Christmas at Peleliu Cove Read online

  “God I’m a mess.” How many other stupid things could she think up while having her nose crushed against a man’s chest?

  “I’d say that you’re a very pretty one, but I’m guessing that would piss you off again. Though sure as the day is long, I don’t know why.”

  “It’s December, the days are short,” she told his chest. “But I do owe you an apology for lashing out. Old parental tapes that I thought I’d long since erased. Always telling me how I got by because I was pretty and so why didn’t I use it to go marry a doctor the way Mom had. And…” Nika sputtered into silence as soon as she realized that she was whining and unloading on a man who probably didn’t want to be hearing about all of her crap.

  “You gonna be okay there, skipper?”

  “God no!”

  He laughed and stepped her back with his hands on her shoulders until he could look down at her.

  “I can see the question, Lieutenant Barstowe,” Nika wanted to close her eyes, to hide from the care that shown so clearly beneath the concern. He clearly thought she was losing it and Nika didn’t like him thinking that. “When I’m busting ass, I don’t have to think, I can just do. Has served me pretty well these last couple tours. But sometimes the past…” She shrugged having no better answer.

  “I’ve always been more of a present tense kind of guy,” his tone was light. Not dismissive, but trying to make her feel better. It didn’t.

  “Clearly not Jewish. We’ve got five thousand years of paranoia to live up to. And that’s without our mothers.”

  “But as my Pappy says, that ain’t no way to be living.”

  “Please tell me you do not call your dad Pappy,” she thought that was a movie stereotype.

  “Not actually. More like Asshole.”

  He smiled weakly at the laugh he’d surprised out of her.

  “Piece of trash who dodged out when I was six. Left Mama, me, and my little sister holding the bag. But it sounds better when I give my advice in my Pappy’s name.”

  “So you’re giving your wisdom to the man who abandoned you? That makes about as much sense as me blaming you for things my mother says.”

  Clint grimaced. “Hadn’t really looked at it that way. He was a useless sack of shit, if the truth be told.”

  “Useless?” Nika looked hard into Clint’s face. “Been making up for that a long time, have you, Lieutenant? Thought you were a present tense kind of guy.”

  “He’s not why I joined.”

  “Spill it.”

  “Trade.”

  “Not a chance in hell!” Nika froze, wrapping her arms tightly about herself and wondered if she was fast enough to dodge around a US Ranger and get up the ramps and ladderways before he could follow.

  Anticipating her, he reached out and brushed a comforting hand down her arm. It rooted her to the steel decking; she couldn’t run after the kindness of that gesture. He opened his mouth, but she cut him off.

  “Don’t you apologize because I’m a bitch caught in her own trap,” it came out as a snarl he didn’t deserve, but she couldn’t do anything about that.

  He nodded once and again, his hat’s pom-pom bouncing as he did so.

  “I—” there had to be something she could give him. “I joined because the past gave me no choice. I stay because I have no other answers.” It was the most she could give him and it cost her.

  He nodded as if he actually understood just how much; his pom-pom again flopping about. Without further requirement, he started speaking. “I joined because of my football coach. Best man I ever met. Mr. Daniels was a Vietnam Vet. A Ranger.”

  “Bet you went All-State,” Nika was surprised she found the tease anywhere inside herself.

  His shrug was eloquent.

  “Scouted by the colleges.”

  Again the shrug.

  “And the pros?”

  He didn’t argue. How damn good was he?

  “Then what the hell are you doing here, soldier?” She waved her hand taking in the darkened Well Deck, the beached hovercraft, and the fact that they were parked off the Libyan coast.

  “Being all I can be.” He cut her off before she could give voice to the scoff inside her. “Football is a game. Mr. Dee taught me that what was real was more important; said I was good enough to understand the difference. I introduced him to Mama and we all talked about it. The discipline and structure fit me better than mustard fits a hot dog. Helping, really helping, that’s what it’s all about.” He was nodding with the strength of his own conviction.

