Her Last Line of Defense (3 page)

“If your constituents don’t like your little forays into meddling, they can vote their opinion. I may endorse your opponent myself,” she added darkly.

Her father made a choking noise, but wasn’t turning any funny colors or clutching his chest so Claire figured he was only pissed off.

She turned to the sergeant. “So you’re off the hook with me. Again, I’m sorry for this mess, and I’ll make sure it doesn’t harm you or your career.”

He stared silently at her, his dark eyes unreadable.

She fumbled slightly but finally shoved her hands into two of the pants’ eight pockets.

Her father finally found his voice. “You ungrateful child!” He swung around and stomped off to where his aide stood back at the building practically wringing his hands.

“The man surely has a sense of the dramatic. I’m shocked he didn’t quote
King Lear
at you.”

“What?” Claire looked at him in surprise.

“I see you as more of a Cordelia type—the dutiful daughter who is the only one to stick with her cranky old dad.”

Claire blinked. “Yes, I read
King Lear
in college. When did you read it?”

“The army sends Shakespeare comic books overseas for us to look at the pictures when we aren’t blowing things up.” He delivered his smarty-pants answer with a straight face.

“Oh, buzz off!” She jumped off the picnic table, intending to find Janey and beg her forgiveness.

Boudreaux blocked her way so quickly she didn’t see him move. “I’ll do it.”

“Do what?” Claire turned to him.

“Train you. Get ready for San Lucas—as ready as you can be. As ready as anyone can be,” he muttered to himself.

“You will?” Claire’s heart beat faster.

“I’ll tell you right now—you’re nuts for wanting to go, and I fully plan on making you rethink your decision.” Her stomach flipped at the first smile she’d seen from him, his teeth flashing white in his black beard. “In fact, I plan on making you
regret
your decision.”

“Been known to happen.” Olie nodded solemnly. The bartender set down their drinks.

“That it has.” Luc nodded back. They had lost a teammate in the same incident that had stranded Luc for five weeks. Luc knew it still ate up Olie, him being the commanding officer and all, even if it wasn’t his fault. Luc lifted his mug in a silent toast to fallen brothers in arms. Olie lifted his in reply and they both drank solemnly.

After a few minutes, Olie broke the silence.

“As long as that’s all you do with her.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Miss Cook is not exactly hard on the eyes, Rage. Pretty hair, bright smile and a sweet disposition all look mighty nice to a man who hasn’t got laid for almost nine months. Maybe you should reconsider and take that cute lieutenant with you after all.”

Luc straightened in outrage. “You saying she’s not safe with me? That I need a chaperone to make sure I act as a gentleman and a soldier of the United States Army?”

“At ease.” Olie waved a hand at him. “All I’m saying is that a ragin’ Cajun, war hero-type like yourself might appeal to a girl who’s finally away from her overprotective dad. Too much of that Frenchie accent and she may go crazy and throw herself at you.”

“Right,” Luc scoffed. “Princess Cook probably has some weenie boyfriend named Preston Shelby Blueblood the Nineteenth waiting for her back in ol’ Virginia. He’ll spend the next year screwing around on her while she’s in San Lucas and ask her to marry him as soon as she gets off the plane. They’ll have a couple kids while he keeps screwing around on her and dumps her for his secretary in ten years.” He subsided into a funk, realizing he sounded like an idiot.

“O-kay.” Olie raised his blond eyebrows. “Well, our immediate concern is not for her future marital happiness, so that’s one burden we don’t have to carry.”

“Yes, sir,” Luc muttered. What the hell was wrong with him? Her personal life was none of his damn business anyway.

Olie’s cell phone rang and he flipped it open, answering with several “yes, sirs.” He closed the phone and swiveled on the bar stool back to Luc. “Colonel Spencer says he made arrangements for you both with the marines at Parris Island. The swamp is about as close to jungle as you can get in the Southeast.”

Luc wished he could take her back to Louisiana, but everything was still torn up from the hurricane last fall, and he didn’t think he could stand being so close to home and not see his family. And he wasn’t about to come home with a woman. His mother would never understand his unorthodox situation and would be calling Father Andre at the church to set a wedding date. He shuddered.

Olie continued, “She’ll do her training during the day and sleep in the VIP quarters at night.”

“Shit, they don’t even want her to know how to make shelter at night? That’s where you run in to trouble.”

