same. I was wrong. Like most men, you want to control everything.”
“I don’t believe this! Because of what happened in California, you’re going to make every man you meet jump through a hoop or tell him to get lost?”
“Just like in the Army.” She smiled. “But in all honesty California was not the single, traumatic incident that made me suddenly change my life. It was more the culmination of a lot of things; some large, some small. I’ve been fighting for the right to choose my own lifestyle since the day my family stuffed me into pink rompers when what I really wanted to wear was a pair of yellow ones. I tried to please people when I could; made some compromises; tried to maintain a balance between what I wanted and what everyone else thought I should have. After California I asked myself, ‘Why bother? Life is short. I’m going to live it my way.’ “
“And to hell with anyone else, is that it?” Matt asked roughly. “You let yourself get pushed around a bit by your family and then that jerk out in California and now you’re out to prove it won’t happen again.”
“Full marks for perception, Matt. As they say in the military, I think you’ve got the big picture.” She pulled free of his arms, turning to walk slowly back along the beach to the hotel. He followed at once, stalking alongside her with the restlessness of a male who has played his last card and knows it isn’t a winner.
“Sabrina, I can’t believe you’re going to do this to both of us.” He made no attempt now to touch her, and his eyes were on the lights of the hotel ahead. But forty-eight hours later, when he put her on the evening flight to Dallas, Matt acknowledged bitterly that she was, indeed, going to do it. He drove the jeep back toward town as Sabrina’s jet climbed into the evening sky, and he wondered how he was going to get to sleep that night.
The restlessness was heavy in his blood. Something about the dark foliage on either side of the road reminded him of that last night in that fouled-up backwater country farther south. The moon had cast the same shadows then; created the same pockets of fathomless darkness in the jungle. He could remember the gut feeling he’d had that night; the deep certainty that everything was wrong.
He’d been right. It had cost him two men and a career to find out just how right. But he’d had his orders. Matt’s scarred fingers tightened on the jeep’s steering wheel. And he’d been the kind of officer who did the job he was paid to do.
It had cost him just about everything he had in terms of willpower and physical ability to get himself and the five surviving men of his small team back out of that jungle hell after the ambush. He’d had no choice but to leave the bodies of Jenkins and Symington behind. He was too pragmatic an officer to risk more lives going back for bodies.
But the guerrillas had gone back for Jenkins and Symington after giving up on finding Matt and the others. Three days later they had produced the bodies amid a blaze of publicity that had thoroughly embarrassed the U.S. government and the Army.
Matt pushed aside the memories, his mind going back to Sabrina Chase. She had told him to get rid of the bits and pieces of the military that still stuck to him. Maybe she hadn’t realized those bits and pieces were keeping him glued together.
Then he thought about Rafferty Coyne and the little man’s offer of a job. Matt wondered what good it would do to prove to himself that he could still handle that kind of work. Would it stave off the growing sensation that his world was losing a sense of focus? Did he really want to spend the rest of his life selling blood-and-guts adventure fiction and trashy New York best sellers to tourists who left suntan-oil marks on the covers?
This damned restlessness. He’d never experienced anything quite like it, not even during the unpleasant period of adjustment he’d made to civilian life two years before.
Sabrina
“I don’t believe this! Because of what happened in California, you’re going to make every man you meet jump through a hoop or tell him to get lost?”
“Just like in the Army.” She smiled. “But in all honesty California was not the single, traumatic incident that made me suddenly change my life. It was more the culmination of a lot of things; some large, some small. I’ve been fighting for the right to choose my own lifestyle since the day my family stuffed me into pink rompers when what I really wanted to wear was a pair of yellow ones. I tried to please people when I could; made some compromises; tried to maintain a balance between what I wanted and what everyone else thought I should have. After California I asked myself, ‘Why bother? Life is short. I’m going to live it my way.’ “
“And to hell with anyone else, is that it?” Matt asked roughly. “You let yourself get pushed around a bit by your family and then that jerk out in California and now you’re out to prove it won’t happen again.”
“Full marks for perception, Matt. As they say in the military, I think you’ve got the big picture.” She pulled free of his arms, turning to walk slowly back along the beach to the hotel. He followed at once, stalking alongside her with the restlessness of a male who has played his last card and knows it isn’t a winner.
“Sabrina, I can’t believe you’re going to do this to both of us.” He made no attempt now to touch her, and his eyes were on the lights of the hotel ahead. But forty-eight hours later, when he put her on the evening flight to Dallas, Matt acknowledged bitterly that she was, indeed, going to do it. He drove the jeep back toward town as Sabrina’s jet climbed into the evening sky, and he wondered how he was going to get to sleep that night.
The restlessness was heavy in his blood. Something about the dark foliage on either side of the road reminded him of that last night in that fouled-up backwater country farther south. The moon had cast the same shadows then; created the same pockets of fathomless darkness in the jungle. He could remember the gut feeling he’d had that night; the deep certainty that everything was wrong.
He’d been right. It had cost him two men and a career to find out just how right. But he’d had his orders. Matt’s scarred fingers tightened on the jeep’s steering wheel. And he’d been the kind of officer who did the job he was paid to do.
It had cost him just about everything he had in terms of willpower and physical ability to get himself and the five surviving men of his small team back out of that jungle hell after the ambush. He’d had no choice but to leave the bodies of Jenkins and Symington behind. He was too pragmatic an officer to risk more lives going back for bodies.
But the guerrillas had gone back for Jenkins and Symington after giving up on finding Matt and the others. Three days later they had produced the bodies amid a blaze of publicity that had thoroughly embarrassed the U.S. government and the Army.
Matt pushed aside the memories, his mind going back to Sabrina Chase. She had told him to get rid of the bits and pieces of the military that still stuck to him. Maybe she hadn’t realized those bits and pieces were keeping him glued together.
Then he thought about Rafferty Coyne and the little man’s offer of a job. Matt wondered what good it would do to prove to himself that he could still handle that kind of work. Would it stave off the growing sensation that his world was losing a sense of focus? Did he really want to spend the rest of his life selling blood-and-guts adventure fiction and trashy New York best sellers to tourists who left suntan-oil marks on the covers?
This damned restlessness. He’d never experienced anything quite like it, not even during the unpleasant period of adjustment he’d made to civilian life two years before.
Sabrina
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