Her Mission With A Seal

Chapter 4

Cole made it out to the living room before he let go of the breath he’d been holding. Damn, that had been a near miss with total disaster. When he’d tried to wake up Nissa and she’d grabbed him, pulled him down on top of her and then all but crawled down his throat, he’d been in grave danger of succumbing to his attraction to her.

He abruptly understood the saying about a person’s world tilting on its axis. He felt off-balance, physically and emotionally, but also on some deeper, more fundamental level. As if his world would never be quite the same again. Which was doubly strange given that he considered himself to be the most thoroughly grounded of men, stable, unshakable and sure of who and what he was.

But that woman...throwing herself at him like that...the way she’d felt in his arms...the things she’d made him feel... This was uncharted territory for him.

Hell, any living, breathing man couldn’t fail to notice how fantastic she’d looked in that curve-hugging wet suit. Even with the hood up, she’d still been beautiful, and not many people could claim that. It wasn’t just the delicacy of her facial bones, either. It was those eyes. Huge and sapphire blue, they were impossible to look away from.

And when she’d wrapped her entire, slender body around him, drawing him into her, opening all of herself to him—

Stop it, he commanded himself. She was a job. Correction, a colleague. He would tear a new one in any of his guys who messed with her on the job. He had to hold himself to the same standard. He prowled around Bass, sprawled out on a bedroll in front of the stove, and went over to the window beside the front door to peer out a crack between the boards.

The water was coming up far too close for comfort. Hour by hour, the floodwaters had been swallowing the steps up to the raised platform. Only two steps were left. Jessamine had better pass on by soon, or they were going to be swimming in here.

He’d thought Bass’s suggestion to put a bunch of long planks up in the rafters had been overkill, but now he saw the logic. If the cabin flooded, they could climb up on the makeshift perch and pick up another six feet of protection from the storm surge.

Bass had also insisted they stow the ax up there, too. Apparently, it wasn’t uncommon for people to drown in their attics when they didn’t have the tools to break through their roofs. Lord, he would hate to have to go out in the storm, though. The wind had howled like a banshee for most of the day.

Cole glanced at his watch. Almost time for another update from the weather service on the storm. He went to the kitchen table where Ashe had set up the field radio and put on the headphones. He powered up the unit and listened in relief as the hourly report indicated that the eye of the storm had passed just west of New Orleans and Jessamine was beginning to weaken as it moved inland. They should get heavy rain and wind through the night, but sometime tomorrow, the worst of the hurricane should spin itself out and move on.

Praise the Lord and pass the potatoes. It had been no joke to get caught out in a major storm like this. Had they not found this sturdy cabin, they would likely have died, if not from drowning or exposure, then from flying debris.

The report went on to say that the eye wall had spared the city the worst of the wind damage, but unleashed a deluge of rain upon the hapless city. The new and improved levees, post-Katrina, were holding, and the city’s pumping system was dealing with the worst of the floodwater so far, but the city was without power and expected to be that way for days. Civilians and evacuees would not be allowed to return to their homes for at least another seventy-two hours.

He moved back to his post peering out the window. His flashlight beam turned the rain into a sheet of crystal particles flying past him horizontally. Everything beyond the porch was swirling, angry water. In the past hour or two, he’d started imagining that he felt the cypress pilings swaying slightly in the killer currents.

The foundation of the home only had to hold a little while longer. High tide was due in another hour, and then hopefully the water would start back down. Hopefully.

His lonely vigil gave him way too much time to think about his sexy encounter with the hot CIA analyst. He couldn’t shake the feel of her lithe body beneath his, her arms wrapped round him like she never wanted to let go, her mouth moving restlessly against his as if she couldn’t get enough of the taste of him.

He was by no means a monk. But he never had found a woman who was intelligent enough to hold his interest for the long term and who also was mellow enough to deal with his more autocratic tendencies. It was hard to break old habits, and he’d been a team leader for a long time. He was used to giving orders and having them followed. Even he knew that made him rotten husband material.

So over the years he’d settled for occasional friends with benefits, women he saw between missions and who wouldn’t question him about when he might leave or might return. He’d closed off the part of himself that would have enjoyed a family and a home, and he had become the job.

Which was all well and good as long as he had the job. But he was coming up on twenty years of active duty service and eligibility for retirement. In the current environment of budget cuts and force restructuring, he had no reason to believe he would be allowed to serve more than twenty years. This was his last year, and he’d decided to spend it in the field with his brothers and the missions he loved so much.

Midnight came and went, and he let Bass and Ashe sleep through their shifts on watch. They were both excellent operators and fine men. Asher Konig had found the woman for him and was deliriously happy with her, and Bass loved the cars he restored as much as any woman. Neither of them seemed to feel a hole in their lives.