Olie grunted. “She probably gets her bed turned down and a mint on her pillow.” He dug around in the nut dish and chose a big brown Brazil nut.

“Funny, I don’t remember mints on my pillow when I was in the jungle—the only brown things under my head were bugs. And at one point, that bug
was
my bedtime snack.” Luc ate a peanut.
Pistaches de terre,
they called them at home. Too salty—he liked plain boiled peanuts better.

Olie shook his head. “Not doing her any favors by letting her off easy at night.”

Luc thought for several seconds. Nuts to the jarheads at Parris Island and their VIP quarters. Survival training without night training meant no survival at all. “This thing with Claire Cook is still an unofficial thing—I’m on leave as of now, right?”

“Yeah. Why?” Olie gave him a wary look, his fingers clamped around a cashew.

“Just want to make sure I’m not going AWOL if I take her on a side trip.”

Olie dropped the cashew. “AWOL? Side trip?” He covered his ears with his beefy hands and shook his head. “As far as I’m concerned, the only side trip I need to know about is to the Parris Island ice cream stand.”

Luc set down his empty mug. He knew just the place he would take her. One of his old buddies had bought a huge chunk of land abutting a national wildlife refuge and had invited Luc and the guys to use it whenever he wanted. It was really out in the middle of nowhere. The animals couldn’t yet read the signs telling them they were leaving federal land, so plenty wound up at his friend’s place. No marines, no babysitters, no chaperones. Him, her and the swamp.

People who weren’t used to the swamp freaked out pretty easily at all the weird noises, smells and bugs. Maybe if they were lucky, he’d even take her out at night when the gators roared. “We’ll be out in the swamp twenty-four, thirty-six hours tops before she starts crying to go home to Daddy.”

“You think so, huh.” His CO shook his head. “We’ll see, Rage. We’ll see.”

A black-haired stranger stood in front of her door, his face turned to the side. Wow, was he a looker with a strong, clean jaw and firm, full lips. His short haircut indicated that he was probably military despite the fact he wore jeans and a black T-shirt. What should she do? It was past midnight. “Yes?” she ventured, tugging her peach-colored cotton robe around her.

“Miss Cook?” He stopped scanning the hall and stared at the peephole.

She swallowed hard. “Sergeant Boudreaux?” she asked faintly. Good Lord, the man cleaned up well. Better than well, magnificently.

“You alone, ma’am?”

“Of course.” She undid the chain and yanked open the door. “Who else would be here with me?” As if she’d brought a boyfriend when she had important preparation to do.

He gave her an amused smile. “Oh, I don’t know—maybe your father or your friend the lieutenant.”

“Oh.” Her mind had immediately jumped to things of a sexual nature and she blamed
him
. Worst of all, he knew what she’d assumed.

“If you’re not comfortable letting me into your room, we can meet downstairs in the bar.”

“No, no, that’s all right.” She stopped clutching the door and opened it for him. “Come in.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” He stepped into her room and looked around. “Never been in this hotel before even though it’s not too far from the base. Fancy.”

Claire supposed it was, with its high ceilings designed for hot Southern nights, creamy warm yellow wallpaper and matching bedding. She snuck a glance at the dark wooden four-poster bed behind her, which seemed to have tripled in size since she’d answered the door.

His gaze followed hers. “Nice bed.”

“Um, yes. Yes, it is, although I haven’t really tried it out yet. Since we just got here today.” She’d been too nervous to sleep, knowing she’d be out in the woods with him tomorrow, but that was nothing compared to having him in her bedroom. “You got a shave and a haircut.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“You suggested it, didn’t you?” He rubbed his chin. “Feels strange to have a smooth face after so many months.”

Claire never guessed he was so handsome under all that hair. She couldn’t stop watching his hand rub his tight, tanned skin. Her nipples tightened and she gathered her robe closer. “What brings you here, Sergeant?”

“You.”

“What?”

“I need to make sure you’re ready.”

Oh, she was. But probably not for what he had in mind. “I’ll be at the base at oh-seven-hundred hours like we planned.” She thought her little foray into military time was pretty good, but he obviously disagreed.

“Real training should start at what we call ‘oh-dark-thirty.’”

“What time is that?” It sounded terribly early.

“Whenever the CO hauls your ass out of bed—three, four o’clock in the morning.”

“My goodness, that is early.”

“The old army recruiting slogan had it right—‘we do more before 9:00 a.m. than most people do all day.’”

