“Let’s do it!” Harvard said, but stopped short as he caught sight of Jake. “Admiral. You’re joining us for a run this morning, sir?”
“Do you have a problem with that, Senior Chief?”
“Well…no, of course not, sir.” Harvard didn’t say the word but. He didn’t have to. It was implied.
Jake held on to the side of the team’s beat-up station wagon for balance as he stretched the muscles in first one thigh and then the other. He kept his expression pleasant, his voice easygoing. “Say what you’re thinking, H. If we’re going to be a team, we can’t keep secrets from each other.”
“I guess I was thinking, sir, that if I were an Admiral, you wouldn’t find me volunteering for PT at oh-seven-hundred on a morning after I’d been out on a sneak and peek until oh-three-hundred.”
Jake looked at the faces of his men. And woman. Zoe was there, dressed in running gear that might as well have been painted on to her. He looked away from her, refusing to let himself think about last night. Refusing to think about that incredible kiss.
“Cowboy here was out as late as I was,” he pointed out. “Lucky and Wes, too. In fact, who here closed their eyes last night before oh-three-thirty?”
No one.
Jake smiled. “So like you said, Senior, let’s do it. I’m as ready as you are.”
Harvard looked at Cowboy, and Cowboy nodded, very slightly.
The message couldn’t have been more clear if he’d signaled with flags.
Don’t let the old man hurt himself.
Jeez.
Harvard set the pace, taking the road that led in a two-mile loop around the campground at an unchallenging jog.
And no one complained. In fact, they hung way back, letting Jake be way out ahead, up with Harvard.
Not a single one of ’em thought Jake could keep up with them. Not even Billy or Mitch.
It would have been funny if it weren’t so damned sobering. If his team didn’t think he could keep up with them on a morning run, there wouldn’t be much they’d trust him to do.
But then Zoe broke free from where she’d been blocked in, in the back, kicking her pace until she’d moved up alongside Jake. She didn’t say a word. She just made a face, clearly scornful of the slow and steady pace. And then she lifted one eyebrow, her message again quite clear. Shall we?
Stop thinking of that kiss. God, he had to stop thinking about that kiss. Shall we run? she’d meant. As in run faster.
Jake nodded. Yeah. He turned and gave the senior chief his best-buddy smile. “Hey, H, how many times around this loop do you figure you’ll go?”
Harvard smiled back. He clearly liked Jake. But this wasn’t about being liked. “Oh, I figure twice’ll do it, sir.”
“And at this pace, that’ll take you, what? About forty minutes?”
“A little less, I think.”
“Dr. Lange and I are going to push it a little bit faster,” Jake said, “and a little bit farther. We’re going to do three loops in about two-thirds the time. Just let us know when you get back to camp.”
Zoe was ready, and as Jake jammed it into higher gear, she was right beside him.
“Hey!” he heard Harvard say as they left him in their dust. He put on a burst of speed, hustling to catch up. “Admiral, this isn’t necessary. You don’t need to prove anything here.”
“Obviously, I do.”
“We’re all tired this morning—”
“Speak for yourself. I’m an old man—I don’t need much sleep.”
Harvard looked pained. “I assure you, sir—”
“Save your breath, Senior. You’re going to need it if you want to keep up.” And Jake ran even faster.
* * *
Zoe stood under the campground shower and let the water stream onto her head.
She hadn’t run a race like that in a long time. And it had been a race. Three times around the KOA campground driveway. At least six miles. At top speed.
It had been some kind of macho showdown, and Jake had come out on top. He was a good runner—he held something back, something in reserve for the end of the race. While everyone else was working overtime to keep up the pace for that last quarter mile, Jake had pulled a sprint out of his back pocket.
She shut off the shower and toweled herself dry.
The other SEALs had tried valiantly to keep up with the admiral, but Harvard was the only one who’d stayed neck and neck.
And when it was over, Jake had been able to carry on a conversation. Bobby and Wes had been gasping for oxygen like fish on the deck of a boat, yet Jake had calmly given out orders, flashing that incredible smile of his at the pack of them.
At everyone but Zoe.
She slipped on her robe and wrapped her towel around her shoulders, using it to reach up and rub her wet hair as she headed toward the trailers.
The smile he’d sent in her direction had been self-conscious, and she knew he couldn’t so much as look at her without thinking about that kiss they’d shared last night.
He was obviously embarrassed. It was clear he didn’t know what to say to her, obvious that she’d overstepped the boundaries of propriety.
That was just perfect. She’d been trying to help, but all she’d done was make things awkward between them and…
Zoe had to laugh at herself—at her self-righteous attempt to justify what she’d done last night.
The truth was that she’d kissed Jake Robinson because she’d wanted to kiss Jake Robinson. Badly. She’d wanted to kiss him since she’d first found out about kissing, back in seventh grade.
She’d pushed too hard too fast, and now she was paying for it.
As she went up the steps to her private RV, she saw Jake standing with Bobby and Wes at the door to the main trailer.
He was watching her, but instead of holding her gaze, he looked away.
His message couldn’t have been more clear. This assignment was going to be neither easy nor fun for him. He’d prefer to keep whatever it was that had made him kiss her the way he had locked deep inside of him forever.
He was still in love with his wife, and a man like Jake Robinson would never cheat, not even on a memory.
* * *
Lieutenant Lucky O’Donlon burst into the surveillance trailer as if his pants were on fire.
He skidded to a stop next to Bob Taylor and furiously whispered into the big enlisted man’s ear. Lucky was gone as quickly as he came in, and now it was Bobby’s turn to stand up.
Moving with the agile speed and grace of a ballet dancer, the six-feet-five-inch tall, seemingly six-feet-wide SEAL pirouetted elegantly over to his swim buddy, Wes Skelly, and, glancing almost nervously at Jake, he leaned over and whispered something into Wes’s ear.