And neither had he until Nissa Beck wrapped herself around him and all but begged him to take her in every sexy, dirty way he could think of. All of a sudden, he was vividly aware of the sacrifices he’d made for his work over the years, the loneliness, the coldness of the life he’d chosen. Sure, he had all the camaraderie he wanted with his fellow SEALs. But they didn’t comfort a guy in the dark when the nightmares came calling, and they didn’t make a home.

More disturbed than he cared to admit to himself, he watched the storm pass by. It was just outside, inches away, on the other side of a thin pane of glass and a few boards, but it didn’t touch him. It raged all round him, but he stayed safe inside this shell of a cabin, isolated and alone.

The rest of his life yawned before him, as lonely and isolated as this, and for once, he couldn’t push his fear of it away with an admonition to himself that he had years left before the end of life as a SEAL.

Now the end was only a few months away, looming bigger and more terrifying than the hurricane outside.

* * *

It was nearly morning before Bass woke with a start, looked at his watch, and swore. “Why didn’t you wake me up, boss? I missed my watch.”

Cole turned to him. “I was wide-awake, so I decided to let you guys sleep.”

The quiet conversation roused Ashe, which was no surprise. SEALs were notoriously light sleepers. He asked, “How’s the storm doing?”

“The worst of it has passed.”

“Did it hit New Orleans?” Ashe asked quickly.

His wife, Sam, was a native and had refused to evacuate. But Ashe had convinced her to go to the naval station to ride out the storm in a hardened building close to the base hospital. Sam was seven months pregnant, and Ashe was having no part of anything bad happening to her or their baby.

“Jessamine slid west of the city. New Orleans is still taking a lot of rain and some wind damage, but the levees are holding.”

“Thank God,” Ashe breathed.

“She’s fine,” Cole replied. “Sam’s tucked into SEAL Ops, and none of the guys will let anything happen to her.”

Bass chimed in, “A bunch of them know how to deliver babies, too.”

Ashe scowled. “Sam’s under strict orders not to have this kid until I’m there to deliver it.”

Cole grinned. “And did you have a conversation with your son about that? Did you explain to him that he’s not supposed to come until you get home?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I did.”

Bass and Cole both laughed and ribbed Ashe about what a pushover of a father he was going to be as dawn broke outside. They ate tuna fish straight from the can—it wasn’t the most appetizing breakfast Cole’d ever had, but it was a whole lot better than some of the swill that had passed for food in his career.

Nissa wandered out of the bedroom around the same time the rain stopped, around nine in the morning. “Is it over?” she asked, her voice husky with sleep and sexy as hell.

Dear God, she was irresistible with her hair—which turned out to be wildly curly when released from its braid—tangled around her face, the formfitting leggings and turtleneck she’d been given to wear under her wet suit leaving nothing to his vivid imagination. His gaze slid up her body hungrily, taking in every detail of her figure, before lifting to her face and—oh, sh—

She was watching him examine every inch of her. Her eyes were wide and startled, but as he gazed into them they went dark and sultry.

Dammit. She was thinking about her dream and that smoking-hot embrace they’d shared. And she knew darned good and well that he was thinking about the exact same thing. He tore his gaze away from hers, but that wasn’t much better. He looked down and couldn’t help but notice her chest rising and falling in short little gasps. Did she have to get so turned on every time she looked at him? It was really starting to mess with his head. And he wasn’t going to be able to stand up without embarrassing himself for too much longer.

In fact, he moved over to the couch and sat down just in case.

“Hungry?” Ashe asked her from behind Cole.

“Yes. What’ve you got?”

Ashe put on a cheesy fake French accent. “I have for zee mademoiselle a delicious tuna fish on zee half can. Or I can offer to her zee beans of later making music.”

Nissa’s laugh was as musical and appealing as the rest of her. “I’ll take the tuna, thanks.”

“Good choice,” Bass commented, opening the stove door to add more wood to the fire.

Nissa settled on a chair that put her knee about six inches from Cole’s. Was she trying to torment him? He was supposed to be the ice man. Nothing rattled him, and nothing ever shook his vaunted cool. He shifted uncomfortably, putting a few more inches between them, hoping he was subtle enough about it not to draw his guys’ attention. He stared fixedly into the fire, determined not to give them any fodder to harass him or, more important, to harass Nissa.

The iron stove door clanged shut, startling him into looking up at Bass. The guy was smirking knowingly. Dammit. At least he’d had the decency to keep his amusement to himself and not embarrass Nissa. Cole made a mental note to have a private word with Ashe and Bass later to keep their remarks to themselves and be respectful of her.

“How much longer until we can get out of here?” she asked no one in particular.

He glanced at Bastien, who was the local and more accustomed to hurricanes than the rest of them.

Bass shrugged. “Depends on how long it takes the water to go down. Could be a day, could be a week. When we can move out will depend on where we plan to move to.”

