Countdown

Countdown
Lindsay McKenna

Hard-as-nails Sergeant Joe Donnally was tough by habit and training–and fought to stay that way. A tragic loss had closed his heart, yet captivating new partner Annie Yellow Horse stirred dormant emotions Joe had long ago denied. Annie's promise of love meant an end to his loneliness and pain…but when peril threw them into the line of fire, could Joe take the ultimate chance and offer his love to her?

Hard-as-nails Sergeant Joe Donnally was tough by habit and training—and fought to stay that way. A tragic loss had closed his heart, yet captivating new partner Annie Yellow Horse stirred dormant emotions Joe had long ago denied. Annie’s promise of love meant an end to his loneliness and pain …but when peril threw them into the line of fire, could Joe take the ultimate chance and offer his love to her?

Countdown

Lindsay McKenna

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Table of Contents

Chapter One (#u71769d87-27e0-5ecd-96ed-8455465fd8b5)

Chapter Two (#ua4c9ea76-15f9-512c-887d-162404e6c761)

Chapter Three (#u4beba811-b7dc-5d10-8095-e9a5d66806ac)

Chapter Four (#u840e1ae5-833a-5841-9a86-5930d61c6cd4)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One

Annie Yellow Horse was nervous. As she entered the headquarters building at Camp Reed, one of the two largest Marine Corps bases in the United States, the hot California-desert wind almost grabbed the door from her hand, recalling the persistent wind where she’d grown up, on a sprawling Navajo reservation in New Mexico. Wryly, she reminded herself that she wasn’t home, no matter how much she wanted to be. Annie didn’t know a lot about Camp Reed, except that they’d had problems in the brig area over the years—and that Captain Ramsey asking her to transfer here meant trouble with a capital T.

After speaking briefly to a lieutenant in the busy personnel office, she took a seat on a bench in the hall outside and waited. The lieutenant had told her that Captain Ramsey wouldn’t be meeting her after all. Instead, Sergeant Donnally, who was to be her new boss, was coming to meet her. Perhaps because she was Navajo, or a woman—or both—Annie had learned to rely strongly on her deep intuition. And if her tightened gut was any indication, she thought, this Donnally meant trouble, too.

Rubbing her damp palms on the skirt of her light green summer uniform, Annie worked to maintain her outer calm, but her stomach felt full of butterflies. Maybe it was simply because of being uprooted from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where she’d been stationed for the last two years, she tried to reassure herself. She had friends there and a comfortable life-style that suited her. Now she needed to find an apartment somewhere outside the gates of Camp Reed and completely reestablish herself—including making new friends.

Annie groaned. Friends. She had women friends, but none here at Reed, and it was difficult to start from scratch. Probably the only problem she had with military life was repeatedly losing the camaraderie of friends from a previous base. Hearing the door open at the end of the passageway, Annie sensed a powerful, potentially threatening presence. Narrowing her eyes, she saw a tall marine moving briskly toward her. Gulping back her initial response to panic, Annie used all her senses to decipher this dark-haired sergeant, his garrison cap gripped tightly in his left hand, his shoulders thrown back so proudly that he looked more like a furious eagle than a man.

Her Native American ancestry and reservation training had helped Annie develop an almost psychic ability to “read” people, but the approaching sergeant was projecting an unusual combination of menace and physical appeal that had her senses spinning. His square face appeared merciless, darkly tanned by the California sun and not at all softened by frosty blue eyes. His generous mouth was compressed into a single line of obvious unhappiness.

Annie tensed inwardly as he strode confidently toward her. He didn’t seem to see her, his focus squarely on the Personnel sign above the open doorway next to her. Black hair sprinkled his arms and peeked out from the neck of the white T-shirt he wore beneath a tan shirt. Although he was more than six feet tall and had to be close to two hundred pounds, Annie couldn’t spot an ounce of fat on his frame. If anything, he reminded her of a well-fed summer cougar, its beautifully sleek appearance masking its inherent danger.

