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parade rest and sit in the chair. As she sat bolt upright on the edge of the seat, the front of the flight suit billowed outward. She grabbed at the zipper and hauled it up. So tight to her neck that her gag reflex tried to kick in, but her hands were already folded neatly in her lap, and she wasn’t going to do anything more to make herself look stupid. If possible.
    “I have a special assignment for you. Indefinite time period. Completely optional, no repercussions, though I hope that you’ll consider it seriously.”
    Meaning she had no choice whatsoever.

Chapter 7
     
    Mark left the equipment check to his crew. It was a crappy call, but he was in no mood to make sure he hadn’t broken a forty-million-dollar helicopter with that landing. Truth be told, the way he was acting, they’d be in no mood to let him.
    As soon as he stepped on deck, he was ricocheted around by the deck crew like an old and unwanted billiard ball. The blue-jacketed chock-and-chain crew pushed him one way and pinned his bird to the deck despite the calm seas. White-vested safety guys shoved him the other and checked the chocks and looked for any fuel leaks. Two reds waited for him to move before they ran a quick inspection and dodged off to the shipboard munitions lift for resupply. The Hawk hadn’t yet been restocked after last night’s op at the cave.
    A couple grapes, in their flame retardant suits and purple vests, waved for him to stand clear, then pulled a hose free from a handy deck hatch and started pumping JP-5 fuel to top off his tanks.
    He finally found peace at the edge of the deck, just two steps from the sixty-foot drop to the Arabian Sea. Good thing the seas were calm today.
    He glared up at the carrier’s tower. Somewhere in there was Captain Emily Beale. If she was truly reassigned, he’d have to fill the seat on her bird. Bronson maybe. But the man was useless in combat. He’d have to reassign her bird to a carrier run until he figured out what the hell was going on.
    He should be back at the base, but he couldn’t let anyone else transport her. He knew it made no sense, but he didn’t trust Beale to anyone else. Sure, the two of them flew side by side into life-threatening danger as often as not, but she also ranked as the most precious cargo he’d ever carried.
    Knowing that the feeling made no sense made it no less true.
    He turned to face the ocean, back toward Afghanistan lost over the watery horizon. Back where they’d flown together, chasing each other across the heart of the Hindu Kush, a grin of delight plastered across his face. Glad to be flying beside her even when he was losing the race.
    What woman had last preoccupied his brain like Emily Beale? Okay, no one. Mary Taylor had filled his waking and sometimes his sleeping thoughts at sixteen. That she was two years older, a senior infinitely far out of his reach, hadn’t stopped him. And perseverance had eventually paid off there. When he was seventeen, Laura had given him a very memorable and educational night for his Junior Prom.
    Being in ROTC and a football wide receiver in college had offered him his pick of women, and he’d enjoyed every one. He’d been assigned for a couple of years to Italy, where he’d learned about the bountiful physical gifts of Italian women and their willingness to share them with a handsome American aviator. It still ranked as his first choice port-of-call for leave after his parents’ ranch.
    But none of them cluttered his brain like Emily Beale.
    Any contentment with his lifestyle evaporated the first time he’d ever seen her. He’d come up from 5th Battalion’s Fort Lewis HQ to fetch the latest newbie to graduate Fort Campbell training. Somehow a woman had made it through selection and training. The first ever, and he’d been saddled with her.
    And his world had changed. Even though she’d been dressed in civvies, carrying a bright red knapsack, with her wheat-blond hair caught back in a ponytail to look like any