Risk Taker

Ethan heard the tension and emotions behind her husky voice and saw pain as well as fondness in her eyes as she spoke. “That had to be tough. I mean, being given up at birth.” Ethan couldn’t wrap his head around that one. There was momentary anguish in her eyes, and then she quickly hid it from him.

“I’m okay with it. Hank and Mary made up for it. They gave me love and stability and supported me.”

“What happened the first twelve years of your life?”

Her mouth crooked, as if to avoid answering his question. “It wasn’t pretty,” was all she said, her voice clipped and growing hard. “I am who I am today because of Mary and Hank. That’s all that counts.”

Ethan tried to translate what he saw in her dark glance, but he couldn’t. There were a lot of layers to Sarah, a complexity, and he wanted to figure it out. His nature was to delve, understand and see the larger picture. It certainly served him well as a SEAL in black ops.

She finished her hamburger and picked at her fries. “Are you an officer?”

Ethan knew where this conversation was going. Warrant officers in the Army lived in a netherworld between officers and enlisted people. The Army considered them officers, higher in rank than any enlisted person. And he was enlisted. What was Sarah thinking? Was she interested in him personally? Checking out his rank or rate status to ensure the fraternization order wasn’t broken? Officers and warrants were not allowed by UCMJ law to fraternize with enlisted people. There was to be no affair, no personal relationship between the two parties.

He squirmed. “I’m a petty officer first class.”

“I see,” she murmured. In a way, Sarah was relieved he was enlisted. It would make it easier to stop the burning connection between them. Sarah wasn’t going to risk her career on an affair with an enlisted man. And yet, as she studied Ethan’s somber expression, that was exactly what she wanted to do. He had a kindness to him, a curiosity and intelligence. They all appealed strongly to her, but she couldn’t get beyond that wall of distrust she had toward all men.

Ethan continued eating his French fries, no longer tasting them. He could see Sarah had already made her decision about him. She was single; that much he knew. Was she available, though? In his SEAL world, which blurred the lines between enlisted men and their officers, he didn’t see this as a deal killer even if Sarah did.

Over the years, Ethan had seen plenty of officer-and-enlisted romances. If the two people involved were discreet, no one said anything. Only those stupid enough to flaunt their affair brazenly out in front of their commanding officers got the order to stop it or else. He’d seen, in some instances, the woman renouncing her military career in order to marry the officer she’d fallen in love with. And sometimes not. He understood what Sarah was thinking about. Weighing and measuring him because she was attracted to him or she wouldn’t have asked the question at all. He could sense her considering the costs to her career and to herself if she allowed their attraction to grow.

“Do you have a wife and kids?” Sarah asked him.

Ethan felt himself smile. “No, I’m not married.” He pushed the empty plate away and picked up his beer.

“Do SEALs replace the need for a woman in their life with their team family instead?”

He chuckled. “No way. About half the guys in our platoon are married and have kids. The rest of us are alpha male wolves without a partner yet.”

She smiled at his description, pushing a few of the last French fries around with her index finger. “Maybe your job, the black ops part of it, stops you from having a serious relationship?” she wondered.

Ethan could feel her trying to grasp the world he lived in. Was this a personal question? Or just a more generalized question about the SEAL community because Sarah knew little about them? He wished it was personal, but he didn’t think it was. “I don’t think most women can take the nature of our business,” he told her seriously. “There’s a ninety percent divorce rate among SEALs. Most marriages last only ten years. It’s like a disease.”

Her brows flew up. “Ninety? My God, that’s high!”

“Can’t disagree with you.” Ethan opened his hands. “Put yourself in a wife’s place, one who is married to a SEAL operator. She will never know where he’s sent, the danger he’s in, whether he’s coming back or not. She has to take care of everything stateside, the house, the kids, and he’s not there to support or help her do it. It’s a pretty daunting task when a husband is sent overseas for six months and you, as the wife, only get emails and maybe a Skype call monthly, if that.”