Another graceful leap and Bobby, too, was out the door.
Wes knocked all the papers from his file onto the floor in his haste to get to his feet. He scooped them up, tossed them on the table in random order, and scurried toward Cowboy, Crash and Mitch.
As he spoke to them, his voice was too low for Jake to hear, but he gestured with his thumb toward the door, then scrambled after Bobby.
Jake looked at Harvard, who was fine-tuning the programming for their satellite access computers. The big senior chief frowned as he watched Mitch rise to his feet and saunter out the door. He turned and met Jake’s eyes and shook his head, anticipating the admiral’s question.
“What the hell is going on?” Jake stood up for the first time in what seemed like hours, stretching his legs and heading toward the door.
Cowboy had crossed to the window and stood looking out.
Crash glanced out the door. “Apparently Dr. Lange has returned from her pool party.”
“Yes,” Cowboy said from the window. “She’s definitely wearing a bikini. And she’s definitely…wearing a bikini.”
Jake opened the door, and stepped outside, intending to go out there and kick some ass. The male members of his team had no right to ogle Zoe, bikini or…
No bikini.
What she was wearing was, in fact, almost no bikini.
Two very small triangles of black fabric stretched across her full breasts, attached with a string that tied around her neck and around her back.
Oh, God, he was staring. Just like Lucky and Bobby and Wes and even unflappable Mitch Shaw, Jake was standing there and staring. He forced his eyes from her breasts and encountered her perfect rear end.
She was wearing some kind of a sarong-style cover-up around her hips, but it was white and completely wet and did little in the way of covering her.
In fact, it clung to her, outlining every detail of her black bikini bottoms, which weren’t much in the way of bottoms at all. They were cut high on her legs, high on her rear. Oh, yeah, there was no doubt about it. Zoe Lange had a world-class rear end.
But Jake already knew that. He’d had his hands all over it just a few nights ago.
And he’d been avoiding her ever since.
“Isn’t anyone going to get me a towel?” she asked.
Jake realized with a jolt that her hair was soaking wet. She was carrying a towel, but it was drenched and dripping, as was her bag and a pair of jeans she had over her arm. She still had beads of water on her shoulders and chest and…
The late afternoon air had an autumn chill. It was blatantly obvious that she was freezing.
He quickly lifted his gaze to her face. “What happened?”
“I got pushed into the pool on my way out of the party. Hal didn’t want me to leave. But things were getting a little…too friendly.” She was trying to be flip, trying to be tough and matter-of-fact. “It’s no big deal. I got a little wet.”
Lucky bounded over, a dry white towel in his hands, as Mitch reached to take her wet things.
“I’ll hang these up for you,” Mitch said.
It was amazing. Jake knew that after only three days of working together as a team, Lucky O’Donlon was hot for Zoe. But Mitch? Lieutenant Mitchell Shaw was not human when it came to distractions. He was the only man Jake had ever met who was completely nondistractable. Or so Jake had believed.
Lucky wrapped his towel around Zoe’s shoulders, gently rubbing her arms, but she quickly backed away.
“Don’t touch me!” Zoe’s outburst surprised them all—herself included. She forced a smile. “Whoa. Where’d that come from? Sorry, Luke. I guess my whole afternoon was just a little too intense.”
“Yo,” Harvard said from the trailer door. “How come you guys don’t throw me a welcome home party every time I come back to camp? We’ve got two months of work to do in two days and I see people standing around. Check the pay stubs in your wallets, please, and unless your pay grade is admiral, get your butts back inside.”
“I need a shower, Senior Chief,” Zoe said. “Give me twenty minutes to get cleaned up.” She glanced at Jake as she wrapped her towel more tightly around her. “If that’s okay, Admiral, I’ll give you a full report then.”
Admiral. It was her acknowledgment of his attempt to put a little space, a little formality between them since that night they’d kissed.
Hold me like you want to be inside me.
He wanted. Despite Daisy’s memory, despite his and Zoe’s age difference, despite the fact that she was at least partly under his command, a member of his team, he wanted her.
Keeping his distance seemed the smartest option under the circumstances. They were going to be forced into close quarters soon enough.
“A full report after you shower would be fine, Doctor.”
Jake watched her turn away, watched her head toward the small RV that held her private quarters. But then he saw it. Bright red on the white of the towel.
He caught up with her quickly. “Zoe, you’re bleeding.”
She looked at the towel, pulling it back to reveal a nasty-looking scrape on her right elbow. Jake lifted the towel to reveal a lesser abrasion on her other arm. They were the kind of scrapes a woman might get from being pushed down, hard, onto her back. “Wow,” she said. “I didn’t even realize….”
“I think I need at least some of that report now,” he said tightly.
She lifted her chin. “It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.”
He still held her wrist. “And that’s why you’re shaking?”
“I’m freezing,” she lied. He knew she was lying. Whatever had happened had shaken her up.
“’Too friendly,’” Jake remembered. He gestured to her elbow. “Is this the result of someone being too friendly?”
She gently pulled herself free. “It was Monica’s boyfriend. I think he was coked up. I handled it, Jake. His family jewels are now lodged somewhere between his tonsils and his sinuses.”
“Note to myself,” Jake said. “Don’t ever get Zoe angry.”
She laughed as he’d hoped she would, but then abruptly turned away—but not before he saw the sudden welling of tears in her eyes.
“I’ll tell you everything,” she said, “but after I shower, okay?”
“Yeah,” Jake said, fighting to hide the sudden rush of anger and protectiveness that made him want to seek out and destroy this Monica’s boyfriend. “I’ll get you something hot to drink. And meet you back in your trailer.”
“Thanks, Jake,” she whispered. “That would be very nice.”