Target Engaged

Chapter 3-4

Sergeant Major Maxwell.

He placed a hand on each of her shoulders and kept her there until she looked up into his face.

“You’re finished. Stress Phase testing is over for you.”

“Finished? No. I’m not quitting.” And then the words sunk in.

Finished is what they’d said each of the thirty days when she’d completed the day’s exercise.

“Finished?” It came out plaintive, more than she’d like but she couldn’t fix it.

A grin crossed his craggy face, such a shocking expression across his stoically neutral expression that she wondered if his face was going to break.

If it did, would she be able to bend down to pick up the pieces? More importantly, if she bent down, would she be able to stand again?

“You won my bet for me, Carla.” It was the first time he’d ever said her name.

Once it sunk in that she was truly done with the hike, she wanted to laugh, to cry, to somehow mark the moment.

When the Sergeant Major shook her hand, it was enough.

In moments, someone had taken her ruck and the M16. Another guided her off to the side, down a trail out of sight of the truck. There was a campfire.

Kyle Reeves was sitting there, lying back against a dirt bank, looking pretty goddamn pleased with himself.

They eased her down beside him, pulled off her boots, propped her feet up on her rucksack, and gave her a cup of hot spiced wine well laced with brandy.

Oh God, she was in heaven.

They were smiling now. Congratulating her. Shaking her hand.

Carla had felt this good before, she must have. But she sure couldn’t think of when.

She didn’t mind when the unit’s doc came over and caused shooting pains as he poked at her feet before declaring them sound. The various agonies of the ordeal were a long way from subsiding, but she no longer cared. She’d passed Stress Phase.

“Well done, tough guy.” She bumped her shoulder against Kyle’s.

“Well done, girlie.” He bumped her back with one of his killer smiles thrown in as a bonus that warmed her inside as much as the cider.

They clinked steaming mugs.

A man who could smile at her like that after what they’d both been through and achieved, he could get away with calling her that. At least this one more time.

They talked lazily back and forth for over an hour—mostly about the men behind them—before the next candidate was escorted to the fire. Chad Hawkins, a big blond guy who looked corn-fed Iowa, was followed minutes later by his good buddy Duane Jenkins, collapsed nearby. Duane could be his twin except for being black. Both were grinning like idiots.

All too comfortable to move, she offered them air high fives, which were happily returned.

Carla was the only one of the three grunts from regular Army to make it this far. One had been unable to hit the twenty-eighth target but was invited back for a later testing, and the other had shattered a hip when he got lost and accidentally walked off a waterfall.

They talked about others who had been left by the wayside as Richie and Andrew made it in. Of course, Kyle knew far more of them than she did. The more they talked, the more impressed she became with herself. She’d done good to have outlasted any of these guys.

As her body slowly recovered, she became aware that her and Kyle’s shoulders were slightly brushing. Had been for a while.

She had underestimated him.

Sergeant bloody Kyle Reeves was also a sneaky SOB. He’d slipped right past her outermost perimeter shield.

He wasn’t just a beautiful, tough, friendly, totally superior grunt. Finding an excuse to lean against her—a contact that was becoming more and more electrifying the longer she didn’t move away—was a totally underhanded maneuver that she hadn’t thought him capable of. A whole new side to him. What else was there to discover beneath that tough-guy exterior?

It made her like him that much more.

By the time they were carried to the trucks—neither her nor Kyle’s insistence that they could walk had proven to be accurate—there were only twelve of them around that fire. How many others finished the “official” hike but didn’t have the will to take that next step, they’d never know.

Psych evals were psych evals.

Kyle had always said to hell with the headshrinkers. You answered honest and you were done. Trying to second-guess their twisty brains wasn’t worth the effort.

Whereas scoring each other had flat-out sucked. Would you want to serve with this soldier?

Would you trust this soldier to have your back if you were in… Multiple diverse questions that had to be answered for each of the other eleven finalists.

He hated s**t like that and tried not to think about what the guys seated around him were marking down.

Make a list, in order, of which of your fellow candidates you would want to serve with. Number One?

Carla Anderson.

He didn’t think before he wrote down the answer and then blinked at it in surprise. Was that as a soldier or was it personal? Was it because she was the toughest one here after himself—a fact that she’d proven again and again? Or was it because he’d seriously considered kissing the s**t out of her and taking whatever the consequences as they’d lounged side-by-side around the fire last night with their feet perched up on their rucks and their shoulders warm against each other?

The first time Kyle hadn’t beaten her time on a hike was the Forty-Miler. She’d taken the disadvantage of starting fifty-four minutes behind him and turned it into the extra motivation to catch him. He’d been so sure no one could. It had motivated her to burn up that trail in seventeen hours to his eighteen. He could seriously respect how fast she’d been moving.

