The Gauntlet

“Well, if that bastard Martin keeps it up,” Maggie shot back, “I’d hang a sexual harassment suit on him.”

“Sinclair was right there. He heard Martin chewing me out. If there were grounds for it, don’t you think he’d do something about it?”

“There is no man alive who’s going to stand in your corner on a sexual harassment charge unless you bring it to him in writing,” Maggie said vehemently. “Damn, Molly, you can’t be laid-back about this. At Annapolis, Dana and I were there to help defend you against goons like Martin. But we aren’t there anymore, as much as I wish we were. You have to start developing that backbone we both know you have.”

“Molly,” Dana begged gently, “Maggie’s upset at Martin, not you. We know you believe diplomacy and a more passive response can win the day, but sometimes it can’t. Take Sinclair’s advice. He wasn’t out to rub salt in your wounds—only to help bind them in the best way he knew how.”

Glumly, Molly nodded. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. If my father hears about this, I’ll just get another chewing-out. I don’t need a third one.”

“Hang tough,” Dana urged. “Sinclair could be your ace in the hole. If things get bad, go to him. Talk to him. I think he’s on your side.”

“And if that doesn’t work,” Maggie added, “deck Martin and tell Sinclair to take a flying leap.”

Laughing, Molly thanked her friends. She hung up and remained on the couch, thinking, the afghan tucked around her legs. Her friends had protected her at Annapolis, to a large degree. Maggie’s fierce confidence made her a guard dog of sorts. And Dana was at her shoulder to back up whatever Maggie put into motion. Between her two friends, no upper or lower classman at Annapolis had wanted to put her at risk.

Picking up her cup of tea, Molly sipped the hot liquid pensively. Dana and Maggie had been her buffer zone against the aggressive male world of the military, it was true. Yet she knew she couldn’t handle it the way Maggie did, with equal assertiveness—which was exactly what Sinclair had suggested. And she didn’t possess Dana’s deadly calm voice and bristling defenses that no man dared test.

Looking around her quiet apartment and seeing the clock on the wall tell her it was midnight, Molly sighed. Tomorrow a letter would arrive from Scott, and he would want to know every detail of her week. On Saturday would come the dreaded phone call from her father, who would wring every nuance of the week’s events from her with endless, probing questions. Rubbing her brow, Molly wondered how she was going to tell them about Martin. It was beyond her to think of lying. Perhaps she could avoid telling them.

With a grimace, Molly removed the purple and pink afghan and sat up. Every time she’d tried the ploy of avoiding a topic with her father, he’d ferreted out whatever fact she was trying to hide and made his verbal berating doubly harsh. Molly stood and took the partially filled cup of tea into her modern kitchen. She rinsed out the cup and set it in the dish drainer. How much she missed Dana and Maggie! They’d been such a happy threesome at Whiting Field, their apartment ringing with kidding, laughter and good times, despite the pressures on them.

Looking around, Molly left the kitchen and headed to the huge bathroom to soak in a tub of hot water. To her dismay, her thoughts revolved back to Cam Sinclair. God, but he looked forbidding, yet she was powerfully drawn to him. Why? How? Molly didn’t think Dana was right about Sinclair. He seemed to hate her as much as Martin did. So why was she so drawn to him as a man? What chemistry was at work? It was totally illogical.

* * *

Cam tossed restlessly in his bed, the sheet tangled between his long legs. Light from the street invaded the bedroom, filtering through the pale yellow sheers. He glowered at the clock on the monkeypod nightstand. It was midnight. Why the hell did Molly Rutledge’s vulnerable face hang in front of his eyes every time he shut them?

His guilt over how he’d handled her earlier had made his whole evening miserable. Miracle, his black Labrador, lifted her head from the braided rug that sat parallel to the bed. Her huge brown eyes glimmered with question. Cam waved his arm in her direction.

“Go back to sleep,” he muttered to the dog and turned over, his back toward her. Punching the pillow into the right shape, he lay there, his gaze shifting to the nightstand on the opposite side of the king-size bed. On it were two photos. One was Jeanne dressed in a beautiful orchid gown. The photo had been taken about a year ago, a month before the airliner had crashed, taking her life. Cam stared at it, wanting to feel something…anything. Only numbness followed. Since the day of the crash, his feelings had been destroyed.

The other photo was of his five-year-old son, Sean. He had Cam’s black hair and his mother’s dark brown eyes. Gone. They were both gone. Cam felt Miracle’s paw on the edge of his bed.

“Go lie down,” he ordered the dog. When Jeanne was alive, they’d go to bed and Miracle would jump up and play with them, bouncing crazily from bed to floor and back. Since Jeanne’s death, Cam hadn’t allowed the Lab up on the bed.

Miracle whined, pawing impatiently at the mattress.

Cam turned over. His anger melted away. The dog’s head was tilted, her eyes lifted to look up into his. Reaching out, he patted Miracle’s sleek ebony coat.

“Go lie down, girl. She’s gone. Forever.” He gently removed Miracle’s paw from the bed. “Go on….”

The dog whined softly, wagging her tail in a friendly fashion. Incredible sadness deluged Cam. “There’s no more play, pup. No more….”

Miracle lowered her head and turned away, her paws clacking against the hardwood floor as she made her way over to her braided-rug bed. She plunked down, resting her head on her paws, her eyes never leaving his.

Cam grimaced and turned away, unable to stand the grief he saw in the dog’s sad gaze. In her own way, Miracle missed Jeanne and Sean as much as he did. Playtime had been every night—a free-for-all of fun, laughter and crazy-kid antics. A soft smile tugged at Cam’s mouth as he closed his eyes. Jeanne had been such a child at heart, so spontaneous and filled with life. She saw all that was good in life, while Cam saw the reality of it. Still, he’d looked forward to their playtime, letting Miracle up on the bed. It was silly and childish, but he didn’t care. Jeanne had brought out the child in him—his laughter and hope. Now all that was destroyed.

