not really seeing the view of the mountains and the hill country below.
“Shane.”
When he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, he turned his head.
“Be reasonable. It’s a done deal. Nothing you can do about it. I’ve already given her permission.” Roebuck sighed. “Look, I know where this is coming from. But you can’t let one incident make you like this. It was an accident, no one—”
“She’s not ‘shadowing’ me. Period,” Shane interrupted, not wanting to hear what his commander would say next, fighting against memories of a time he tried his hardest to ignore.
“And I would think you of all people would understand why,” he finished, grimly.
Emma paused, her fist poised to knock on the door, when the voices inside grew louder.
After leaving the gym on their way to the office, her cell phone rang, a call from her editor.
Although she could have allowed it to go to voice mail, she used the call as an excuse to get away. She needed a chance to pull herself together and rally her defenses against what she knew was a battle she faced with Shane.
Although she’d taken the call, she’d spoken less than five minutes with Bill before ending the conversation with a promise to call him back.
The anger of the prudent never shows.
She’d learned the value of the wise old adage long ago, while on her first assignment in a small village in Burma. She’d incorporated the saying as much as she could into her everyday life, although at times it wasn’t so easy to do.
She took a deep breath, slowly exhaling. No matter what happened, she wasn’t going to allow him to bait her into saying something she would regret later. He wouldn’t make her say something stupid and shoot herself in the foot before she even got it in the door.
When she could no longer clearly hear the angry staccato of words, she strained her ears to pick up on the conversation, stepping closer to the door.
After several minutes of silence, Emma mentally and physically squared her shoulders and knocked briskly on the door.
So, tall, blond and fine didn’t want her around his precious jumpers? Oh well. She had every right to be there. She hadn’t been given any special favors, she’d worked hard to get the assignment and no one was going to take this golden opportunity away from her.
There was a slight pause before she heard Roebuck’s deep baritone calling out for her to enter. Cautiously, she opened the door, plastering a bright smile on her face.
Like a magnet, her eyes were drawn to the jumper as he stood near a large window, his long legs braced far apart, big arms crossed over his chest, his back to her.
Roebuck motioned her to come inside. “Come on in, Emma. We were just discussing your assignment.”
Emma picked up on the false cheer in his voice and the worried glance in the commander’s eyes as he looked at her.
Obviously he was aware that she’d heard at least part of the discussion. Despite that, along with the accompanying tension so thick in the room she could cut it with a knife, Emma nodded and stepped inside the office, closing the door behind her.
The office was small, but everything was neat and orderly. An oversize, scratched, oak desk took up most of the room, upon which two monitors sat. One was a computer, and the other seemed like some type of weather-monitoring system.
“Have a seat, Emma. We can go over the particulars of the article. Your expectations and ours.”
“What did you have to do to get this job?” Before Emma could take the offered seat, Shane spoke, surprising her, turning to face her.
“So you can speak. I thought you were just here for my viewing pleasure.” Before she knew it, her mouth started in, before her head could rule it out, the retort tripping off her tongue.
Shane’s expression darkened, his brows nearly meeting in the middle as he took two steps toward her and stopped. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Whatever you want it to mean.” Emma shrugged. “Probably the same thing you meant when—”
“Shane,” Roebuck broke in. “Emma, before this goes any further, let’s all sit down, discuss this like we have some sense.”
Emma fully faced Shane, her anger rising. She crossed her arms over her chest, keeping her expression light. “Well, you were asking me how I got the job?” she baited Shane. “Just what did you mean by that?”
“You call yourself Gene Raw, right?”
“Yes. And your point would be?”
“My point is you seem to be…billing yourself as one thing when you’re selling something else entirely.”
“I’m not selling myself as anything other than what I am. A damn good photojournalist.” Emma brushed off his not so subtle innuendo and focused on the latter part of his sentence.
“I don’t get how having a pen name makes me seem as though I’m billing myself—or as you like to say, ‘selling’ myself—in any way different than who I am.” Emma stopped and drew in a deep breath. “And I do that purely because of men like you. Men who think that just because I’m a woman, I’m not as capable in doing my job as any other journalist. I don’t have to—”
“Look,” he interrupted. “I don’t pretend to know how it works in your world. I don’t give a damn one way or another. What I do know is that lives are on the line here. There is no time for play, this is real—”
“And how will my presence here alter that?” Emma bit out angrily, her chest heaving, brushing against the hard wall of his abdomen.
She took a step back.
It was then that she noticed how close they stood to each other. One or both of them had moved so that they were so close they were touching. Emma caught the subtle hint of his cologne, mixed with his natural scent, wafting across her nose.
After backing up, she continued. “I didn’t get any special favors to get this job. I worked hard for it, just like I have for everything I’ve ever gotten. Every accomplishment I’ve ever had was because I worked hard for it.” She emphasized each word, unwanted emotion burning the back of her throat.
“No one gave me any special consideration.” She made one more attempt at civility, desperately trying to bring her anger and threatening tears under control.
“I’m sure you did nothing to get any favors, Ms. Raw,” he said, emphasizing her pen name. He just wouldn’t let it go.
“Like I said, I got this job fair and square, Mr. Westwood. And unless you want a sexual-harassment claim slapped on you and the rest of this camp, I suggest you put on your big-boy panties and deal with it.”
The back of her teeth hurt so badly from clenching them that she knew that as soon as she reached her room she’d have to pull out her industrial-sized, extrastrength Motrin to rid herself of
