Tall, Dark and Devastating: Harvard's Education

“Hey, Ron,” Harvard said as Joe stopped to pull several bottles of beer from the refrigerator. “What’s up?”

“I’m teaching myself to cook,” she told him in her crisp British accent. Her red hair was loose around her shoulders, and she was casually dressed in shorts and a halter top. But she was the kind of super classy woman who, no matter what she wore, always looked ready to attend some kind of state function. Just throw on a string of pearls, and she’d be ready to go. “How’s your father?”

“Much better, thanks. Almost back to one hundred percent.”

“I’m so glad.”

“Moving day’s coming. My mother keeps threatening to pack him in a box if he doesn’t quit trying to lift things she perceives as being too heavy for him.”

Joe looked up from his search for a bottle opener. “You didn’t tell me your parents were moving.”

“No?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“My father’s taking a position at a school out in Arizona. In Phoenix. Some little low-key private college.”

“It sounds perfect,” Veronica said. “Just what he needs—a slower pace. A change of climate.”

“Yeah, it’s great,” Harvard said, trying to mean it. “And they found a buyer for the house, so…”

Joe found the bottle opener and closed the drawer with his hip, still gazing at Harvard. “You okay about that?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Harvard said, shrugging it off.

Veronica turned to the baby. “Now, Frank, really. You’re supposed to use the other end of the spoon.”

Frankie grinned at her as he continued to chew on the spoon’s handle.

“He inherited that smile from his father,” Veronica told Harvard, sending a special smile of her own in Joe Cat’s direction. “And he knows when he uses it, he can get away with anything. I swear, I’m doomed. I’m destined to spend the rest of my life completely manipulated by these two men.”

“That’s right,” Joe said, stopping to kiss his wife’s bare shoulder before he handed Harvard an opened bottle of beer. “I manipulated her into allowing me to refinish the back deck two weeks ago. We don’t even own this place, and yet I managed to talk her into letting me work out there in the hot sun, sanding it down, applying all those coats of waterproofing….”

“It was fun. Frank and I helped,” Veronica said.

Joe just laughed.

“Can I convince you to stay for dinner?” she asked Harvard. “I’m making a stew. I hope.”

“Oh, no, Ron, I’m sorry,” Harvard said, trying hard to sound as if he meant it. “I have other plans.” Plans such as eating digestible food. Veronica may have been one of the sweetest and most beautiful women in the world, but her cooking skills were nonexistent.

“Really? Do you have a date?” Her eyes lit up. “With what’s her name? The FInCOM agent? P.J. something?”

Harvard nearly choked on his beer. “No,” he said. “No, I’m not seeing her socially.” He shot a look at Joe Cat. “Who told you that I was?”

Joe was shaking his head, shrugging and making not-me faces.

“Just a guess. I saw her the other day.” Veronica stirred the alleged stew. “While I was dropping something off at the base. She’s very attractive.”

No kidding.

“So what’s the deal?” Veronica asked, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Has Lucky O’Donlon already staked his claim three feet in every direction around her?”

Lucky and P.J.? Of course, now that Harvard was thinking about it, Lucky had been circling P.J.—albeit somewhat warily—for the past few days. No doubt Miss East Coast Virginia was starting to cling. Harvard knew of nothing else that would send Lucky so quickly into jettison mode—and put him back on the prowl again. He had to smile, thinking of the way P.J. would react to Lucky’s less-than-subtle advances.

His smile faded. Unless it was only Harvard she was determined to keep her distance from.

“P.J.’s not seeing anyone, Ron,” Joe told his wife as he slid open the door to the back deck. “She’s working overtime trying to be one of the guys. She’s not going to blow that just because Lucky gives her a healthy dose of the O’Donlon charm.”

“Some women find heart-stoppingly handsome blond men like Lucky irresistible,” Veronica teased. “Particularly heart-stoppingly handsome blond men who look as if they’ve stepped off the set of Baywatch.”

“There’s no rule against a SEAL getting together with a FInCOM agent.” Harvard managed to keep his voice calm. “I have no problem with it, either. As long as the two of them are discreet.” The minute he got back to base, he was going to track down O’Donlon and… What? Beat him up? Warn him off? He shook his head. He had no claim on the girl.