The only thing left of what they’d shared was four-year-old Miracle. Cam knew the dog remembered Jeanne and Sean, remembered better times. She’d loved Sean dearly, had always been watchful of him, always there as a wonderful and protective companion.

But as Cam closed his eyes again, it wasn’t Jeanne’s or Sean’s face that hovered before him. It was Molly Rutledge’s serious features, her green eyes mirroring genuine hurt, her mouth pursed to hold back the pain he was sure she’d felt from Martin and his own scathing attack.

This was crazy! He didn’t even know her! And yet, as he lay there, Molly haunted him. Just what the hell was it about her that was triggering this ridiculous response? Cam tried to hide from the memory of his urge to go back into the computer room and hold Molly after he’d laced into her. It was her mouth, so delicate and wonderfully shaped, that beckoned to him. And to look into her serene green eyes laced with gold, was to know peace. Peace! Something he’d not felt in the year since his family had been brutally ripped out of his life.

To stare at those sculpted lips was also to acknowledge the heat building almost painfully in his lower body, a strictly carnal hunger that wanted satiation through Molly and no one else. With a groan, Cam pulled the pillow over his head and tried to escape his rampantly wild thoughts and needs. God, he worked with women every day. None of them affected him. Why her? Why soft, slender Molly? She was such a graceful creature among a group of hard, harsh men. Yet, on one level, Cam admired her stubbornness to stick to her guns and be herself, not allowing the situation she lived in to change her convictions. He admired that quiet gutsiness.

The rest of the night held only bits and snatches of light sleep. When dawn came, Cam got up in a foul humor. Miracle, as if sensing his ogreish mood, remained on her braided rug and simply watched him come and go from the master bathroom as he shaved, climbed into his flight suit and then returned to the bed to shut off the clock radio.

Cam went in to the facility early and proceeded directly to the student file drawer that held information on the current students. Locating Molly’s file, he tucked it under his arm and walked down the long, empty hall to the coffee room. After starting the coffee, he sat on a plastic chair at one of the tables and opened the file. Maybe by absorbing every bit of information on Molly Rutledge, he’d finally get over whatever was eating him, and he could enjoy a decent night’s sleep again.

While the coffeemaker gurgled away, Cam riffled through the file. He started at the back, at the beginning of her naval career. The folder was at least two inches thick, containing her Annapolis years and Whiting Field experience. He dug for something in particular, like Miracle tracking a scent. Every prospective Annapolis student had to fill out a biography: why they wanted to attend the elite school.

“Finally…” he muttered. Frowning, Cam began to read her beautiful handwriting with its feminine flourish. Time slipped away as he continued to read page after page, discovering Molly. There was a four-and-a-half-year-old picture of her, taken at high-school graduation. Cam touched the color photo. Molly’s hair had been very long and loose, flowing across her dark blue graduation gown in carefree abandon. She looked hopeful and joyous, her smile warming him even now.

Cam scowled, looking down at Reason For Entering Annapolis. Her brother had originally been scheduled for the academy and had been unexpectedly injured beforehand. Shaking his head, Cam read on. Molly was taking Scott’s place? He looked up. The coffee was ready. So, she had volunteered to step into her brother’s boots and take his place at the academy.

As he got to his feet, Cam’s mind whirled with questions. Did Molly really want to be in the military at all? Had her family forced her into going? Yet, looking at her grades, she was a brilliant aeronautical engineering graduate. She had a nice balance of understanding of math and mechanics, but hadn’t lost her decidedly feminine side in the process.

“Enigma,” he muttered, retrieving a cup of steaming coffee and sitting back down. He glanced at his watch. It was 0530. In half an hour, the instructor on duty for the day would officially open TPS. Running his fingers down the thickness of her file, Cam decided he’d better read in a hurry to cram as much information as possible about Molly into his memory before that happened. He wanted no one, especially Molly, to know what he’d done. It wasn’t against regs, but it was unusual.

She’s an unusual case, he told himself and sipped the coffee gratefully. Very unusual. And interesting. God, but she fascinated him! At the same time, Cam worried for Molly. It was obvious she wasn’t cut out for the dog-eat-dog atmosphere of the military. Here she was at TPS, one of the toughest, most demanding military schools in the world. How the hell was she going to survive in this environment?

Chapter Four

“Well, how did your first flight test go?” Scott wanted to know.

Molly gripped the phone hard, pacing back and forth in front of her couch in the large living room. She’d just gotten home at 1700 when the phone rang. “It went,” she said, refusing to lie. If Scott wanted details, he was going to have to ask the questions to drag it out of her.

“What kind of a grade did you get?”

Wincing, Molly sat down and shakily began to unlace her black flight boots. “I got a seventy-five percent.”

“Is that good?”

“It wasn’t failing.”

“What’d the other flight engineers get?”

“The grades went all the way from seventy-five to ninety-five, Scott.”

“Jeez, were you at the bottom of the barrel, Molly?”

Pushing the boots to one side, Molly unzipped the lower legs of her suit and tugged the thick white cotton socks from her feet. “Yes, I was last on the list.” She tried to laugh. “Look at it this way, Scott—I’ve got nowhere to go but up.”

“Well, did they give you the hardest of the flight tests? Is that why you almost flunked?”

Molly felt a cry deep within her. “Look, Scott, I’m really tired. You’re calling me a day early. I need to get supper and then I’m going to hit the books. I’ve got a lot of studying to do.”

“Oh…yeah. Well, I was just real excited, Molly. You said the test was Friday, and I couldn’t wait until Saturday to find out how you did.”