  “You’re a determined sort, aren’t you?” Nika felt embarrassed to even be standing beside such a man. Her reasons were lame and elusive by comparison.

  “Maybe. Stubborn runs deep in our family; Mama is a very determined sort of lady. She started as an RN and now runs a major hospital back home in Little Rock, so it’s in my blood too. ‘Course there was a drawback to introducing them.”

  “What was that?” But she had a guess. At her smile, Clint merely nodded. His football coach had done more with Clint’s mom than talk about her son.

  She wasn’t feeling all mushy about Clint Barstowe because he’d held her. It wasn’t because he such a sweet man who worshipped his Mama. What she did next was because he was just such a good man.

  She reached up…and yanked off his Santa hat.

  “Hey!” Clint made a grab for it and she switched it between hands behind her back.

  “Not a chance am I kissing a man wearing a Santa hat.”

  “What have you got against Sant—”

  Clint froze. She could see the look in his eyes shift, inspecting her face to make sure she meant what she’d said.

  Nika did her best to not give away any hints on what he should do next.

  A moment later Nika knew there was one quality of a US Army Ranger that she’d never doubt again. Rangers were men of action.

  # # #

  The cold shower hadn’t done shit for shutting down his thoughts about Nika Maier, especially not with her standing inches away and doing her best to look so innocent with his Santa hat held behind her back.

  Sparring with her over dinner had only added to the heat. But that heat had shifted as he held her down here in the heart of the Peleliu. Held her while she’d proved to both herself and to him just how strong she really was.

  The heat didn’t go away, not by a long shot. And not a chance was he turning down an offer to kiss her, but it didn’t happen the way his libido had imagined.

  Clint had thought a tussle with Nika would be fun. Maybe somehow they could ignore weightier matters and just heat up each other’s blood with a bit of play. What he didn’t figure on was how her cheeks would feel cradled between his palms, or how those big, dark eyes watched him as he leaned down to brush their lips together.

  Her hands didn’t come up to hold or touch him, but he could feel her rising on her toes, adding pressure as the kiss deepened. The playfulness that he’d anticipated, fantasized about—her innate merriness—was instead a steady truth.

  Clint was not just kissing some woman.

  He was kissing Nika Maier.

  She was a hundred percent present right now as they pressed together. Not their bodies. His hands did not move from her face to once again hold the lithe strength of her fine form, because even when she’d been leaning against him in misery there were some things a man couldn’t help but notice. Only their lips met. And Clint knew he’d never received such a kiss in his life. Like an honest gift.

  He’d been correct before the mission.

  Nika Maier was a serious kind of woman and kissing her was a serious kind of business. They hadn’t even begun and he was already in over his head.

  Of course if this was drowning, someone please sign him up.

  “That,” she whispered against his lips when they finished, “can never happen
again.”

  “Are you mad?” He couldn’t believe his ears. “Girl, that has so got to happen again.”

  “Nope. Allow me to prove it,” and she tugged the Santa hat back on his head. “See? I’ll never kiss a man wearing a Santa hat.”

  It took all of his self control to not drag her against him and prove her wrong. Or lay her down on the steel ramp and finish the job for both of them.

  But Nika Maier was a serious kind of woman he had to remind himself.

  There’d be another time. A woman didn’t smile at you the way she was smiling if there wasn’t.

  Best move?

  Back away slowly, like from a mine about to explode.

  For now.

  “You will kiss the man in the hat one day,” he found some tease in his suddenly dry throat.

  “Sorry to crush your hopes, Lieutenant Santa, but it’s not going to happen.”

  “That against your religion too?”

  “Nope. You just look too silly for words while wearing it. Never is your answer.”

  “Oh, I gots me some patience, girl. I swear on a pack o’ blue-tick hounds that I does,” he let his Arkansas through as if he was some country hick and not from the largest city in the state.

