Page 11 of Twins for the Secret Prince (Even More Babies #8)

EVA

O ver the next two weeks, Eva’s plan to keep herself from thinking about Pete — or worse, acting on her physical impulses — was to stay as busy as possible.

With ongoing basic training for the new recruits as well as her usual duties and responsibilities, she would have been busy enough, but she and Pete were still engaged in a battle of wills to get the promotion.

Eva ensured that she was the very model of professionalism, going above and beyond to be civil to Pete in front of everyone else.

The rest of the time, she made sure she was never in close proximity to him. She didn’t trust herself not to do something she would regret, and steering clear of him was far and away the safest option.

It didn’t help that she felt his eyes on her whenever they happened to be in the same place, surrounded by other people.

She didn’t know if anyone else noticed, and she hoped, for his sake, that wasn’t the case.

The more she thought about it, the more she worried that Pete’s lack of discretion might get them both in trouble if what happened under the rock face ever came out.

She told herself not to be paranoid. With Pete still demonstrating his desire to beat her to the promotion, she was sure that he wouldn’t be careless enough to disclose the fact that they had slept together.

Memories of that night flooded back to Eva at inopportune moments, like when she was leading drill practice with the recruits.

Her face would flush with embarrassment and repressed desire.

Most nights, her dreams were about Pete. Holding back thoughts of him during the day only served to make him come alive in her dreams, doing things to her that made her wake up in a cold sweat.

She had never felt this way about another man, not even during high school, when it had seemed as though everyone else was giving in to their raging hormones. If this was delayed adolescent desire, it was hitting her like a tidal wave.

Eva channeled her desire into trying to make sure that she wouldn’t be overlooked for yet another promotion.

Outwardly polite and professional at all times, inwardly she felt the competing pulls of extreme physical desire and fierce competitiveness.

Lieutenant Marshall asked her to take on more and more responsibility, and she said yes to everything, even though it meant that she collapsed in her bed with exhaustion every night, sleeping fitfully as her brain ran endless scenarios about how she could beat Pete to the job.

There was one glaring problem with her plan to best him at everything.

Private Sully wasn’t making the grade with basic training and was on track to flunk out of the military.

Eva, who’d always prided herself on her ability to whip new recruits into shape in record time, knew she was failing with Private Sully.

The terrible part was that Private Sully had shown her more times than not that he wanted to succeed.

His gruff sullenness, the front he put on about not caring if he passed or failed, was an act honed from the time he was a boy, Eva was sure.

He’d failed at most things in life, and this was shaping up to be one more disappointment.

Eva’s training philosophy was based on tough love. She knew she wouldn’t be doing the recruits any favors if she was soft on them at this formative stage in their training. If they weren’t up to scratch in any aspect of their training, she told them so.

The problem was that Private Sully wasn’t up to scratch with almost everything.

If he failed, she failed as a trainer. He was already doing damage to her reputation.

Pete’s squad members were all on track to get through basic training successfully, so if Private Sully flunked out, it would make Eva look bad by comparison.

More than that, Eva wanted to help Private Sully because he reminded her of one of her brothers. For that reason, she decided to implement an alternative and potentially risky training strategy.

The opportunity came the next morning during the squad run. Private Sully was always at the back of the pack because he was still so much slower than the others. Occasionally Eva ran with him, giving him a tough-love pep talk that clearly had not worked yet.

She decided to try another tactic. “Private Sully, how do you think your basic training is going so far?” she asked, running alongside him.

“Fine, sergeant,” he said, already out of breath, even though it was only the first lap of the field.

“Do you really believe that, private?”

“Yes, I do.”

“How do you think your fellow squad members would answer that question if I asked them?”

“They’d say I was doing fine, too, sergeant.”

Eva knew that wasn’t the case, but she didn’t argue with him. “What are your favorite parts of basic training?”

The young man ran in silence for a minute. “I don’t know — everything, I guess.”

“What about the wilderness training? Did you like that?”

