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  The man lifted his hands and stepped back. “No.” And then he said, “Mr. Shinwari, if I were you, sir, I’d stand still. He’s a Navy SEAL. You and I are both outclassed.”

  Shinwari’s eyes rounded as he stared up into Mike’s hard face. “Well,” he sputtered in Pashto, “let me go! You are nothing! You are a worm!” He slapped at Mike’s arm again.

  Like a striking snake, Mike’s other hand snapped up, grabbing his wrist. He brutally twisted it back and the man uttered a shriek of pain.

  “Get in the elevator,” Mike breathed harshly, jerking the man toward it.

  The other elevator opened, and two Marine Corps security guards walked out of it. They saw Mike, recognized the SEAL cammies and halted, looking to him.

  “I’ve got this,” Mike told them. “Just keep this sonofabitch down in the lobby and do not, under any circumstance, let him come up to this floor again.” He glared at Jaleel, his lips lifting away from his clenched teeth. “Because if you so much as step a foot onto this floor, I’ll shoot you myself. Got it?” And he shoved the man into the elevator. The bodyguard nodded deferentially to him, walked by and helped Shinwari to his feet. The two Marine security guards followed them and the doors closed.

  Mike stood there, trembling with fury. Closing his eyes for a moment, he struggled to get control over himself. God, Khat’s father was here! Rubbing his face, he turned and saw all three nurses staring at him, disbelief in their features.

  “That man was certifiable,” Linda sputtered, giving Mike a look of thanks.

  “What’d he do? Just bust in here? Demanding to know where Khat’s room was?”

  “Yes. I refused to tell him.”

  “Well,” Mike warned them in a guttural voice, “he isn’t getting near her again. Make sure you tell all your nurses not to breathe a word of this to Khat. I don’t want her knowing that bastard was here. It will only upset her. It’s the last thing she needs right now.”

  Linda nodded. “I’ll make sure, and I’ll tell the shift coming on at 0900, too.”

  “Thanks,” Mike said gruffly and he turned swiftly on his heel, heading back to Khat’s room down at the end of the hall. His mind whirled with how the man had gotten here, but the obvious answer was that he was an Afghan citizen and would be allowed back into his own country any time he wanted, without a problem. Even though Jaleel had a civil engineering business in San Francisco, he’d made the trip here for unknown reasons to see Khat. Running his hand distractedly through his hair, Mike figured the Marine Corps had alerted Khat’s family to the fact she was missing in action. And her father had initiated the trip. Why? He had already slapped her when she was recovering from her torture five years ago. Mike wasn’t going to let it happen again.

  Jaleel had to have learned on the way over here that Khat had been found; that would be why he’d come to the Bagram Hospital. Why the hell did he want to see her now, after disowning her? Mike halted, breathing harshly, rage churning within him. Khat had her back laid open from repeated whippings by Taliban torturers. She’d been bed-bound and unable to defend herself while she was recovering in that Navy hospital after being rescued. The mean little sonofabitch! Mike wanted to turn around, stalk down to the lobby and pound the abusive bastard into the ground. He didn’t deserve Khat as a daughter. And judging by his arrogance and pride just now, Mike knew whatever Jaleel’s reason was for wanting to see Khat, it wouldn’t be good news for her. He’d want to abuse her verbally and maybe even physically once again. Mike would bet anything that Jaleel Shinwari was feeling embarrassed once more by his daughter’s actions. Only this time, the bastard was not going to set foot in Khat’s room for any reason. Taking a deep breath, Mike calmed himself and shoved everything in a box deep within himself.

  Opening the door, he saw Khat was awake. “Hey,” he called, “how do you feel?”

  Khat smiled drowsily, pushing strands of hair out of her face. “What was all the yelling about? It woke me up.”

  He grimaced. “Somebody wanted to visit before hours and Nurse Black got into a shouting match with the individual.” He shrugged. “It was nothing. It’s been handled.”

  She could feel tension and intensity around Mike as he walked over to her. “Are you all right? You look upset.”

