Kiss of Surrender

  “Sir!” Now she was indignant. The commander must think she’d been putting the moves on Trond. Well, she had, but with a purpose. Not because she had the hots for him. Well, not totally.

  “Do you honestly believe that the Navy SEALs allow anyone onto our base without complete security clearance?”

  “No, but—”

  “Jaegers are as elite a group in Norway as SEALs are in the U.S. Do not for one minute think they’re lax in their requirements.”

  “It’s not that, Commander, sir. There is just some secret that I know he is hiding. He’s a ghost. Honestly, I had an old police contact check him out, and he’s not in any database. He doesn’t exist.”

  “Good Lord! Every man here has secrets. Don’t you?”

  She was fighting a losing battle, Nicole realized.

  The frustration on her face must have shown because the commander said, with less sternness, “I commend your motivation in wanting to ensure the security of our unit, but in this case, your concerns are misplaced. Now, let me tell you what I’m concerned about. Team unity. One of the things we emphasize from the very beginning in BUD/S as they do in WEALS training is the importance of teamwork. If you can’t work together with every single person on the OctoTiger Squad, perhaps you need to step back.”

  “Oh no, sir! I assure you I’m a team player.”

  “Including Captain Sigurdsson?”

  She gulped several times before agreeing, “Including Captain Sigurdsson, sir.”

  As she left the office, duly chastised, Nicole had to wonder, Was I wrong? Are my instincts so rusty? Am I letting my hormones affect my judgment?

  One thing was clear, though. She would have to adjust her behavior toward he-who-was-driving-her-crazy.

  Eleven

  Angel flying too close to the ground, or something . . .

  If Nicole was already confused by Trond, she was stunned speechless the next morning when she finished her morning run and was walking toward the chow hall where she intended to have a big breakfast. She’d earned it.

  As she approached the small, nondenominational chapel that served all Navy personnel, including the SEALs, she saw a small crowd outside, just standing about with the oddest expressions on their faces.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Listen,” one young sailor said.

  The most glorious male voice was singing “Amazing Grace” inside the chapel. No, it was two male voices.

  “Amazing Grace” was a wonderful hymn, and had been sung by some of the best singers in the world. Aretha Franklin’s rendition on Oprah’s last show had brought the audience to tears.

  This was different.

  She stood, transfixed, as did the others, when the choir moved from one song to another, including some in Latin, like “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus,” that Nicole remembered from her childhood in a neighborhood Greek Catholic church.

  Finally, she couldn’t resist and stepped through the open doors, even though she wasn’t appropriately dressed for church. She shouldn’t have been shocked at what she found, but she was. Trond stood in the front row with his friend Karl and they were singing their hearts out like . . . like angels. Jeesh! With voices like those, they could get music contracts, especially singing Christian music.

  Just then, she noticed a man sitting at the opposite end of the last pew where she’d plopped down. He was staring intently at Trond and Karl, giving her an opportunity to study him.

  Beautiful, that’s the only word that fit. He wore a plain white T-shirt and denims with white athletic shoes. Nothing unusual there. And although he was tall and well-built, that was the norm here on the base. His face was sculpted out of pure, cream-tinted marble, or so it seemed. A strong nose. Full lips. Thick, dark eyelashes. His black hair hung smoothly to his shoulders. The sunshine filtering through the stained glass window cast a light that seemed to hover above his head like a halo.

  Inexplicably, Nicole’s heart was racing, and her hands trembled in her lap.

  Then, as if sensing her perusal, the man’s head turned, and he stared directly at her through eyes of an ethereal silvery blue color. Mesmerized, she couldn’t have looked away if she tried.

  The most incredible sense of peace came over her, and in her head flashed vignettes of her entire life up to this point. And then it was as if an eraser wiped the slate clean of all the bad things in her past. All this happened in the blip of a moment.

  The man nodded at her and smiled.

  She blinked.

