11
Chapter 1
They called her Blue Eyes.
Ethan Quinn, a Navy SEAL, turned the ice-cold beer around in his hands as he sat diagonally across the canteen from her. The place was noisy, filled with laughter and with mostly military black ops types. Some were Special Forces, Marine Force Recons, Rangers, CIA spooks, Delta Force or SEALs. There were a couple of tables of Night Stalker pilots in one corner, guzzling beer down like it was their last day on earth. A group of women Apache pilots from the Black Jaguar Squadron at FOB Bravo had a table off in another dark corner. They were drinking beer and chatting among themselves, ignoring the testosterone at the bar looking longingly in their direction.
Ethan had been warned by his SEAL buddies from the platoon stationed at the forward operating base that Blue Eyes shot down every red-blooded American male who tried to sit at her table. Hell, he couldn’t blame any of them for trying. She wasn’t what Ethan would call model beautiful. No, but she had a square face with wide cheekbones, a sinner’s mouth that would beckon to any man and those incredibly beautiful, large blue eyes. He liked the way her shining black hair lay around her shoulders, somewhat mussed, not perfect, but perfect for her.
It didn’t hurt that Blue Eyes was about five feet nine inches tall and curvy as hell. They said she was always in her Army flight uniform, a drab green, when she came in off a medevac mission and ordered a beer. She always sat at the same small wooden table near a wall, where the light wasn’t so bright. Where she could hide? Ethan wondered.
Someone else had told him over at the SEALs HQ that Blue Eyes was single. How they knew that, Ethan couldn’t fathom. No one in the military wore rings on their fingers since it was against the rules. A ring could cause you to lose a finger under the right circumstances. He snorted softly to himself as he lifted the beer to his lips and drank deeply of the cold, bubbling liquid.
Some sex-starved jerk must have spread the word that she was single because he’d wanted her to be single. Not that Ethan knew anything one way or another about her. Base gossip had buzzed among the competitive Delta Force operators. They were betting which one of them would get to her first. Ethan had declined to join the bet. Women weren’t pieces of meat to be sold to the highest bidder.
He felt sorry for her, being the center of so much male attention and curiosity. How would he feel under a constant spotlight like that? Blue Eyes often sat with the Black Jaguar Squadron women pilots, but not today. The women, he’d found, usually stuck together, such a small percentage versus the thousand men who worked at Camp Bravo. Talk had spread that when Blue Eyes had bad missions, she sat by herself, wanting to be left alone.
He tipped his head slightly forward so he could watch her without her seeing him stare blatantly at her. What was it about Blue Eyes that set fire to the male imagination? She did look sad. Her full mouth was slightly pursed, the corners drawn in, as if she was experiencing pain of some kind. Even in the poor light of the naked bulbs strung overhead in the canteen, he could see the breath-stealing color of her eyes.
The color reminded Ethan of the calved glaciers up in Alaska where he was born. When a glacier split and fell into a bay, the light pierced through the newly created sections, revealing a translucent turquoise blue. It was the most unearthly color he’d ever seen in his life. And now, through his short lashes, he was staring at eyes that were the same remarkable color. They were absolutely mesmerizing. No wonder guys hit on her. What would he do if he really saw her, up close and personal? Judging from the stories circulating among the SEAL platoon, guys were rendered speechless and stood like stunned, hormone-ridden teenagers before her.
Her gaze looked far-off as her slender hands held the can of beer. Sometimes she’d move her thumb, pushing beads of condensation away. What was she thinking about? Where was she? Ethan could see she was completely oblivious to the milling group of men surrounding the bar. They all watched her like hungry predatory animals on the hunt. Every last damn one of ’em. The flight suit didn’t exactly spell out her lush body. Though Ethan figured he’d have to be dead not to see the way the green folds curved here and there, giving hints to her hidden assets.
She seemed lonely to him. He found himself holding his breath for a moment as she tipped the beer up and her full lips touched the edge of the can. Two things made him go hot. First, that full mouth of hers, the lower lip slightly pouty. Second, her grace as she tipped her head back, revealing the long, slender column of her throat. His juices were definitely going—and he wasn’t alone.
Ethan laughed to himself. Women in combat were okay with him. They’d more than earned their stripes in battles across the Middle East, long ago proving they could get the job done. But there was just a damned demarcation line drawn between males and females. And he couldn’t fully explain the pleasure of simply watching a woman move. It was magic. It was hypnotic. It was...well, hell, there were way too many lonely men, married or otherwise, at this FOB. Women were a different energy, different anatomy, different in the best of ways that just hooked a man’s full, undivided attention.
Ethan couldn’t sit there and admit he wasn’t attracted to her. He was. But so was his heart. This wasn’t just about sex. Sex would be great. But there were deeper layers to Blue Eyes that he wanted to explore, ones that had nothing directly to do with sex. Maybe he was curious. Or infatuated like every other dude on the FOB.
He’d arrived at Camp Bravo last week as a straphanger, a SEAL from another platoon who replaced a man who had been badly injured. Charlie Platoon lost their radio comms guy. Ethan’s specialty was just that. Patrols always wanted someone who knew how to work the radios, the laptop, the connections with Apaches. He was JTAC trained and able to talk to the loitering F-18 Hornets and B-52s on racetracks that circled forty thousand feet above them. Because when a crisis happened, it was the comms SEAL that saved the collective ass of the team out on a mission.
“Hey, Ethan. How’s it goin’, bro?”
Ethan looked up to see his LPO, lead petty officer, Derek Tolleson. He walked over and pulled a chair up at his table, a beer in hand.
“Okay. Just trying to get this damn sand out of my throat.”
Tall, blond-haired and blue-eyed Tolleson chuckled. “Yeah, man, I know what you mean,” he said as he sat down. He tipped his beer back and drank half of it. Tolleson wiped his hand across his mouth and then rubbed his unruly beard. “Thank God they let us have beer out here.” He shook his head. “Don’t know what I’d do if they didn’t.”
SEALs were beer drinkers, pure and simple. Ethan smiled a little and took another sip.
“You just got here a few days ago—did