“Shouldn’t they have said ‘oh-nine-hundred’?” He gave her a strange look. “I mean, using military time and all that…”

“Let me see your stuff.” Without getting permission, Sergeant Boudreaux hefted one duffel bag. “Crap! Can you even lift this thing?” He easily tossed it to Claire, but its weight pitched her backward onto the bed and she found herself staring at the underside of the yellow canopy.

He muttered another curse and pulled the bag off her chest. “You okay?”

She nodded as she tried to catch her breath. Before she knew it, he was kneeling next to her on the bed and running his hands expertly over her shoulders and arms. He hesitated briefly as his fingers brushed the sides of her unbound breasts, but continued his checkup. “Take a deep breath.”

Claire did, her robe falling open to reveal her sheer cotton nightgown. His gaze fell to the rise and fall of her breasts, and she realized the dark circles of her nipples were visible.

Boudreaux swallowed. “Does it hurt?” His voice was thick and sweet as cane syrup.

“Does
what
hurt?” Her nipples were starting to hurt from being so hard. Despite his rough exterior, his hands had been gentle.

“Your chest. I mean, when you breathe.” His own breath was coming faster.

“You mean, here?” Some little devil made Claire massage the tops of her breasts and breastbone between.

His hands clearly gripped his jeans-clad knees. “Yeah. There. Do I need to call you an ambulance?”

She stopped, disappointed. “No. Are you trying to break my ribs so I don’t go?”

He leaped off the bed so smoothly the only evidence he’d ever been there was his imprint on the duvet. “Back to the duffel.” He crouched and unzipped it while she sat up. “Camping gear?” He lifted a sarcastic eyebrow. “What did you do, clean out the Bass Pro Shop?”

“No, of course not!” It had been the L.L. Bean catalog.

He pulled out each item, giving a running tally. “Sleeping bag, sleeping bag
pillow
, mess kit, ground sheet—okay, that might be useful…biodegradable dish soap?” He shook his head. “Planning on doing any dishes? A GPS unit—do you even know how to use this? Got any extra batteries? They go bad quickly in hot, damp climates. Oh, look, how useful. An unsharpened pocketknife. Got a whetstone?”

Claire shrugged. She wasn’t sure.

Boudreaux continued, “No compass, no whetstone, no machete—”

“Machete? What’s that for?”

“A machete, or ma-chay-tay, as our Spanish-speaking friends would call it, is
the
golden ticket to survival. You wanna make friends in the Amazon, you bring the natives high-quality machetes, and lots of them. If you’ve never seen the gardener on your family estate use one, they look like a really big knife curved on the sharp side.”

Claire curled her lip at the crack about her “family estate.” “Where do I get a machete?”

“I have several. You can borrow one for now.”

She was already bringing medical supplies for the hospital and educational supplies for the school, but she’d have to talk to Dr. Schmidt about how to bring machetes. She didn’t suppose she could throw several foot-long knives into her airline carry-on.

“And your other bag?” He lifted the smaller duffel bag. “Don’t worry. Now that I know you have no upper-body strength I won’t throw this at you.”

“It’s a bit late for developing upper-body strength, don’t you think?”

He gave her an evil grin. “It’s never too late for push-ups. And no girl push-ups, either, where your butt’s sticking up in the air.”

“You want me to drop and give you twenty? That way you can check how my butt is.” She challenged him with her hands on her hips, knowing her loose nightgown would gape all the way down to her toes.

He noticed the same thing and backpedaled. “Maybe later.” He crouched and unzipped the smaller bag. “Ah, clothes from the discount rank-amateur-survivalist collection.”

“I did not shop discount,” she informed him. He held up a khaki shirt.

“Not bad—quick drying. But four of them? And one’s pink? No way I am going into the swamp with you wearing pink. Never hear the end of it.” He dug around further. “Six t-shirts, three pairs shorts, three pairs hiking pants. A packable poncho—good for making shelter. What looks like seventeen pairs of socks.”

“I blister easily.”

He gave her an incredulous look. “You kidding me? Bad feet in the jungle? What, you wanna get jungle rot or blood poisoning from a bad blister?”

“They’re special socks,” she informed him.

“Mon Dieu.”
He shook his head. “Special socks. I’m beginning to sympathize with your father more and more, Claire.”