“I guess so. Until you got swept away by the river of mud, I mean.”

Eva bit her lip to stop herself from laughing at his choice of words. “That wasn’t my favorite part either, let me tell you.”

“No, sergeant.”

“And what parts of basic training do you not like?”

“There’s nothing, really.”

“Is that the truth?”

“I guess so.”

They ran in silence for a couple of minutes. Eva could feel the nervous energy radiating from Private Sully. No doubt, he wanted nothing more than for her to run on ahead and leave him alone.

“Private, if I tell you something about myself, do you promise to keep it to yourself?”

“Uh, I guess so?”

“Come on, I’m going to need a more definite answer than that.”

“Yes, sergeant. I can keep it to myself.”

“Good. It’s about my brother. My older brother, by two years. He got into some trouble when he was in high school. You know, fell in with a bad crowd, drugs, that kind of thing.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. But I’m not into drugs, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No, I’m not saying you are. But I think there is something you have in common with my brother Sam.”

“What?”

“He wasn’t the only one of my siblings to go off the rails. We didn’t exactly have a fairy-tale childhood. I’m talking poverty, parents who drank their troubles — and money — away. They fought all the time.”

“Sounds bad.”

“It was. Some of my siblings followed the pattern they had seen growing up. But with Sam, it was worse. He was falling down a hole so deep I didn’t know what to do to pull him back up.”

“How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

Eva took a deep breath and told herself to keep her emotions in check. “There are ten of us, including me.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I already knew I was going to join the military. I was in cadets all through high school. I tried to get Sam to join, thinking it would be a way out of what he was doing, but he wasn’t interested. At first.”

“He changed his mind?”

“He did. Said he was going to come with me to a recruitment session, find out what all the fuss was about. But that never happened.”

“Why not?”

“The night before we were due to go, someone gave him some bad drugs. They were cut with something that fried his brain.”

“Oh, no. Did he die?”

“No, he’s alive. Well, his body is alive, not his brain.

” Eva took a few deep breaths and then added, “I’m not telling you all of this for sympathy.

It’s because I knew — even back then when I was only fifteen — that for some of us, people who didn’t have the greatest start in life, the military is the answer.

It gives you purpose, people around you who care so much about you they’d risk their life for yours. ”

They ran in silence for a moment, Private Sully’s breaths rattling in his chest.

“That’s why I’m here,” he said quietly. “I want that.”

Eva nodded. “I figured as much. I can usually see it in recruits. And I have to be honest with you, private, when I first met you, I was fed up with your attitude problem almost right away.”

“I get that a lot.”

“That’s why I was so hard on you, trying to make you see that you get one chance at this.”

“I know.”

“I know you do. And I know now that it’s not that you’re lazy or can’t be bothered. You need someone to coach you, one to one, so that you can start to do the things you’re struggling with.”

The young private turned to look at Eva and what she saw on his face — hope and vulnerability — cut to her core. “Who were you thinking about?” he asked.

“I was thinking I’ll be the one to coach you.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“Of course I will. But there’s one condition — you can’t let me down. Bright and early every morning, we’ll train together. And then you are going to pass basic training.”

“I won’t let you down,” Private Sully said, with a look so earnest it made Eva’s heart ache.

At the crack of dawn the next morning, Eva walked into the training yard and was delighted to see Private Sully there, waiting for her.

“Have you ever done yoga?” she asked him. He shook his head. “That’s what we’re going to do today. It will help with your breathing.”

“What’s wrong with my breathing?”

“It’s very shallow, like you can’t get enough air into your lungs. Did you have bronchitis as a child, or asthma?”

He nodded. “Bronchitis.”

“Breathing problems often develop as a reaction to a chronic condition. I’m going to show you how to really use your lungs.”

As Eva led Private Sully through some simple yoga poses, she noticed how uncoordinated he was.

Even holding his balance in some of the more basic poses proved difficult.

At one point, he fell onto the ground when she was guiding him through breathing exercises in the tree pose.

