Are Men From Mars?
Not that being rudely, crudely and unfairly abducted, as she put it, wasn’t her own doing. Trespassing on restricted government property might have been overlooked, but it had been that damn camera of hers that had sealed her fate. Had she treated their accidental encounter like most people would have done and run for cover like her sister, he would have had no reason to bother her in the least.
In fact, the whole point of conducting testing at the old air base in Roswell had been Roswell’s tie to the UFO phenomena. Around Roswell people expected to see strange objects flying through the air. And it didn’t matter if those sightings were real or if they were only imagined. Roswell depended on UFO sightings as the main tourist attraction that supported most of the city’s livelihood.
A civilian actually having pictures of the current most top-secret aircraft in the United States military, however, couldn’t be tolerated. Especially when those pictures had the potential to fall into the wrong hands.
I made the right decision, Brad told himself with confidence, then skillfully landed what had aptly been nicknamed the Black Ghost on the helipad that was protected from view by the fifteen-foot concrete barrier walls that surrounded them.
Unbuckling his seat belt, Brad pulled himself out of the cockpit. He walked to the back of the chopper and stood with his hands at his waist, looking down at his disgruntled prisoner. She was still sitting where she’d landed on the floor, but she had managed to push some of her hair out of those dark blue eyes that were now as big around as saucers. Unfortunately those full, enticing lips he’d noticed earlier were now pressed together in a line so thin they almost disappeared.
“Captain Brad Hawkins. United States Air Force,” Brad said with as much authority as he could muster, and then he extended a willing hand to help his frowning passenger back to her feet.
MADDIE HESITATED FOR A moment, staring up at the imposing figure who was now towering above her. Oh, he was cute, all right. She’d noticed he was cute the second he turned around and looked at her. Yet looking at him now, Maddie realized referring to this man as cute was the equivalent of calling the brilliant Monarch butterfly a rather colorful moth. No, it was more like referring to Mt. Everest as a hill in the Himalayas. His dark hair was cut in that crisp, military fashion that commanded respect. The hint of a five-o’clock shadow crept up the full length of his jaw. A tight-fitting T-shirt and his camouflage fatigues only emphasized a fine-honed body that was lean, mean and nothing in between. And those arms—God, those arms. His biceps were literally bulging. Exactly the type of arms that would have the power to crush a woman to him and….
In a flash, Mary Beth’s total brawn from head to toe comment came rushing back to haunt her.
Maddie shuddered at the thought.
She reluctantly accepted his offer and pulled herself up to a height that barely reached his shoulder, ignoring a jolt of a different nature that colored her cheeks from the mere touch of his hand.
What’s wrong with me? Maddie worried. So, maybe he did have a hunkability factor of about a zillion. So what? He was also someone she should have been ready to throttle. She should have kicked both his shins and sucker-punched him soundly in the stomach. Hadn’t he literally kidnapped her? Terrified her poor sister? Possibly destroyed her chances of finding the Deva Skipper again? Maybe even ruined her chances for the biggest opportunity of her career?
Yet, here she was acting like a silly schoolgirl experiencing her first legitimate crush!
Shame on you! Maddie told herself, then purposely squared her shoulders and found the courage to say, “I’m Dr. Madeline Morgan, Captain Hawkins. And I’m certain the colonel or the general, or whomever is in charge will be absolutely appalled when he learns how badly you’ve treated a defenseless law-abiding citizen.”
His eyebrow raised slightly. “Law-abiding?” he repeated in a mocking tone. “I doubt my wing commander will call trespassing on private government property something a law-abiding citizen would do.”
He was toying with her and Maddie knew it, she could see the hint of amusement in his dark brown eyes. Dreamy eyes, she might add. Eyes that were currently staring at her so intensely Maddie felt her cheeks flame a second time. He’s openly flirting with me, Maddie suddenly realized. And though his flirting flattered her in one respect, it irritated Maddie in another.
“I prefer that your wing commander, not you, Captain Hawkins, make that type of decision for himself,” Maddie was quick to tell him before she added with another lift of her chin, “and if you’ll kindly escort me to his office, I’ll be happy to take the matter up with him myself.”
