The Woman Left Behind: A Novel Read online

  Levi waited, giving her a chance to spout off again. Jina pressed her lips together. She could feel words pushing against the back of her throat, but she bore down, called on her seldom-used smart-ass control and kept them there.

  After giving her time to verbally hang herself, he gave a brief nod indicating satisfaction that he’d sufficiently slapped her down—for now—and moved on to business. “Here’s what’s going to happen, and why. Your group is the first bunch of trainees who’ve had no prior jump experience, which means we aren’t set up to do training the way you’d get it if you’d been in the military. We’ve had a short tower built, and a swing-landing trainer in a big Quonset hut, but a big tower would call too much attention to us, so your first jump will be an actual jump. Has to be.”

  An actual jump. Her stomach didn’t wait, it jumped right then, up into her throat. If she’d needed to answer, tough, because she couldn’t have managed to say a word. And what the heck was a swing-landing trainer? She didn’t want to swing while she was landed. For that matter, “landing” meant she was in the air heading down, and she didn’t want to do that, either.

  “Boom is a certified jump instructor,” Levi continued. “He’s going to be in charge of your training, and it’s going to be fast. In the military, jump school takes three weeks. We’re going to have you jumping in less than a week, but it’s individual training instead of instructors handling a whole group, so it’ll work out to about the same. But don’t fucking waste our time—got it? If you can’t do it, walk out now.”

  That was what he wanted. She could see it in his eyes, hear it in the gravel of his voice, see it in his body language. He wanted her gone.

  Okay, damn it, she hadn’t wanted to be here any more than he’d wanted her here, but she’d committed her time, a lot of energy, and a buttload of pain, to doing this. She’d become provisional friends with most of the guys—provisional because they joked around with her, teased her, sometimes deliberately making themselves targets of her ire because they liked winding her up, but they were all still aware that she hadn’t made the final cut yet. She didn’t want to be provisional, she wanted to do this. She wanted to meet their friends and families, she wanted to be invited to their cookouts, feel as if she belonged.

  She straightened her shoulders and squared up with him. Even standing as tall as she could, he was so damn big her head barely reached shoulder level on him, but she refused to show that she was intimidated—just a little—by him. “I want to do it.” Lie. “I don’t like giving up.” Truth. “I’ll do my best.” Maybe. No, she’d try her damnedest, because she didn’t know any other way, so change that last one to truth. Two out of three wasn’t bad.

  The corner of his mouth did that twitching thing again. She did a quick mental check to make sure she hadn’t subconsciously crossed her fingers and he’d noticed, but no, her fingers were doing what they were supposed to do, clutching her own biceps to mimic his position. Maybe that was what was annoying him, that she was mimicking him. If so . . . tough.

  Typical Levi, he instantly went back to being all about the work. “Today you’ll learn about the different types of parachutes, how and why they’re different, and you’ll get into harness. It’s possible to harness yourself, but mostly buddies or instructors help because it’s awkward. When you’re getting in the harness, Boom will be passing straps between your legs for you to buckle in place. It’s not a big deal and he won’t be copping a feel, so don’t squeal and do something silly.”

  “I don’t do silly,” she growled, which might not be completely true in all situations but in this one she was serious. There were a couple of the guys who might let their hands go places where they shouldn’t, but Boom wasn’t one of them. She trusted him, and he wouldn’t do anything to make her uncomfortable.

  “Just letting you know what will happen. After you get through ground training, then you’ll do tower training, jumping off a thirty-four-foot tower into different ground conditions like sand or pebbles, learning how to land, how to roll.”

  “Won’t jumping from that high break my legs?” Or possibly kill her. She might not live long enough to die in a failed parachute jump. She’d read once that most lethal falls were from something like fifteen feet.

  “You’ll be harnessed to a safety line. If we didn’t know what we’re doing,” he said impatiently, “none of us would survive training.”

  She had to give him that, so she nodded.

  “Then you’ll do the swing landing, learning how to handle the parachute swinging from side to side, prepare for the unexpected. In three days, you’re jumping.”

  Three days. Jumping. Her. Out of a plane.

  Oh God.

  Her lips felt numb, so she didn’t try to talk, just gave another brief nod that she hoped looked curt, instead of simply being as much as she could move because she was mostly frozen stiff.

  “Your first jump will be tandem,” Levi continued. “Normally I’d hook a first-timer to a static line and kick his ass out, but he’d have already done tower jumping. Like I said, you aren’t military and that’s getting you a couple of breaks here.”

  Lucky me. Your kindness is astounding, she thought sarcastically, but still kept her mouth shut. Now was not the time to get him pissed off, not when he could still hook her to a static line, whatever that was, and kick her ass out of the plane. A tandem jump. Maybe she could handle that. The idea still made her stomach twist, but at least if she died she wouldn’t be alone. Yeah, she could find some comfort in that.

  “We’ll need the other guys to pull the ropes on the swing-landing trainer, but until then I’m pulling them off and having them do different stuff. They don’t need to be standing around watching you; they treat you like a spectator sport, anyway, and that shit needs to stop.”

  Spectator sport. Jina stiffened. She’d been cold, but now a flash of outrage sparked through her veins. She also found her tongue. “Spectator sport?” she asked carefully. She’d pushed herself so hard she’d been on the verge of collapse more days than not, and they thought of her as entertainment?

  “Don’t get your ass on your shoulders,” he advised shortly. “There’s no benefit, and if you blow up at them, you’ll lose their support. Just suck it up, and keep going.”

  That was what she’d been doing, and she hadn’t found any fun in it. But he was right; there was no benefit to getting angry. On the final analysis, she’d rather they enjoyed having her around than be actively looking for ways to get rid of her, because that could get ugly, fast.

  “Let’s get started,” she said, trying to sound positive, and headed back to the other guys.

  Levi watched her walk away from him and allowed himself a brief moment of purely male enjoyment at the view. He missed the softer curves she’d had at the beginning of her training, but there was nothing wrong with the rounded muscles of her ass now. She’d worked hard to get those muscles, so damn straight he was going to admire them. He just had to make sure that she didn’t catch him at it, and that his expression wasn’t as horny as he felt.

  He’d hoped that with time he’d get accustomed to having her around, that maybe he’d find something about her that killed or at least muted the attraction he felt. Hadn’t happened. If anything, she appealed to him more every day. How could she not? She had bone-deep grit and determination, way more than he wanted her to have. None of them, from the top down, had thought she’d make it this far, but she’d had the highest score on Mac’s spatial games and they couldn’t exclude her just because she was a woman. He’d waited not so patiently for the day she washed out; no one could say she hadn’t tried, because she’d kept at each phase or exercise way past what they’d thought she could do, and Mac would have put her back in her old job. That was the best-case scenario.

  If she’d washed out, then he could have seen about having some personal time with her, find out if she kissed with the same sass and pepper she threw at them every time she opened her mouth, find out if she was half as aware