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  She’d stop after two hours for three minutes max. She’d studied the first three map sections before starting, had chosen and memorized her route.

  Carla took a bearing and kept to the shortest travel line. Three kilometers right over the peak to the next RV. She’d hiked the Continental Divide Trail—far less known than its Appalachian or Pacific Crest brethren—during her last two summers of high school. It required six months of walking over the highest peaks of the country, from the Crazy Cook Monument in the deep desert of New Mexico to Glacier National Park in Montana: three months south from Colorado, and three months north to the Canadian border.

  These Appalachian mountains made her feel like she was merely warming up, no more than that. She had to admit, even if she wouldn’t say it aloud, that the Forty-Miler with full ruck and an M16 did add to the challenge.

  When Carla crested the peak, Sergeant Major Maxwell was standing there.

  “Sergeant Major.”

  “Blue Five.” Not a single instructor had yet used her name or anyone else’s outside of morning roll call. “Figured you’d be the one batshit crazy enough to follow this route.”

  “Yes, sir.” Carla was itching to keep moving, but you didn’t brush off a sergeant major. And she liked that the head of testing had decided to place himself in position to wait especially for her.

  “So, you’re done? No shame in it. You’ve destroyed pretty much every betting pool so far. You can walk away proud of what you’ve done. We’ll give you a top letter back to your regular unit. Even recommend you to SOF.”

  Carla didn’t know whether to shout at him or laugh in his face. A hundred times she’d been asked that question in the last thirty days, and she’d told them a hundred times no.

  Though a recommendation to Special Operations Forces was damn high praise, especially coming from The Unit. But she didn’t want to be the first female Ranger or the first female Special Forces Green Beret or anything else. She was going to be Delta.

  It took an effort, but she managed to keep her voice steady. “Think I’ll keep walking for a bit, Sergeant Major.”

  “Show me that your flashlight works and show me where you are on your map.”

  She hadn’t used her flashlight yet, preferring the moonlight, and she was standing on the peak of the mountain. She did both without comment, and he nodded and stepped aside with, “Have a good ’un.”

  Carla made it about three steps past him when a sudden thought struck her. Turning back, she studied Maxwell’s face in the moonlight.

  “Pretty much every betting pool?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Your money still in there, Sergeant Major?”

  “Oh, I put my money down on the first day. Haven’t seen any reason to place a bet since.”

  “Didn’t answer the question, Sarge.”

  “Don’t intend to, Blue Five. Have a good ’un.” And with that he melted into the night as if he’d never been there and she was alone on the mountaintop. Fifty-six kilometers to go.

  * * *

  Kyle stood at what he hoped to God was the last intersection. Sixty-five klicks over rough terrain with a twenty-kilo ruck. Eighteen hours.

  Was that right? Or was it a twenty-mile hike and an eighteen-kilo ruck? He knew he’d started at midnight. He knew what the time was on his watch, but he was so hammered that he was having trouble connecting the two. Eighteen hundred hours minus midnight was…still eighteen.

  It was nearing sunset.

  The blistering heat of the day had sapped his strength along with his wits, no matter how much water with electrolytes and how many energy bars he’d consumed. The straps of the ruck had cut into his shoulders until his hands were numb and he could barely open a water bottle. He had to look down at his hands every now and then to make sure he was still carrying his rifle. Once he hadn’t been, but he’d found where it went fast enough. It had landed on his throbbing feet and hurt like unholy hell despite the boot.

  His feet were long past agony as he forced them into the last turn and began climbing up the stiff hill to the final RV; thank god it was the final one. He crested a low rise and could see the trucks of the check-in point waiting just a few hundred meters ahead, like manna from heaven.

  “I can do a few hundred meters.” He dug deep and began forcing his body to honor his words. It helped that he could see one of the training cadre standing atop the rise looking down at him.

  He’d made it about a dozen steps toward the man when there was a heavy crashing sound in the thick brush off to his right.

  Kyle had not walked all this way to be surprised and mauled by a bear. He turned and blinked hard to restore his focus. No live ammo, just this shit-heavy M16. Too far downslope still for the cadre to make it to him in time.

  Then he heard a sharp curse, followed by the appearance of a woman who looked much the worse for wear. Her hair was snarled with branches and leaves. Dried mud smeared up half her body as if she’d dived into a swamp to do the sidestroke. There were scratches on her face that had dribbled blood and dried crusty brown. She stumbled onto the open trail in obvious shock at her abrupt release from the tenacious clutches of the wilderness.

  He probably looked much the same.

  “Hey, Kyle.” Her smile was a grim acknowledgment of forty miles of pain and strain.

  “Hey, Carla.” He’d never seen such a beautiful sight as this woman of the wild. No one had passed him through the night and the scorching day. That she’d made up fifty-seven minutes on him should shock the shit out of him—he hadn’t exactly been loafing along—but it really didn’t. Damn she was tough.

  “Race you.” Her voice was hoarse with exhaustion.

  “Sure,” he grunted out.

