Command Performance
Maggie plastered a serious expression on her face and gripped the sides of the podium. “Yes, please come in.”
Three men, all over fifty if they were even that young, filed into the room and took their seats. Not one of them offered an introduction or a handshake. They assumed she knew who they were, which she did, and that was fine with her. She preferred thinking of them as the pointy-nosed general, the stone-faced one and the pudgy one.
The stone-faced man, who sat closest to the podium, looked up at her. “We’re expecting two more.”
As if on cue, the door creaked open.
“Ms. Barlow, this is Lieutenant Colonel Walt Johnson from Fort Campbell in Tennessee, and Chief Warrant Officer Hunter Cross from the army ranger’s Seventy-Fifth Division. Provided we like what we hear today, Chief Cross will act as your liaison while you conduct your interviews.”
The trailer door closed behind the man who’d knelt between her spread legs and given her the most powerful orgasm of her life. Hunter. Maggie’s face burned and her knees turned to noodles.
“Ms. Barlow,” Hunter said, his eyes wide with surprise and something else she couldn’t quite read.
Dear God, that voice sent shock waves through her body down to her core, and a place deep inside her that had no business attending a meeting in her conservative suit melted. Then she came crashing back to reality.
Hunter, her one-night stand, was her army liaison? This man, who’d spent Saturday night fulfilling her sexual fantasies, held the key to her success?
Oh, hell. Oh, holy crap.
Maggie closed her eyes and took a deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. He wouldn’t say a word. Not Hunter, the man who held doors and pulled out chairs. The man she’d met at the car show would never open his mouth and say, “Hey, Maggie, thanks for Saturday night. I hope you got all the orgasms you needed.” No, he would not do that.
She hoped. She prayed.
But he didn’t need to say anything to throw her off her presentation. Just the sight of him made her think of sex. Okay, so she wouldn’t look at him. She’d pretend he wasn’t there. She could do this. She had to do this. If she ran out of the trailer now, she’d never get another meeting with these men.
Opening her eyes, Maggie plastered a serious smile on her face, not too big or too charming, but just enough so that she did not appear combative. Gripping the sides of the podium, she waited for Chief Hunter Cross and Lieutenant Colonel what’s-his-name to take their seats. Then she looked down at the podium and began the most important presentation of her career.
* * *
HUNTER STEPPED INTO the dinky trailer and froze as if approaching a land mine. Maggie. He didn’t need C4 to knock him on his ass; shock nearly did the trick. His orgasm-demanding one-night stand stood at the podium.
He reached for the back of his chair, pulled it out from the table and sat before he fell. Maybe it wasn’t the same woman. Maybe his Maggie had a poorly dressed, too-serious twin.
Her fingers drummed the side of the podium and a faint blush spread across her face. Nope. Same Maggie. And she’d recognized him, too. Judging from the color on her cheeks, she was probably thinking the same thing he was: less than forty-eight hours ago, they’d been naked together. In bed. Exploring her fantasies.
Hunter smiled and wondered what he’d done to deserve this divine twist of fate. He’d been assigned to spend the next week, maybe longer, with the woman who’d rocked his worl
d with her demand for orgasms. Plural. It didn’t matter that his vibrant, multicolored Rubik’s Cube had turned gray on all sides. He knew what lay under that god-awful, ugly suit—a woman who pummeled the bed as she came. With that crystal clear memory, surprise morphed into an I’m-so-getting-laid-again feeling.
“What did I tell you?” his commanding officer muttered, leaning over from the seat beside his. “She’s just a girl.”
Like hell she is, Hunter thought.
“It won’t take much to keep her on a tight leash.” The colonel slapped him on the shoulder and turned to the man on his other side.
Control her. That was his objective. The getting-laid happy feeling turned up a notch. Wasn’t that what Maggie had begged for Saturday night? For him to take control? Sure, she’d been talking about sex, but of all the women he’d ever met, Miss Maggie was the most likely to follow his orders both in bed and when it came to her book.
Images from Saturday night flashed in his mind like a highlight reel. Hunter’s smile fell as he reached the end, where she walked, no, make that ran, for the door. If she’d been so into it, why had she run away while she thought he was sleeping?
He glanced up at the woman behind the podium, the only woman in the room. It took balls to stand up in front of decorated generals. A woman like that didn’t hand over control of her work. And if he tried to take it? No way she’d invite him back into her bed.
“Good morning, gentlemen.” Maggie’s steady voice cut through the room, silencing the muttering generals. Hunter watched her face, but she didn’t look up. Not once. She kept her gaze glued to her notes. She sounded confident, but he knew better. Her hands moved a mile a minute against the side of the podium. Bold and nervous, that was his Maggie. Except he had a sinking feeling she wasn’t his now and she wouldn’t be anytime soon.
“Thank you for your time.” The first slide appeared on the screen behind her. “‘America’s Cowboy Heroes,’” she read. “My book focuses on the team that completed a successful mission without the aid of most modern warfare tools, including cars. The men who rescued three aid workers while riding horses provided by an Afghan warlord.”
Cowboys? Hunter rolled his sore shoulder. He might have ridden a horse through the Afghan mountains, but he’d done it out of necessity. If he’d been driving a tank when he was sent in to save those women, he wouldn’t have gotten shot, with or without his teammate’s error. But their friendly Afghan warlord host hadn’t exactly shown up at the meeting point with a fleet of armored vehicles.
“There is no argument that the modern-day cowboys who went out of their way to save those women are heroes,” she continued.