  “Nobody as patient as this Navy gal.”

  “So, you kissed me just to make sure I wouldn’t sleep a wink today?”

  “You’re the one who kissed me, soldier. And of course that’s the only reason I let you do it.”

  “Problem is, sailor,” he brushed a finger down that ever so soft skin of her cheek and her eyelids fluttered half closed. He’d swear she sighed though he’d wager his next month’s pay that she’d never admit it. “It backfired and you won’t be sleeping a wink either.”

  “Bet you twenty I will.”

  “Done!” He raised his palm and she high-fived it to seal the deal.

  Chapter 5

  Crap!

  Nika stared at the ceiling of her berth. Normally she’d be in a four-berth with three other petty officers. But because of the light crew needed to operate the Peleliu, she’d been able to scrounge a berth of her own. It wasn’t luxurious, she could touch either side wall at the same time and she didn’t need to reach a full stretch twice to span the other direction, but it was hers alone. There were other female petty officers—the Navy was twenty percent female after all—but she had little to do with them since switching from the Flight Deck to the LCAC.

  Double crap!

  She was going to owe Lieutenant too-damn-sure-of-himself Barstowe twenty bucks if she didn’t get to sleep in the next fifteen minutes. How was she supposed to know that the arrogant prick would be such a damn good kisser?

  Of course if that had been the only issue, she could have slept fine. After all, a kiss that paralyzes you from the neck down happened…approximately…never. Yet Clint’s had. It had been so perfect, so intense, that she hadn’t even thought to raise a hand to touch his face. To see how his shoulder fit the curve of her palm. To hang on for dear life as her knees melted.

  Still, that shouldn’t have been a problem.

  Nor the verbal teasing, which had been nothing more than good fun.

  No, it was the way he’d held her before that was such an issue. No one held Nika Maier when she was miserable. Not former lovers, not friends, and surely not her parents.

  Yet Clint had done exactly that. He’d held her and just let her be herself. He hadn’t petted and patted and told her not to cry. He’d simply held her and offered comfort and, just maybe, some understanding.

  The alarm jolted her like an electric shock and she slapped at it.

  Coffee.

  A shower, then coffee.

  That was going to be the only cure for Clint Barstowe. Total avoidance. Maybe she’d be lucky and not see him today.

  Chapter 6

  Clint had kept his boys on the run all night. They’d started with a tactical debrief of last night’s mission—studying every move to see how it could have been improved. Then they’d fully serviced every piece of equipment they’d taken into the field. After that, he’d gotten them up on the deck for target practice.

  The Peleliu was eight hundred feet long, an easy distance for a Ranger, but only if they kept in constant practice.

  The Night Stalkers had their helos off the deck running their own exercise—precision shooting at small marker floats during low-level, high-speed passes. Clint set up a shooting range on the blacked out deck to rack up some night-scope practice. There was just enough roll on the ship that his Rangers had to compensate for the nine-tenths of second of travel required by the special-issue subsonic rounds he’d selected—the targets had time to shift several inches in the time it took the bullet to travel the length of the deck.

  With the suppressors, their practice was almost completely silent—no sharp crack of standard-issue rounds moving at twice the speed of sound. Just a soft pop and the click of the bolt auto-loading the next round in the chamber. Even the bright ping of ejected rounds sang in the quiet night.

  While the helos were off deck, he ran his men through a few hundred rounds apiece. Two of the guys were solidly ready for the next level course during their next rotation stateside. They were turning into top snipers; he could see it in their motions as well as their consistent results.

  Now, after a long, sweaty night—and another ice cold shower that hadn’t helped anything—he’d wandered forward to the gaming room. There was a projection TV aimed at a white-painted section of the hull with a cluster of occupied steel chairs circled around it. Some ball game. Never held his interest—that was his past, not his present—but the guys and some of the Navy gals were into it. They screened movies here too, and the posters that had been shipped out papered the walls in a blinding array of color and tech; not a whole lot of romantic comedies for this crowd.

