“Tamara?” Michael asked.
“Yeah, Tamara. She started this thing about how a particular rope fiber—which we just happen to be using—has been proven to cause skin rashes in some people, and the next thing you know, half the soccer moms are up in arms. Someone has an audition for a commercial and can’t allow her hands to have a rash, and another one said she is extremely sensitive to certain fibers. Lemme ask you,” Eli said, turning to face Michael for a moment. “Have you ever once in your life thought about what kind of fiber is in anything? We will never transform these women into believable soldiers.”
“They aren’t supposed to be soldiers. They are supposed to be women who think they’re soldiers. They’re supposed to be a little clumsy.”
“A little?” Eli snorted. “We’re lucky nobody has died yet.”
“It’s all going to work out,” Michael tried to reassure him, but Eli stubbornly shook his head. “Give it a rest, Pollyanna.”
“Excuse me, is someone going to help me down?” Leah shouted.
Eli sighed and climbed up to untangle her safety ropes. Michael caught her when she came down. She landed a little shakily, grabbing Michael’s arm to right herself. But then she smiled up at Eli, one of those beautiful, nut-cinching smiles that only Leah could summon, and she laughed, and her hands were suddenly moving, pointing at the rope ladder and the cranes with both hands as she explained how she had fallen.
That was something Michael had always admired about her—she had that ability to shake off anything . . . or at least he was sincerely hoping she still had it.
After the guys got her out of the harness, Leah trotted over to the awning. Michael followed her.
She obviously didn’t notice him—she bent over a cooler, fished out a bottle of water, then stood up and did a weird little backward hop when she saw him. “Oh, hey,” she said.
“Are you all right?”
“Me? Sure,” she said, nodding a little too enthusiastically.
Michael couldn’t help it—he kept seeing her bouncing on the end of the harness and laughed.
She continued to drink her water for a moment, then lowered it and said, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s clearly something.”
He shrugged, tried to keep the smile from his face. “I was just thinking of the time we were in Aruba, and you dove off the boat—”
“Shut up!” she exclaimed, turning red. “You’re not supposed to remember that.”
“Oh, I remember,” he said, nodding. “A full moon rising is hard to—”
“I can’t help that a rogue wave took one-half of my bathing suit away.”
“A rogue wave? Like a tsunami, or what?”
“A wave. I told you it was a wave.”
“I think it was just sloppy diving,” he said with a grin.
She gave a snort of laughter and didn’t try to deny it.
“That was some fine rope work out there,” he said.
She paused in the drinking of a long draw of water. “Are you kidding? I almost killed myself?”
“Maybe so—but you looked good doing it.”
“Hey, Austin Powers!” a woman called, and when Michael glanced over his shoulder, he saw Jill, jogging by on her way to the tuck-and-roll clinic. “Where’s your groovy sidekick?” she asked, and then laughed loudly, as if that was the funniest thing that had ever been uttered by a human being.
Unfortunately, so did Leah.
Michael sighed wearily.
Leah screwed the lid on the bottle and looked at him with sparkling blue eyes. “So, Austin . . . I had a call last night,” she said, pushing her hair off her shoulder. “Imagine, Mini-Me calling me out of the clear blue.”
“Imagine,” Michael said with a wry smile.
“All right, so maybe you aren’t as delusional as I thought,” she said. “Maybe you really were a spy—oops, I mean operations officer.”
“Senior operations officer,” he corrected her with a bow of his head. “So you believe me?”
She shrugged. “I can’t help but believe you—I can’t for the life of me imagine why three grown men would make up such a stupid lie.”
Michael grinned broadly. He had just cleared the first major hurdle. “That is about the best news I’ve heard in years.”
“But now you’ve got that little secret off your chest, we can put the whole thing behind us, right?” she said, sweeping one arm behind her. “We’ll just be civil, like we said. Right?”
No, not right, not even remotely right, but he thought the better of making his case at the moment and merely nodded. “If that’s how you want it. Civil.”
Her smile faded. “That’s not how I want it. But that’s how I can live with it,” she said softly.
That stung, and Michael didn’t know what to say to it.
“I better get back to work,” Leah said, and ducked out of the tent before he could think what to say.