“Ronnie, would you please send Blue out here after he gets here?” Joe asked his wife as he led Harvard onto the deck.

As Harvard closed the door behind him, he looked closely at his longtime friend. The captain of Alpha Squad looked relaxed and happy. The undercurrent of tension that seemed to surround the man like an aura was down to a low glow. And that was amazing, since the meeting tonight was to discuss the fact that the frustration levels regarding this FInCOM training mission were about to go off the chart.

At least Harvard’s were.

“You’re not really that bothered by all the interference we’re getting from FInCOM and Admiral Stonegate, are you?” Harvard asked.

Joe shrugged and leaned both elbows on the deck railing. “You know, H., I knew this program was a lost cause the day I met FInCOM’s choices for the team. To be honest, I don’t think there’s anything we can do to get those four working effectively together. So we do what we do, and then we recommend—emphatically—that FInCOM stay the hell out of counterterrorist operations. We suggest—strongly—that they leave that to the SEALs.”

“If you’re quitting, man, why not just detonate the entire program right now? Why keep on wasting our time with—”

“Because I’m being selfish.” Joe turned to look at him, his dark eyes serious. “Because Alpha Squad runs at two-hundred-and-fifty percent energy and efficiency one hundred percent of the time, and the guys need this down time. I need this down time. I’m telling you, H., it’s tough on Ronnie with me always leaving. She never knows when we sit down to dinner at night if that’s the last time I’m going to be around for a week or for a month or—God forbid—forever. She doesn’t say anything, but I see it in her eyes. And that look’s not there right now because she knows I’m leading this training drill for the next six weeks. She’s got another six weeks of reprieve, and I’m not taking that away from her. Or from any of the other wives, either.”

“I hear you,” Harvard said. “But it rubs the wrong way. Doing all this for nothing.”

“It’s not for nothing.” Joe finished his beer. “We’ve just got to revise this mission’s goal. Instead of creating a Combined SEAL/FInCOM counterterrorist team, we’re creating a FInCOM counterterrorist expert. We’re giving this expert all of the information she can possibly carry, and you know what she’s gonna do?”

“She?”

“She’s gonna take that expertise back to Kevin Laughton, and she’s gonna tell him and all of the FInCOM leaders that the best thing they can do in a terrorist situation is to step back and let SEAL Team Ten do the job.” Harvard swore. “She?”

“Yes, I’m referring to P. J. Richards.” Joe grinned. “You know, you should try talking to her sometime. She doesn’t bite.”

Harvard scowled. “Yes, she does. And I have the teeth marks to prove it.”

Joe’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, really?”

Harvard shook his head. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I almost forgot—you have no problem with her hooking up with Lucky O’Donlon as long as the two of them are discreet.” Joe snorted. “Why do I foresee a temporary transfer for O’Donlon crossing my desk in the near future?”

“You know I wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, maybe you should.”

Harvard clenched his teeth and set his barely touched bottle of beer on the deck railing. “Cat, I’m trying to be professional here.”

“What happened, she turn you down?”

Harvard pushed himself off the rail and walked toward the sliding doors, then stopped and walked toward the captain. “What exactly do you envision her role at FInCOM to be?”

“You’re purposely changing the subject.”

“Yes, I am.”

“I can’t believe you haven’t at least tried to get friendly with this woman. If I weren’t a happily married man, I’d be pulling some discreet moves myself. I mean, she’s smart, she’s beautiful, she’s—”

“What exactly do you envision her role at FInCOM to be?” Harvard enunciated very clearly.

“All right,” Joe said with a shrug. “Be that way.” He drew in a deep breath, taking the time to put his thoughts into words. “Okay, I see her continuing to climb FInCOM’s career ladder and moving into an upper-level position—probably onto Kevin Laughton’s staff. She’s worked with him before. He was the one who insisted she be part of this program in the first place.”

Kevin Laughton and P.J. Now Harvard had to wonder about that relationship. Inwardly, he rolled his eyes in disgust. Everything became more complicated when women were thrown into the equation. Suddenly sex became an issue, a motivation, a factor.

A possibility.

Damn, why couldn’t P.J. just stay in the FInCOM office, safe and sound and out of sight—a distraction for after hours?