Annie switched to her inner sensing equipment. This man was very angry. But at whom? Could this be Sergeant Donnally? Although he was still too far away for her to read the nametag above his left uniform pocket, her intuition said yes. While her head cautioned, “wait and see,” Annie experienced a surprising lurch and pounding of her heart. Stunned by her unexpected response, she sat very still, attempting to integrate the unreasonable feeling. Only one man in her life had ever made her heart respond this way, and he had died in Desert Storm.

Tears leaked into Annie’s eyes, and she quickly bowed her head. Marines didn’t cry. Their code demanded they remain tough, not showing fear or tears or pain. To show any kind of weakness meant losing the respect of other marines, and Annie wouldn’t allow that to happen. So, swallowing hard, she forced the tears away—but the memory of losing Jeff continued to ache like a wound that hadn’t completely healed. Perhaps, Annie realized, as she raised her head to focus on the marine rapidly closing the distance between them, it was best that she’d been transferred here. She had met and fallen in love with Jeff at Camp Lejeune and it was still filled with memories. Yes, coming here was best. Or so she hoped.

* * *

Sergeant Joe Donnally tried to contain his fury. He was angry that his boss, Captain Ramsey, had asked him to come retrieve the world-famous brig tracker, Corporal Annie Yellow Horse. What a hell of a name. And she was probably just as different as her name sounded, he fumed inwardly. He didn’t have time to be chief meeter and greeter to every new brig chaser transferred to Reed. With Ramsey turning on the heat to get the lackluster brig personnel squared away, Joe didn’t need this welcoming-committee stuff. Anyway, he admitted to himself, he was angry that Ramsey felt they couldn’t do without this woman brig chaser. Baloney! No one was indispensable in the corps, and they didn’t need this prima donna tracker. He had plenty of men—including himself—who were decent enough trackers to hunt escaped prisoners if necessary.

Momentarily, Joe’s focus shifted, and he was startled to see a young woman with copper-colored skin sitting almost at attention on a wooden bench outside the personnel office. His heart sped up, and his scowl deepened. She had huge, cinnamon-colored eyes, and her black hair was neatly coiffed in a short style that emphasized her oval face and high cheekbones. Was this Yellow Horse? No, he growled to himself. She was too pretty. He’d expected someone old and tough looking—a throwback to the old-corps days.

In spite of himself, Joe felt some of his anger dissolve as he met and held her widening gaze for a moment. Her gentle look offered him no returning challenge as he glared in her direction. Something in him told him this woman was Annie Yellow Horse, although he tried to convince himself it was a crazy idea. Whoever she was, she wasn’t conventionally pretty, but had an earthy kind of unspoken beauty. She wore no makeup, yet her skin glowed, the perfect backdrop to her expressive eyes and mouth. Joe slowed his pace as his gaze settled on that mouth. He’d never seen one quite like it—full lips curving slightly upward at the corners and parted just enough to make any man groan with need.

Did she realize how damned sensuous she was? Joe wondered. He knew only that he was staring at her like a slavering wolf—a totally improper reaction to a fellow marine. Desperately gathering his strewn feelings, ignoring the blood pumping through him in response to her single, luminous look, Joe tore his gaze from hers. He was close enough now to read the nametag above the pocket of her feminine uniform: Yellow Horse. With a groan, he slowed considerably, his senses rebelling with anger and frustration.

Annie Yellow Horse wasn’t anything like the image he’d invented in his mind. Captain Ramsey had spoken of her so often and in such glowing terms that Joe had automatically begun to dislike her. No one could be that good, he’d thought, as Ramsey extolled her capabilities as a tracker to heaven and back. After that kind of buildup, she had no right to look so young—and so damned beautiful! His gaze locked aggressively on hers, and he saw that her eyes were filled with curiosity and compassion.

