Page 2 of Lethal Pursuit

“Thanks.” She snagged one and stuffed a change of clothes into a bag. “Have a good shift.”

With the bag draped over her shoulder, Maya chugged half a bottle of water and rolled her head around to ease the tension in her neck as she began her walk. The muscles in her upper back were knotted and stiff, as well as the knuckles on her right hand. The bruise on her ribs felt tight and sore. All in a day’s work here at Bagram. A hot shower was definitely in order. Her reaction time had been too slow today. She would push herself that much harder next time she trained in the sparring ring.

The base was busy as ever this Saturday morning. The constant noise of aircraft engines and other vehicles formed a background noise she’d become accustomed to within a few days of arriving at base for her third tour in Afghanistan.

As she walked, a different sound carried over the relatively warm early March air. Faint strains of music. A piano. Passing the end of a long supply warehouse, she noticed a crowd had gathered over by where they’d set up the stage for the USO show happening the following night. She paid it only passing interest, looking forward to that shower and some rack time before she went out on patrol again tonight.

Then she heard the voice.

A man’s voice. Deep and smooth, singing an old Dean Martin song.

She stopped abruptly, a prickle of awareness flashing across her skin. Something about that voice was familiar, made her heart beat faster.

It can’t be him.

Pulled by some sick sense of morbid curiosity, she pivoted and strolled toward it. The stage came into sight. Whoever the performer was, he was both playing and singing. Already the crowd was growing. Maya approached the edge of the sizeable audience, staring toward the stage. Whistles and cheers rose up to mingle with that incredible voice.

She stayed back from the throng of onlookers, only partially aware that she was holding her breath. Someone pushed their waythrough the horde of admirers, clearing a path, and Maya got her first good look at the singer. Her hand tightened around the plastic water bottle until it crunched in her grip.

Shit, itwashim. That PJ, Staff Sergeant Jackson something-or-other she’d tangled with after Ace was rescued. For a moment her mind went blank in surprise, then flashed back to when he’d confronted her in the hospital hallway that day the CSAR crew had brought Ace back. When she’d had enough of his flippant attitude, she’d lost her temper. She’d muttered unflattering things about him in Spanish, and the normally silent and taciturn—and apparently Spanish-speaking—pararescueman had whirled on her, caging her against the wall with his arms on either side of her head. In that instant, she’d realized how badly she’d misread him. His long, powerful body had been only inches away from her, close enough that she could smell the wintergreen mint on his breath and feel the heat coming off him.

She might not remember his last name, but for damn sure she’d never forget his first one. Not after he’d permanently burned it into her brain with six words that had woken every feminine atom in her body and still did every time she thought about them.

My name is Jackson, he’d growled, his dark eyes daring her to defy him.Say it.

And oh, yeah, she’d said it. In a slightly breathless whisper that was completely unlike her. That surprising display of dominance and authority he’d shown still had the power to make her shiver.

Those deep brown eyes had blazed with a potent mixture of anger and arousal as he’d pinned her to the hospital exam room wall. The memory sent a tremor of feminine need rolling through her. That day she’d caught an intriguing glimpse of the warrior beneath that polite, Southern boy image. She was woman enough to admit she wanted to see a lot more of it, though she’d die before ever letting him know.

Watching him on stage now, she still didn’t know how to read him. It was hard to reconcile the man in front of her with what she knew about his job. Being a Pararescue Jumper was one of the toughest jobs in the military. The training was so ridiculously hard that very few candidates ever graduated from the Pipeline in the first place. Atjust over three hundred active duty members, their tiny number said it all.

God, the man could sing. Since he hadn’t noticed her, she stayed, eyeing his T-shirt-clad broad shoulders and muscled back as he played. Until that day in the hospital, she hadn’t been able to envision him doing any of the dangerous things PJs did. She could now. That confrontation had been one hell of a wake-up call.

Maya was startled to realize she was smiling. His voice was incredible. Smooth and deep, with no hint of his usual Texas drawl. She’d never have guessed he had a talent like this. The man always surprised her, and it was captivating as hell.

He kept his gaze on the piano rather than the audience, hands gliding across the surface of the keys, that hypnotic voice striking a chord deep inside her. The timbre of his voice was intimate, warming her from the inside out. When the song faded away to the mad applause and screams from the female members of the audience, he looked over his shoulder at someone off stage.

Facing away from the mike, his voice barely carried enough for her to catch the words, “Get enough for sound check?”

His new fans wouldn’t have it. “Encore, encore!” they chanted, even some of the men, clapping and whistling in unison until it seemed like everyone but Maya joined in.

Jackson faced the audience and offered a boyish grin, a little shy, as if he wasn’t used to the attention. Hot. “One more?”

“More, more!” they chanted.

“All right, one more,” he said in that gorgeous Texas drawl that made her think of long, hot summer nights spent relaxing on screen porches with pitchers of sweet tea and ceiling fans revolving overhead.

But mostly it made her think of long, lazy sex. The kind that would last all night and leave them both sweaty and too sated to move.

She shoved the thought from her head to halt the wave of arousal flooding her veins and refocused on him at the piano. A slight breeze ruffled his short, nearly black hair.

He launched into another ballad, and this time Maya recognized “Danny Boy.” The sad, poignant lyrics drifted into the air, his clear, mellow voice raising goose bumps all over her skin. He hadeveryone there riveted, including her.

As though he sensed the weight of her stare, partway through the chorus he glanced up from the keyboard. When his bottomless brown eyes locked on hers, he faltered for the barest of moments, a single heartbeat. He recovered fast, and continued gazing right at her as he sang. It felt personal, as though he was singing to her alone. Then he smiled a little. A sexy, secret smile aimed right at her, and her heart fluttered. In that instant, she knew they were both thinking about him pinning her to that wall. About what might have happened if they’d had more privacy and he’d acted on the sexual energy arcing between them.

Damn.

Her stomach did a tiny somersault. Held by the quiet intensity burning in that hot gaze, she was trapped. Couldn’t look away.

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