He stalled for a moment, seemingly amused that she would question his authority. “First, I’ll need to verify that you are who you say you are. Can you provide me with any type of identification?”
Maddie let him know exactly what she thought of such a stupid question. “Well, of course, I don’t have any identification on me,” she sputtered. “My purse was in the Jeep with my sister. And I’m sure you scared her to death when you had G.I. Joe reach out and grab me and then body-slam me to the floor of your stupid—” she glanced around her surroundings before she added “—your stupid whatever this flying contraption is.”
He glanced at his copilot, who had suddenly found something rather interesting on the toe of his boot.
“And what is all this spy nonsense?” Maddie’s hands were on her hips now. “Take a good look at me, Captain Hawkins. Do I look like a spy to you?”
When he purposely looked her up and down, Maddie wished she could snatch back the invitation to do so. She was sure he was thinking that she didn’t look like a professor, either. And she didn’t. She looked like hell is what she looked like, thanks to him and his partner.
Angry all over again, Maddie glanced briefly at the metal door to her left and made her move. She wasn’t quick enough. Captain Hawkins had the door blocked before she could reach for the door handle. And the scowl on his face told her trying to reach around him probably wouldn’t be a good idea.
Now what? Maddie wondered, worried for the first time that her impressive credentials might not be enough to get her out of her current predicament.
BRAD DIDN’T BOTHER admitting he’d already made the spy assessment himself. He had no doubt she was who she said she was. Even the way she carried herself let him know she was accustomed to giving orders instead of taking them. But Dr. Morgan was on his turf now. And the sooner she realized he was in charge, the better it would be for both of them.
Still, he couldn’t help but notice that her beauty was genuine. No heavy makeup, no frills, no polish or jewelry. None of the usual amenities most women felt were necessary to make them attractive. And her confidence wasn’t limited to her appearance, either. She’d been confident enough to make a break for the door. Which meant keeping her sequestered until he figured out what to do with her might not be an easy task.
Time to play hard ball, Brad decided. “Right now all I know is that you were trespassing on private government property. And,” he added as he reached out and grabbed the camera strap from around her neck, “you were taking pictures on government property without permission. Illegal pictures,” he said as he quickly flipped the back of the camera open and jerked the film out to completely expose it. “Pictures I’m personally authorized to destroy on behalf of the United States Air Force.”
The color drained from her face so fast Brad was prepared to catch her if she fainted. It was then Brad realized the Black Ghost wasn’t the only thing his pretty captive had been photographing on her expedition in the desert.
“Do you have any idea what you just did?” she gasped as her hand flew to her mouth.
“Yeah, I just did my job,” Brad told her.
“No, you just destroyed the only evidence I had to support the research I’ve been working on for the last six months.”
Destroying her research hadn’t been his intention, but there was nothing he could do about it now. Stuffing the exposed roll of film into his pants pocket, he slipped the camera strap carefully back over her head and said, “I’m going to have to detain you until I can verify your identity. Sergeant Baker will escort you to my living quarters. You can stay there until I notify you otherwise.”
“Your living quarters?” She jerked her arm away when the sergeant tried to take it. “If I’m under arrest, Captain Hawkins, then I insist you take me to the proper authorities!”
She could insist all she wanted, but Brad had his own problems to worry about. Like explaining to his wing commander how his test flight that afternoon had suddenly turned into a quasiespionage mission. A mission that had resulted in one suspect being apprehended, while a search party was now racing across the desert in hot pursuit of suspect number two.
Knowing he could no more divulge those details than he could successfully restore her ruined film, Brad folded his arms across his chest and said as calmly as possible, “Look, Dr. Morgan. If that is who you are. We can do this easy, or we can do it hard. It’s your choice. But you are going to go with Sergeant Baker one way or the other until I get this whole mess straightened out. Understood?”
Another lift of her chin told Brad she wasn’t even going to acknowledge his question with an answer.
