No Quarter Given

“Go right on in, Ms. Coulter. Lieutenant Turcotte is waiting.”

“Thanks,” she said. Dana moved around the door and closed it quietly. The small office was filled with bookshelves. Behind the massive oak desk sat a man, his head bent, studying what might be her file. Sweat popped out on her upper lip. Dana faced him and prepared to snap to attention. But before she could, he raised his head. A gasp escaped her.

“You!” she croaked. Griff. Dana saw the shock in his eyes. He was no less stunned than she. Her defenses shattered as his gray eyes momentarily thawed from ice to smoldering heat. Then, just as quickly, they hardened again. Off balance, Dana stood, her lips parted, words deserting her. How could Griff be the dreaded Turk? This man, his words, his incredibly gentle touch on her shoulder, had been anything but threatening at the airport.

Griff stared up at her in utter disbelief. She stood helplessly, her hands open in a gesture of peace toward him. “Dana?”

“I—yes, it’s me. But—you said your name was Griff.”

He stared down at the file, a gamut of emotions colliding within his heart. “Griff is my middle name. Your file said Danielle Coulter.”

“Yes,” she choked out. “But I’ve always been called Dana. No one calls me Danielle.”

Angrily, Griff noticed his hand tremble slightly over the file. Of all the tricks to be played on him! Her left eye was nearly swollen shut, her entire cheek black-and-blue. A huge part of him wanted simply to get up and hold her. She had to be in constant pain from that injury. Her eyes were huge, and he could read the shock in them. He was sure his IP reputation was foremost in her mind. She was probably trying to reconcile it with the man who’d helped her capture the thief at the airport.

Dana watched as the care that had again surfaced in his dove-gray eyes dissolved. Automatically she snapped to attention, tucking her chin against her chest. “Ensign Coulter reporting as ordered, sir.”

Griff wanted to curse so badly he could taste it. Life was one lousy joke after another. Dana’s face, once open and readable, was now closed, showing no expression at all. Griff reminded himself that she was a ring knocker, an Annapolis grad, one of the elite few. She was tougher than most women, he told himself, but still a cream puff underneath it all.

Slowly rising, Griff glowered at her. As much as he wanted to stop himself, stop the anger from boiling up and out of him, he couldn’t. “Remain at attention, Miss Coulter!” he snapped at her, and rounded the desk. His nostrils flared as he approached her. Griff waited to see her melt, but she remained unwavering beneath his towering scrutiny. She was such a small, helpless thing! He was six foot three, casting an ominous shadow across her.

“All right,” he rasped, watching as her eyes remained fixed straight ahead. “This is the end of the line for you or any other woman who thinks she can take it to become a Navy pilot.” Griff stalked around her, his hands behind his back. “You might be real special back in Annapolis, Miss Coulter, but here, you’re nothing more than a plebe. I break men who think they’ve got what it takes to fly a Navy jet. They come in here cocky and full of confidence. After two or three weeks with me, they wash out.”

Dana froze inside. Griff’s deep voice was like a chain saw cutting into her heart and her barricaded soul. If only she hadn’t seen his human side! He threw his words at her like a glove in a duel. The hatred in his voice was real, further eating away at her normal defensive array. Anguish soared within Dana. She had to forget the human named Griff. This was the Turk, the IP who wanted her washed out. He circled her like an eagle ready to strike at her, the quarry. Her mouth flattening, Dana rapped out, “Sir, I’ll do my best to earn your respect behind the stick.”

Turcotte glared at her. Her voice was firm, but lined with grating resolve. “These next six weeks are a survival school, Coulter.”

“Survival is one thing I’m very good at, sir.”

Taken aback, Griff moved around the desk, putting it between them. He’d had students cower like whipped dogs by the time he’d finished his initial briefing, but Dana showed absolutely no fear of him. She seemed to gather strength from his assault on her confidence. Opening his mouth to retort, Griff suddenly remembered her sitting on the concrete sidewalk at the airport, a rueful, almost painful smile on her mouth as she’d told him it wasn’t the first time she’d had a black eye. God, what a mess!

“I don’t tolerate tardiness, Coulter.”

“I’d be late for a flight only if I were dead, sir.”

“Women can’t take the punishment of flying.”

“I don’t accept that, sir.”

“You will,” he ground out softly.

Dana pinned him with an equally frosty gaze. “I know what prejudice is all about, Lieutenant. You don’t like me because I’m a woman. Fine. You’ve drawn the battle lines.”

Griff stared at her, nonplussed. What a hellion. “If you were a man, I might be impressed with your guts in standing up to me.”

“If I were a man, you wouldn’t be giving me this speech,” Dana retorted coldly. His gray eyes turned black as a thunderstorm. A part of her cried inside at the loss of the Griff who had been so gentle with her and the old woman at the airport.

“You’re wrong, Ensign. Every student that enters that door leaves knowing I’m intent on only one thing: failing you. You either have what it takes to stay in the kitchen and take the heat I’ll turn up on you, or you get out. I don’t want to be flying with any student of mine someday, unsure if he’s got what it takes when the chips are down in combat.”

