Cindy Dees - Special Forces - The Recruit

The compromise they’d reached was that Beau would try to train her. But he also retained the right to wash her out if she couldn’t cut the training.

No way would he let her onto a Spec Ops team if she was going to be the weak link. Any team was only as strong as its weakest member. He wasn’t about to let a woman get his brothers killed just so Torsten—and some wannabe chick—could prove a point.

He swore under his breath. If his boss thought that because his knee was busted up Beau would take it easy on Tessa, Gunnar Torsten was in for a surprise.

Everyone kept telling Beau he could contribute to the teams by training the next generation of special operators. But damned if he was going to accept that his field days were over and settle for playing nursemaid to anyone, male or female.

He was the first to admit it was a miracle he could walk. But the thing was, if he’d made it back this far, well beyond where the doctors had told him he could rehab his knee, why couldn’t he rehab his knee all the way back to operational? One thing he was sure of: no way was he cut out to be an instructor. Torsten—in his infinite bloody wisdom—seemed to think this insane, waste-of-time mission would be good for him. Bastard .

“Why Louisiana?” the waste of time beside him asked, all eagerness now that she knew why they were really here.

“The idea is to keep your existence completely off the radar. We don’t want anyone to know the Medusas are back.”

“Is that why Major Torsten had you march me across camp this afternoon where everyone could see me leaving?”

“Affirmative.”

“So Torsten’s making a big fuss about tossing out the women and then...what? Bringing them here secretly to train?” she asked curiously.

“He’s legitimately tossing out most of the women. But he saw something in you.” He added reluctantly, the words acid on his tongue to even say aloud, “He thinks you’ve got what it takes to be one of us.”

Silence fell between them as they stared at the sluggish black water below. It lapped around the stilts supporting the building, oily and thick. He could feel the mind of the woman beside him working overtime. One thing Torsten had gotten right: Tessa Wilkes was a sharp cookie. Observant as hell. She would need both to make it through the rest of this hypothetical training of hers. Assuming he didn’t end up just shooting himself, instead.

He caught himself rubbing his thigh, as had become his habit ever since surgery to remove the shrapnel that shredded his knee and quad muscle. He jerked his hand back to the railing. No way was he showing weakness to Tessa, particularly if he was supposed to train her.

“When do we start?” she asked.

“In the morning.”

“Is there a hidden training base around here?”

He envisioned the ruin that would be their base of operations for the next few months. He had already humped in the bare basics they would need to survive, and his knee had thought the hard labor of repairing the old dock behind the house and crawling around repairing the roof were terrible ideas. He answered drily, “I suppose you could call it a base.”

“Will you be training me?”

She sounded so damned enthusiastic. He restrained an urge to roll his eyes. She had no business being here. Women didn’t belong in the Special Forces community. Period. The total loss of the second Medusa team had proven that, hadn’t it?

He had no idea how he was actually going to train Tessa. He had no experience as an instructor, and with just the two of them out here by themselves, he couldn’t rely on the same methods by which he’d been trained. “About training you. Here’s the thing. I’m not an instructor. I’m a field operator. Or I was until I wrecked my knee a while back.”

She looked down in quick sympathy at his leg. Sympathy he neither needed nor wanted. His plan was actually to use her training to get himself back into good enough shape to qualify for field ops again. He would drag her along with him until he was field ready—and until he had run her into the ground and made his point—both to her and to Torsten.

“The first part of the Spec Ops training you went through with the boys was mostly physical conditioning, meant to weed out the faint of heart and the quitters. Torsten feels like he’s seen enough from you to know you would actually make it through the physical demands of full Spec Ops training.” He added wryly, “Torsten says you don’t know the meaning of the word quit. ”

“He got that right,” she muttered.

Spoken like a true operator. Beau smiled a little in spite of himself.

Torsten had discussed with him at length where to train her. This project needed a challenging, but secluded, environment. Beau had been the one to suggest reluctantly that his abandoned family homestead fit the bill perfectly. The incredibly difficult bayou environment would force her to battle heat, humidity, muck, critters and general squick factor.

“Will my training be like the men’s course?” she asked.

She sounded entirely too naive and eager. Poor kid had no idea what she was in for. Torsten had been clear. Push her right to the edge of breaking. Find out where her limits lay and take her to them and beyond. And while he was at it, figure out how to work with a woman.

Not. Happening .

“I’ll be a real operator, right?”

“Don’t count on it,” he snapped.

“Then what the hell are we doing out here?” she shot back.

Gun, I’m gonna kill you the next time I see you . He straightened to his full height and a hot knife of pain shot through his knee. He clenched his jaw until the pain subsided to bearable. “Assuming you survive, which is not a given, you would hypothetically be a no-kidding operator when it’s said and done.”

He added direly, “Don’t get your hopes up. The odds of you being able to do everything you’ll have to in order to work on an operational team are pretty much zero.”

For a blink of an eye, trepidation shone in her eyes. But in the very next blink, steely resolve filled them. Unwillingly, he was impressed with her mental toughness. Even if it was useless. No way was he graduating her from this training. He wouldn’t do that to his brothers.

“Why Louisiana?” she asked.

“Secret location. No prying eyes. Challenging environment.” He added warningly, “The ocean may have sharks, but we’ve got gators out here. They’re a whole lot sneakier than sharks, and you can’t punch a gator on the nose and get him to back off. He’ll eat your arm if you try it.”

She turned her head to study him more fully, and her ponytail fell over her shoulder in soft curls that begged his fingers to run through them. Her gaze was intent. Focused on him like a laser. In that moment she looked just like a warrior...but with firm, round breasts filling out her T-shirt, a lush behind filling out her fatigue trousers and muscular legs a mile long.

Crap. Talk about messing with his head. A woman operator. And of course, she had to go and look like a freaking Playboy centerfold.

He had to give her credit: not many women looked this good without a stitch of makeup on, wearing combat boots, no less. Even her muscular shoulders and the pronounced veins in her bare arms were hot. Everything about her spoke of strength, confidence and badassery. But it was all wrapped up in a package so sexy he could devour her like his steak earlier.

He shook his head to clear the thought. It didn’t matter how sexy she was. He wasn’t about to let her become a member of the club.

“Let’s get out of here,” he growled. “I owe you at least one decent night’s sleep before we get this ball rolling.” Down a tall hill into a pile of manure.