Willing

Chapter 1

“So, why isn’t Josie taking on the partnership?”

Daniel Black Eagle didn’t like incongruities, and Tyler McCall’s desire to take on a partner for his mercenary school in the Oregon Coastal Range didn’t add up. Not when his daughter was more than qualified to run the school on her own.

Tyler ran his hand over his salt-and-pepper crew cut, a frown wrinkling his brow. “She’s not interested. Thought one day I’d leave the school to her, but she says she’s spent enough of her life living like a soldier.”

“You’re not ready to give it up.” And probably never would be.

Men like Tyler knew one thing, warfare. Whether training soldiers or fighting, they lived for combat and usually died the same way.

“Not yet. There are still some good years left in this old body.”

Daniel didn’t doubt it. The Vietnam vet was in better shape than a lot of Daniel’s contemporaries, and there was no arguing with the fact that he was still a damn fine trainer. “You’ve run the school for a long time without a partner.”

“Times change. Josie’s ready to move on, and I’m ready to let someone else do some of the grunt work.”

Daniel didn’t smile, but he felt like it. Kids would be out of school for a snow day in Hawaii before the man sitting across from him stopped training soldiers in hand-to-hand combat. “My specialty is explosives, not grunt work.”

“That’s why they call you Nitro.”

It wasn’t. Daniel had gotten the tag long before he learned how to build and diffuse a bomb, but he wasn’t about to explain what had prompted his Army Ranger nickname. It came from a time in his life he never talked about and wished he could forget.

“So, what does Josie want to do?” He couldn’t see her as anything but a highly skilled, highly paid warrior.

“She’s got some idea about becoming a computer expert, or something, working nine-to-five in an office like normal people.” The way the older man said normal people made it clear he didn’t think much of his daughter’s idea. “She took computer classes on-line for over a year. I didn’t even know about them. Now she’s moved to Portland so she can go to PSU and finish getting her degree.”

The man sounded baffled by such a plan.

“You don’t want her to move on?” Most fathers would be relieved, not upset, if they found out their daughters didn’t want to be professional soldiers.

But Tyler McCall was not typical in any sense.

“Don’t get me wrong. I’ve never been all that excited about her going into the field.” For once the other man’s expression was easy to read. He looked haunted. “That’s not why I trained her like I did. I thought she’d teach soldiers how to fight, not go out and do the fighting herself. But this computer stuff is no better.”

“How so?”

“Josie wasn’t raised to fit into a normal environment, and maybe that’s my fault.” Tyler’s jaw hardened. “Hell, I know it is, but facts are facts, and my baby girl is going to fit in an office environment about as well as a forty-four slug in a twenty-two rifle.”

At twenty-six, the highly skilled female warrior was hardly anybody’s baby girl. “She’ll be fine.”

Tyler’s face creased in a frown. “I wonder.”

“What do you wonder, Dad?”

The softly feminine voice traveled along Daniel’s nerve endings straight to his sex, and he got as hard as a pike between inhaling and exhaling. Damn, how could a woman who dressed, acted and fought like a man sound so much like a woman and have such an impact on his libido?

She wasn’t exactly standard wet dream material, being on the short side of average with small curves. And her chin-length, reddish brown hair gave her a perky air, not a sexy one, but it didn’t matter. She made him react like a horny teen getting his first glimpse of Marilyn Monroe-style cleavage.

He wanted Josie like hell on fire, and she’d shown him six ways from Sunday that she wasn’t interested.

Tyler’s green gaze settled on his daughter. “I wonder how well you’re going to fit into the normal world.”

The smile she’d been wearing when she walked into the austere room that reminded Daniel of army quarters slipped right off her face. “About as well as I fit into this world, I guess.”

There was something in her voice that confused him, a bitterness he wouldn’t have expected. She made it sound like she didn’t belong, but he’d met few mercs as capable as she was.

Tyler grunted. “You fit in just fine with other soldiers.”

“But I’m not a soldier, Dad.” She sat down on the edge of a twin-size army bed pushed up against one wall and put one foot on the mattress, then looped her arms around her knee. Swinging the other leg, she gave her dad one of those serious looks that always caught at something inside Daniel he didn’t want to deal with. “I’ve never been enlisted. I don’t owe my undying allegiance to any world government.”

