“What are you going to do now?” asked Z.
Garrett fought to cut back the vine. He battled hard, damn it. He told himself this wasn’t the time or the place to be a mindless caveman.
None of that seemed to matter when he spat his response to Zeke.
“I’m going to negotiate.”
He clicked the call off before his friend could utter a word of repercussion.
Chapter Ten
“Hell.”
Before she even turned, Sage sensed what Ethan’s tight utterance referenced. More accurately, to whom it referred.
Moments ago, she’d sensed a change in the air itself, a surge of strength that jolted the depths of her stomach and made her nerve endings burst in awareness. When she’d gotten the same rush ten nights ago in Thailand, she’d written it off to her terror as well as the gun battle fireworks outside King’s hut. No terror now. No guns going off now. There was only one common factor to both situations. One person. Only now, his entrance carried one distinct change.
Garrett was a more magnificent sight this time around.
She struggled to keep in mind that his conqueror’s stride and his granite-hard glower were likely—probably—the result of his wrath with her. Major failure on that front. All she could fixate on were how long his legs looked even in his baggy camouflage pants and how incredible that black T-shirt defined the perfect male V of his torso. She didn’t dare let her gaze travel along his biceps… Another major flop. God, how she looked at him, enduring another attack of oh-my-God-he-isn’t-real because of it. And of course, Hades take him, he’d slipped on his all-man, battle-toughened work boots before chasing after her, too.
Yeah, chasing after you, remember? Not here to pick you up for lunch, not here to bring you some flowers. He looks like a gladiator, but he’s pissed as a lion, girl—and his claws are aimed your direction.
She suddenly craved some cat scratch fever, lion style.
The sunlight hit the top of his head as he stepped clear of the hangar. His hair, still damp from his shower, literally glittered in the sunlight. Before he jerked his sunglasses back over his eyes, the blue flames in them licked out, incinerating what was left of her logic.
She was in deep shit. On a bunch of crazy levels.
She opened her mouth to say something, but not a peep spilled out. She sure as hell wasn’t going to feed his misplaced rage with an apology. They were barely still engaged, if that was what they were still calling it. But a “hey, how’s it hangin’” wasn’t going to help the situation, either.
Garrett handled the dilemma for her. Sort of. From the inside of his jacket, he pulled out a sheaf of papers. “I think you dropped something.”
Her heart thudded in her throat. The Jump School insignia practically lifted off the top page like a magical curse, searing into her conscience. “Thanks.”
His only reply was to glance back into the hangar, as if he’d left something behind himself. Sage gulped and kicked the ground. Was this actually an awkward silence, when engines, trucks, and repair machines ripped up the air around them?
Ethan got noble about smoothing things out. “Sage? Everything okay?”
“Yeah.”
“No,” Garrett said at the same time. Though his tone was simple as a comment on the weather, Sage knew better. It meant the opposite. He added a grim smile while adding, “No, it’s not, Corporal Archer, so I’ll thank you to step the fuck back.”
Ethan pivoted to Garrett and actually saluted him, which rammed Sage’s heart to her stomach. Guys on a Special Forces team didn’t have time to stand on ceremony, and everyone here knew it. Ethan’s move, while wrapped in the ribbons of military respect, might as well have been a knee in Garrett’s crotch. A Special Forces version of the Unfriend button.
“With respect, Sergeant Hawkins, the training flight has been cleared.”
“I’m aware of that, Archer,” Garrett retorted. “I was the one who first heard the Otter would be here for hiking season support, as well as training flights for the team. Or did you think I just moseyed over to base because of my keen spidey sense and a desire for some tasty brunch in the mess?”
Sage empathized with the tension behind Ethan’s glower. The guy dipped his head of thick chestnut hair, unable to argue with a word of Garrett’s statement. The respect memo somehow hadn’t gotten through to the smartass just behind him, though. Sage barely held back a groan as Tait Bommer and his mischievous eyes, silken smirk, and surfing idol looks ambled into the conversation with a smooth chuckle.
“‘Tasty brunch in the mess.’ Ha. Good one! Hey, we’ll come join you, Hawk. I’ll save some mud off my boots, and we can have it for dessert. It’ll be better than the mush they’re trying to pass off as pudding, and there’s that cute little mashed potatoes server girl I’ve been meaning to talk to again.”
“Hey, Tait?” The query was issued by the next guy who came over, the dark-eyed counterpart to Bommer’s beach god gilt. Kellan Rush was Tait’s polar opposite in looks, temperament, and dating tastes, which made him T-Bomm’s perfect flank, both on and off duty. “I’d suggest you shut up.”
“Good suggestion,” Garrett growled as he tilted his head at her again. Sage still couldn’t see his eyes behind the glasses but didn’t need to. His scrutiny bathed her from head to toe in uncomfortable, incredible heat. “So you’re still thinking of going Airborne, huh?”
“Yeah.” Despite her discomfort, she gave him a tiny smile of gratitude. He’d remembered—though it wasn’t simply that. He’d remembered, and he knew, how important this was to her. Regrettably, it didn’t look like his own stance on the subject had changed much over the last year, and she was now the subject of his taut scrutiny about the matter.
“You that hot to get to Fort Benning for sixteen weeks?” he issued in a grim mutter, toeing at the ground. Sage copied the gesture.
They’d always laughed about sharing that little habit, though she always nearly fell over when she did it in heels. Today, neither of them chuckled. Sage felt her smile faltering.
“Maybe I am.”
She couldn’t filter out the wistful threads in the assertion. Oh, screw wistful. Her tone planted itself right over the line into needy, and she didn’t care. If she had to go invisible Whack-a-Mole hammer on his damn stubborn head, so be it. You don’t want me to go, Garrett? Then give me a reason to stay. Give me a reason to look at our home as something more than house arrest now! “The Airborne squads need medical members right now.” She nearly stammered it out, but the silence needed filling. Bad. “And…so…”
“So you found out about this little field trip”—he cocked a condemning brow at Ethan—“and got yourself added to the flight roster somehow, despite that on most of the paperwork, your ashes are still at the bottom of Puget Sound.”
Sage jammed her toe down harder the next time and left it stuck that way. She was certain if she lifted it again, she’d drive it into Sergeant Hawkins’ right shin. So much for trying to maintain her smile—or any shred of the fantasy she’d been entertaining about getting her hands underneath his T-shirt. “And I see your head is still wedged in the bottom of the funeral urn,” she flung. As she forced herself to step closer to him, a now-familiar heat threatened the backs of her eyes. Damn it, was she now destined to cry every time they spent more than five minutes near each other? “I hope it’s nice and dirty and dark down there too, you shithead.”
“Sage!” Ethan’s panicked burst layered atop the other guys’ gasps. “Maybe a little restraint would be—”