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situation well in hand and would prevent any would be suitor interfering with her letting her hair down, and—Terry admitted—if anyone needed to relax, it was Kristen.
    After about twenty minutes, Hoover returned to the table to finish his beer, but he kept his eyes on Hamilton and Kristen who remained on the dance floor.
    Terry watched them dancing. Her normally perfect coiffure had come loose, and her hair now seemed alive as it flowed about her, creating an intoxicating image as she moved with the music. The alcohol, as the SEALs intended, had relaxed her. “Wow,” he murmured, “I wouldn’t have believed it.” Her normal stoic and cold façade had disintegrated as she let the music take her.
    “What do you mean, Lieutenant?” Hoover asked. The pretty-boy SEAL was seated across the table next to Gibbs.
    Terry wasn’t sure how to phrase it, but said, “She just always acts so prim and proper. You know, totally in control…”
    “You can’t judge a book by its cover, Lieutenant,” Gibbs reminded Terry.
    Terry looked over at the two men. They were both looking back at him with amused expressions. Again Terry had the feeling he was missing something, then Gibbs looked at Hoover oddly and said, “Isn’t that right?”
    Hoover nodded with the same whimsical smile. “That’s right.” With that, the two men stood and joined Hamilton and Kristen on the dance floor.
    Terry watched her, as an unfamiliar uneasiness grew inside of him. He couldn’t help but reconsider his entire opinion of Kristen as she danced with the three men. Until that moment, she’d had the personality of a mannequin, always in complete control. But now he realized the woman he saw everyday while on board the Seawolf with her fastidious attention to every conceivable detail and annoying habit of being nearly perfect at everything, came with a price. He’d thought Kristen had been just naturally hard working and socially introverted, but now realized the rigidness, the stoic nature, the perfection came with a terrible price he’d never considered. But as he watched her dancing and saw her move with reckless abandon—unchained from the expectations of the world around her—he saw the free spirit she truly wanted to be.
    He swallowed hard, feeling a strange desire like he’d never known before.
     
    Kristen awoke and her first thought was that someone was mining for gold in her skull with a pickaxe. She slowly opened her eyes. The overhead was spinning. She closed her eyes and groaned as realization struck her about what she’d allowed to happen. She and alcohol had never been a good mix, so she tried to avoid it. But the SEALs had gotten her to drink, and after her third hurricane the night had become a blur.
    “Oh, no,” she groaned.
    Her hand managed to turn off the blaring alarm clock beside her pillow. She then lay for a few moments, willing her pounding headache away. But it seemed a permanent feature now. Slowly, she climbed from her bunk and gripped the edge of it to steady herself, wondering how she could possibly make it to her division’s morning muster without everyone realizing she was nursing a raging hangover. She moved slowly, knowing she had to get a shower before getting dressed.
    She looked down and saw she was still dressed in her liberty clothes from the previous evening. The last thing she clearly remembered was being around the dinner table in the restaurant and laughing about how she’d tried to calm Dr. Dar-Hyun by speaking English. After that, it was all a bit hazy.
    Kristen made it to Brodie’s cabin, thanking God he was not in. Stumbling into the head, she turned on the red light to avoid the bright white light hitting her eyes. She knew she was going to vomit and went ahead and got it over with immediately before stripping down and stepping into the shower. She stuck her head under the water, turning it down until it was so cold she was certain ice cubes might shoot out of the showerhead.
    She let the