Page 20 of The Woman Left Behind

“Then you’ll do the swing landing, learning how to handle the parachute swinging from side to side, prepare for the unexpected. In three days, you’re jumping.”

Three days. Jumping. Her. Out of a plane.

Oh God.

Her lips felt numb, so she didn’t try to talk, just gave another brief nod that she hoped looked curt, instead of simply being as much as she could move because she was mostly frozen stiff.

“Your first jump will be tandem,” Levi continued. “Normally I’d hook a first-timer to a static line and kick his ass out, but he’d have already done tower jumping. Like I said, you aren’t military and that’s getting you a couple of breaks here.”

Lucky me. Your kindness is astounding,she thought sarcastically, but still kept her mouth shut. Now was not the time to get him pissed off, not when he could still hook her to a static line, whatever that was, and kick her ass out of the plane. A tandem jump. Maybe she could handle that. The idea still made her stomach twist, but at least if she died she wouldn’t be alone. Yeah, she could find some comfort in that.

“We’ll need the other guys to pull the ropes on the swing-landing trainer, but until then I’m pulling them off and having them do different stuff. They don’t need to be standing around watching you; they treat you like a spectator sport, anyway, and that shit needs to stop.”

Spectator sport. Jina stiffened. She’d been cold, but now a flash of outrage sparked through her veins. She also found her tongue. “Spectator sport?” she asked carefully. She’d pushed herself so hard she’d been on the verge of collapse more days than not, and they thought of her asentertainment?

“Don’t get your ass on your shoulders,” he advised shortly. “There’s no benefit, and if you blow up at them, you’ll lose their support. Just suck it up, and keep going.”

That was what she’d been doing, and she hadn’t found any fun in it. But he was right; there was no benefit to getting angry. On the final analysis, she’d rather they enjoyed having her around than be actively looking for ways to get rid of her, because that could get ugly, fast.

“Let’s get started,” she said, trying to sound positive, and headed back to the other guys.

Levi watched her walk away from him and allowed himself a brief moment of purely male enjoyment at the view. He missed the softer curves she’d had at the beginning of her training, but there was nothing wrong with the rounded muscles of her ass now. She’d worked hard to get those muscles, so damn straight he was going to admire them. He just had to make sure that she didn’t catch him at it, and that his expression wasn’t as horny as he felt.

He’d hoped that with time he’d get accustomed to having her around, that maybe he’d find something about her that killed or at least muted the attraction he felt. Hadn’t happened. If anything, she appealed to him more every day. How could she not? She had bone-deep grit and determination, way more than he wanted her to have. None of them, from the top down, had thought she’d make it this far, but she’d had the highest score on Mac’s spatial games and they couldn’t exclude her just because she was a woman. He’d waited not so patiently for the day she washed out; no one could say she hadn’t tried, because she’d kept at each phase or exercise way past what they’d thought she could do, and Mac would have put her back in her old job. That was the best-case scenario.

If she’d washed out, then he could have seen about having some personal time with her, find out if she kissed with the same sass and pepper she threw at them every time she opened her mouth, find out if she was half as aware of him as he was of her. He thought she was; no, he wassureshe was. Levi was neither naive nor inexperienced, and he knew when a woman was attracted to him. She tried to hide it, but the color in her cheeks deepened whenever he was near. She tried like hell not to look at him, not to speak directly to him, and he knew why: she didn’t want to feel the attraction any more than he did. She wanted to control it, and above all she didn’t want any of the others to know.

They’d both succeeded in keeping the others in the dark, but damn it, with everything else, he felt as if they were sliding down a slope with no brakes, no way to keep them from a hard fall. Just being near her made him feel as if the air between them was arcing with hot electricity; she felt it, too, and betrayed herself by getting as restless as if she had ants in her pants. She fidgeted, she twitched, she shifted back and forth, she’d start nervously feeling her long ponytail. Maybe she hadn’t admitted to herself yet how aware she was of him, butheknew. He was damn good at reading people; he had to be.

This damn jump instruction would likely be the death of him. Boom could handle everything on the ground, but he wasn’t a certified tandem instructor, and Levi was. A tandem jump wasn’t anything to leave to someone inexperienced, no matter how many solo jumps that person had made. Strict professionalism was needed in a tandem jump, because hell, two people were harnessed together in spoon fashion. Given their height difference, she might need to sit on his lap to get her harnessed in the correct position, and the prospect made him feel grim while at the same time he couldn’t help anticipating it. He’d try getting her positioned without doing that, but safety won out over discomfort. She had to be in the right position. If the harness was too long and she was hanging lower instead of snugly against his chest, both steering the parachute and landing were more difficult. She was already so scared about trying, she needed a jump that went as smoothly as possible.

If he was the double-crossing kind, he could scare the shit out of her and force her to quit, clearing the way for them to get up close and personal. That was dirty pool, though. He wouldn’t necessarily go out of his way to help her, but neither would he sabotage her. He’d be pissed as hell if someone did him that way, so he wasn’t going to do it to her. Fail or succeed, she’d do it on her own.

If she succeeded—and she was damn close to finishing training ahead of everyone else—he’d have to tough it out and ignore how attracted he was to her. If she failed, then hallelujah, he was unleashed. Until then he was between a rock and a hard place. The rock was his own ironclad rule that placed her off-limits, and the hard place was in his pants.

He rejoined the group and gave the guys their assignments. Jelly, predictably, groaned. “Ah, Ace, we wanted to watch her.”

Levi saw her give them a quick, sharp glance and knew she hadn’t liked being regarded as their entertainment. He couldn’t help kind of agreeing with the guys, because, damn, there was no telling what might come out of her mouth. Still, no one wanted to be the comic relief.

“We have other things to do,” he replied. “Boom will let us know when he needs our help.”

Boom scowled at them. “Get outta here. Babe and I won’t need any of you until the tower training starts.”

Jina gave the parachutes her undivided attention, because her life was going to depend on these nylon things. Boom had printed matter for her to refer back to, let her take notes, paused occasionally to look things up on his phone for her to watch. The harness was impressive, and far more complicated than she’d expected—not that she’d ever expected anything about parachuting, because she’d never thought she’d be required to do it. She studied the webbing and straps and buckles and rings; at first everything looked like a hopeless tangle, until Boom showed her how to step into it.

“Don’t expect a harness to be comfortable,” he said, “though they’re better now than they used to be. The leg straps are a bitch. Women don’t have the problems there that men do, but when the canopy opens and jerks you back, you feel it. After you’re under canopy, you can adjust the straps across your boobs some, make them more comfortable.”

She didn’t react to the boobs comment, because it hadn’t been made salaciously; he’d been giving her information, nothing more. Besides, her boobs were barely there, so she didn’t expect she’d need much strap adjusting.

But the harness itself... damn. Jina saw now what Levi had meant about needing a buddy to get it strapped on. Doing it alone was possible, but she was glad she didn’t have to figure it out by herself.

A question gnawed at her and finally, after looking around to make certain no one was within earshot, she said, “Boom, give me a straight answer on something.”

He was bent over straightening the harness, preparing to guide her again through the process of putting it on. “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t commit to anything without knowing what it is.”

“Fair enough. Do the guys make fun of me when I’m not around?”

He straightened abruptly, giving her a startled look. “Make fun of you? Hell no! What made you think that?”

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