"Take a break, okay?" he told her. "Lean back against me and concentrate on breathing. I've got you." Somehow he managed to put his arm around her waist, to secure her more tightly against him, even as he held on to the ropes. "Is that better?"

If she didn't know better, if she hadn't already firmly established the fact that they were friends and nothing more than friends, she would have thought he'd told her not to look down on purpose, purely for a chance to get his arms around her.

G.o.d, he had big arms. One of them was wrapped tightly around her so she could feel firsthand just how strong he was. His other arm, she could see. It was right next to her cheek, muscles standing out as he held them both in place.

"You're not wearing a harness," she realized, suddenly dizzier than ever. "Oh, G.o.d! Oh, Mike! This was a really bad idea. I want to get down. I want us both to go back down to the ground, okay?"

"Shhh," he said. "Joan, come on, breathe. I'm up here all the time. Remember what I told you? For me, it's no big deal."

"Yeah, but you're not usually up here with me. I'm a total klutz. I'm going to knock you off of this thing, I know it. In case you haven't noticed, I need to lose about twenty pounds. I'm not some delicate lightweight."

"Well, actually," he said into her ear, as calmly as if they were having a conversation back on the ground, "I have noticed. Kind of hard not to, considering our physical proximity and, well, you want to know the truth, I don't think you need to lose anything. You feel pretty perfect to me."

Chapter 5.

Muldoon held on to the ropes as Joan didn't say anything. As she still didn't say anything. As she continued not to say anything.

Oh, man, he'd never done this before. He'd never had to, never wanted to. And now he knew why. Facing potential rejection like this was no fun.

Especially when she smelled so d.a.m.n good and fit so well in his arms. Man, this woman was incredibly s.e.xy and she apparently didn't even know it. Her skin was beautiful, smooth and soft on her cheeks, but crinkling slightly around her eyes. He loved laughter lines on women. From now on it was going to be the first thing he looked for when he checked out a woman. He'd wasted far too much time on far too serious women who wouldn't laugh even if they were dating Adam Sandler. Yeah, he was forever done with women who didn't have a solid sense of humor.

He was done with women who didn't fill his arms, too. No more bony, half-starving, pencil-thin women who wanted him to escort them to dinnera"which was ridiculous because once they got to the restaurant, they barely dented a salad.

No more blondes, either. He liked hair like Joan'sa"thick and dark with a hint of red highlights. Chestnut, he thought it was called. Yeah. And he liked brown eyes, too. Just like hers.

Right now her brown eyes were closed. But then she opened them and glanced back over her shoulder at him. And then, finally, she spoke. "Are you fricking hitting on me, Muldoon, sixty feet off the ground?"

"Thirty-five feet," he corrected her. "And no," he lied, because she didn't look particularly happy at the idea. "I'm not. I'm ... You said you weren't a lightweight, like there was something wrong with that. And I just thought you should know that a lot of guys don't like women who look like they'll blow away in a strong breeze. A lot of guys like women who actually look like women, and have, like, women's bodies, and well, I'm one of those guys, and I happen to think that you've got, you know, a really fabulous body. So don't go ruining it by losing twenty pounds and turning into a walking skeleton, okay?"

He'd surprised her. He'd surprised himself as well. Despite his initial lie, he'd never been so completely honest with a woman beforea"at least not about what turned him on.

A great smile, laughter lines, lots of curves, and legs just like Joan DaCosta's.

"Well," she said rather faintly. "Thank you. That's ... the most compelling argument for not skipping dessert that I've heard in a long time."

She glanced at him again, smiled weakly, then looked away.

Ah, come on, Joan. Say it. This was where she was supposed to take his incredibly unsubtle cue and invite him to her hotel room to share some of that dessert. And breakfast, too.

She cleared her throat. Here it came...

"You're a very nice young man," she said.

Ah, jeez. That was even worse than being called Junior. He knew from experience that calling someonea"or being calleda"nice promised a relationship filled with exactly zero s.e.x.