Turning to his copilot, Brad said, “Wait at least thirty minutes before you make your move. Be discreet. Take her through the back way. And don’t answer any questions if anyone stops you. The fewer people who know she’s here, the better.”
“You’re going to regret this, Captain. I’ll see to it,” she threatened with a deadly look.
Brad held her gaze a second longer than necessary, then turned away. “Don’t let her out of your sight,” he called back over his shoulder before he opened the side door of his multimillion-dollar Black Ghost and slammed it soundly behind him.
2
“YOU DID WHAT?”
Brad squeezed his eyes shut when the powerful fist of Brigadier General Joseph Gibbons made contact with his heavy wooden desk and sent a loud crack echoing through the room. Still standing at attention, Brad took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry, sir. We were right on top of her before I even saw her. If she hadn’t picked that moment to play photographer, I could have been out of there so fast her head would still be spinning. But under the circumstances, I didn’t have any choice but to bring her back to the base.”
“And you destroyed that film?”
“The minute we landed,” Brad said, then took the exposed roll from his pocket and gave up his straight-back pose long enough to place it on the desk in front of his commander.
Gibbons, who had seen more combat action than Brad ever planned or hoped to see, pushed back in his chair and stood up, then began pacing around his office. Standing at attention again, Brad never moved a muscle.
“And you say she’s a professor?”
“A professor of entomology,” Brad affirmed, still rather impressed by the fact. “I did a quick background check. She teaches at a small private college in Georgia. She’s out here doing research on an endangered species of butterfly.”
Gibbons’s scowl made Brad take a deep breath before he added, “But there is another slight problem, sir. Someone else was with her. She says it was her sister. The sister split so fast there wasn’t any time to stop her. I radioed ahead and have a patrol out now to bring her in. She was way off the main road. I’m sure we’ll stop her before she gets back to Roswell.”
“You’d damn well better stop her!” Gibbons bellowed. “Do you have any idea what will happen if that woman hits Roswell screaming a strange aircraft carried off her sister? Hell, every news team in the country will be on top of us so fast we won’t know what hit us!”
Brad cringed. “That isn’t going to happen, sir. They should bring her in any minute now.”
Gibbons resumed his pacing, then stopped to glare at Brad again. “I want both of those women in my office within the hour. Do you hear me? We have a top secret operation to protect here, and I don’t intend to let a couple of tourists jeopardize our testing.”
Brad nodded. “I’m sure they can be convinced to keep silent, sir. It may take some fast talking, but…”
“Fast talking, hell!” Gibbons shouted. “I intend to scare the living crap out of them.”
“Well, we do have the upper hand here.” Brad threw that in for good measure, hoping he might spare his pretty prisoner and her sister some of the old man’s wrath. “I mean, the professor knows she was trespassing. I’m sure if you explain…”
“You leave those details to me.” Gibbons made another lap around the room, then flopped back down at his desk. “Now get the hell out of here and see if they’ve located that sister yet.”
Brad gave his commander a salute, turned on his heel and was one step from reaching for the door-knob when a loud knock brought him to a stop. The commander’s anxious-looking aide stepped into the room the second Brad swung the door open.
“Sorry to interrupt,” said the young lad who barely had a trace of peach fuzz on his face. “The patrol Captain Hawkins sent out just called in to say they weren’t successful in their search. They said you’d want to know.”
Brad prepared himself for the rage that immediately followed.
“Get your ass to Roswell, Hawkins. And do it now,” the voice of authority yelled from across the room. “And don’t step foot in my office again until you have this whole mess straightened out!”
After a quick salute Brad hurried from his commander’s office, already suspecting, however, that his new assignment would be his own personal version of Mission Impossible.
MADDIE CONTINUED TO PULL away every time Sergeant Baker tried to take her arm. “I’m perfectly capable of walking unassisted,” she told him in a frosty tone that should have turned the big goon into an ice sculpture.
“Just following orders,” Baker mumbled.
“Well, as far as I’m concerned your orders are every bit as ridiculous as you bailing out of the air to capture me like some common criminal,” Maddie huffed.
“You were trespassing,” Baker reminded her.
