No Quarter Given. Lindsay McKenna

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СКАЧАТЬ got your address, Ms. Coulter. When and if Mrs. Biddle presses charges against this guy, we’ll be in touch.”

      “Okay.” Dana looked past the policeman. Griff was being kept busy by the other officer, who was taking his report.

      “Look, you sure you’re okay? The ambulance will be here in just a minute. Maybe you ought to go to Emergency and get checked over. That’s quite a shiner you’ve got in the making.”

      Forcing a slight smile for the officer’s benefit, Dana said, “I’ll be fine.” Then she disappeared into the crowd. Right now, all she wanted was to escape Griff’s gray, eagle gaze. Her instincts told her he wanted to be sure she was all right. Dana wavered between disbelief and fear that a man honestly could be concerned about her. She picked up her luggage and hailed a taxi, ignoring the stunned look of the driver. Collapsing in the back seat, she gave the cabbie the address where her roommates, Maggie and Molly, awaited her.

      Dana ignored the pain it cost her to sit forward and look across the crowd. Griff stood tall and straight, his shoulders thrown back with natural pride—an eagle among a bunch of chattering blackbirds, Dana thought tiredly. As she sank back again, closing her eyes, his gray eyes haunted her heart. Her tightly coiled emotions begged to explode outward in a sob. Suddenly Dana realized just how tired she was—a kind of bone-deep exhaustion that frightened her more than men did.

      She ignored the sunny April weather, the humidity, and the tropical foliage that lined the wide boulevards. Coming to Whiting Field to face her ultimate test had been the culmination of the past four years of her life. Her mother, Ann Coulter, had finally found the courage to divorce her father, Frank. Even her best friends, Maggie and Molly, knew little of her abusive childhood. It was something she was ashamed of; something she wanted no one to know about. Griff’s harsh features swam in front of her tired eyes. An eagle with the heart of a dove. Was that possible? Did any man own a heart sensitive to anyone other than himself? Something inside her wanted to believe that Griff might.

      Griff… His voice had soothed the pain in her cheek and the ache in her head. How badly Dana wanted simply to sit and talk to him, to find out more about him. But she would never see him again. A terrible sadness overwhelmed Dana. She could have stayed at the airport and waited for him to come back to her. But she’d been frightened by the way he affected her strewn senses. Never would she give her power away to a man again.

      * * *

      “Where is she?” Griff demanded, craning his neck.

      “Who?”

      “The woman who tackled the thief.”

      The cop looked around and shrugged. “Dunno, Lieutenant. I told her she was free to go.”

      Dammit. Throwing his hands on his hips, Griff glared around at the dissipating crowd. The purse snatcher was being put into the cruiser. “I need to see her.”

      “You know her?”

      “No. I need her name and address, Officer.”

      “Sorry, I can’t do that.”

      Griff glared at him.

      “Police policy, Lieutenant. Sorry.”

      “But—”

      “I’m sure she’ll show up if there’s a hearing, and you’ll be there, too.” The cop grinned. “Gutsy broad, wasn’t she?” He glanced significantly down at Griff’s bare left hand. “I’d want her name and phone number, too, if I were in your shoes.”

      Griff bit back a nasty retort. He didn’t like the innuendo in the cop’s voice. But he wasn’t going to lower himself to the man’s locker-room level. “I’ll see her in court,” he snapped, spinning on his heel and heading in the direction of his dropped bags.

      Retrieving the luggage, Griff grimly asked himself why the hell he wanted to see Dana again. She’d taken a nasty punch. Her eye was going to swell shut. Did she have anyone to care for her? To hold her or maybe just listen to her story, her fear?

      “You’re nuts, Turk. Knock it off and get back to business.” Bags in hand, he swung off the curb and made his way to the parking lot where his red Corvette was waiting. This whole situation was crazy. Four days ago his best friend, the brother he’d never had, had been killed, thanks to the incompetence of a woman student-pilot over at Pensacola Naval Air Station. Lieutenant Toby Lammerding had been an instructor pilot at Pensacola, only miles away from Whiting Field, where Griff was also an IP. Toby had taught officer candidates, while at Whiting Field, Griff taught Annapolis grads making a bid to pass the toughest flight tests in the world and become U.S. Navy pilots.

      Griff had never believed a woman could meet the tough standards necessary to become a Navy pilot. Women simply weren’t physically strong enough—or emotionally prepared—to handle a thirty-million-dollar fighter jet. When Toby had called, excited about his first female student pilot, Griff had felt a cold chill work up his spine. Toby had been ecstatic over the chance to help a woman get her wings. Griff couldn’t agree with his friend. In the year Griff had been an IP, or 03 as they were called by the students, he’d never had a woman assigned to his training schedule. He never wanted one.

      Unlocking the car door, he threw his luggage into the passenger seat. He’d just returned from Augusta, Georgia, where Toby had been buried that morning. The flight investigation blamed the woman student-pilot for the flight error. The woman had bailed out in time but Toby had valiantly stayed behind to try and save the crippled trainer. The engine had exploded.

      After buckling his seat belt, Griff rammed the key into the ignition, his feelings of grief and loss over Toby surfacing. He hadn’t cried at the funeral as Toby’s family and friends had. No, he’d attended in uniform, stoic and strong for those who weren’t. Tears burned in Griff’s eyes as the Corvette purred to life. Dana’s bruised, battered face swam before his tear-filled eyes. God, but she’d had wide, clear eyes—the kind a man could fall into and feel safe and good about himself.

      “Dreamer,” Griff growled at himself harshly. That was his Achilles’ heel. Though his world required highly complex skills, a mind that worked at the speed of a refined computer and brutal physical demands, Griff recognized his own soft underbelly. He’d dreamed of Carol being more than a “wife.” Maybe it was his fault their marriage had fallen apart. Maybe he’d wanted her to be something she never could be. Funny how women touched his wistful-dreamer side, especially when based on his five-year-marriage track record, he was a failure.

      Well, tomorrow was a fresh start in so many ways. No more getting together with Toby on weekends to go deep-sea fishing, or Friday-night poker games with the IPs at Pensacola. Griff’s apartment would be silent and empty, as usual since his divorce from Carol. When he went to Whiting Field, Monday morning, it would be to meet his next three students for the coming six weeks of daily instruction. He sighed. Very few of his students made it through their time with him. Griff knew he had one hell of a reputation among the student personnel at the base. They called him “the Turk,” and he had the highest washout rate of students at Whiting. And for a good reason. He didn’t want anyone in the air who couldn’t handle the pressures that a naval aviator would experience.

      As he guided the red sports car down a palm-lined avenue, Griff acknowledged that his mind and, if he was honest, his heart, still dwelled on Dana. Her trembling words haunted him: “This isn’t the first time I’ve had a black eye….” A hunger to find out more about her ate at him. She was a woman of mystery and of surprisingly heroic СКАЧАТЬ