  They turned shoulder to shoulder, a few steps apart so that the cadre could see they were in no way assisting one another, and staggered up the trail, every step stinging his feet like hell, but each one also a little lighter for having her beside him.

  At the RV, the cadre separated them.

  His sergeant led him over to a truck. “Show me where you are on your map.”

  I’m standing right here, idiot. Had to be the right place because Carla was here too. Of course, that kind of defined the right place no matter what a stupid map said.

  What the hell was he thinking?

  He fumbled out the folder paper and pointed. No, that was his starting point on this sheet. He moved his finger along the route he’d taken and found the end point as much by luck as coherence.

  “Night is falling. Change out your batteries and show me that your flashlight works.”

  Shit! Shit! Shit! This wasn’t the end of it. No way did he have another step in him. No, this was the end. They were just messing with him. Weren’t they?

  He managed to fumble open the light. It hurt like grabbing live voltage to make his hands work.

  Kyle ignored the whole “you can quit anytime” spiel while he struggled with the fresh batteries, which took him several minutes. Somehow he managed it.

  “Read these instructions.”

  He couldn’t even see the instructions. Eight numbers. Map coordinates. It wasn’t over.

  It took Kyle a full minute to parse the numbers and more time to make the right notation on his own map. Had to hurry or Carla would get a lead on him. Catching him was one thing; passing him was not acceptable.

  Eleven more kilometers. Right back over the worst terrain in the entire Uwharrie Forest. No way in hell.

  The cadre member checked his notation on his map, nodded, then stepped aside. “Have a good ’un.”

  * * *

  Carla stared at her cadre in disbelief.

  Have a good ’un?

  Eleven kilometers over butt-ugly terrain and he was saying, “Have a good ’un”?

  It took everything she had to re-shoulder her ruck. />
  Then it took everything she had to make that first step.

  And her whole being again to take the next.

  When the cadre called out for her to stop, she ignored him.

  She’d do this one fucking step at a time if she had to. Kyle Reeves was never going to beat her again.

  A couple of the trainers came up to block her progress; she bulled her way between them. Unable to stop, she actually ran head-on into one of them. It was like walking into a brick wall.

  Sergeant Major Maxwell.

  He placed a hand on each of her shoulders and kept her there until she looked up into his face.

  “You’re finished. Stress Phase testing is over for you.”

  “Finished? No. I’m not quitting.” And then the words sunk in. “Finished” is what they’d said each of the thirty days when she’d completed the day’s exercise. “Finished?” It came out plaintive, more than she’d like but she couldn’t fix it.

  A grin crossed his craggy face, such a shocking expression across his stoically neutral expression that she wondered if his face was going to break.

  If it did, would she be able to bend down to pick up the pieces? More importantly, if she bent down, would she be able to stand again?

  “You just won my bet for me, Carla.” It was the first time he’d ever said her name.

  Once it sunk in that she was truly done with the hike, she wanted to laugh, to cry, to somehow mark the moment.

  When the Sergeant Major shook her hand, it was enough.

  In moments, someone had taken her ruck and the M16. Another guided her off to the side, down a trail out of sight of the truck. There was a campfire.

  Kyle Reeves was sitting there, lying back against a dirt bank, looking pretty goddamn pleased with himself.

  They eased her down beside him, pulled off her boots, propped her feet up on her rucksack, and gave her a cup of hot spiced wine well laced with brandy.

  Oh God, she was in heaven.

  They were smiling now. Congratulating her. Shaking her hand.

  Carla had felt this good before, she must have. But she sure couldn’t think of when.

  She didn’t even mind when the unit’s doc came over and caused shooting pains as he poked at her feet before declaring them sound. The various agonies of the ordeal were a long way from subsiding, but she no longer cared. She’d passed Stress Phase.

  “Well, done, tough guy.” She bumped her shoulder against Kyle’s.

  “Well, done, girlie.” He bumped her back with one of his killer smiles thrown in as a bonus that warmed her inside as much as the cider.

  They clinked steaming mugs.

  A man who could smile at her like that after what they’d both just been through and achieved, he could get away with calling her that. At least this one more time.

  They talked lazily back and forth for over an hour before the next candidate was escorted to the fire, mostly about the men behind them. Chad Hawkins, followed minutes later by his good buddy Duane Jenkins, collapsed nearby. Both were grinning like idiots. All too comfortable to move, she offered them “air” high fives, which were happily returned.

  Carla was the only one of the three grunts from regular Army to make it this far. One had been unable to hit the twenty-eighth target but was invited back for a later testing, and the other had shattered a hip when he got lost and accidentally walked off a waterfall.

  They talked about some of the others who had been left by the wayside as Richie and Andrew made it in. Of course, Kyle knew far more of them than she did. The more they talked, the more impressed she became with herself. She’d done good to have outlasted a lot of these guys.

  As her body slowly recovered, she became aware that her and Kyle’s shoulders were just brushing. Had been for a while.

  She had underestimated him.

  Sergeant bloody Kyle Reeves was also a sneaky SOB. He’d slipped right past her outermost perimeter shield.

