13
FRESH OFF A mission deep in the vicious heart of the Afghan desert, Taylor Powell strode down the gangplank of the aircraft carrier, his pack under one arm and the sea air dampening his skin. The sun, just starting to peek over the horizon, would melt the mist away soon enough, but for now Taylor welcomed the chill.
It’d been damned hot where he’d been.
His fingers tapped a tattoo on the butt of his sidearm. Yeah. It’d been hot. A ghost of a frown slid over his face, the only sign he’d allow as images flashed through his mind. Maybe a little too hot.
He breathed deep the fresh sea air, letting it cool his lungs and his thoughts.
“Yo, Wizard. You owe me fifty bucks.”
“Don’t you mean you owe me fifty?” Taylor slowed, throwing a grin over his shoulder at SEAL team member Shane O’Brian. “Face it, Scavenger. You’re getting soft.”
“Soft, hell,” Shane muttered with a grin.
“Now that you’ve hooked up with that sweet little brunette, you’re like a stuffed teddy bear. Supposed to be so big and tough, but feather soft inside.”
“Feather soft, my ass.”
Taylor made a show of looking the Scavenger up and down, from the tip of the guy’s combat boots to the brim of his cap tilted low over his eyes. An inch taller than Taylor’s own six feet-two, the only things that kept O’Brian from skinny were his muscles.
“You putting on weight?” Squinting at the other guy’s flat stomach, Taylor shook his head. “Shoulda stuck with rations instead of scarfing down seconds of your lady’s cooking.”
“You miserable all by your lonely self?” Scavenger shot back. “Poor guy, stuck bouncing from woman to woman because none of them want to keep you?”
“Yeah.” Taylor’s grin turned wicked. “It’s rough having women fall all over me, every one of them hot for good times, good sex and no strings. I gotta tell ya, I’m not sure how I sleep at night trying to figure out which one I’ll hook up with next.”
“Dog.” Scavenger threw back his head, laughing. “You would be such a dog if you really thought like that.”
“Can’t say I mind the bevy of beautiful women and lack of strings,” Taylor admitted with a shrug. After all, he liked—no, he loved—sex. But the only thing he was willing to commit to was his country.
“Then you’re in for a good time.”
“You don’t say.” Catching Scavenger’s grin, Taylor frowned. “Correction, say. What’s up?”
Scavenger shrugged but unless the guy was standing at attention or facing an enemy, he had a lousy poker face. Still, it was hard to tell which was more apparent. Amusement. Or guilt.
“You sending me a stripper for my birthday?” Taylor hazarded a guess. “I’m partial to blondes with big—”
“Your birthday isn’t until December and with any luck...”
Damn.
“With any luck, what?”
When Scavenger didn’t respond, Taylor grabbed his arm.
“What?”
“It’s nothing.” Scavenger grinned. “The ladies are on a tear, is all.”
“Ladies?” Uh-huh. “So what kind of trouble is your girlfriend starting?”
“Hey, don’t blame Lark. Alexia started it.”
Damn and double damn it all to hell.
“Matchmaking?”
“You’re quick,” Scavenger said in an admiring tone.
Quick?
Hardly.
Given that the commander’s wife had been trying to hook him up for months, that Irish’s new bride had started asking him to dinner to meet her friends and that even the sweet hippie Aiden had married was talking about casting charts to find his perfect match, he was feeling pretty slow.
But he wasn’t going to admit that.
“Nobody quicker,” he said instead as they crossed the asphalt. “Which is why you owe me fifty bucks.”
“The hell I do. I hit the ground first. It was my shot that took out the security system.”
“You should have hit the ground first since you jumped first. What’d you do on the way down, man? Take a side trip? I landed first. It was my shot that took out the mark.”
“Yo, Ice. Got a second to settle an issue?” Scavenger called out to the guy a few steps ahead of them.
“Settling issues is my specialty,” the tall, blond SEAL said, his expression as deadly serious as his aim.
“Who hit the mark?” Scavenger asked, jerking his thumb between the two of them. “Me or the Wizard?”
“Are you kidding?” The Nordic mountain slowed, his pale blue eyes shifting left then right, piercing both men. “While you guys were getting ready to play hopscotch with guerillas, I was infiltrating a high-tech installation’s security, weaving a virtual time bomb through their system without setting off any alarms.”
Hopscotch. The image flashed through Taylor’s mind of a baby-faced terrorist, barely five foot nothing in ragged clothes and dirt-encrusted bare feet. There should be rules about who could play. There should be rules about who was safe.
A vicious knot wrapped itself around his guts and was ignored. He’d learned a long time ago that rules were like fairy tales. Believing didn’t make them real.
But there was no point telling Ice that.
The man was a SEAL.
He already knew.
So Taylor pretended he was trying not to grin and gave a cocky nod.
“Yeah. You were busy playing hero.” He waited a beat. “So who hit the mark? Me or Scavenger?”
Ensign Dag Eckart gave a sad shake of his head before striding off. Taylor exchanged grins with Scavenger as they waited with matched stances. Feet wide, arms crossed, chins high. It only took about a dozen steps before, without a hitch in his stride, Ice jabbed a thumb over