If he’d expected some hardened woman corporal, he certainly didn’t see one. Joe watched her slowly rise, tension evident in her tall, lithe body. He wanted to hate her. He certainly didn’t need to play baby-sitter to some world-famous tracker coming into his section. Not right now.

Joe halted and tried to collect himself. His heart was pounding, and a strange emotion seemed to be radiating outward from it, touching him softly, subtly, throughout his body. What the hell was going on? Was Yellow Horse more than just a tracker? More than just a woman? As he drilled a merciless look into her eyes, he realized he barely needed to look down, so she must be at least five foot nine. Compressing his lips, he continued to glare at her.

“Yellow Horse?” he snarled. Joe hated himself for behaving this way, but he had to take his anger out on someone, and she was the one making his life even more complicated.

Annie felt buffeted by the marine’s snarl, but she held her ground, tightened her jaw and deliberately hardened her own eyes. “I am. And who are you?” she flung back in a low, husky tone. She saw surprise in the sergeant’s icy blue gaze. He was trying to tower over her, but because only three inches in height separated them, he couldn’t do it, so he placed his hands imperiously on his hips to bluff her. Annie had been in the Marine Corps for six years, and she knew her place in it as a corporal. This man might be trying to threaten her with his stance, but he was only one grade above her—and he had no right to try to intimidate her this way.

Joe scowled heavily. He’d seen her eyes go hard—seen her luscious mouth thin with displeasure. And she hadn’t taken a step back from him—hadn’t so much as batted an eyelash. She’d held her ground and, bitterly, he had to respect her for it. “I’m your new boss, Yellow Horse. I’m Sergeant Donnally. I was sent over to baby-sit you. Captain Ramsey couldn’t make it, so you’ve got me instead.” His glance flicked to the personnel file she held tensely in her left hand. “That your orders?”

“Yes,” Annie snapped back, “it is.”

“Give them to me.” Joe felt a little chagrined at his own rudeness. Momentarily, he saw confusion dart through Annie’s beautiful eyes—the most alluring feature of her face. Her fingers accidentally grazed his as she handed over the folder, and Joe nearly jerked the file out of her grasp. He pretended to look at the paperwork, but it was a ruse. His heart was hammering so hard that he wondered wildly if this was some sort of early heart-attack warning.

As he paged through the papers in her file, Joe could feel her silent appraisal. Well, let her look, he thought, it wasn’t going to do her any good. Yellow Horse meant nothing but trouble to him, arriving at a time when the office situation was still tentative and volatile. They had so many morale problems—the legacy of Jacobs, their recently departed captain—and Joe didn’t want to try to integrate a new member on top of it all. Especially since, as a corporal, Yellow Horse would be looking to him for help and direction.

“Everything seems to be in order,” Joe said gruffly. He glanced over—and instantly drowned in her eyes, which had again lost their hardness. He felt himself being pulled into their gold-flecked, cinnamon depths, framed by thick, black lashes. Why did she have to be so desirable? Disgusted with himself and his response to her, he added in a low snarl, “Come with me.”

“Wait!” Annie tilted her head. The sergeant was obviously furious—with her?

“I don’t have all day. What is it?”

She tried to let his irritability slide off her. “Sergeant Donnally, is something wrong?”

He gave her a sarcastic look. “Everything’s wrong, Corporal.”

“How so?”

Restraining his building anger, Joe drilled her with a venomous look that he hoped would put a stop to her questions. “Corporal,” he announced brusquely, “you work for me. You’re in my section. When I want you to know something, I’ll be the first to tell you. If I don’t want to talk to you about certain things, that’s the way it’ll be. Do we understand each other?”

Annie held his glare and felt ice pour through her veins. “I’ve had six years in the corps, Sergeant, and I’ve just taken my test to become a sergeant. In two months, I’ll know if I’ll be an E-5 like you. I feel a lot of resentment coming from you toward me. If there’s a problem, perhaps we should work it out here and now. I don’t want to start a new assignment with someone hating my guts.”