sight.

“Ilsa, honey,” he called back over his shoulder. “You might want to put your gown back on.”

* * *

Melissa didn't know whether to weep or laugh.

Three hours later, they'd traded a luxurious bed built for two for side-by-side cells. They'd given her back her pants and T-shirt from the plane, but the concrete was chilly. The sole source of warmth was where their shoulders touched through the bars. They were the only prisoners in this section—a line of three steel-bar cells in a concrete cube. The Bahamians probably considered them as too dangerous to be in with the common drunks.

The laughter won out.

“You really know how to show a girl a good time, Q.”

Richie grunted at her. He'd done little else over the last three hours.

They'd been seized and questioned while the Twin Otter was practically torn apart looking for drugs. Sometime after a missed lunch, they were dragged back to Nassau. Curiously, as the only ones qualified to fly the plane, they had made the flight as pilots—with three armed guards stationed in the passenger cabin.

Richie had managed to get his one phone call before they took his prints.

USCG Clearwater Air Station's liaison officer had denied any knowledge of a person named Vito Corello. The officer had admitted that the Twin Otter belonged at their field but was currently missing.

Richie's request that the arresting officer call Fort Rucker, Alabama, had gotten him nowhere. They didn't even know Vito's rank, or if that was his real name.

The plane was what had started the whole mess. They'd stopped at customs on the north end of Cat Island upon entering the country. It had taken a while, but their computer system had eventually spit out that the aircraft belonged to a drug lord named Andres Estevan. The Royal Bahamas Defence Force had come looking for them.

Richie's comment at the beginning of the questioning, saying “He's dead,” had been ill-timed.

“Our records do not show that. How do you know about a major drug runner's death? Are you the one who killed him? Did you take over his operation?”

Richie had clammed up after that for what good it did them. And that left Melissa to wonder if he had.

She waited until they were truly alone and whispered, “Estevan? You?”

He shook his head.

She wondered how he'd known about it then.

“Kyle.”

Oh. That explained it. Except… “Not Carla?”

“No. Not for lack of desire though.”

And that left Melissa with a lot to think about. Despite the Operator Training Course and now flight training, she had yet to be in the field as an operator. Her last military action had been a 101st Airborne deployment that had earned her a lot of ground action in Afghanistan over a year ago. With the drawdown of the wars, the personnel remaining in-country had been pressed twice as hard.

Her new Delta team, assuming she got out of this prison cell, had done some serious black ops. It rankled that she hadn't had a chance to prove herself yet, to live up to the standard of a team that killed drug lords. Maybe even started intercontinental drug wars.

All she could do was sit on her hard bench and feel useless. The next step would happen when their prints came back, and in the meantime, as mundane as could be, her stomach was rumbling.

“I could use some lunch.”

Richie looked at her between the cell's bars that separated them. His gaze narrowed as if he couldn't understand her words.

“That omelet and cinnamon toast is long gone.”

He shook himself out of his apathy. “I'm worried about what happens when two operators' prints pop up on Fort Bragg's systems.”

“I'm worried about my empty stomach.”

Now he was practically squinting. Then, with a sharp nod of concession, he rose and went to the jail cell door and shouted for the guard.

Oddly, she was as touched by that as by almost anything else during this crazy day. He wouldn't have done it for himself, never would have thought to. But for her, there wasn't even a question. If she wanted dinner, he'd face down the Royal Bahamas Defence Force for it right from his prison cell.

His efforts earned them each a heavily escorted trip to the vending machines and five dollars to spend. He just set his meal beside him on the narrow bench and looked down at the floor again.

“Mmmm,” she teased him as she chewed. “Dry roast beef on soggy white bread, my favorite.”

“I'm so sorry, Melissa. I should have figured—”

“Shut up, Richie. If I'm Ilsa and you're Mr. Rick, we can at least say, ‘We'll always have the Bahamas.' It's not quite Paris but that's got to be good for something.”

The officer who'd done all the talking between phone calls and fingerprints came to stand in front of the cells. He didn't move to unlock them.

“Your prints came back.” He held up a sheaf of papers.

“Shit!” Richie hung his head even farther.

“Dishonorable discharge.”

Richie's head popped up in surprise.

No, the Army couldn't have. Melissa didn't think they could do that without a general court-martial. And definitely not so fast. Getting the “double-D” took forever and required hard proof of a heinous crime.

“Seems that you have a whole history of drug running, starting with Army medical supplies.”

Oh. Melissa was glad she'd kept her mouth shut.

She could read Richie well enough to see the initial shock and then how quickly he covered it with a noncommittal shrug. She was in Delta now, but being a member of The Unit wasn't something that ever showed up on public records—not even for queries between military units. The Pentagon still officially denied The Unit's existence to this day.

So they'd given Richie a fake dishonorable discharge and he was sharp enough to catch onto that right away.

“And you, lady. A supply sergeant dealing illegal arms under the table. Do neither of you have any respect for the uniform?”

Melissa considered pointing out that his own sandals, shorts, and light khaki shirt weren't exactly the most formal of attire. Instead, she conjured up a pained look in Richie's direction as if she was sorry she'd gotten him into something.

“We found no evidence of drugs or guns on your plane. USCG Clearwater has sent someone to retrieve it, but they are not pressing formal charges for its theft. You are to be released shortly and have six hours to be out of the country. If you can't find a flight, I'd suggest you start swimming.”