Risk Taker. Lindsay McKenna

      God help him, he wanted to gather Sarah into his arms and hold her. She needed that right now, judging by the stark look in her eyes. He could feel how alone she was in this male world. In one aspect, Sarah looked fragile and too vulnerable to be a Black Hawk pilot. In other ways, Ethan sensed her steel backbone. She was complex. And that is what drove him to know her on a personal level. What moved her? What passion directed her life? Why was she in the military? There was so much more to Blue Eyes.

      Sarah seemed to force a brittle smile. “It’s life. Everyone gets kicked around by it sooner or later.” She finished off her beer and pulled out some bills from the pocket of her jeans. “Thanks for letting me buy you lunch,” she told him. “I’ve got some stuff I gotta do over at my squadron whether I’m on the flight roster or not.”

      It was a lie, but Sarah knew if she stayed there one more minute with this SEAL, she was going to give him her trust. And that just couldn’t happen. She owed Ethan for protecting her, but she didn’t owe him personal access into her wounded heart. That, Sarah guarded, because she couldn’t stand to have her life ever shattered again.

      Rising, Ethan nodded. “Thank you.”

      Sarah lifted her hand. “Stay safe out there, okay?”

      Ethan knew a brush-off when he got one. He nodded and held her blue gaze, feeling the warmth and gentleness that was an intrinsic part of her despite the walls she erected. He also saw she was frightened. Of him? Why? Need for Sarah wrapped around his heart, and Ethan wanted to groan over his loss. “You, too,” Ethan told her, meaning it. “There’s only one of you, Sarah, and we need you here on this planet. Okay?”

      Struck by his parting words, she blinked, assimilating his statement. There was a hidden depth to Ethan, and she saw it in his genuine care for her. That protective energy of his embraced her even more powerfully than before. “Yes...of course.”

      * * *

      Well that went swimmingly, didn’t it? Ethan was angry with himself as he walked toward SEAL HQ. He had to be at a mission-planning session at 1400. He’d blown it with Sarah. She was wounded, grieving, and he’d just romped into her life like a sledgehammer shattering crystal. Damn. Running his fingers distractedly through his hair, he wondered how to repair the damage he’d done through his ignorance and impatience.

      He heard a Black Hawk spooling up at Ops. The sun, hot and burning, fried and dried out everything in its path. Ethan hated it, preferring the cool, damp and humid Alaskan wilderness. That or jumping into the ocean, where he truly felt at home.

      What was he going to do to win back Sarah’s attention? Should he continue his other black ops strategy with her? Continue to place an envelope with a stanza of a poem he’d written about her every morning before she woke up? Ethan felt driven to do it by some invisible, unnamed source. His drive to know Sarah to her soul was intense, almost dire. And he’d never felt this before with a woman.