“You’re a better soldier than ninety-nine percent of the armed forces.”

She shrugged and turned to face Daniel, her small but tempting breasts outlined by her khaki tank top. “How are Wolf and Lise?”

It took him a second to respond to her words rather than the seductive force of her body. “They’re expecting a baby.”

Primal male tension filled him as he waited for her to ask about Hotwire. She’d shown a definite preference for the other man’s company on their last mission.

Oblivious to his tension, her pixie face lit up, and her smile made her seem too damn sweet to know as much about bombs as she did. “Hotwire didn’t tell me. They must have just found out.”

What the—“You keep in touch?”

Her pale green eyes warmed in a way that made Daniel want to hit something. “He’s been helping me with my computer training.”

For no discernable reason, Daniel’s muscles contracted into battle-ready mode. “He never mentioned it.”

“Probably because he knows you don’t like me.”

“What are you talking about?” Not like her? He wanted her more than he’d wanted any other woman.

Despite her total lack of encouragement in that area, he couldn’t get rid of the desire that made his blood bubble like molten lava whenever she was around.

She rolled her eyes, her nose wrinkling. “You didn’t exactly make a secret of it on the mission with Wolf and Lise.”

“I never friggin once said I didn’t like you.” Could she really be this blind?

Her laugh was hollow, and her eyes went dark with something he didn’t have a hope of defining.

The only thing he understood about women was their sexual response, and since Josie’s was about as clear as an over-cast day, he couldn’t figure her out at all.

“You didn’t have to. I mean, actions speak louder than words, don’t they?”

Hell, he’d always thought they did, but since meeting her, he wasn’t so sure. “I don’t dislike you.”

Her eyes went wide at his tone, but he wasn’t used to having to explain himself. Most of the time he wouldn’t have even bothered, but having her believe he didn’t like her bothered him. For all her strength as a soldier, she was vulnerable.

“Maybe you don’t dislike me, but you don’t exactly like my company either. You made it pretty clear I was just in the way on the mission.”

“You weren’t in the way.”

“That’s not what you said the last night of the mission.”

“I was in a bad mood.” She’d been all over Hotwire after treating Daniel like the untouchable man on their cross-country drive together.

“Which seems to be your constant state of being when you’re around me.”

He opened his mouth to argue when he suddenly remembered they weren’t alone. Tyler McCall sat on a straight-back wooden chair, an arrested expression on his weather-beaten, darkly tanned face. Daniel’s lips snapped together, and he frowned, first at Tyler and then at Josie.

“We can discuss this later.”

“Further dialogue on the blatantly obvious facts would be redundant.”

“You sound like a schoolteacher sucking on a lemon.” And a woman still very much convinced he did not like her.

The anger he’d learned to control fought to slip its leash as frustration ripped at his insides. It was as though she was being deliberately obtuse, only she was too natural to be putting on an act. She really believed that crap.

Did that mean she’d similarly misread his sexual signals?

He wanted her, and the truth was, an emotion as lukewarm as liking didn’t begin to come into it. His feelings where she was concerned were much too hot for mere liking.

Josie kicked the covers off and flopped onto her back to stare at the dark ceiling above her.

Staying the night at the compound had been a bad idea. Nitro hadn’t driven back down the mountain to his hotel until well after dinner, and her dad had insisted she stick around to discuss plans for the school with them. Even though she was no longer going to teach, he wanted her opinion on the new training program he’d been devising.

Usually, being asked for her opinion by her dad made Josie feel good. Tonight it had been an instrument of torture, keeping her cooped up in the same room with Nitro and his testosterone-laden body.

She wouldn’t have been at the compound at all, but her dad had finally consented to her computerizing his files. She’d finished the week before and was done installing the new software. All she had to do was go through the easy entry procedure with him, and he would be good to go.

She supposed she’d have to show Nitro, too, since he was going to be her father’s partner.

Her hands fisted at her sides while her body tingled the way it did every time she thought about him. Seeing him again had her hot and bothered and from past experience, she knew the feeling wouldn’t be disappearing anytime soon.

He was just so sexy. Everything about him turned her on, and she wasn’t used to feelings like this. From mahogany brown eyes that looked as though they held the secrets of the universe, to black glossy hair he wore just a little long, to a muscular but flexible body she desperately wanted to touch, he was the most appealing man she’d ever known, and she’d known a lot of men.