“And exactly what penalty does trespassing carry in the Air Force, Sergeant Baker? Does the rule book say jump out of the sky and pounce on your trespasser? Shove them facedown with their arms held behind them? Bruise and batter them? Does it say shoot those pesky trespassers if they dare try to run away?”
Baker didn’t answer. Instead he continued to shepherd her along in a lumbering fashion while looking straight ahead.
“And why is your captain so concerned about someone else seeing me?” Maddie grumbled when the man towering above her stopped only long enough to look up and down a long hallway before forcibly taking her arm again and steering her down the hall.
Again, Maddie wrenched her arm free, then sent a wistful look back over her shoulder. As luck would have it, they hadn’t seen a single soul since they’d emerged from the strange aircraft they’d been riding in. If they had, Maddie would have screamed bloody murder and begged for someone to rescue her. She even thought of screaming now, but the threat of being slammed to the floor again by a guy with the build of a professional wrestler kept her silent.
The big bully! Maddie thought with a frown.
Both of her knees were scraped, probably even bleeding, and it would be weeks before the skin grew back on her right elbow. And though it briefly occurred to Maddie that her injuries were mainly due to her own kicking and struggling, she much preferred to blame those injuries on her overgrown chaperone.
“Could it be possible Captain Hawkins told you to be so secretive about my existence because he knows keeping me against my will is totally illegal?” Maddie piped up again. “Tell me the truth, Sergeant Baker. Do the two of you routinely swoop down and pluck innocent women out of the desert and spirit them away to your private living quarters? Is Captain Hawkins the brains behind some type of illegal love slave trade the two of you have going on out here in the desert?”
Again, Sergeant Baker didn’t answer, but her whimsical assessment of the situation quickly filled Maddie’s mind with thoughts of what it might be like if Captain Hawkins did hold her captive as his love slave.
Would he be the type of man to aggressively force her into submission? Never, Maddie told herself, though her heart betrayed her and skipped a beat at the possibility of such unfamiliar excitement. Or would the hunky captain lure her into his arms with gentle whispers of the tantalizing things he planned to do to her while they made slow, unhurried love?
Oh, yeah. That would undoubtedly be his style.
In fact, her interaction with him so far left no doubt he was a man of few words, but exceedingly quick in the action department. Like the way his eyes had traveled daringly over her body when she’d made the mistake of asking him to take a good look at her. His intense gaze had left her breathless.
You idiot! Maddie scolded, when her apparently sex-starved mind began wandering again. And then she asked herself, Why on earth am I having these bizarre thoughts now?
She was an educated woman. A woman with the ability to stay completely focused on her career—a career that, thanks to Captain Fantasy, had possibly been sabotaged. Yet now, she was suddenly daydreaming about being this man’s love slave.
It was completely unlike her.
Totally preposterous!
Yet, so was her current situation.
For all practical purposes, she might as well have been spirited off to another planet, Maddie reasoned. Educated and focused or not, she was totally out of her element. Could she really expect herself to act normal? Expect to remain calm and collected when she’d lost complete control of the situation?
And, of course, there was also that stupid prediction Mary Beth had made earlier about some guy knocking her feet out from under her. That had to be what was jinxing her now and turning her into some wide-eyed silly twit because some hunky soldier had paid a little attention to her.
Damn you, Mary Beth.
But thinking about her sister also made Maddie wonder what her poor twin’s fate had been. She was certain Mary Beth had to have seen the soldier jump out of the aircraft and seize her. Was it possible Mary Beth was already in the commander’s office now pleading for her release? Or had Mary Beth gone back to Roswell to enlist the help of local authorities?
Which might not be a good thing, Maddie reminded herself with a frown. The local sheriff probably wouldn’t be any more lenient about her trespassing than the captain had been. A convicted felon certainly wouldn’t be a prime candidate for a federally-funded research team. Although making the research team was the least of her worries at the moment. Thanks to her own stupidity, she could possibly end up with a new wardrobe of striped prison clothes and staring out at the world from behind bars.
Maddie was still mentally kicking herself for being such an idiot when Sergeant Baker stopped in front of a door, opened it and pushed her inside a darkened room.