“I see her as being the voice of reason and being right there, on hand, so that when a terrorist situation like that incident at the Athens airport comes up again, she can tell Laughton to get the SEALs involved right from the start instead of waiting a week and a half and getting five agents and ten civilians killed.

“The U.S. has a no-negotiation policy with terrorists,” Joe Cat went on. “We need to go one step further and consistently deliver an immediate and deadly show of force. Tangos take over another airport? FInCOM snaps to it, and boom, SEAL Team Ten is there within hours. The first CNN report doesn’t bring attention to the bastards’ cause—instead it’s an account of how quickly the Ts were crushed. It’s a report on the number of body bags needed to take the scum out of there. Tangos snatch hostages? Same thing. Boom. We go in, we get them out. No standing around wringing our hands. And eventually the terrorists will realize that their violent action causes a swift and deadly reaction from the United States every single time.”

“And you think P. J. Richards will really reach a point in FInCOM where her opinion is that important?” Harvard let his skepticism ring in his voice. “Where she can say, ‘Call in the SEALs,’ and have anyone listen to her?”

“On her own? Probably not,” Joe said baldly. “She’s a woman and she’s black. But I do think Kevin Laughton’s going all the way to the top. And I think P. J. Richards will be close by when he gets there. And I’m betting when she says, ‘Call in the SEALs,’ he’s going to listen.”

Harvard was silent. Damn, but he hated politics. And he hated the image of Laughton with P.J. by his side.

“So since our goal has changed,” Harvard asked, crossing his arms and trying to stay focused, “do we still try to convince FInCOM to let us run training ops that extend past their current ten-hour limit? And what about our request to go out of the country with the finks? If you’d prefer to just stay here in Virginia—”

“No,” Joe said. “I think it would create more of an impression on P.J. if we put on a real show—you know, let her feel the impact of being in a strange country for these longer exercises.”

“But you just said Veronica—”

“Ronnie will be fine if I go out of town for a few days for something as safe as a FInCOM training exercise. And I can’t stress enough the importance of convincing P.J. that the creation of a CSF team is not the way to go,” Joe told him. “And the way I think we can do that is to set up and run two different forty-eight-hour exercises either in the Middle East or somewhere in Southeast Asia. We’d let the finks take part in the first operation. And then, after they fail miserably again, I’d like to set P.J. up as an observer as Alpha Squad does a similar training op—and succeeds. I want her to see exactly how successfully a SEAL team like Alpha Squad can operate, but I want her to get a taste of just how hard it is first.”

“We’ll need to make a formal request to Admiral Stonegate’s office.”

“It’s already sent. They’re pretty negative. I think they’re afraid we’re somehow going to hurt the finks.”

Harvard smiled. “They’re probably right. God only knows what will happen if the finks don’t get their beauty sleep.”

“I’ve also put in a call to Laughton’s office,” Joe told him. “But I’m having trouble reaching the man. So far, his staff has been adamant that the rules stand as is.”

The door slid open and Blue stepped onto the deck. “Sorry I’m late.”

Harvard looked at Joe. “He look sorry to you?”

“He’s trying.”

“He’s not succeeding. Look at that smile he can’t keep off his face.”

Blue sat down. “Okay, okay, I’m not sorry. I admit it. So what are we talking about? P. J. Richards? Her test scores are off the scale. And I assume you’re both aware she’s an expert-level sharpshooter?”

“Yeah, we’ve already voted her in as Wonder Woman,” Harvard told him.

“What we’ve got to do now,” Joe said, “is make sure she’s got the same warm fuzzy feelings about us that we have about her. We want her going back to Laughton and telling him, ‘These guys are the best,’ not ‘Whatever you do, stay away from those nasty SEALs.’ She’s been kind of aloof, but then again, we haven’t exactly welcomed her with open arms.”

“Consider that about to change,” Blue said. “I heard Lucky talking before I left the base. P.J.’s having dinner with him—the Alpha Squad’s ambassador of open arms—right this very moment.”

Joe swore. “That’s not what I had in mind. You’d better go and intercept that,” he said, turning toward Harvard.

But Harvard was already running for his car.

P.J. punched her floor number into the hotel elevator.

Well, that had been a joke.

She’d finally decided to take some action. Over the past few days, she’d come to the conclusion that she had to attempt to make friends with one of the SEALs. She needed an ally—because it was more than obvious that these big, strong men were scared to death of her.