  Board games, cards (that were forbidden to be used for gambling according to the lone white sign among the sea movies posters, so they of course were used for nothing else), and some table games.

  He’d checked on his men, about a third of them were here. Lamar and Ruiz were in one of their intense speed chess tournaments—ten seconds maximum per move. It made him twitchy just to watch them. They could rack up dozens of games a night and he couldn’t beat either of them no matter how much time they gave him.

  Hanson was sitting nearby, glaring at another chess board. No one sat opposite him. Hanson didn’t like opponents: Always messing up my games, Lieutenant. He only played against himself no matter how often he was razed about playing with himself. Clint had watched his slow, thoughtful games a time or two and decided that Hanson was out of his league as well.

  Clint had always been more of an action man. Pool, which was impossible to play on a rolling ship, had paid for more than a few of his drinking nights back in his early days. Of the table games available aboard ship, he rocked the foosball table and soon gravitated to the back of the crowd gathering there to watch a Ranger versus Navy matchup.

  “Damn it! I knew my luck was too good to last.”

  Clint looked down to see the top of Nika’s head close beside him. He hadn’t even noticed her approach.

  “I guess I need a different kind of luck,” Nika continued. “Can’t see squat either. Just Rangers getting beat by Navy anyway, so it’s nothing new.”

  “Well,” he went for Southern friendly. “If you weren’t so short, might have better a better view. Could always sit on my shoulders, Petty Officer. Must say though, I surely do not know why the Navy grows them so short.”

  “No chance in hell, Lieutenant Barstowe,” she cricked her neck back to glance up at him from so close and looked as if she was going to snicker at his hat’s white pom-pom.

  Then it chose that moment to slide forward and dangle in his eye and her snicker turned into a smirk.

  “I’d thought it
was going to be a good morning,” her shrug was one of eloquent resignation. “Guess not.”

  “What’s wrong with this morning?” He brushed aside the pom-pom that went to dangle in front of his other eye.

  Her smile only grew. Well, he know how to take care of that.

  “Owe me money from our bet, do you?”

  “Go to hell, sir,” her looked of too damned pleased with herself went away quickly enough.

  “Probably will, sailor. I probably will. But I’ll be twenty dollars richer when I do. A passel better than a poke in the eye.” And even now he could hear Hell beckoning with the thoughts he was thinking. Thoughts he shouldn’t be thinking at all, especially not in the midst of a crowd. But if she lost a night’s sleep over their brief kiss, then at least they were on equal footing there.

  Then her eyes narrowed and he wondered if he should cut for the exit while he still had a chance.

  “Air hockey, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, Petty Officer Maier. That is what the table behind you is called.”

  “Do you play air hockey, Lieutenant?”

  “Been known to whip some Navy ass from time to time.”

  Without another word, she turned and walked toward the table. He instantly regretted the “Navy ass” remark as his attention was riveting on Nika’s fine one. She wasn’t a “hippy” woman, but she displayed a form just designed for a man’s hand to cradle. To cradle while pulling her in tight and kissing her like—

  “You chickening out on me?” Nika called back without even turning.

  Somehow she knew he wasn’t following. He just hoped she didn’t know where his thoughts had wandered off to. Clint got his feet in motion and used his longer legs to catch up without hurrying.

  At the air hockey table he was chagrined to see that Jerome, the LCAC’s mechanic and assistant Loadmaster, was kicking Sergeant Dupree’s butt. The eight-foot table, full regulation size, looked like a pool table without the pockets. It hissed softly with the air it was pumping out of the myriad holes in its smooth plastic surface.

  The red three-and-a-quarter inch puck skittered frictionlessly across the surface at lightning speeds. Jerome and Dupree each wielded small plastic mallets with rounded handles on top, trying to protect the narrow slot of a goal in the center of either end.