She blinked when he switched on the light.
The captain’s living quarters were certainly nothing like the barracks Maddie had seen portrayed on TV and in the movies. “How does Captain Hawkins rate his own suite at this inn?” Maddie wondered aloud.
As usual, Baker refused to answer.
She took another look around the room. The accommodations certainly weren’t elaborate. The walls were cement blocks and painted a puke-green, and to her dismay there wasn’t a window in sight. The main room was large enough for a sitting area, but the love seat and matching recliner had seen better days. A sagging bookshelf to her left held a TV, VCR and what looked like a CD player. A metal table and two metal folding chairs sat on the opposite side of the room. There was also a small apartment-size refrigerator. Instead of the standard military-issue cot, Maddie could see a double bed in an adjoining room.
She assumed the closed door off the bedroom led to the captain’s private bath. And a bathroom was certainly something she could use at the moment. Not only was she covered in dust and grime from head to toe, but her scrapes and scratches shouldn’t go long without attention. The way her luck had been going, gangrene could set in at any moment.
Maddie glanced at her bodyguard. “Does Captain Hawkins have his own private bath?”
“Off the bedroom.”
“And may I use that facility?”
Baker nodded.
“Alone?”
Baker blushed.
“Don’t you need to search the bathroom first?” Maddie jeered. “Make sure I can’t shimmy out a window or something?”
She’d only been joking, but to her surprise Baker motioned her in the direction of the bathroom. Only when they were standing side by side and peering into the small bathroom did he nod his approval. “Help yourself,” Baker said with a goofy smile. “I didn’t think there were any windows in this old block building, but thanks for reminding me to check it out.”
“You aren’t welcome!” Maddie stomped inside the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. She could hear the sergeant chuckling to himself as the sound of his footsteps left the bedroom. It irritated her that the big buffoon thought the situation was funny, but at least he’d had the decency to allow her a little privacy. Reaching down, Maddie locked the bathroom door just to be safe, then stood staring at herself in the small mirror above the sink.
Completely covered in dirt, Maddie decided she looked like one of those old Vaudeville comedians in black face makeup.
“God, I’m a mess.” She bent forward and ran her fingers through her tangled hair. The sand that peppered the basin made her yearn for a hot shower. The thought of stripping naked in the captain’s private bathroom, however, made Maddie more than a little apprehensive. Especially with the off-the-wall scenarios that seemed to spring to mind every time she thought about the handsome devil.
Like now.
Maddie could picture herself waterlogged and withered after spending hours waiting naked under a spray of water that had long since grown cold. Waiting. Hoping. Praying her mysterious kidnapper would finally burst into the bathroom to see if she had somehow managed to escape. He would throw back the curtain and grin wickedly when she only halfheartedly tried to cover herself. And then he would step into the shower with her and pull her naked, quivering body…
You, my dear, are a certifiable nut case!
Hoping to cool herself off from that mental image, Maddie jerked a towel from the towel bar, wet it thoroughly, then mopped it slowly over her dust-splattered face. The amount of grime and dirt she was leaving behind on his own personal towel made her smile.
After cleansing her injuries as best she could with a basin-type bath, Maddie studied the medicine cabinet above the sink. She had never been one of those nosey people who secretly went through other people’s medicine cabinets.
But under the circumstances?
Well, it was the captain’s own fault she needed medical supplies, she reasoned.
Boldly reaching out, Maddie opened the door and peered inside. The usual male toiletries stared back at her. His toothbrush and toothpaste told her even a big, strong soldier like him was just as concerned about the threat of gingivitis as everyone else. There was a can of shaving foam and a fancy-looking razor for that heavy stubble she had noticed earlier. And he evidently preferred aftershave to cologne, though his brand wasn’t cheap; Ralph Lauren would have been proud. Picking up the bottle, Maddie’s intention was to take a quick sniff.
She froze the second she saw the box of condoms.
Shoving the bottle back in place, Maddie slammed the cabinet door and stood staring into the mirror wondering how such a promising day had turned crazy on such short notice.