  And between one blink and the next, he was gone.

  Nicole found that tears welled in her eyes, but they weren’t tears of pain or hurt. They were tears of joy.

  That’s how Trond found her when the service ended and he was exiting the church.

  “Are you following me?” he accused. “More stalking? There aren’t any closets here as far as I know.”

  Now, there was a mood killer if she ever heard one. Not that she’d been expecting sweet words after their bout of near-sex. Oh wait. Could it be that he was aware that she’d complained about him to the commander again? Still—

  “No, I was out running when—”

  “You were running? On a Sunday when you could have slept till noon, or lazed about doing nothing?” He sighed as if those were activities to be desired. Or nonactivities.

  “Trond, Trond, Trond! You really do need some of my motivational books. Peak Performance comes to mind.” The commander had warned her about pursuing Trond’s “secrets,” but that didn’t mean she had to accept his lazy attitude.

  His lips twitched with humor. “You really want to know how I perform when peaking? Methinks you already know that.”

  At first, she was confused. “Oh you! That’s not what I meant.” She felt her face heat with embarrassment. “How about this other tape, Life Is Passing You By? It’s been a huge best-seller for years.”

  “Believe you me, I do not need a book to teach me that.”

  “Maybe you just need to be more organized.” Okay, if she was going to be more cooperative with the guy, per the commander’s edict, she could try being helpful. “I have some extra daily planners if you’re interested. If you write down what you want or need to do for every hour of the day, you’d be surprised how much more productive you can be. I could show you how.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” He shook his head with incredulity. “Do you write down times for visiting the latrine or doing laundry?”

  Actually, sometimes she did.

  “Amazing!” he said when she didn’t respond, her nonresponse screaming, Guilty as charged, and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. “Anyhow, if you weren’t stalking . . . uh, following me, why are you here?”

  She ignored his implication that she wasn’t a churchgoing person, which she wasn’t. Not anymore. But he had no way of knowing that.

  “I was out running,” she repeated, “when I heard the singing. Remarkable singing. So, I came in. You’re very talented. Both of you.” She nodded to Karl, who gave her a little salute as he approached and then walked on, following the rest of the congregation, leaving her and Trond alone.

  Each of the men wore golf-type shirts with wing icons instead of little alligators or polo ponies on their left chests, tucked into neatly pleated khaki pants, with sockless loafers. Church clothes.

  How could she reconcile the lackadaisical, seemingly lazy special forces guy who could kiss like sin on the hoof with a man who attended church and sang hymns? Well, her ex-husband used to attend Mass, too. For show. “Are you religious?” she blurted out.

  “You could say that,” he surprised her by saying. “Is that why you’re misty-eyed? Because I sing so well? Or might be religious?” He smiled at her.

  She hated when he smiled at her. Rather, she hated how his smiles made her feel. “If I’m misty-eyed, whatever the hell that is, it’s because I just had the most remarkable experience.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think I just met an angel.”


  Trond studied her for a moment, glanced over to the end of the pew where there was, incongruously, a small white feather, and said, “Uh-oh!”

  Up close and way too personal . . .

  Trond was taking a shower that evening, a cold shower, in the one of the private stalls in the bachelor officers’ quarters . . . probably something set aside for visiting dignitaries wanting to brag that they’d jogged with the SEALs, ate with them, even slept in their barracks, in essence participated in the total SEAL experience. Hah! The real experience involved total lack of privacy and communal showers where everyone got to view each other’s goodies. He’d like to see some white-haired politicians put their drooping gonads out on display.

  When he raised his face toward the showerhead to rinse off the shampoo, Trond noticed a bare leg hanging over the top of the stall. A hairy leg. He jerked back, slipped on the soapy tiles, and fell on his ass, cracking his skull on the tiled wall.

  When his vision began to clear, he saw that the man was climbing into the shower stall with him. First, he got an up close and personal view of a man’s butt . . . a nice butt, if he did say so, not that he usually noticed that kind of thing on men. Good grief! Had word of his gayness spread already? Who else had that witch blabbed to?