Her father’s school had seen hundreds of pupils over the years, and she’d gotten to know pretty much all of them, ninety-eight percent of whom had been male. None of whom had impacted her like Nitro did.

Maybe if she’d been able to spend any bonding time with the women who came through the school, she would now know what to do with the feelings Nitro elicited in her, but she hadn’t known how to relate to the female soldiers. She had no more fit in among them than she had in the public school she’d tried out for a couple of months before returning to homeschool at her father’s mercenary training compound.

She’d always felt like the rest of the world had a secret handshake she’d never been given, so she would forever be on the outside looking in. The only person in the world she was really close to was her dad, and he wasn’t exactly sane by society’s standards.

Josie didn’t fit anywhere, and she wanted to change that. As much as she acted like one of the guys, she wasn’t one, and meeting Nitro had brought that home to her in a way nothing else could have. She wanted him with a physical ache that was actually painful and didn’t even know how to tell him so.

She’d thought he wanted her, too…until he started acting like he hated her.

She didn’t know what she’d done to turn him against her, but it hurt. She’d spent so much time around men with nary a twinge of physical reaction that the wave of sexual desire that crashed into her upon meeting him had about sent her to her knees in shock. She’d never known anything like it, not before or since.

She’d tried dating a few times in the past months, but none of the men she’d gone out with had made her heart race or her hands itch to tear their clothes off. Her teeth gritted against the sexual desire tormenting her. If seeing him for such a short time this afternoon did this to her, what was going to happen when he was here every time she came to visit or upgrade the computer system?

She just could not believe Nitro was going into partnership with her dad.

Oh, sure, the two men had plenty in common. Both were consummate soldiers. Both were so self-sufficient they didn’t really need anyone else, least of all her. They were powerful, tough males with not an ounce of weakness in them. Still, it wasn’t fair that her dad would pick as his partner the one man destined to torment her with what she couldn’t have.

She knew her dad was disappointed she hadn’t wanted to take a more active role in the training camp, just as he’d been disappointed when she’d opted for real missions over training others since reaching adulthood, but did he have to punish her by taking on Nitro as his partner?

She sighed, acknowledging she wasn’t being fair to her dad.

He knew nothing of her feelings for Nitro. In fact, she’d told him she didn’t like the man who made her throb in places she hadn’t known existed. Ignorant or not, her dad’s decision had her edgier than a deer scenting a bobcat.

With a groan of frustration, she climbed out of bed and into her fatigues. Maybe a walk would clear her head enough to sleep.

Forty-five minutes later, she had walked the entire perimeter of the camp and didn’t feel any closer to sleep. She hadn’t even had the satisfaction of moving undetected by her father’s pupils because there weren’t any.

It was the usual two-week hiatus between training groups, and the camp was deserted except for her and her dad. Even the part-time teachers that helped her dad teach stuff he wasn’t so hot on, like computers and offensive driving, were gone. Not that most of them lived on site, but some stayed at the school during sessions.

Giving up on getting any sort of peace with the walk, she started jogging back. Exercise was supposed to be the panacea for all ills.

Suddenly, the ground shook, and a huge boom she recognized all too well rent the air. She fell to her knees, terrifying knowledge of just how devastating that magnitude of explosion could be slamming into her. Scrambling back to her feet, she saw orange flames licking toward the sky from the office section of the compound.

She started to sprint, her legs moving with fear-based adrenaline pumping through them. Where was her dad? He had to have heard the explosion, but she didn’t see his big body silhouetted against the flames.

She bypassed the office and the bedroom all the students thought he slept in to the back of the building and the windowless room he actually used. The wall looked seamless, but she knew he had an exit, and it didn’t take her any time at all to trigger the release on the hidden door.

It swung outward, and she saw her father’s form sprawled across the bed outlined in the eerie light. The explosion had caused part of the wall to fall on him, and he was dangerously still. Heat blasted her as she ran toward the bed, the fire having reached the secret room through the decimated wall.

