but there’s even less for her. She doesn’t even add anything to the team.”
Unless you counted long, blond hair, big blue eyes, and the sexiest butt he’d ever seen.
“Look, I know you don’t want to be around Kendra,” Tate said, his mouth tightening under his mustache. “I’m not thrilled at the idea of her tagging along with us either, but John wants her to get some field time on a low-risk mission—sort of a reward for all the hard work she’s been doing.”
Declan swore. “You know that’s crazy, right? There’s no such thing as a low-risk mission, not when every third person in the place we’re going carries a weapon. Is John willing to let her—or one of us—get killed just so he can give her a freaking reward?”
“No one’s going to get killed,” Tate shot back. “And unless you want to quit the DCO in protest, there’s only one option—shut up and soldier on.”
“I was a forest ranger, not a soldier.”
“Yeah? Well, go over there and take a look in your rucksack. I’m pretty sure forest rangers don’t carry the amount of weaponry you have shoved in that bag.”
Tate was right, but Declan still growled in frustration.
His friend sighed. “I know the situation sucks, but it is what it is. You have to get your head right or somebody is going to get hurt. But it won’t be because of Kendra; it’ll be because of you.”
That had pretty much been the end of the conversation. Tate had left Declan there, staring at the cracked asphalt of the runway, wondering how he was going to handle two weeks in the same jungle as Kendra.
But no answer had been forthcoming then, and now, as he sat wedged into a seat that was way too small for him, he still didn’t have one.
Being so close to her shouldn’t bother him. He’d gotten over his crush on her and moved on. As he stole occasional glances at her, he knew that was a crock of shit. He’d tried; he really had. But since deciding four months ago that enough was enough and it was past time he stop pining for a woman who refused to even acknowledge his existence, he’d been miserable as hell.
He bit back a growl. Damn, he was pathetic. But there was something about Kendra that attracted him like a bear to honey. He might have chuckled at the analogy if it wasn’t so damn fitting.
Kendra had already been firmly established with the DCO when he’d shown up seven years ago. Back then, she’d mostly shadowed the training officers and watched—taking notes, making her quiet observations and recommendations directly to the trainers. At the time, Declan had been coming off the disaster that was his relationship with Marissa, so he hadn’t been interested in getting involved with any woman. Plus, he’d been consumed with trying to fit in with his team and learn everything they had to teach him. He had no military training to fall back on, so there’d been a lot to learn. By the time he’d gotten his head above water, he already had it bad for the behavioral scientist.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t string together two sentences whenever he was around her. He wasn’t a Romeo with the ladies by any stretch of the imagination, but he’d never gotten tongue-tied around women—not even his former fiancée. But it wasn’t hard to see why Kendra had that effect on him. She was beautiful and smart, made him smile like no other woman ever had, made the camouflage uniform she was wearing look way sexier than it should, and she smelled delicious as hell.
His nose usually wasn’t that good—mostly because he never used it—except when it came to Kendra. Then it worked just fine. Sometimes he could pick up her scent from the far side of the DCO training complex. Sitting this close to her now, it was the only thing he could smell, and it was overwhelming. He closed his eyes, hoping to block out her scent, but it was useless. Her pheromones surrounded him, holding him prisoner and refusing to let go.
He’d tried to catch Kendra’s eye for years and fallen flat on his face every time—because she was too busy obsessing over that jerk Clayne Buchanan. It had taken Declan a while, but he finally realized he was wasting his time—and his life—waiting for her and had decided to move on.
And it had been working. He’d gotten to the point where he didn’t think about her 24/7,