  The man, a tall man equal to Trond’s height, was standing now, his long hair plastered to his head by the watery spray . . . the shower head having a wide spray span.

  Trond wished he had his sword with him. As it was, he would have to use his hands, or maybe that washcloth could serve as a garrote.

  But then the man turned.

  “Oh my God!” Trond said, before he could bite his tongue.

  Two things occurred to Trond then.

  He was sharing a shower with St. Michael the Archangel.

  He had seen St. Michael’s bare ass.

  Whoa! Hold the chariots! He was also seeing something else on the angelic being.

  He scrunched his eyes shut so that he wouldn’t go blind.

  “What are you doing in here?” he asked as he reached for the shower doors and stepped out. A quick peek showed that St. Michael had stayed inside and seemed intrigued by the cool water spraying over him.

  “I’ve never taken a shower before. I was curious.”

  Trond reached for a towel, thankful that he was the only one in the showering chamber at the moment. But then, he wasn’t sure if anyone would be able to see the angel. He wasn’t taking any chances, especially considering the fact that the archangel must have been in the chapel today, sitting near Nicole, and he’d obviously been visible to her.

  “Why didn’t you just open the door?”

  “There’s a door?”

  Trond shook his head and quickly donned clean underwear, shorts, and a T-shirt. Then he slipped his feet into a pair of rubber thongs. The whole time he kept his back to the shower. “You better hurry up, or someone might come in,” he warned.

  “I’ll just disappear if they do.”

  That answered that question.

  “What is this substance in a bottle marked Axe?”

  “It’s liquid body wash. You can use it on your skin or to shampoo your hair.”

  “It smells heavenly.”

  Trond sat down on a bench and put his face in his hands, elbows braced on his widespread knees. Could his life get any more peculiar than this? “Why are you here?” Sorry if that sounds rude, my angel friend, but you must admit this is not your usual modus operandi.

  Mike could read minds, and often did, but he must not be “reading” him this time because Trond could hear him whistling. My brothers will never believe me when I tell them about this. They’ll say I was drukkinn or that I made it up.

  “Ouch, ouch, ouch!” he heard come from inside the shower stall.

  “What?” he asked. No way was he opening the door to see his heavenly mentor in the nude again.

  “My eyes are burning.”

  “It’s the soap. You must have gotten soap in your eyes.”

  “Soap? You did not tell me it was soap.”

  Trond rolled his eyes. “I thought angels knew everything.”

  “Only the important things.”

  “Just let the shower wash over your open eyes for a few seconds.”

  Before he could blink, faster than any human nanosecond, the archangel was sitting beside him on the bench, fully dressed except for shoes in jeans and a white T-shirt with the logo “Beam Me Up, Scotty,” and reeking of Axe’s Cool Mystic fragrance.

  “You’ve been talking with Zebulan,” Mike said right off.

  So that was his reason for being here. “I have. Once.”

  “And you did not consider it important enough to notify us.”

  “I thought you saw everything.”

  “That does not excuse your keeping secrets.”

  “Hey, it wasn’t a secret. Nothing happened. Besides, I notified my brothers of the presence of a high-level Lucipire in this area.”

  “I am more concerned with your impressions of Zebulan.”

  Trond hesitated to speak his mind, it was such an outlandish notion. “I wonder if . . . I don’t think Zeb is all bad.”

  Instead of denying such a possibility, Mike nodded as if Trond had affirmed something he’d already known.

  “Is there any possibility . . . I mean, has a demon ever turned?” Trond asked hesitantly.

  “Turned what?”

  Trond shrugged. “I don’t know. Good.”

  “It has never happened in all the eons,” Mike told him.

  “What purpose would there be, after all?” Trond remarked.

  “Have you learned nothing, Viking? Good is its own reward.”