She needed just one of them to start looking at her as if she were an equal. All it would take was one, and that one would, by example, teach the others it could be done. She could be accepted as a person first, a woman second.

But that special chosen one wasn’t going to be the SEAL nicknamed Lucky, that was for sure.

He had a nice smile and an even nicer motorcycle, but his intentions when he’d asked her to join him for dinner hadn’t been to strike up a friendship. On the contrary, he’d been looking for some action.

A different kind of action than the kind she was looking for.

He’d fooled her at first. They had a common interest in motorcycles, and he let her drive his from the base to the restaurant. But when he rode behind her, he’d held her much too tightly for the tame speeds they were going.

And so she’d told him bluntly between the salad and the main course that she wasn’t interested in anything other than a completely nonsexual friendship. By the time coffee arrived, she’d managed to convince him. And although he wasn’t as forthright as she had been, from the way he kept glancing at his watch she knew that he wasn’t interested in anything other than a sexual relationship.

Which left her back at square one.

The doors opened, and P.J. stepped into the small sitting area by the elevators. She searched through her belt pack for her key card. She almost didn’t see Harvard Becker sitting in the shadows.

And when she did see him, she almost kept going. If she’d had any working brains in her head, she should have kept going. But in her surprise, she stopped short, gaping at him like an idiot. He was the dead last person she’d expected to see sitting in the hallway on the soft leather of the sofa, waiting for her.

Harvard nodded a greeting. “Ms. Richards.”

She had to clear her throat so her voice wouldn’t come out in an undignified squeak. “Were you looking for me? Am I needed on base? You could have paged me.”

“No.” He stood up—Lord, he was tall. “Actually, I was looking for Luke O’Donlon.”

“He’s not here.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

P.J. started for her room, afraid if she didn’t move, her anger would show. Who was he checking up on and trying to protect? Her or Lucky? Either way, it was damned insulting. She unlocked her door with a vicious swipe of the key card.

“Do you happen to know where he was headed?”

“Back to the base,” she said shortly. She wanted to slam the door behind her, but she forced herself to turn and face him.

“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” he said quietly.

“Was there anything else you wanted?” She knew as soon as the sarcastic words were out of her mouth it was the wrong thing to say.

Undisguised heat flared in his eyes, heat tinged with an awareness that told her he knew quite well his attraction was extremely mutual. He wanted her. The message was right there in his gorgeous brown eyes. But all he did was laugh, a soft chuckle that made her heart nearly stop beating and the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

All she had to do was step into her room and hold open that door, and he would come inside and…

And what? Mess up her life beyond repair, no doubt.

He was not on her side. He’d flatly admitted that he didn’t like working with her, he didn’t want to work with her.

P.J. moistened her dry lips, holding her head high and trying to look as if she were totally unaffected by the picture he made standing there. “Good night, Senior Chief.”

She closed the door tightly behind her and drew in a deep breath.

Dear God, how on earth was she going to make it through another six weeks? She needed an ally, and she needed one bad.

CHAPTER FIVE

HARVARD KNEW THE MOMENT P.J. walked into the bar. He turned and sure enough, there she was, looking everywhere but at him, pretending he didn’t exist.

Today had been a classroom day for the finks, and Harvard had had other business to take care of. He’d gone to the mess hall at lunchtime, hoping for…what? He wasn’t sure. But when he got there, Wes told him P.J. had gone to the firing range.

The afternoon had passed interminably slowly, the biggest excitement being when he spoke to Kevin Laughton’s assistant’s assistant, who had told him there was no way the FInCOM rule book was going to be altered to allow for two- or three-day-long exercises. And hadn’t they already compromised on this issue? And no, Mr. Laughton couldn’t come to the phone, he was far too busy with important matters.

Harvard had wheedled and cajoled, reasoned and explained, but he’d hung up the phone without any real hope that Laughton would call him or Joe Cat. He’d cheered himself up some by calling the friend of a friend of a friend who worked at the Pentagon and who faxed him the layout of FInCOM headquarters, where Kevin Laughton’s office was housed. He’d spent his coffee break pinpointing the areas of FInCOM HQ that would be most vulnerable to a direct assault by a small, covert group of SEALs. He’d managed to put a smile on his face by imagining the look on Laughton’s face when he walked into his high-level security office and found Harvard and Joe Cat sitting there, feet up on his desk, waiting to talk to him.