Yes, buried inside of her innocuous-sounding vague words of dubious praise was his answer. The No s.e.x Tonight buzzer sounded with seeming finality. He wasn't going anywhere near her hotel room any time in the near future. Nice young man was a full one-eighty degrees from steamin' hot stud m.u.f.fin.

There was no doubt about it. She thought he was too young for her.

"But I really do want to get down now," she added.

"I'm not going to let you fall," Muldoon said for what seemed like the four thousandth time in the past fifteen minutes, working hard not to let his frustration sound in his voice. But he knew that she wasn't really listening, that she didn't really trust him. How could she? He was obviously too young to be trusted.

"I'm not afraid of me falling," she said. "I'm afraid of youa" Hey, you're not listening to me, Michael. Let me try to make this really simple. I'm wearing a harness. I will not hit the ground if I slip. But if I somehow make you slip, and I know that I will, it'll be Splatsville."

"No, it won't."

"Oh, yes, it will."

"No," he said, resisting the urge to shake her. "It won't. You're the one who's not listening to me." Muldoon knew what he had to do. "Will you be okay if I move away from you? I want to show you something, but I won't leave you if it's not okay with you."

She craned her neck to look at him over her shoulder. "What are you going to do?"

"Are you going to be okay?" he asked.

"Yes, buta""

"Yes is all I need to hear," he interrupted.

"Buta""

"Shhh. I want you to hold on really tight, because the net's going to bounce. Put your arms all the way through and loop the ropes with your elbows. Yeah, like that. Good. You feel secure?"

He'd gotten her attention now, that was for sure. Her eyes were wide as she turned to look at him. "What are you going toa"

He didn't wait for her to finish. He went up, fast, almost all the way to the top of the obstacle. He could see her face, looking up at him. Good.

Okay, Joan. Watch this.

Muldoon let himself drop. Fast. With his legs free. From Joan's point of view it would look as if he were falling. And maybe, technically, he was. But it was a controlled fall. One that he could stop anytime.

And he did stop, directly beside Joan.

The ropes strained and groaned under his weight, and she bounced pretty hard, but she didn't lose her grip.

He'd timed it perfectly, executed it beautifullya"and she had her eyes tightly closed.

"Oh, my G.o.d," she was saying. "Oh, my G.o.d, oh, my G.o.d!"

"You want me to do that again?" he asked. "And this time you can keep your eyes open so you can watch?"

Joan opened eyes that were filled with anger. "You childish b.a.s.t.a.r.d! You could have told me what you were going to do!"

Whoa. She was really p.i.s.sed.

"This is supposed to be a demonstration, soa""

"This was a mistake. A big mistake. So if you're done showing off, d.i.c.khead, I want to get down."

"Oh, come on, you're not really going to quit on me, are you?"

"I Want To Get Down," she enunciated. "Why am I waiting for you? I don't need you to help me." She started toward the ground.

Muldoon followed alongside of her. "Joana""

"Stop making it bounce!" she ordered. "Just stay where you are. I can get to the bottom by myself."

And she did.

But as soon as she hit the ground and started unfastening the harness, Muldoon went after her.

"I didn't expect you to be the type to quit and run away," he said. That was probably not the smartest thing to say given Joan's emotional state.

She looked about to boil over. "I didn't expect you to be a d.i.c.khead."

She got the last of the harness off of her and stormed to the bench, s.n.a.t.c.hing her skirt, her shoes, and that oversized purse thing she carried around with her, before heading toward the gate and the parking lot.

Muldoon looked back at the cargo net. Jenk and Gillman were already on their way back to the ground. Cosmo was still perched up at the very top, like some kind of weird giant bird, basking in the afternoon sunshine.

"Stow the harness and rope," he ordered them, before dashing after Joan.

"Come on, wait a sec," he said, catching up to her, catching her arm in the parking lot.

But she yanked herself free and kept walking. "You scared me to death! You should have told me you could do that circus trick stuff right from the start! But no. You had to show off."

"I told you the O course was no big deal to any of us," he protested as she stopped in front of a rental car and fished in her bag for the keys. "I spent not an insignificant amount of time today talking to you about insertion techniques like HALO jumps out of airplanes and fast-roping down from helicopters. Didn't it occur to you that if we can do that, then something like the cargo net on the O course might not be such a challenge?"