She didn’t waste any time checking for a pulse, but started throwing debris off of him. When he was free, she dragged him out of the burning building, her muscles straining against his weight. They made it outside just as the wall collapsed with a whoosh of fire and a deafening crash. She kept moving until they were clear of it, relief flooding her as she saw his chest rise and fall with one choking breath after another.

Running to the jeep parked away from the office, her own lungs heaved against the smoke billowing around her, and she brought her arm to her face, breathing into the crook of her elbow. She sent prayers of gratitude skyward for the jeep’s undamaged state as she drove to where her father lay.

Her own small Justy was a goner, having taken a direct hit of fire-heated timber when the office exploded.

It took more strength than she knew she had to get his unconscious weight into the passenger seat, but desperation sizzled through her muscles. With a flick of her wrist, she shoved the car into gear and started driving down the mountain as fast as she could without going off the track.

Her dad stored explosives underground, with each component carefully separated from the others, but she wasn’t taking any chances on the initial explosion being followed by another. Her caution was justified as the ground rocked under the jeep, almost sending them sliding off the narrow track. She kept driving, the vehicle barely under control, her mind focused entirely on escape.

They were more than halfway down the mountain when she used the jeep’s CB to call the explosion and possible forest fire in to the fire service. It had been a wet spring, and she had no doubt the water copters would have the fire under control before the forest surrounding the compound could be severely affected.

She hit the coastal highway at a speed beyond legal limits and just kept going, making a split-second decision to head toward the major metropolitan hospital to the east rather than the small community hospital ten minutes closer and to the west.

The instincts her dad had told her she would learn to live by were screaming at her that no carelessness on her father’s part had caused that explosion tonight. If someone was trying to hurt her dad, they’d have a better shot at him in the small coastal town than the more anonymous metropolitan area surrounding Portland.

She drove without her lights until she hit the outskirts of civilization, glad for the three-quarter moon that lit the highway. Unless they were using night vision or radar, no one followed her. She made it to the nearest major hospital less than twenty minutes later, ignoring speed limits in the downtown district and pulling into the emergency parking lot with squealing tires and honking her horn.

Tyler McCall had not moved so much as a muscle during the entire trip. Emergency room personnel came rushing out, and her dad was on a stretcher headed into ER within minutes.

She spent the next half hour discretely securing the perimeter of her dad’s environment while the doctors examined him. She was leaning against the wall, surreptitiously watching the emergency room entrance, when a doctor in a white coat and with an energetic demeanor approached her.

“Miss McCall?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Dr. Wells. I’ve been treating your father.”

“And…”

“He has a nasty hit to the head, but he’s regained consciousness.”

Air escaped her lungs in a whoosh, and she sagged against the wall. “Can I see him?”

“Yes, but I think there’s something you need to know.”

“What?”

“He’s experiencing a certain level of confusion, and I believe it’s brought on because his memory has been compromised by the blow he received.” His mouth tightened with exasperation. “Not that he will admit it.”

That sounded like her dad, not to admit to weakness. It was a measure of the doctor’s powers of observation that he’d noticed anomalies in her dad’s behavior enough to make the diagnosis.

“He has amnesia?”

“Partial. He knows who he is, but avoided answering questions about where he had been or what he had been doing before the explosion.”

“That doesn’t mean he can’t remember.”

“I get that impression, but he wouldn’t tell me what day it is either. He knows the year, but it’s my guess there are some gaps in his memory, and without his cooperation, we have no way of determining what they are.”

She almost wished the doctor good luck, but kept the facetious comment back. Her dad was stubborn and distrustful of authority. Apparently the doctor had already figured that out.

“Will his memory come back?”

“There’s no way of knowing, but in most cases, unless there is significant damage, the brain learns to rewire itself, going around the affected area and retrieving knowledge. Without a previous MRI to compare his current condition to, it’s hard to tell how widespread the impairment to brain tissue is. From what I can tell, it is limited to a small area in his left frontal lobe corresponding to a large external bump and gash.”

Her dad wouldn’t like knowing they’d been taking pictures of the inside of his head. He was funny about stuff like that, and they’d gotten away with it only because he’d been out cold, but it didn’t bode well for his mood when she got to see him.

“Anything else?”

“He has some surface bruising, but no internal damage.” She’d hedged when asked what had caused his injuries and could sense the doctor’s curiosity now.

“I’d like to see him.”