She’d definitely snagged his attention…his and his body’s. But bottom line, it didn’t matter.

If she did nothing but fight beside him, he’d find a way to be content, or at least accept it.

Then he thought about the other side of that coin. What if there was more?

Taking down Carla Anderson as man and woman, that could definitely give a guy happy thoughts. Or, he had to smile to himself, being taken down by Carla Anderson, which was probably her preferred scenario. Nope, he wouldn’t be filing a complaint either way.

Carla wondered what the hell Kyle Reeves was smiling about. Psych evals were a royal pain in the ass and she absolutely despised them.

She could never figure out what the crazier-than-she-was psycho-chiatrists were after. And grading each other was the absolute shits!

She turned the page: If Delta Selection was up to you, which soldiers would you select, in order.

Goddamn it! It kept getting worse.

Well, Kyle was an easy shoo-in for the first spot.

She could seriously respect that he’d held on to match her finish at the rate she’d been moving. He was also like a kind of Mr. Perfect Soldier Guy.

What was behind that cool facade of decent guy and gorgeous man?

She’d thought Delta Selection had peeled back all of their layers. Right up until Kyle had managed to lean against her without her noticing.

Somehow, despite the process, he’d hidden away deep—like a stealth weapon—his underhanded maneuver of first physical contact. Had he done the same during the shooting assessment or any of a hundred opportunities since, it wouldn’t mean as much. But he hadn’t.

Instead, he’d held off so long that now, sitting at a desk in the concrete-and-blah eval room, that simple contact still sizzled through her body. She’d passed out thinking of him and woken doing the same. Unfair, cheater, cheater pumpkin-eater, low-down… Slick move, dude.

How far ahead had he planned that moment? All the way back when he’d first challenged her to make it to the end? Now that she thought of that, she knew it was true, or might as well be. It was as if part of his twisty mind had turned on at the shooting range and begun planning how to sidle up to her without her defenses noticing. Worse, it had worked!

She never did things like that. She could be sneaky, underhanded, downright nasty in the moment. But apparently Kyle’s brain could work on a much longer timeline. Probably part of why she’d only led a fireteam of Army grunts and he’d commanded an operational detachment of Green Berets.

What other layers did he have that Delta hadn’t exposed?

Her own tough-b***h side had come out more than once. Okay, it was more of a core than a side of her, but it had come out. If there was more to Kyle, she couldn’t see it.

She knew for sure that she received more than her fair share of his attention. It was true for a number of the guys, but Kyle didn’t make a thing of it.

He wanted more than her friendship—she’d known that since the first sizzling look on Day One. Could still feel it. She’d kept her shades on that first day to gain distance from that initial flash of heat.

But it had taken the asshole an entire week before he spoke directly to her, and that was only after she spoke first in the back of the truck while he stared at her face. He didn’t have the decency to stare at her breasts so that she could dismiss him out of hand. Jerk.

He had played a low-key waiting game. It was extremely risky, but she had to admit he’d played it well—it had one hundred percent worked.

She was to the point that if she didn’t tear his clothes off real goddamn soon, she was going to lose it.

Now that they’d finished Stress Phase testing, there was a desire to find herself a serious release and Kyle was her prime candidate for that as well as for Delta.

However, there was one more big obstacle.

They were still candidates for another two days, not yet trainees. After this dumbass psych eval, they still had to face the last step of the selection process tomorrow: the Commanders Board Review.

Then they each would either be in or out.

If only one of them made it, the cliff between them would be too vast and no way was she signing up for a pity f**k in either direction.

If they were both out, she wouldn’t mind friendly commiseration with a man who would understand, before they were shipped back to their respective units.

One of the biggest dangers of trying for the elite units was not making the cut. And in Delta, there was typically a ninety-five percent failure rate. When grunts were kicked back to their unit, they were forever labeled not good enough, no matter what Delta’s glowing letter said. The fact that the others of the old cadre stood less of a chance didn’t matter. They could still pretend that they could pass if they wanted to, but not Mr. Failure—your butt had been booted back down.

If they were both in?

Well, that was a whole different matter. In that case, she’d say that a celebration was definitely in order. Wonder how much that would surprise him.

She’d bet not one bit. He would have built plans around all possible contingent scenarios. It was hard to surprise Kyle Reeves, but she sure looked forward to trying.

Carla turned back to the eval, hoping no one noticed her smile. Soldier number two of eleven that she’d want to serve with?

Duane Jenkins. Guy was an absolute rock. She knew she could always rely on Duane to have her back. That, and right when it couldn’t get any worse but was about to anyway, he’d find a joke and make it a bit better.

Number three…