Sandra Hill - [Vikings II 04] (29 page)

All of them were so exhausted by the time they got back to their sleeping barracks that night that they wished they were back in Georgia jumping out of airplanes.

The men took quick hot showers and fell onto their pallets, asleep practically before they hit the mattresses.

Ragnor had other plans, but they would have to wait till the morrow. Even if he had had the energy, a guard standing at the doorway ensured he wouldn’t be using that energy for anything but sleep.

But he dreamed. Sweet, sweet dreams.

Running with the wolves … rather, SEALs … uh, same thing …

Alison finished her morning rounds and decided to go run with the SEALs.

She was a little upset that Max hadn’t come to see her yesterday, even though she knew it wasn’t his fault. Ian, her father, the FBI, and Navy security had practically built a glass wall around her to keep the tangos from getting to her. If she wanted to see Max, or talk with him, she would have to take the initiative … and even then, it would take a little creative planning. That would be risky—calling attention to herself and Max and a possible relationship between
them, which was a U.S. Navy no-no. So maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

But running would be okay, she told herself. Lots of people liked to run with the SEALs, and not just military personnel at the base. Visiting celebrities, politicians, even presidents loved to run with them, looking upon the exercise as both an ego boost and a promo opportunity.

Butterflies fluttered in her stomach as she warmed up on the Grinder, knowing she would be seeing Max soon. Then she jogged slowly to the beach, where she planned to catch up with the various SEAL classes running together this morning, like any other morning. To her surprise, they were stopped up ahead, standing around, while Ian, Lieutenant George Igo, the XO of the SEALs command center, and several instructors stood arguing with Max and his teammates. Max’s swim partner, Cage, was sitting on the beach rubbing his ankle. A whole lot of yelling was going on.

She began to run faster when she realized Cage was hurt.

“I’m not volunteering out,” Cage shouted, getting clumsily to his feet with the help of Max. The tears in his eyes were a testament to the pain he was trying to hide. Either that, or a testament to his fear that he would be expelled from the training program.

“You ring out or I ring you out,” the XO said stonily. “You’ve injured your ankle, Seaman LeBlanc, and are unable to complete the rest of SEAL training. That’s that!”

“The hell it is … Lieutenant Igo, sir!” Cage insisted. Turning to Ian, he pleaded, “Master Chief,
sir … you allowed Max to continue after his concussion. Give me a chance, too.”

“Let me look at it,” Alison said, pushing to the forefront. She barely made eye contact with Max, who looked so good her mouth watered, before getting down on her knees in the sand and taking Cage’s foot in her hands. The ankle was already starting to swell, and the skin was turning a reddish blue. She probed, she pressed, she massaged, and she asked Cage questions the whole time. He denied being in pain, but she knew better.

“His ankle is sprained, not broken,” she pronounced to the XO and Ian as she stood up. “Probably a torn or stretched ligament. At worst, a sprain. At the least, a bad strain.”

“What does that mean?” Lieutenant Igo growled.

“He’s in a lot of pain.”

“No kidding!” Cage said.

Ian scowled at him in a silent message to be quiet.

“He should ice the ankle down, wrap it tight, and keep his weight off the foot for at least a week. And get an X-ray as a precaution.”

“No way!” Cage knew full well that one week out of training and he’d be dropped from this class, maybe from SEALs training forever. All the other SEAL trainees standing around grumbled their support.

“You know the rules,” Ian told Cage, his voice soft with compassion. “If you can’t do the work along with your teammates, you have got to ring out.”

“He is not dropping out,” Max said, stepping in front of Cage and going down halfway on his haunches, his back to him. “Put your arms around
my neck and wrap your legs around my hips,” he told Cage. “We’ve got a run to complete, buddy.”

Cage grinned and shook his head at Max. “Nice try, Max, but you can’t carry me and run at the same time.”

“I am a Viking. We can do anything we set our minds to do.” He gave a quick glance at Alison to emphasize the double meaning in his words.

Her heart did a little flip-flop. She knew then that he was just as aware of her as she was of him, even in the midst of this disaster.

“Do it! Do it! Do it!” the other SEAL trainees started chanting.

Max said something in an undertone to Cage about him and the other guys having carried him for weeks and now it was his turn. Although Max had several inches in height on Cage, and the Cajun was much leaner in build, it would still be a formidable task.

“Mon Dieu,
they will never believe this down on the bayou.” Cage embraced Max from behind, piggyback style, and Max stood up clumsily. Once he got his bearings, he began to jog along the beach. The other SEAL trainees smiled widely and joined in with Flash who began calling out a jubilant jody call:

Alison wasn’t the only one with tears in her eyes as she watched the very slow jogging of the troop moving up the beach. No one insisted that they run at their usual pace.

She looked at her brother and he looked at her.

“I’m beginning to understand what you see in the dodo bird,” was all he said.

They caught up with the troop and jogged along silently. At one point, Sly, who was about the same height as Max, came up beside him and they arranged Cage between them and resumed stride. Now Cage’s weight was equally distributed between two men, his arms looped over each of their shoulders, his feet off the ground. When two other men took over for them after fifteen minutes or so, Max jogged in place till Alison caught up with him. The XO and several instructors gave him a dirty look as they passed by, but not Ian. He just shook his head hopelessly at the two of them.

At first, Max just jogged along beside her, staring straight ahead. But when she glanced over, she saw that he was smiling.

He’s the only man I know whose smile is like a kiss.
“What’s so funny?”

“Not funny.”

“You’re smiling.”

He looked at her then, giving her the full benefit of his smile. His smile said it all. He was glad to see her.