Although he wasn’t injured, the fall rattled his confidence and he put his head in his hands, frustrated.

“Why can’t I do things that everyone else can?” he said angrily.

“This isn’t easy,” Eva said. “A lot of people struggle with it. But if you can master the breathing, it’s going to make every other challenge you face in basic training so much easier.”

“Really?” he asked, his face hopeful.

“Really. Take the hell wall, for example. You’ve got the upper arm strength for it. That isn’t the problem, it’s your breath. You run out of puff before you get to the top.”

“Okay. I’ll keep trying.”

And he did. Every morning that week, Private Sully was up early, ready for yoga. By the end of the week, he showed definite progress both in terms of his balance and his breathing. Eva was proud of him. More to the point, Private Sully couldn’t hide the fact that he felt proud of himself.

“You’re doing great,” Eva told him. “Let’s go for our run, and then we’ll tackle the hell wall.”

He groaned. “Great, more broken bones. Just in time for the weekend.”

“Private Sully, you are not going to break any bones. Today’s the day you conquer the hell wall.”

“It’s raining just as much as it was the day I had my accident,” he said. “I’m getting flashbacks.”

“You’ll be fine. I’m going to be right beside you, talking you through your breathing.”

They ran in silence for a couple of minutes, heavy rain lashing against their faces.

“Thank you, Sergeant Bailey,” Private Sully said. “You could have just watched me flunk out, but you’ve done all this extra training with me.”

Eva swallowed down a lump in her throat. “Like I said, if you fail, I fail. I’m doing this for me, too.”

When they’d finished their run and took their places at the climbing wall, Eva was dismayed to see Pete standing there.

“Good morning, Sergeant Billings.”

“Good morning, Sergeant Bailey. What brings you two out here on this fine morning?”

“We’re climbing the hell wall.”

“Do you need a spotter? Because of the weather, and all.”

“Sure, that would be great,” Eva said. But she didn’t mean it. What she really wanted was to tell him they were fine, that he should leave them alone. But she couldn’t argue with him, especially given that any risk assessment would conclude that a spotter really was required on a day like this.

Instead, she tried to put Pete out of her mind as she started climbing, advising Private Sully as they slowly made their way up the wall.

Although it was usually one of her favorite activities, and she’d never before failed to get an adrenaline rush from the climb, she was too self-conscious with Pete standing there to really enjoy it.

About three-quarters of the way to the top, the wind picked up and blew the rain sideways, making the climb even more perilous.

“You okay, private?” Eva asked.

“Fine, sergeant,” he replied, but the tremor in his voice betrayed his true feelings.

“Good, because you’re going to do this. We’re almost at the top. Focus on your breathing as you move your right arm into position, and then your right leg.”

“Okay,” he said nervously.

The gusts of wind were so strong that Eva had to fight with all of her strength just to get a finger hold and then a foothold on the wall. She looked across at Private Sully and saw that he was already in position.

“You’re doing better than me,” she called out to him. “Well done, private. Now breathe and move your left arm and then your left leg.”

In a few moves, they were at the top of the wall. Private Sully let out a loud whoop, and Pete called out his approval from the ground.

“Now we’re going to do the exact same moves, but in reverse,” Eva said. “Are you ready?”

“I’m ready to be back on solid ground, sergeant.”

“Me too, private.”

The wind and rain didn’t let up even for a fraction of a second, but Private Sully stayed focused, and they were soon back standing next to Pete.

“That was excellent climbing, both of you,” he said, holding eye contact with Eva for just a second too long. “Now, how about we get inside and get some hot breakfast?”

Eva didn’t waste any time doing as he suggested.

She was soaked through, chilled to the bone, and very, very hungry.

But more to the point, she could smell Pete’s lemon soap and another scent, one that was unique to him, and it was driving her crazy.

She wanted to change her clothes and have some warm food, but she needed to put some physical distance between her and Pete.

She didn’t trust herself around him, not for a second. Not after what had happened between them — and what she wanted very much to happen again.