“I’d say this is combat right now,” Dana whispered.

“As close as you’ll ever get to it, Ensign.”

The gauntlet had been flung. A sharp pain shot through Dana. Griff was turning out like so many other military officers she’d run into during her four years in the Navy. It would do no good to continue lobbing verbal grenades at each other. What was going to count was her performance in the cockpit of the single-engine trainer.

As always, Dana knew she would retreat to that safe place deep within herself when things got unbearable. It was a survival tool learned through years of painful experience. To everyone else, she would appear calm, cool and collected. Like swimming, retreating deep within herself meant safety.

“What time do I report for flight duty, sir?”

Griff stood, his hands on his hips, and watched her. With that swollen left eye she’d have trouble seeing. If she were a man, he’d send her to sick bay to get a chit until the eye was properly healed. Making her start in this condition didn’t give her a fair chance. Even as he thought it, though, his anger at women—and this no-win situation—surfaced. “Be at the ready room at 0800 tomorrow morning, Coulter. And be ready to fly.”

“Yes, sir.” Dana made an about-face and marched to the door. She opened it and stepped out into the passageway. After shutting the door behind her, she leaned against it momentarily. Fortunately no one was around to see her lapse of military protocol. Straightening, she absently touched her throbbing cheek, then placed the garrison cap on her head. Next stop was the bookstore where she’d pick up an armload of texts. When she wasn’t flying during the next fourteen weeks, she would be taking part in grueling academic sessions, learning about aerodynamics and meteorology.

As she left the administration building and walked the palm-tree-lined route to the bookstore, Dana couldn’t ignore her emotions. Somehow, she had to get Griff out of her mind and heart! The man at the airport had been a sham. The Turk was the real man—the bastard out to make her fail at any cost. He hated women encroaching on his male-dominated world. Fine. She’d withstood the men at the academy who’d wanted her to fail. But there was a difference here: her flight grades for the next six weeks rested entirely in Griff’s hands. She knew if she dropped below a 2.0 grade, a Board of Inquiry would be called. Rumor had it that any student with two “Boards” was washed out automatically—whatever the reasons.

Dana ignored the other students hurrying to the bookstore or to flight interviews with their new instructors. If Griff chose to wield his prejudice against her even if she was flying adequately, Dana would be in trouble. And it would be so easy for him to do—his word against hers. He was an 03, a first lieutenant, while she was an 01, an ensign, the bottom rung on the officers’ ladder. No one would take her word for anything. And if she cried prejudice or sexual discrimination, they’d laugh her out of school.

Grimly Dana swung into the bookstore and pulled a list from the thigh pocket of her flight suit. Griff seemed very sure she wouldn’t make the grade. Well, she would do everything in her power to fly—and fly well. Still, Dana couldn’t erase the memory of Griff’s soft gray eyes filled with concern. If she could forget that episode, she could easily bring up her defenses and weather his hatred of her. Maybe Molly or Maggie would have some sage advice; both of them seemed to have more understanding of men than Dana did. After all, her one relationship had been built on lies and was a proven disaster.

* * *

“So,” Dana ended tiredly, “that’s the whole story on Turcotte.”

Maggie leaned back in the cushioned, bamboo chair, putting her feet up on the small stool. “You can tell you don’t have any Irish blood in you to give you some luck.”

“Worse, she saw his good side,” added Molly, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Maggie’s chair.

Dana studied Molly. Her blond hair was shoulder length, the ends softly curling around her oval features. Molly had always worn her heart on her sleeve and was tremendously sensitive to others. Dana held her understanding gaze. “That’s the worst part of this. If I hadn’t seen Griff in action at the airport, I could handle how he sees me now.”

“Jekyll and Hyde,” Maggie muttered defiantly, brushing some auburn strands off her brow. “He obviously hates women.”

“I don’t think so,” Molly objected. “He didn’t treat Dana like that at the airport.”

“No, he was solicitous and—” Dana chewed on her lower lip for a moment, almost unable to say the word.

“What?” Molly prodded.

“Gentle.”

Maggie smiled. “There are a few men who have that quality, Dana. I know you don’t believe it, but there are.”

“That’s why I need your advice. You’ve both had positive relationships with men.” Maggie’s father adored her and his three other daughters. He was a warm, caring man, as Dana had discovered firsthand on a trip home with Maggie one time. Molly’s father was cooler and more aloof, favoring Scott, his son, over her. Nevertheless, Molly’s father was a vast improvement over Frank Coulter, as far as Dana was concerned.

Dressed in comfortable jeans and a lavender tank top, Maggie balanced a book on aeronautics on her lap, and held a glass of lemonade in one hand. It was six in the evening—their second evening together at the new apartment. “They aren’t all ogres,” Maggie said. “If the Turk was nice at the airport and a bastard at base, something isn’t jibing.”

“I think he hates all women,” Dana muttered.

“No,” Molly protested. “Maybe just women in the military. You know: the same old male prejudice about us bringing down their last bastion or some such crock.”