Harvard headed for an empty table in the bar, keeping P.J. securely in his peripheral vision, trying to figure out the best strategy for approaching her.

It was funny. He’d never had to work at approaching a woman before. Usually women fell right in his lap. But P.J. wasn’t falling anywhere. She was running—hard—in the opposite direction.

The only other woman he’d ever pursued was Rachel.

Damn, he hadn’t thought about Rachel in years. He’d met her during a training op in Guam. She was a marine biologist, part of a U.S. Government survey team housed in the military facilities. She was beautiful—part African American, part Asian and part Hawaiian—and shyly sweet.

For a week or two, Rachel had had Harvard thinking in terms of forever. It was the only time in his life he’d been on the verge of crossing that fine line that separated sex from love. But then he’d been sent to Desert Shield, and while he was gone, Rachel had reconciled with her ex-husband.

He could still remember how that news had sliced like a hot knife into his quick. He could still remember that crazily out-of-control feeling of hurt and frustration—that sense of being on the verge of despair. He hadn’t liked it one bit, and he’d worked hard since then to make sure he’d never repeat it.

He glanced at P.J. and met her eyes. She quickly looked away, as if the spark that had instantly ignited had been too hot for her to handle.

Hot was definitely the key word here.

Yes, he was the pursuer, but he wasn’t in any real danger of going the Rachel route with this girl.

She was nothing like Rachel, for one thing.

For another, this thing, this current between him and P.J. came from total, mindless, screaming animal attraction. Lust. Pure, sizzling sex. Two bodies joined in a quest for heart-stopping pleasure.

That wasn’t what his relationship with Rachel had been about. He’d been so careful with her. He’d held back so much.

But when he looked into P.J.’s eyes, he saw them joined in a dance of passion that had no civilities. He saw her legs locked around him as he drove himself into her, hard and fast, her back against the wall, right inside the doorway of her hotel room.

Oh, yeah. It was going to be amazingly good, but no one was going to cry when it was over.

Harvard smiled at himself, at his presumption that such a collaboration was, indeed, going to happen.

First thing he had to do was figure out how to get this girl to quit running away for long enough to talk to her. Only then could he start to convince her they’d gotten off to a bad start.

He should have been cooler last night.

He’d stood there outside her hotel room and he hadn’t been able to think of anything besides how good she looked and how badly he wanted her and how damn glad he was that she hadn’t been bringing Lucky back to her room with her.

He wasn’t sure he would have been able to make small talk even if he’d tried. But he hadn’t tried. He’d just stood there, looking at her as if she were the gingerbread girl and he was the hungry fox.

At least he hadn’t drooled.

He caught the waitress’s eye as he sat down. “Iced tea, no sugar,” he ordered, then glanced again at P.J.

This time, she was looking straight at him and smiling. Damn, she had an incredible smile. On a scale from one to ten, it was an even hundred. He felt his mouth curve into an answering smile. He couldn’t explain what caused her sudden change of heart, but he wasn’t going to complain.

“Hey,” she said, walking toward him. “What are you doing here?”

As she moved closer, Harvard realized she wasn’t looking at him at all. Her focus was behind him. He turned and saw that Joe Cat had come into the bar through the back door.

“I thought I’d stop in tonight before going home,” the captain said to P.J. “What’s shaking?”

“Not much,” Harvard heard P.J. say as she gave Joe Cat another of those killer smiles. “Everyone’s glued to the TV, watching baseball.” She rolled her eyes in mock disgust.

Excuse me, Harvard felt like standing up and saying, but everyone isn’t watching baseball. The waitress put his drink on the table in front of him, and P.J. still didn’t glance in his direction.

Joe shrugged out of his jacket. “You’re not a baseball fan?”

“Nuh-uh. Too slow for me. The batter wiggles around, getting all ready for the pitch, and the pitcher does his thing, getting ready for the pitch, and I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Just throw the ball!’” She laughed. She had musical-sounding laughter. “And then the ball is fired over the plate so fast that they’ve got to play it back in slo-mo just so I can see it.”