The jungle was eerily silent beyond, no doubt due to the recent man-made intrusion. She turned back to Carrie, but Carrie still wouldn’t meet her gaze. For once she wasn’t sure how to respond to her best friend. Though they’d spoken regularly on the phone, they hadn’t seen each other in two years.
Evidently things had changed.
She swallowed hard. “Carrie, do you realize what you’re saying?”
Carrie turned then, pulling off her own helmet and running her fingers through her inky curls as she shrugged. “Yeah, I do.”
Oh God.
Now what?
Fortunately, she didn’t need to worry about a comeback, at least not right then. Because, as Eve tipped her head to the left and stared past her friend’s olive-drab flight suit, she spied two camouflaged soldiers with fully-loaded rucksacks on their backs stepping out from the trees beyond.
Two?
She must have stiffened, because Carrie turned around to stare as well. Her friend was smiling as she swung back. “It’s him. I was hoping he’d have to tag along. But I couldn’t be sure.”
Eve’s heart sank. Though there’d been more men in Carrie’s life than either of them could count, she’d only seen that beatific smile once before. It was during their senior year of college. During the reign of Jake-the-Great. Her heart sank even further. Carrie hadn’t been pretending. Her friend knew darn well she was playing with fire.
And she didn’t care if she got burned.
Eve flicked her gaze back to the men as their crew chief, Sergeant Lange, joined them. A couple yards more and they were close enough for her to make out their camouflage-greased facial features, though not the flat black ranking insignia on their collars. It didn’t matter. Her heart sank to her toes as she studied the taller of the two Green Beret advisors. If that was Sergeant Turner, it was too late for Carrie or the woman’s career. Heck, even she’d be tempted to rip off her wings for a night with the man.
Hunk was an understatement.
With those dark forbidding brows beneath the man’s field cap, strong cheeks and firm lips, combined with that mouth-watering physique beneath his jungle fatigues, the Army could skip the Be All You Can Be recruiting logo. For the women, anyway. Just slap a poster of this guy up in the halls of America’s high schools and they’d be signing up in droves.
As he drew closer, Eve sucked in her breath—and realized she’d been staring. A split second later, she caught the twin bars on his collar. They matched hers. Thank heaven. At least she hadn’t been ogling the man her best friend thought she was falling in love with.
If Carrie wasn’t already beyond saving.
Moments later, Eve knew she was. Before Eve could stop her, Carrie had vaulted from the cockpit and headed out to meet the men. The blinding grin still on her face as she turned back confirmed it. Jake-the-Great and every lover after was nothing more than a distant memory.
Against her better judgment, not to mention standard procedure, Eve climbed out of the cockpit as well. She rounded the front of the bird as her crew chief tossed the soldiers’ rucksacks into the rear of the chopper and climbed in after. Carrie stepped forward and grabbed her arm, practically ripping the sleeve of her flight suit off as she hauled her toward the men.
“Eve, this is Sergeant Turner. Bill, Captain Paris.”
Eve winced.
Not only had Carrie lost her head, she’d lost her manners, at least her military ones. It was bad enough for Carrie, also a captain, to be on a first-name basis with the enlisted man while in uniform, but did she have to advertise the fact before Turner’s commander?
Maybe the man would let it slide?
The deep frown on his face said otherwise.
Anxious to ward off a set-down within earshot of their crew chief, Eve nodded to the sergeant and stuck out her hand toward his commander. “Captain Paris. You must be Captain Bishop.”
If anything, Bishop’s frown deepened as he ignored her outstretched palm. “I am. Now, if social hour’s over, perhaps you soldiers would do me the favor of getting this damned bird off the ground before I miss my briefing.” He flicked his steel-blue gaze into the belly of the chopper. “Where’s my headset?”
Eve stiffened as the jackass stepped crisply past, dismissing her as curtly as he’d ignored her hand.
“My spare headset is on the fritz.”
Bishop spun about, the swift arch in his deep black brows clearly voicing his suspicions.
Too bloody bad.
Her crew chief would support her, as would Carrie.
In fact, behind Captain Marvel’s very back, Lange was already calmly slipping the extra headset with its perfectly functioning two-way communications link into its storage slot. From the way her chief snapped the door shut, she wasn’t the only one who’d taken offense at Bishop’s brusque comments.
Eve shrugged. “Global positioning is down, too. Fancy that.” She turned her back on the man before he could answer and strolled around the front of the chopper to climb in.
Captain Marvel wanted to play drill sergeant?
Fine with her. But she’d be damned if she was going to give him the courtesy of listening in while he did it.
Of all the lousy luck.
Rick bit down on his scowl as he studied the two pilots who had been tasked with ferrying him to the presidential compound for his briefing. He had no idea who the blonde was—and if she was anything like her copilot, he didn’t care. But the dark one, he knew that one all right. Better than he wanted to. Carrie Evans was going to cost him the best sergeant he’d ever had if he wasn’t careful. Dammit, he should have requested a set of male pilots. He would have, too, if it wouldn’t have led to questions.
Questions he couldn’t risk answering.
Still, he should have kept a tighter lid on his disappointment, not to mention his anger. After all, it wasn’t Captain Paris’s fault.
Well, it was too late now.
The crew chief slid the chopper’s side door shut as the officer he’d snubbed settled in the pilot’s seat and powered up the Black Hawk. Rick tugged off his field cap and scrubbed his hands through his shorn hair as he sank down into the webbed bench at the rear of the bird.
Another bad move.
His sergeant promptly took advantage of the forward empty seats, commandeering the one directly behind the pilot’s. In doing so, Sergeant Turner had afforded himself a choice view of the copilot—the same copilot Turner had been preoccupied with for five of the last six months. Rick tried scowling at the man as the chopper’s crew chief moved to the rear instrument panel to busy himself with the takeoff checks. Unfortunately, Turner’s attention was already focused on Carrie Evans.
As usual.
The bird took off smoothly, thundering over the trees where Rick had spent the last eighteen months training San Sebastián’s soldiers. He allowed his gaze to stray to the back of Captain Paris’s helmet. Eve. A good two inches of dark-gold curls spilled out from beneath the bottom edge of the Kevlar bucket, curls that were a shade lighter than the smooth brows framing those striking emerald eyes. He’d seen them for all of five seconds as the woman initiated their introduction. Thickly lashed, her eyes were unusually large…until her gaze had narrowed.
For the first time in a long time, he pushed aside regret.
In the end it wouldn’t matter how professional the woman was. In twelve years in the Army, he had more than enough experience to know that a woman that stunning was nothing but trouble out in the field. Take Carrie Evans. The captain was already paying more attention to his sergeant than to the aerial map spread out on her lap. It’d be a miracle if they reached