  He wasn’t just some beautiful, tough, friendly, totally superior grunt. Finding an excuse to lean against her—a contact that was becoming more and more electrifying the longer she didn’t move away—was a totally underhanded maneuver that she hadn’t thought him capable of. A whole new side to him. What else was there to discover beneath that tough-guy exterior?

  It made her like him just that much more.

  By the time they were carried to the trucks—neither her nor Kyle’s insistence that they could walk had proven to be accurate—there were only twelve of them around that fire. How many others finished the “official” hike but didn’t have the will to take that next step, they’d never know.

  * * *

  Psych evals were psych evals.

  Kyle had always said to hell with the headshrinkers. You answered honest and you were done. Trying to second-guess their twisty brains wasn’t worth the effort.

  Whereas scoring each other had flat-out sucked.

  “Would you want to serve with this soldier?” “Would you trust this soldier to have your back if you were in…” Dozens of questions that had to be answered for each of the other eleven finalists.

  He hated shit like that and tried not to think about what the guys seated around him were marking down.

  “Make a list, in order, of which of your fellow candidates you would want to serve with. Number one?”

  Carla Anderson.

  He didn’t even think before he wrote down the answer and then blinked at it in surprise. Was that as a soldier or was it personal? Was it because she was the toughest one here after himself—a fact that she’d proven again and again? Or was it because he’d seriously considered kissing the shit out of her and taking whatever the consequences as they’d lounged side by side around the fire last night with their feet perched up on their rucks and their shoulders warm against each other?

  The first time Kyle hadn’t beaten her time on a hike was the Forty-Miler. She’d taken the disadvantage of starting fifty-seven minutes behind him and turned it into the extra motivation to catch him. He’d been so sure no one could. It had motivated her to burn up that trail in just over seventeen hours to his eighteen. He could seriously respect just how fast she’d been moving.

  She’d definitely snagged his attention…his and his body’s. But bottom line, it didn’t matter.

  If she did nothing but fight beside him, he’d find a way to be content, or at least accept it.

  Then he thought about the other side of that coin. What if there was more?

  Taking down Carla Anderson as man and woman, that could definitely give a man happy thoughts. Or, he had to smile to himself, being taken down by Carla Anderson, which was probably her preferred scenario. Nope, he wouldn’t be filing a complaint either way.

  * * *

  Carla wondered what the hell Kyle Reeves was smiling about. Psych evals were a royal pain in the ass and she absolutely despised them.

  She could never figure out what the crazier-than-she-was psycho-chiatrists were really after. And grading each other was the absolute shits!

  She turned the page: If Delta Selection was up to you, which soldiers would you select, in order.

  Goddamn it! It just kept getting worse.

  Well, Kyle was an easy shoo-in for the first spot.

  She could seriously respect that he’d held on for the tie at the rate she’d been moving. He was also like a kind of Mr. Perfect Soldier Guy.

  What was behind that cool facade of nice guy and gorgeous man?

  She’d thought Delta Selection had peeled back all of their layers. Right up until Kyle had managed to lean against her without her even noticing.

  Somehow, despite the process, he’d hidden away deep—like some stealth weapon—his underhanded maneuver of first physical contact. Had he done the same during the shooting assessment or any of a hundred opportunities since, it wouldn’t mean
as much. But he hadn’t.

  Instead, he’d held off so long that even now, sitting at a desk in the concrete-and-blah eval room, that simple contact sizzled through her body. She’d passed out thinking of him and woken doing the same. Unfair, cheater, cheater pumpkin-eater, low-down… Slick move, dude.

  How far ahead had he planned that moment? All the way back when he’d first challenged her to make it to the end? Now that she thought of that, she knew it was true, or might as well be. It was as if some part of his twisty mind had turned on at the shooting range and begun planning how to sidle up to her without her defenses noticing. Worse, it had worked!

  She never did things like that. She could be sneaky, underhanded, downright nasty in the moment. But apparently Kyle’s brain could work on a much longer timeline. Probably part of why she’d only led a fireteam of Army grunts and he’d commanded an operational detachment of Green Berets.

  What other layers did he have that Delta hadn’t exposed?

  Her own tough-bitch side had come out more than once. Okay, it was more of a core than a side of her, but it had come out. If there was more to Kyle, she couldn’t see it.

  She knew for sure that she received more than her fair share of his attention. It was true for a number of the guys, but Kyle didn’t make a thing of it.

  He wanted more than her friendship—she’d known that since the first sizzling look on day one that she could still feel. She’d kept her shades on that first day to gain some distance from that initial flash of heat.

  But it had taken the asshole an entire week before he spoke directly to her, and that was only after she spoke first in the back of the truck while he stared at her face. He didn’t even have the decency to stare at her breasts so that she could dismiss him out of hand. Jerk.

  He had played a low-key waiting game. It was very risky, but she had to admit he’d played it well—it had one hundred percent worked.

  She was to the point that if she didn’t tear his clothes off real goddamn soon, she was going to lose it.