It was the first time he’d used her first name, but she figured they’d moved past a certain formality when he’d run his hands near her breasts and stared at her nipples. She liked the way he said it in his French accent, the
R
at the end a little purring noise.

She was too busy mooning over that to notice he’d moved on to the deepest corner of her bag. “Hey!”

He had a fistful each of her bras and panties and was examining them with a clinical eye. Of course it wasn’t any of her delicate, lacy things she had a secret weakness for—these were industrial-strength white or gray cotton sports bras and panties.

“Put those back, those are none of your business.” She grabbed for them, but of course he was too quick.

“Everything about you is my business now, down to your underwear.” He stuffed them into the bag. “Glad to see you brought one hundred percent cotton. Prickly heat and fungal infections are no joke.”

Claire winced but he had moved on to the hiking boots she’d left next to the door. He examined the specially vented sides designed to drain water and sweat, tested the soles’ flexibility and tugged on the laces. He stopped and examined one lace closely.

“Is it getting frayed?” She hoped not. She had gone online and researched her boots, knowing her feet would be her weak point. These were supposed to be the best jungle-trekking boots made.

Boudreaux unlaced one boot. She probably hadn’t laced it up to Green Beret requirements. He straightened, his face serious, the boot dangling from his hand. “What do you know about the plans your father has made for your training?”

“Oh, um, he said we would all drive down to Parris Island tomorrow and get started. I’m not sure how far that is.”

“It’s about two hundred and fifty miles. Ever been there?”

She shook her head.

“It’s the Marine Corps recruiting depot for the eastern United States. Big installation. The feds do their outdoor training there.” He eyed her closely. “Your father made reservations for the two of you to stay in the VIP quarters at night after you train with me during the day.”

“So we would go out into the woods for the day and come back every night?” It sounded cushy to Claire, but not particularly effective.

“You didn’t know about your hotel arrangements?”

“I figured we’d pitch a couple of pup tents so I could learn how.”

“Pup tents. Right.” He held up her boot. “Did you realize you have a tracking device here?”

“A what?”

“Somebody planted what looks like a GPS tracking device on the tongue of your boot. See this black disc? Your other boot doesn’t have it.”

Claire stared at the plastic circle. “I barely noticed that—I thought it was an antitheft device from the store.”

“It is. An antitheft device for
you
. Not your boot. Whoever planted this can log in to a GPS server and find exactly where your boot is, every minute of every day.”

“Who would want to…” Claire’s question trailed away. Of course she knew who wanted to track her—her father. Good grief, she’d seen ads for things like this, but to find lost children who’d wandered away at the playground, not keep tabs on a grown adult. Then a worse thought hit her. Had her father put trackers in her car, her purse?

She ran across the room and dumped her purse on the bed. “Check out my stuff. I need to know if I have any more electronic babysitters.”

Boudreaux methodically examined every thing she normally carried with her. Claire blushed briefly when he found the little pouch that held her tampons and a couple condoms she’d forgotten about. His black gaze flicked to her face but he didn’t change his expression.

He probed the lining of her purse and stopped. “Here.” He pulled out a razor-sharp-looking pocketknife and slit a seam before working something out with his fingers.

She leaned over his shoulder. “Another one,” she said dully. It was a match to the one on her shoe.

“Want me to check your duffel bags?”

“No.” She waved off his offer, slumping onto the bed, her shoulders hunching.

“You think it’s your father?”

“Who else?”

“Disgruntled boyfriend? Someone who’s unhappy you’re leaving him for so long?” He looked down at her in concern.

She let out a decidedly unladylike snort. “Not hardly. I haven’t even had sex in almost a year.” She slapped a hand over her mouth. Great. Now she sounded like some sort of desperate weirdo.

He bit back a smile. “If it makes you feel better, neither have I.”

Instead of clearing the air, their mutual admission of celibacy thickened it. The condoms on her bed beckoned. Condoms, bed and extended celibacy were a potent combination.

Who would need to know if she made a move on him? She was leaving for San Lucas in less than a month, where the sexual opportunities were probably slim. She’d never been so bold with a total stranger, but he had shown her flashes of gentleness under his tough exterior. “Luc.” His name was strange and wonderful on her tongue as she ran her hand up his muscled forearm to where his bicep met his soft cotton T-shirt.

He stood frozen as a statue, the only movement in his body under his tight zipper. Emboldened, she brushed her palm over his rock-hard pec, his nipple responding instantly. He closed his eyes and shuddered.