  Trond was so sick of motivational sayings. From Nicole. From the SEAL instructors. And now from his heavenly mentor.

  “Use him,” Mike advised. “If Zebulan has a weak spot, bore in and take advantage.”

  “That doesn’t sound very . . . um, Christian.”

  “Needs must for the greater good.”

  Blessed stars! Another proverb! “Can I promise him anything?”

  “It is not for you to barter with the devil.”

  Okay, that put me in my place. Not that I haven’t known exactly what my place is for oh, let’s say, one thousand, one hundred, and sixty-three years.

  “About the woman . . .” Mike started to say and then just stared at him. An archangel’s stare was riveting. You couldn’t look away. And with the stare, he saw everything.

  “It was just a little playing.”

  Mike made a scoffing sound.

  “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Even Trond heard how pathetic an excuse his attempt at humor was.

  And Mike wasn’t laughing. “You’ve been in Rome, Viking, and did not like it. Fodder for the lions, you were, as I recall.”

  Trond shivered with distaste. If he never smelled lions’ breath again, it would be too soon. He couldn’t even go to a zoo, as Karl had once wanted him to, when a special panda bear exhibit had arrived from China. Too close to the lion cages.

  “Temptation is a two-edged sword, Viking. You would do best to remember that.”

  Whatever that means!

  “It means that while the pleasure can be great, the consequences can be greater.”

  Oh, so Mike is back to reading my mind? Just great! He could have given me warning.

  “What would be the fun in that?” He almost smiled at Trond then.

  Which almost caused Trond to topple off the bench with shock.

  “In the vein of nothing ventured, nothing gained . . .” Trond scrambled to stand up with dignity, then flexed his fingers nervously. Good grief! Now I’m quoting motivational sayings. “I was wondering what exactly is the penance allotted for near-sex?” He wouldn’t even bother to ask about full-blown, up-to-her-womb, screaming sex with a woman. The answer would no doubt scare him spitless, or was that sinless?

  When he got no answer, Trond glanced sideways and saw that Mike was gone, leaving on
ly a single white feather in his wake.

  At the same time, Cage walked in, a towel wrapped around his middle, preparatory to taking his own shower. “Hey, Easy! Who you talking to in here?”

  Trond twirled the feather between his thumb and forefinger and said, “Just myself.”

  Twelve

  Angel to the rescue . . .

  Nicole dreamed that night, and her dreams starred Guess Who?

  Men got their satisfaction in wet dreams. Hers were hot and very unsatisfying. Thus, she was tired and cranky and no way ready for the voice mail she received from Commander MacLean after breakfast, just before heading to the command center for the first briefing of the day.

  “Lieutenant Tasso: A woman named Cyndee Walsh is trying to reach you. Claims to be an old friend. Says it’s important. Here’s her number.”

  Oh my God! She hadn’t talked with Cyndee for years, despite their having been next-door neighbors and best friends from grade school. In fact, Cyndee had been the only one who’d halfway believed her reports about Billy’s abuse.

  When Nicole had left Chicago, she’d cut off ties with everyone, fearing Billy would come after her. Later, when she’d become stronger and able to stand up to bullies like her ex-husband, she’d still kept her distance, not wanting anyone she contacted to suffer for association with her. As far as she knew, her dad was still on the force.

  She sank down on a bench under a palm tree facing the beach. With heart thumping, she hesitated, then placed the call.

  “Cyndee?”

  “Nic, is that you?” She squealed, just as she had all through high school.

  Nicole smiled, pleased that some things didn’t change. “Holy cow! Cyndee Walsh! How are you?”

  “I’m fine, but it’s Cyndee Dillon now,” she said. “Brad and I got married last year. Finally.”

  Regret swept through Nicole in waves . . . regret that she hadn’t even known that her onetime best friend had married. “I didn’t know about the wedding, but, hey, it’s about time. You two have been making googly eyes at each other since second grade.”