The doctor frowned, but nodded. “That might be best. Maybe you can convince him to cooperate in his treatment.”

That brought a cynical twist to her lips. “I can try.”

A nurse led her back to a curtained cubicle. Her dad was sitting up in bed, his eyes obviously unfocused, but scanning the room for any signs of danger nevertheless. The consummate soldier in crisis.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Josie-girl.”

She walked to stand beside the bed and laid her hand on his forearm. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ll live.”

“The doctor thinks you’ve got partial amnesia.”

Her dad’s pale green eyes narrowed. “Damn impudence.”

She smiled, the first glimmer of humor sparking inside her since the ground shook beneath her feet. “Are you saying you don’t?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Do you know what day it is?”

“No…” He put his hand to his head, his eyes closing, sweat breaking out on his brow. “There are gaps.”

“Don’t worry about it. The doctor said it will probably all come back eventually.”

“I suppose he thinks he knows because he used that fancy machine to look inside my brain.”

So, he knew about that already. “He was just trying to assess the level of damage.”

“If you say so.” But clearly her dad didn’t believe it.

She sighed. She supposed for a man who considered being asked for his middle name a gross invasion of privacy, and who had refused to go to a doctor in the decade since, an MRI would be over the top of his comfort level.

He opened his eyes and pinned her with a look he used for interrogation. “What happened?”

“You don’t remember that either?”

“No, but if it was serious enough to land me in this white prison, I think I should.”

“There was an explosion.”

“Where?”

“The office and your mock room, but the fire was spreading fast when I pulled you out.”

“You saved my life.”

She shrugged.

His jaw clenched. “I can’t remember what day of the week it is, and I sure as hell don’t know why someone tried to blow me up.”

She didn’t bother denying the explosion had been planned. Her dad’s instincts were better than hers, and hers were screaming the same thing. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got your back.”

He nodded and then winced, bringing his hand to his head again. “Damn, this hurts.”

“I’m sorry.”

The next two hours were tense with Josie avoiding the probing questions of the ER staff and a duty officer who had been called in to try his luck when they were unsuccessful. She told them her dad had had a fall.

They were bothered because that didn’t explain the condition of her clothes or his. She refused to enlighten them, having learned a long time ago that no answer was a better form of evasion than adding lies on top of the initial one. Finally, a nurse came into say they would be moving her dad to a private room for observation.

After the nurse left, her dad said, “Call Nitro.”

She supposed his new partner deserved to know their school had been blown to smithereens. “I will in the morning.”

“Now, Josie-girl.”

She frowned. Dawn was less than an hour away, and she could call Nitro an hour or so after that. “Why now?”

Confusion clouded her dad’s face. “I don’t know. Just do it.”

He didn’t like weakness, and he’d always been a bear when he was sick, so she didn’t take issue with his general-in-command tone.

“Okay, but if you don’t know why, then I don’t see how you’re going to tell him anything.”

It sounded reasonable to her, but at his glare she gave in. Bending down, she kissed his cheek. “Fine. I’ll go call him right now, but don’t blame me if he doesn’t like being woken up before the roosters.”

“He’s a soldier. He’s used to it.”

When Nitro answered the phone with an instantly alert voice five minutes later, she had to concede her dad was right.

“Nitro…It’s Josie.”

“What’s up?”

She’d gone outside to an isolated phone and made sure no one was in hearing distance, but still she spoke in a low tone. “There’s been an explosion at the Mercenary Training Camp. When I left it looked like most of the compound was gone.”

“Are you all right?” The words whipped out like bullets.

“I’m fine. I was out walking.”

“What about Tyler?”

She couldn’t help noticing he had asked about her first.

It made her feel tingly inside, and she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with a feeling like that. “Dad was sleeping. He got hit by debris, and he’s in ER right now. They’ll be moving him to a private room shortly, and he wanted me to call you.”

“What hospital?”

She told him the name and grimaced at Nitro’s curse. “I wanted the anonymity of the city.”

“Yeah, but it’ll take me an hour and a half to get there.”

“We’re not going anywhere, not right now anyway.”

“Tell your dad to stay put until I’m there, but here’s my cell phone number just in case he doesn’t listen.”

She wrote down the number and rang off, her heart beating too fast for a simple telephone conversation with her dad’s partner.