Nodding, Sarah whispered, “That would be really rough.” And then she looked at him. “Is that why you never married?” Because Ethan struck her as a man any woman would stumble all over herself to be with. He wasn’t like those ego-busting Delta operators. He was settled, mature, intelligent, and all those things appealed strongly to her whether she wanted them to or not.

“Just haven’t run into the right woman yet, I guess,” Ethan said, giving her a good-humored look. “Have you run into the right man?”

Sarah frowned. Her voice grew terse. “No.” Sarah rubbed her brow, and he could see her weighing whether or not she wanted to reveal any more of herself to him. Desperate, Ethan waited, wanting to know.

She shook her head and gave Ethan a confused look. “I’ll bet a lot of people confide in you....”

“I’m trustworthy,” he assured her. And he was. Ethan didn’t spread gossip around, and he held every relationship as sacred. Sarah was staring at him, unsure. His mouth pursed as he waited. This was a key to Sarah.

“I don’t have a very good track record, so let’s leave it at that.”

Ethan felt sadness blanketing her. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business,” he rasped. And he was sorry because he saw moisture come to her eyes and it tore at his heavily guarded heart. A woman’s or child’s tears ripped him wide-open and he had absolutely no defense against them. Ethan wanted to touch her but stopped himself.

God help him, he wanted to gather Sarah into his arms and hold her. She needed that right now, judging by the stark look in her eyes. He could feel how alone she was in this male world. In one aspect, Sarah looked fragile and too vulnerable to be a Black Hawk pilot. In other ways, Ethan sensed her steel backbone. She was complex. And that is what drove him to know her on a personal level. What moved her? What passion directed her life? Why was she in the military? There was so much more to Blue Eyes.

Sarah seemed to force a brittle smile. “It’s life. Everyone gets kicked around by it sooner or later.” She finished off her beer and pulled out some bills from the pocket of her jeans. “Thanks for letting me buy you lunch,” she told him. “I’ve got some stuff I gotta do over at my squadron whether I’m on the flight roster or not.”

It was a lie, but Sarah knew if she stayed there one more minute with this SEAL, she was going to give him her trust. And that just couldn’t happen. She owed Ethan for protecting her, but she didn’t owe him personal access into her wounded heart. That, Sarah guarded, because she couldn’t stand to have her life ever shattered again.

Rising, Ethan nodded. “Thank you.”

Sarah lifted her hand. “Stay safe out there, okay?”

Ethan knew a brush-off when he got one. He nodded and held her blue gaze, feeling the warmth and gentleness that was an intrinsic part of her despite the walls she erected. He also saw she was frightened. Of him? Why? Need for Sarah wrapped around his heart, and Ethan wanted to groan over his loss. “You, too,” Ethan told her, meaning it. “There’s only one of you, Sarah, and we need you here on this planet. Okay?”

Struck by his parting words, she blinked, assimilating his statement. There was a hidden depth to Ethan, and she saw it in his genuine care for her. That protective energy of his embraced her even more powerfully than before. “Yes...of course.”

* * *

Well that went swimmingly, didn’t it? Ethan was angry with himself as he walked toward SEAL HQ. He had to be at a mission-planning session at 1400. He’d blown it with Sarah. She was wounded, grieving, and he’d just romped into her life like a sledgehammer shattering crystal. Damn. Running his fingers distractedly through his hair, he wondered how to repair the damage he’d done through his ignorance and impatience.

He heard a Black Hawk spooling up at Ops. The sun, hot and burning, fried and dried out everything in its path. Ethan hated it, preferring the cool, damp and humid Alaskan wilderness. That or jumping into the ocean, where he truly felt at home.

What was he going to do to win back Sarah’s attention? Should he continue his other black ops strategy with her? Continue to place an envelope with a stanza of a poem he’d written about her every morning before she woke up? Ethan felt driven to do it by some invisible, unnamed source. His drive to know Sarah to her soul was intense, almost dire. And he’d never felt this before with a woman.

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