Chance felt something fist low in his gut. “Oh, yeah? I’d think you’d be happy to have someone who understands what it is you do. Someone who really gets it.”
“Ha! The only thing they want to get is laid.”
“So I guess you’re performing true to form, then, huh?” Chance couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, look at you … you’re a pilot. What makes you so different from the guys? You clearly wanted to get laid, and you succeeded.” He gave her a terse smile. “Glad to have been of service, ma’am.”
He began buttoning his shirt, refusing to look at her, because if he did, she might see something in his eyes that he was trying really hard to hide.
Regret. Disappointment.
He shouldn’t care what her motives were for being with him. It wasn’t as if he was planning on seeing her again. They’d agreed that this wasn’t going to be anything more than a onetime hookup. No strings. No commitments. So why did he feel so miserable?
Jenna sighed. Reaching out, she lay a hand on his arm. “Look, it wasn’t like that, okay?” She gave a rueful laugh. “To your credit, I broke my own rules when I agreed to come out here with you. My number-one rule is to never sleep with a pilot, so at least I didn’t break that rule, thank God. But I generally try not to get involved with anyone in the military, period. I don’t like to mix business with pleasure.”
The woman didn’t have the first clue what he did for a living. Chance’s first instinct was to tell her, just so he could see her response. Instead, he gave a snort and finished fastening his shirt. He didn’t trust himself to look at her. “I’m flattered. Really.”
She made a sound of frustration. “I’m not trying to flatter you—”
“Do the guys in your battalion have any clue how you feel about them?” he asked, cutting her off. He knew he sounded bitter, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Do they realize what a low opinion you have of them?”
Even in the darkness, he could see how taken aback she was. “Just because I prefer not to sleep with them doesn’t mean I have a low opinion of them. And why are you getting upset about this? Trust me, they have such high opinions of themselves that what I think doesn’t even register on their ego-meters.”
“Right.” Chance pushed himself to his feet and began scooping up their things, forcing her to scoot off the blanket so that he could roll it into an untidy ball and stuff it into his saddlebag. “It’s getting late. I’ll take you back to the club or drive you home. Whichever you prefer.”
He didn’t look at Jenna, but concentrated on packing up instead. He felt like he’d just made a crash landing after an exceptionally spectacular flight, and now his only hope was that he could walk away from the wreckage unscathed. He wasn’t going to argue with her and ruin what had, up until a few moments ago, been the best night he’d spent in a very long time. She was entitled to her opinions and it wasn’t like they were ever going to see each other again. Even if he had wanted to ask her out, once she discovered what he did for a living, she’d be gone from his life faster than a Hellfire missile.
Better to let her believe that her record was untarnished. Because after hearing her opinions about pilots, there was no way in hell he was going to tell her that she’d broken her own number-one rule. She’d just had the best sex of her life with an Apache helicopter pilot. Boo-rah.
4
Two months later—Nuristan Province, Afghanistan
JENNA BROUGHT THE BLACK Hawk in low and fast, her eyes sweeping the narrow mountain pass for any signs of insurgency. Behind her, in the open door of the cabin, Specialist Leeann Baker squeezed off several magazines as a warning to deter any possible ambush. Once through the pass, Jenna would have a visual on Forward Operating Base Kalagush, where her current passengers would disembark and she would collect another group bound for Kabul Air Base.
The stark valley, surrounded on all sides by the naked, forbidding peaks of the Hindu Kush mountains, always gave Jenna the shivers. No matter how many times she flew this particular route, she couldn’t shake the sense that she’d stumbled into an episode of The Land That Time Forgot. If a prehistoric pterodactyl suddenly took wing from the nearby crags, she wouldn’t have been at all surprised.
Fortunately, the only predatory birds in the nearby airspace were the second Black Hawk that flew hard on her right flank and the fully manned Apache attack helicopter that provided cover from above. Even with the armed escorts, she wouldn’t breathe easy until they were on the ground at Kalagush. They’d stay just long enough to refuel and reload passengers, before they made the return trip to Kabul Air Base, arriving before darkness fell.
In the seat beside her, so close that their elbows nearly touched, Warrant Officer Laura Costanza radioed their position to the control tower at the remote base. Jenna listened carefully to the instructions provided by the tower and checked the coordinates on the multifunctional display. She’d been flying for nearly five hours, and now she feathered the cyclic stick between her knees while simultaneously working the collective to control her angle of descent.
The mountain pass opened up, and spread out on the desolate wasteland beneath her was the sprawling complex of Forward Operating Base Kalagush, a small patch of Western civilization smack in the middle of the unforgiving terrain of northern Afghanistan. Several minutes later, Jenna brought the helicopter to a smooth landing on the helipad and shut the rotors down.
“Welcome to Kalagush,” she shouted to the soldiers as they gathered their gear together in the cabin. “Enjoy your stay and thank you for flying with the U.S. Army. We know you have no other options, but we still appreciate your business.”
As always, her comments drew laughs and ribald comments from the men as they jumped down from the helicopter and made their way across the tarmac to their new duty station.
“And they say women can’t park!” one of the soldiers said, grinning at her as he climbed out. “Nice flying, ma’am!”
“How long do we have?” she asked Laura, as she shut everything down and completed her flight paperwork.
Laura flipped open a flight book and consulted her watch. “Twenty minutes to unload, refuel, reload and lift off.”
Switching off her headset, Jenna removed her helmet and climbed down from the cockpit and stretched her tight muscles, watching as her flight crew went through the routine of checking the aircraft and preparing it for the return trip. The crew chief, Sergeant First Class Samantha Helwig, began coordinating with the ground personnel to unload the supplies and mailbags that she carried in her cargo bay, while a fuel truck lumbered toward them. Nearby, the other two helicopters were undergoing similar activity.
A soldier jogged toward her across the tarmac, a clipboard beneath his arm. Jenna returned his smart salute.
“Hey, Corporal Garrett.” She smiled, recognizing the man from her previous visits. “Who do we have the privilege of transporting today?”
The soldier consulted his clipboard. “A five-man unit for you, and two VIPs for Captain McLaughlin.”
“Right,” she replied, and glanced in the direction of the other Black Hawk, where she could see the pilot inspecting his aircraft. She wouldn’t speculate on the reasons why McLaughlin always got the VIPs. Her job was to transport personnel. End of story. Her helicopter was large enough to accommodate her four-person crew and seven fully equipped troops, so the five-man team put her almost at full capacity.
Turning away, she began a visual inspection of her own helicopter, looking for any structural damage or weaknesses in the aircraft. She’d been flying with Warrant Officer Costanza for so long