Yep, kiss-smiles, for sure.
She wanted to be mad at him for getting her pregnant. She wanted to keep her distance from him emotionally till she understood her feelings. She wanted to tell him he was an idiot for calling attention to himself like he’d just done back there. But his smile melted her. And she couldn’t help herself. She smiled back.

“I earned my wings,” he told her.

The delight on his face is precious.
“I know. How was it?”

“Exciting. I want to do it again.”

Oh, Max, you are becoming a SEAL, whether you want to or not. That is pure SEAL mentality.
She laughed. It was the reaction of lots of guys … women, too. Bone-deep fear at first, then a huge adrenaline rush afterward. “You’ll have lots of opportunities if you become a SEAL.”

“Mayhap we can do it together sometime.”

Not while I’m pregnant, sweetie.
“Mayhap,” she said back, teasing.

The teasing was lost on him. “I missed you. When can I see you?”

“I don’t know. Things are dicey right now.”

He nodded. “Your brother told me.”

My brother doesn’t know the half of it.

“Meet me tonight,” he said.

“I can’t. I have a guard assigned to me all the time.” She glanced pointedly at the ensign who jogged right behind them.

Max, instead of being more cautious now that he knew they were being watched, reached over and
patted her bottom. To the scowling guard, he remarked, “Just brushing off a sand fly.”

The guard was not amused. In fact, she could have sworn he gave Max the finger.

Max couldn’t have cared less. “I will come to you, then.”

“Don’t do that,” she said quickly. “Jeesh, you’ll get yourself kicked out of SEALs for sure. It’s one thing to defy Ian and the other instructors. Another thing all together to butt heads with the FBI and Navy Intel.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

“They fed us good in George-ha,” he said, as if that were relevant to anything.

“Uh, well, great!”

“But do you know what I asked for with every meal?”

She couldn’t even guess, and she probably looked ridiculous gaping at him in question.

“Peanut butter and honey sand-witches.” He grinned and waggled his eyebrows at her.

You are such a child.
She couldn’t help but grin back at his playfulness.

“I heard your father was here. I would have liked to meet him. By the by, what is your bride price?”

Another quick change of subject and, whooee, it was a zinger. Was he deliberately trying to throw her off balance?
Well, I’ve got news for you, buster, I’ve been off balance ever since I met you.
“Why?”

He cast her a tsk-tsk look, as if she’d asked an odd question. “You know why.”

No, I don’t. At least, I don’t think I do. Oh, no! He wouldn’t!
No way was she going to go down that path.
Time for her to do the quick-change thing and throw him off balance.

“Does the name Kirsten Magnusson mean anything to you?”

Max’s head jerked to the side to look at her. “I had a sister named Kirsten at one time.”

“
Had?
”

“She died when she was fourteen years old, along with the rest of my family. Why do you ask?”

Alison was spared from answering by the roar of
“Magnusson!”
from her brother, who was jogging back to them. “What the hell are you doing back here all this time?”

“Just talking.”

“Talking?
Talking?
Is that what we friggin’ pay you to do in BUD/S? Get your ass in gear to the front of the squad. And since you’re in the mood for talking, how ’bout you call out a jody so we can all benefit from your wisdom.”

Ragnor winked at Alison and loped up to the front, where two of his classmates were transferring Cage onto another set of shoulders. When they finished running, Alison planned to check Cage over more thoroughly and bind him up so that no further harm would be done.

“Is your brain melting, to be associating with a trainee in public?” Ian inquired, watching her watch Max as he jogged to the front.

Probably.
“I wasn’t associating. I was just running with the teams, and he happened to be running beside me.”

Ian snorted with disgust.

Just then, Ian was given more reason for disgust,
though she noticed his lips twitching with mirth, as Max called out his own version of a jody call:

That last, rhymeless word was added for her benefit, she was pretty sure. In fact, when Max glanced back at her and winked, she knew for certain.

She put a hand over her belly and said to herself,
Oooh, baby, we are in big trouble.

When love comes knock, knock, knocking …

Alison was in the shower that night when she heard a soft knock on the glass door of the shower stall.

At first, she was alarmed. How had someone entered her unit on the second floor of the officers’ quarters? Could it be the tango? She grabbed for a loofah back scrubber and crouched down into a defensive position.

When the tango entered, she raised her “weapon” and was about to whack him on the head, but the culprit grabbed the handle in mid whack and threw it to the floor. The tango was Max.

“Are you crazy? You almost gave me a heart attack. And I could have really hurt you.”

“With that?” He glanced disdainfully at her “weapon.”

“Why are you here?” she asked, wiping water out
of her eyes from the continuing hot spray. Barefoot and bare-chested, wearing only nylon running shorts, Max was already wet … not that he appeared to mind.

“Because I am dirty?” He smiled at her, giving special meaning to “dirty.”

“How did you get here?”

“I rappeled down from the roof and came through your living-room window. Sorry I am, but I had to break the lock. Well, not too sorry, since I am here.”

“The roof? You rappeled down from the roof?” she asked incredulously.

He nodded. “Finally some of the training on the O-Course is beginning to have some merit … though my brother and I used to rappel on occasion when we wanted to enter a Saxon castle for a bit of raping and pillaging.” He waggled his wet eyebrows at her to show he was teasing. “Flash is up on the roof still, holding the rope and keeping watch for me.”

“I’ve heard of nut-case antics on the part of SEALs and SEAL trainees before, but this takes the cake.”

“You have cake?”

His interest in a sweet at a time like this was equally adorable and asinine. But perhaps he’d just been teasing again, because he was already backing her up against the wall and leaning down to kiss her.