Jake swallowed and forced a smile. “God, I’m sorry,” he said. “How long have you been standing there? I didn’t realize you were still in the room.”
She shifted her briefcase to her other hand, and Jake realized that she was nervous. He made Pat Sullivan’s top operative nervous.
The feeling was extremely mutual—but for what had to be an entirely different reason. He found her attractive, college-girl getup and all. Much too attractive.
“I just wanted to thank you again for including me in this assignment,” she said, all but stammering. She was trying so hard to be cool, but he knew otherwise.
“Let’s see if you’re still thanking me after you get an up-close look at the CRO compound.” Jake headed for the door to get away from her subtle, freshly sweet scent. She wasn’t wearing perfume. He had to guess it was her hair. Hair that would slip between his fingers like silk. If he were close enough to touch it. Which he wasn’t.
“I’ve spent years in the Middle East. At least I won’t have to walk around wearing a veil in Montana.” She followed, almost tripping over her own feet to keep up. “I’m just…I’m thrilled to be working with you, sir.”
He stopped in the corridor just outside the third door. There was no doubt about it. “You’ve read Scooter’s damn book.”
For seventeen years, that book had been coming back to haunt him. Scoot had written his memoirs about his time in Nam. Who knew the monosyllabic, conversationally challenged SEAL was a budding Hemingway? But he’d written Laughing in the Face of Fire both eloquently and gracefully. It was one of the few books on Nam that Jake had actually almost liked—except for the fact that Scooter had made Jake out to be some kind of demigod.
Zoe Lange had probably read the damn thing when she was twelve or thirteen—or at some other god-awful impressionable age—and no doubt had been carrying around some crazy idea of Lieutenant Jake Robinson, superhero, ever since.
“Well, yeah, I’ve read it,” she told him. “Of course I’ve read it.” She was looking at him the way a ten-year-old boy would look at Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa.
He hated it. Hero worship without a modicum of lust. What the hell had happened to him?
He’d turned fifty, that’s what. And children like Zoe Lange—who hadn’t even been born during his first few tours in Vietnam—thought of him as someone’s grandpa.
“Scooter exaggerated,” he said shortly, starting down the hall toward the elevators. He was mad at himself for giving a damn. So what if this girl didn’t see him as a man? It was better that way, considering they were going to be working together, considering he was not interested in getting involved with her. “Extensively.”
“Even if only ten percent of the stories he told were true, you would still be a hero.”
“There’s no such thing as a Vietnam war hero.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
“Yeah? You can’t be a hero alone in a room. You need the crowd. The ticker-tape parade. The gorgeous blonde rushing the convertible to kiss you silly. I know—I’ve seen pictures of U.S. soldiers coming home after the Second World War. They sure as hell didn’t get egged by college students.”
“The Vietnam era was a confusing time in history.”
Jake winced. “History. Jeez, it wasn’t that long ago. Make me feel old, why don’t you?”
“I don’t think you’re old, Admiral.”
“Okay, then start by calling me Jake. You’re on my team, we’re going to get to know each other pretty well by the time this is over.” Jake stopped at the elevators and punched his security code into the keypad. “And I am old. I’ve been around a half a century, and I’ve seen more than my share of terrible, violent, monstrous acts. The things people do to each other appalls me. But I’m going to use that in my favor. Everything I’ve seen and learned is going to help me keep Chris Vincent and the CRO from doing some awful, permanent damage to this country that I love.”
She laughed. Her teeth were white and straight. “And you claim you’re not a hero.” The elevator doors slid open and she followed him inside. “I think you’re wrong. I think you can be a hero alone in a room. I think you would’ve shied away from the ticker-tape parade anyway.”
“Are you kidding? I would’ve eaten it up with a spoon.” He punched in the code that would take them to the ground floor. “Look, Doc, I appreciate your support, I do. Just…don’t believe everything you read in Scooter’s book.”
“Four hundred and twenty-seven.”
“Four hundred and twenty-seven what?”
“Men.”
His first thought was surely a sign that he’d had sex on his mind far too frequently of late. But there was no innuendo in Zoe Lange’s face, no hint of a suggestion in her eyes that she wanted Jake to be number four hundred and twenty-eight in a very, very long line. In fact, such a long line, it was preposterous. He tried not to laugh and failed. “I cannot begin to guess what you’re talking about. I mean, I’m trying, but…” He laughed again at his own cluelessness. “You’ve lost me, Doctor.”
“My father was number four hundred and twenty-seven,” she said quietly. “He’s one of Jake’s Boys.”
Jake didn’t know what to say.
It happened sometimes. Someone would come up to him with emotion brimming in their eyes and shake his hand, whispering that their husband or son or father was one of Jake’s Boys. As if he still had some kind of hold over them. Or as if, upon saving their lives, he’d somehow become responsible for them until the end of time.
He’d learned to be courteous and brief. He’d shake their hand, touch their shoulder, smile into their eyes and pretend he remembered Private This or Corporal That. The truth was, he didn’t remember any of them. The faces stuck in his mind were only of the men he hadn’t been able to save. The men who died, who were already dead. Empty eyes. All those awful, empty eyes…
“Sergeant Matthew Lange,” she told him. “He was with the forty-fifth—”
“I don’t remember him.” He couldn’t lie to this woman. Not if she was going to be on his team.
She didn’t even blink. “I didn’t expect you to, sir. He was only one out of hundreds.” She smiled and reached out to take his hand, to squeeze his fingers. “You know, I owe my life to you, as well. I wasn’t born until a year after he came home.”
Which meant her father was probably younger than Jake was.
Perfect.
His one completely loyal ally, the one person on his team who honestly didn’t have any reservations about his age or ability, had just managed to make him feel undeniably old.
And not just old, but nasty and old. Like some kind of complete degenerate.
As he gazed into her perfect brown eyes, as she held onto his hand and he felt the warmth and strength of her fingers, the smoothness of her skin against his palm, he forced himself to admit that for the first time in the two and a half years since Daisy had died, he’d finally met a woman he could imagine himself making love to.
And he didn’t want that. He didn’t want to imagine himself capable of wanting anyone but the only woman he’d ever loved, the woman he still loved. But he couldn’t deny that he missed sex, that he wanted sex. And he didn’t know how to reconcile his physical needs with the indisputable fact that Daisy was forever gone.
Forever, permanently gone. And she wasn’t coming back.
For just a second, he let himself really look at Zoe Lange. She was brilliant, she was brave, she was tough, yet her