“Meaning what?” Cole asked.

“Are we heading back to the boat, or are we going to hike inland until we hit civilization?” Bass responded.

“What are the odds of stumbling across a marina out here where we can refuel?”

“Low,” Bass admitted. “Even if we had a water navigation chart, when a big storm comes through the bayou, the scouring action of the tides and the storm surge cut new waterways and clog others till they’re impassable.”

“So our best bet is to abandon the RIB and make our way overland toward New Orleans?” Cole asked.

Ashe chimed in. “The boat was out of gas. If we use it, we’ll have to row all the way back to town. My best guess is we’re a hundred miles west of New Orleans.”

“So far?” Nissa exclaimed.

Ashe nodded. “Weather reports said Jessamine passed west of New Orleans, and her eye wall was about sixty miles across. I figure we didn’t catch the eye wall, because as sturdy as this place is, even it wouldn’t have withstood a direct hit. So we’re at least fifteen to twenty miles west of the path of the storm center. That puts us a good hundred miles or more west of New Orleans.”

The others launched into a brainstorming session of possible ways to get back to New Orleans, but all Cole could think about was Nissa’s knee so close to his. Who obsessed about knees, anyway? And yet, here he was, taking note of how slender hers was and how perfectly proportioned to her legs.

Eventually, Bass distracted him by saying, “What do you think, boss? Do we radio for help or try to make it back on our own?”

He answered, “The folks back in New Orleans are going to have their hands full with rescue operations. No matter how hard the government tries to convince everyone to leave, you know a bunch of the locals were too stubborn to go.” The others nodded in commiseration. “We’re able bodied, uninjured and capable of taking care of ourselves. We don’t need to divert resources to help us when civilians are dying. What’s out here by way of roads or towns?”

Bastien pulled out the laminated maps that had been provided for this mission, and Cole was relieved to move over to the kitchen table to pore over the maps with his men. Close proximity to Nissa was doing weird stuff to his blood pressure.

Cole pulled out their GPS locator. “We’ve only got the one battery that’s in the GPS to work with. The spare batteries got wet somewhere along the way. Let’s get a solid position fix and then figure out where the closest place is that might have vehicles and gasoline.”

As Ashe had guessed, they were, indeed, about a hundred miles west of New Orleans along the Gulf Coast. But what shocked Cole was that they were nearly fifteen miles inland north of the White Lake Wetlands Conservation Area. “How did we get so far north?” he asked.

Bass answered, “Storm surge. All this coastal area, here, was underwater by the time we came ashore, and we motored right over it.”

“We’re only about three miles southwest of this town, Gueydan. Can we hike to it overland, or will the area between us and it be flooded?” Cole asked him.

Bass shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

Ashe looked over at Nissa, seated on the couch. “What about her? Do we leave her behind and come back for her once we’ve got transportation?”

Cole was stunned by the visceral negative reaction in his gut at the notion of leaving her behind. Aloud, he answered, “SEALs don’t leave anyone behind, and for now, she’s one of us. Besides, she’s had a hell of a scare—several of them, in fact. Let’s not traumatize her any further by abandoning her out here in the middle of the bayou.”

Nissa flashed him a brilliant smile that all but had him striding across the room to wrap her in his arms and capture all that joyous relief for himself.

They ended up having to wait a full twenty-four hours for the floodwaters to go down and for the sodden land to reemerge. They passed the time making repairs to the cabin, inside and out, by way of thanks to the owner for the shelter. Bright and early the next morning, however, they packed their gear and headed out.

Cole was plenty glad to get out of the small confines of the cabin. Its four walls hadn’t been anywhere near big enough to contain the towering attraction between him and Nissa, and he was on the verge of losing his mind before they finally got outside and on the move, away from the momentary insanity that had been their impromptu hurricane party.

For the first time he could remember, he was antsy as all heck to get back to civilization and be done with this mission. And it had everything to do with a petite blonde CIA analyst and her big blue eyes.

Chapter 5

The three-mile hike to Gueydan turned into a six-hour nightmare of dead ends, doubling back and wading through waist-deep water. Nissa didn’t think the trek from hell was ever going to end. She was still dreadfully sore from the last hike with these guys, but she was embarrassed to complain about being too uncomfortable to go on. They were toodling along like this was a stroll in the park. Which she supposed it was for them. Bass was actually whistling—cheerfully, no less—as he led the way forward. Instead, she suffered in silence and resolved to work out for about a month solid before she volunteered to come out into the field with a bunch of Navy SEALs again.

The only thing that kept the day from being completely miserable was that every time she stumbled, Cole’s hand was there to steady her. Every time she thought she couldn’t go another step, he called a rest break. Every time her throat was parched, he held out a canteen to her. His attentiveness was so constant and kind that it nearly made her weep more than once.