Into the Night by Suzanne Brockmann Page B

circus trick stuff right from the start! But no. You had to show off."
    "I told you the O course was no big deal to any of us," he protested as she stopped in front of a rental car and fished in her bag for the keys. "I spent not an insignificant amount of time today talking to you about insertion techniques like HALO jumps out of airplanes and fast-roping down from helicopters. Didn't it occur to you that if we can do that, then something like the cargo net on the O course might not be such a challenge?"
    "No." Joan unlocked the car door and threw her stuff into the backseat.
    "Well, then, okay, I'm sorry."
    She laughed as she climbed in behind the wheel, but it wasn't because she thought he was funny. "You're only sorry now?"
    "No, that's not what I—"
    "I think it would be a good idea if I were assigned a different liaison." She wouldn't look him in the eyes.
    Oh, man. "Look, Joan, I don't think—"
    "I'll call Lieutenant Commander Paoletti's office in the morning." She closed the door and started the car.
    "Joan—"
    But she kept the window up as she put the car into reverse, pulled out of the parking spot, and drove away.
    "Shit!"
    Muldoon turned to stomp back toward the O course and found Sam Starrett a few feet away from him, getting something out of the back of his pickup truck.
    "Looks like that didn't go too well," Sam commented.
    "Yeah, well, it would have gone really great—if my goal was to have her call me a dickhead and drive off without me."
    Sam had the decency not to laugh in his face as he hefted his sea bag onto his shoulder and crossed around the back of his truck so he could talk to Muldoon without shouting.
    "Sometimes you can measure how much a woman likes you by how mad you can make her."
    Muldoon snorted.
    "I know it sounds crazy," Sam said. "But it's true. And it's something I learned a little too late. Don't make the same mistakes I did. This White House lady might be in the exactly perfect emotional place right now for you to call her up and apologize profusely. I mean, really crawl. Admit to anything and everything. Tell her she was a hundred percent right. Women really like to be right. And then ask her to dinner."
    "Yeah, I don't know about that." It was kind of hard to take romantic advice from a man who was miserable in his marriage and still carrying a torch for someone else. And the cowboy Texas drawl didn't help his credibility as Dear Abby, either.
    "Suit yourself," the lieutenant said with a shrug. "But if I were you, I'd ask her to dinner before it's too late."
    "I did," Muldoon told him. "She said no. She said she was tired"
    "Tired isn't no. Tired is tired. Ask her again, for Christ's sake. Ask her to lunch if you don't want to ask her to dinner again. Ask her to have a drink. Ask her out on your boat. Don't just sit around with your thumb up your butt. Ask her fucking something. Or else she's right. You are a dickhead."
    "Gee, thanks, Lieutenant."
    "Anytime."
    Mary Lou couldn't find her car keys. She was going to have to go pick up Haley in about half an hour, and she couldn't do it without her keys.
    To make matters worse, it wasn't going to be too long before it got dark, and once it did, then she'd really have trouble finding them.
    She was on her hands and knees in the Robinsons' garden, praying that any spiders and snakes she encountered would be of the nontoxic variety. She tried not to start crying again as she searched mostly by feel among the thick pink and yellow flowers.
    "May I help you?" a musically accented voice asked.
    Oh, Lord.
    She couldn't bring herself to turn and look up into the face of the man standing beside her. The leather sandals and long, almost elegant dark-skinned toes were all she could bear to focus on.
    It was the Robinsons' yard guy. She'd seen him in the neighborhood often enough over the past month or so—a tall, reed-thin, dark-haired, dark-skinned, foreign-looking man. He came every week to cut the Robinsons' lawn and tend their flower