Page 112

So much for him telling her more about this mystery summons en route to wherever they were going. She’d met his kind before. Macho jerks who couldn’t stand the idea of women infiltrating their precious military. She shrugged mentally. His kind were a dying breed. Women were here to stay and he could just get used to it.

If nothing else, he had a killer handshake, complete with more sex appeal than ought to be legal in one man. Thankfully, she’d been around the block enough times to know that men like him were all sizzling attraction and no actual substance when it came to relationships.

She might have been a Spec Ops groupie as a young lieutenant, but she’d long ago learned that men like Jack Scatalone were emotionally suppressed jerks who shut down all semblance of human feelings so they could do their jobs without falling apart. She was glad for their service to their country, but she bloody well didn’t want to date the type.

She was surprised when the car turned into what looked like a private driveway. A brick mansion came into view, and he drove around to the back side of the spread. She spotted a hefty helicopter on the back lawn, black, ugly and powerful-looking. What the hell was a Blackhawk doing here in civilian-landia? They were highly specialized spec ops aircraft.

“Why’s the Blackhawk here?” she ventured to ask.

“It’s our ride.”

Whoa. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to fetch her in the middle of her vacation—her once-every-five-years, the-Air-Force-made-her-take-it vacation. Of course, she doubted her boss had high-stress mock combat in mind when he shoved leave orders at her and told her to relax.

She grinned to herself. Paintball was relaxing. Or, it had been until the prickly colonel showed up.

Why on earth did someone want her back at her desk bad enough to send a freaking Blackhawk after her? She was a mid-level paper pusher who handled nothing of importance.

She waited silently while Scatalone tossed the car keys to a gray-haired man standing by the helipad. The guy looked retired military and nodded tersely as they approached. Scatalone motioned her into the ‘copter.

She strapped herself into a no-frills, nylon-webbing seat across from the colonel. Their knees didn’t quite touch, but they might as well have. Heat rolled off her escort, and yet again, she was confronted with the massive sex appeal the man wore like a second skin.

When the chopper was well under way, he unbuckled his shoulder harnesses and stripped off his muddy undershirt.

Oh. My. God. The man had the kind of hard, muscular torso a male cover model would make a fortune with. A fine sheen of sweat actually broke out on her forehead as she fought back an urge to lean forward and touch all those acres of male perfection.

Was he even aware of the effect he had on her?

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and the faintest smirk curved his mouth. Bastard. He knew exactly what he was doing to her.

Thankfully, he reached for his uniform shirt and shrugged into it. Still. Her gaze was unwillingly glued to his big, tanned fingers as they slipped each button into his hole.

The helicopter dropped sickeningly as it hit a pocket of turbulence, and her stomach rumbled ominously. She swallowed hard and prayed that the secret nemesis of her career—persistent airsickness—wouldn’t reveal itself. Although the grumpy colonel’s black patent leather shoes were caked in mud and looked liked hell, she didn’t want to barf all over them.

How she managed to hang on to her breakfast through the interminable chopper ride she had no idea. It was probably just as well that she was filthy and caked in mud and leaves. Nobody could see the sickly green color her skin had to be.

She’d just about decided to let rip with the contents of her stomach when the distinctive skyline of Washington, D.C., came into view outside her window.

Whoa. Who wanted to talk to her so urgently here? And about what?

She currently supervised a small team of computer programmers working on updating the database for a supply squadron in North Carolina. It was a beta test of a larger overhaul of the supply and logistics programs the Air Force currently used. And it was a totally dead end job.

The powers-that-be had stuck her in the position to shut her up, of course. To get her off everyone’s case about the idea of letting her apply to the Special Forces. Sure, a few women had made it into the Army Rangers. But she wanted to go full-on spec ops. Delta Force. SEALs. Marine Recon.

Not that her efforts had done a lick of good. Her dream wasn’t to be.

The helicopter swooped down low enough for her to make out individual ripples in the Potomac River, and then rushed north, swinging up aggressively for a landing on top of the gray roof of the Pentagon. Damned show-off pilots.

Almost back to terra firma.

Don’t barf.

Do not barf.

The colonel was true to his word and gave her no opportunity whatsoever to clean herself up, refusing even her request for a restroom stop inside the Pentagon’s plush heliport arrival lounge.

Clearly he was hoping to intimidate her. Throw her off balance.

But he didn’t know her well enough to realize she got a kick out of strolling down the high-gloss corridors of the Pentagon looking like the creature from the Black Lagoon. The looks all the scurrying flunkies threw at her in the halls were priceless.

She was grandly amused by the time the lieutenant colonel turned into a rich, walnut-paneled corridor. Holy cow. The offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Well, okay then. That was a little intimidating. But damned if she’d let Jack Scatalone know it.

They stepped into a sitting area furnished like some old-world gentlemen’s club with leather couches and thick rugs. Despite its soothing décor, the atmosphere in the office was electric. Like this place was the center of something important. Like life and death decisions were made here. Her adrenaline surged. God, she loved being where the action was.

Okay, so now she felt a little weird in her camo fatigues and full-body mud wrap. When they’d landed, Jack had shrugged into his Class A jacket, tied his tie, and brushed the dried mud off his pants and shoes. In stark contrast to her, he looked reasonably presentable. To cover her discomfort, she occupied herself with picking bits of oak leaves off her clothes and tossing them into a trash can.

A severe, gray-haired secretary stepped out of an interior office and looked down her narrow nose with distaste at Vanessa. “General Wittenauer will see you now.”

Wittenauer? The JSOC commander? The Joint Special Operations Command itself? Headquarters and operational command center for all inter-service special operations units and missions. Except it was based out of North Carolina, not the Pentagon. Was Wittenauer doing something else now that she hadn’t heard about?

Her pulse leaped in sudden anticipation. She’d applied to various Special Forces schools every year for the first ten years of her career, knowing full well that women were not accepted to those elite units. But a girl could always hope. Maybe that’s why she’d been summoned to JSOC’s Washington branch office….