"No." Joan unlocked the car door and threw her stuff into the backseat.

"Well, then, okay, I'm sorry."

She laughed as she climbed in behind the wheel, but it wasn't because she thought he was funny. "You're only sorry now?"

"No, that's not what Ia""

"I think it would be a good idea if I were a.s.signed a different liaison." She wouldn't look him in the eyes.

Oh, man. "Look, Joan, I don't thinka""

"I'll call Lieutenant Commander Paoletti's office in the morning." She closed the door and started the car.

"Joana""

But she kept the window up as she put the car into reverse, pulled out of the parking spot, and drove away.

"s.h.i.t!"

Muldoon turned to stomp back toward the O course and found Sam Starrett a few feet away from him, getting something out of the back of his pickup truck.

"Looks like that didn't go too well," Sam commented.

"Yeah, well, it would have gone really greata"if my goal was to have her call me a d.i.c.khead and drive off without me."

Sam had the decency not to laugh in his face as he hefted his sea bag onto his shoulder and crossed around the back of his truck so he could talk to Muldoon without shouting.

"Sometimes you can measure how much a woman likes you by how mad you can make her."

Muldoon snorted.

"I know it sounds crazy," Sam said. "But it's true. And it's something I learned a little too late. Don't make the same mistakes I did. This White House lady might be in the exactly perfect emotional place right now for you to call her up and apologize profusely. I mean, really crawl. Admit to anything and everything. Tell her she was a hundred percent right. Women really like to be right. And then ask her to dinner."

"Yeah, I don't know about that." It was kind of hard to take romantic advice from a man who was miserable in his marriage and still carrying a torch for someone else. And the cowboy Texas drawl didn't help his credibility as Dear Abby, either.

"Suit yourself," the lieutenant said with a shrug. "But if I were you, I'd ask her to dinner before it's too late."

"I did," Muldoon told him. "She said no. She said she was tired"

"Tired isn't no. Tired is tired. Ask her again, for Christ's sake. Ask her to lunch if you don't want to ask her to dinner again. Ask her to have a drink. Ask her out on your boat. Don't just sit around with your thumb up your b.u.t.t. Ask her f.u.c.king something. Or else she's right. You are a d.i.c.khead."

"Gee, thanks, Lieutenant."

"Anytime."

Mary Lou couldn't find her car keys. She was going to have to go pick up Haley in about half an hour, and she couldn't do it without her keys.

To make matters worse, it wasn't going to be too long before it got dark, and once it did, then she'd really have trouble finding them.

She was on her hands and knees in the Robinsons' garden, praying that any spiders and snakes she encountered would be of the nontoxic variety. She tried not to start crying again as she searched mostly by feel among the thick pink and yellow flowers.

"May I help you?" a musically accented voice asked.

Oh, Lord.

She couldn't bring herself to turn and look up into the face of the man standing beside her. The leather sandals and long, almost elegant dark-skinned toes were all she could bear to focus on.

It was the Robinsons' yard guy. She'd seen him in the neighborhood often enough over the past month or soa"a tall, reed-thin, dark-haired, dark-skinned, foreign-looking man. He came every week to cut the Robinsons' lawn and tend their flower bedsa"one of which she was currently kneeling in, trying desperately not to crush. He was relatively new, but he kept the Robinsons' yard looking so good he'd already landed contracts with some of the other neighbors as well.

Despite the fact that he looked as if he might spend his free time organizing an al-Qaeda terrorist cell.

"I, uh, lost my car keys," she said. Mercy, what a stupid, foolish thing to have to admit. As if she'd been doing cartwheels here in this flower bed and they'd fallen out of her pocket.

"I threw them over here," she went ahead and admitted, wiping her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand, "so I wouldn't be tempted to drive to the Ladybug Lounge and get s.h.i.t-faced drunk, all right? So, no, unless you have X-ray vision and can see where my keys landed, you probably can't help me. But thank you so very much for asking."