“You should go now,” Eva said. “Just remember — don’t tell anyone. And don’t make any comments or jokes about it when you think no one’s around.”
“What if we developed a coded language so that we could talk about it without anyone else understanding us?”
“Go and get a shower, Pete.”
“I get it. What happened under the rock face stays under the rock face.”
He was gratified to see the corners of Eva’s mouth turn up. “You’ve got it. Not a word. Not even coded ones.”
“Okay, okay. But for what it’s worth, I amnevergoing to forget what happened under the rock face.” He leaned down and kissed Eva, quick enough that she couldn’t protest first but deeply enough that he hoped it would leave her wanting more.
“Goodbye, Sergeant Billings,” she said, her voice husky.
“Goodbye, Sergeant Bailey,” Pieter said, holding eye contact with her. “Until the next wilderness training camp.”
CHAPTER 10
EVA
Over the next two weeks, Eva’s plan to keep herself from thinking about Pete — or worse, acting on her physical impulses — was to stay as busy as possible. With ongoing basic training for the new recruits as well as her usual duties and responsibilities, she would have been busy enough, but she and Pete were still engaged in a battle of wills to get the promotion. Eva ensured that she was the very model of professionalism, going above and beyond to be civil to Pete in front of everyone else.
The rest of the time, she made sure she was never in close proximity to him. She didn’t trust herself not to do something she would regret, and steering clear of him was far and away the safest option.
It didn’t help that she felt his eyes on her whenever they happened to be in the same place, surrounded by other people. She didn’t know if anyone else noticed, and she hoped, for his sake, that wasn’t the case. The more she thought about it, the more she worried that Pete’s lack of discretion might get themboth in trouble if what happened under the rock face ever came out.
She told herself not to be paranoid. With Pete still demonstrating his desire to beat her to the promotion, she was sure that he wouldn’t be careless enough to disclose the fact that they had slept together. Memories of that night flooded back to Eva at inopportune moments, like when she was leading drill practice with the recruits. Her face would flush with embarrassment and repressed desire.
Most nights, her dreams were about Pete. Holding back thoughts of him during the day only served to make him come alive in her dreams, doing things to her that made her wake up in a cold sweat.
She had never felt this way about another man, not even during high school, when it had seemed as though everyone else was giving in to their raging hormones. If this was delayed adolescent desire, it was hitting her like a tidal wave.
Eva channeled her desire into trying to make sure that she wouldn’t be overlooked for yet another promotion. Outwardly polite and professional at all times, inwardly she felt the competing pulls of extreme physical desire and fierce competitiveness. Lieutenant Marshall asked her to take on more and more responsibility, and she said yes to everything, even though it meant that she collapsed in her bed with exhaustion every night, sleeping fitfully as her brain ran endless scenarios about how she could beat Pete to the job.
There was one glaring problem with her plan to best him at everything. Private Sully wasn’t making the grade with basic training and was on track to flunk out of the military. Eva, who’dalways prided herself on her ability to whip new recruits into shape in record time, knew she was failing with Private Sully.
The terrible part was that Private Sully had shown her more times than not that hewantedto succeed. His gruff sullenness, the front he put on about not caring if he passed or failed, was an act honed from the time he was a boy, Eva was sure. He’d failed at most things in life, and this was shaping up to be one more disappointment.
Eva’s training philosophy was based on tough love. She knew she wouldn’t be doing the recruits any favors if she was soft on them at this formative stage in their training. If they weren’t up to scratch in any aspect of their training, she told them so.
The problem was that Private Sully wasn’t up to scratch with almost everything. If he failed, she failed as a trainer. He was already doing damage to her reputation. Pete’s squad members were all on track to get through basic training successfully, so if Private Sully flunked out, it would make Eva look bad by comparison.
More than that, Eva wanted to help Private Sully because he reminded her of one of her brothers. For that reason, she decided to implement an alternative and potentially risky training strategy.
The opportunity came the next morning during the squad run. Private Sully was always at the back of the pack because he was still so much slower than the others. Occasionally Eva ran with him, giving him a tough-love pep talk that clearly had not worked yet.
She decided to try another tactic. “Private Sully, how do you think your basic training is going so far?” she asked, running alongside him.
“Fine, sergeant,” he said, already out of breath, even though it was only the first lap of the field.
“Do you really believe that, private?”
“Yes, I do.”
“How do you think your fellow squad members would answer that question if I asked them?”
“They’d say I was doing fine, too, sergeant.”
Eva knew that wasn’t the case, but she didn’t argue with him. “What are your favorite parts of basic training?”