  He came and sat at her side and muttered, “Linda needed a little help, so I was the muscle and the persuasion.” He didn’t want to lie to Khat, but neither did he want to tell her the whole truth. This morning, she looked better, but she was still fragile. He could see it in her eyes and feel it around her. Framing her face, he said, “Do you know how beautiful you are to me?” His voice grew guttural, holding her moist gaze. “I want to wake up every morning seeing you at my side, angel. Just like this.” Mike smiled a little, pushing some mussed tendrils away from her cheek.

  Khat’s eyes grew warm, shining with love, and he leaned down, gently taking her mouth. His heart soared with fierce love for her as she responded to his lips skimming hers. She smelled sweet, her womanly scent driving him crazy. He felt her slender hands upon his jaw, touching him as if she were memorizing him all over again. A wonderful welcome home to one another. Her lips were soft, yielding, and Mike controlled his desire to plunder her mouth. He felt her sigh, surrendering to him in every way, lips gliding wetly against his, her tongue shyly touching his lower lip. A jagged fire coursed down through him and he groaned. How badly Mike wanted to love her, but that was a long way off. He contented himself with coaxing her, tasting her and pleasuring her. As his mouth left hers, Mike kissed her cheek, the shell of her ear and the delicate lobe. Khat moaned and he smiled, easing away.

  “I don’t think we should be messing around too much yet, do you?” he teased, grinning. He saw her mouth draw into a wry smile.

  “I’d have to be dead not to want you,” Khat admitted, sliding her hand through his long hair, trailing her fingertips down his cheek and feeling the roughened quality of his well-trimmed beard.

  Mike caught her hand, opening the palm, moving his tongue in a slow circle and then kissing the area. Khat sighed and groaned. “Oh, don’t…you just make me want to jump on you!”

  Kissing each of her long, tapered fingers, he murmured, “Hold that thought, okay?” Mike felt her tense, but it was the kind of tension that spelled arousal. More than anything, Mike wanted Khat to know he loved her, no matter what had happened in her past. Sliding her a glance, he said, “Do you want one of the nurses in here to check your incision? Then I can go down and get us something to eat?”

  Khat felt the tiny tingles sliding through her hand after he released it. “Sure. Maybe she’ll get rid of this other IV.”

  Nodding, he said, “You want to try some Jell-O again? Orange juice?”

  “Please.” She made a face. “I’m not very hungry yet.”

  “Doc said it would be at least three or four days before your appetite kicked in. Strawberry? Orange?”

  “Strawberry?”

  He moved off the bed and pressed the button. A nurse would come in shortly. Mike met her halfway to the desk, reminding her that whoever cared for Khat needed to stay mum about the confrontation with her father.

  *

  THERE WAS A knock on Khat’s door at 0900. Mike placed his tray aside, scowling. Before he could reach it, the door opened and Mac stepped in.

  “Hey, Sergeant Shinwari, I heard you were feeling better,” Mac said in way of a greeting. He nodded toward Mike and shut the door. He carried a briefcase in his hand.

  Khat smiled a little, having just finished her cup of Jell-O. “Nice to see you, Chief. Aren’t you a long way from home?”

  Mike brought over a chair for him. Mac McCutcheon, at forty-five years old, was the head honcho of their SEAL platoon. His deep blue eyes were always alert and had a piercing quality to them.

  “No, just checking up on you. Mike’s been giving us daily updates, but I thought I’d see you in person, Khat. Are you up to a few minutes of business?” he asked as he sat down and put the briefcase acros
s his lap.

  “Sure,” Khat murmured, sitting back on her pillows, hands clasped.

  Mike frowned, unsure of what Mac had brought in the way of paperwork for her. He was nervous, not wanting to stress or upset her. He sat down in his chair next to her bed. Khat reached out, her fingers sliding into his hand.

  Mac pulled out a set of orders. “I just received these from General Maya Stevenson, your head honcho on Operation Shadow Warriors. I think you know her.”

  “Yes, I know who she is.” Khat frowned. Her heart started to pick up in beat. Mike’s fingers grew more firm around hers.

  “In ten days you’re being shipped back to the States,” he told her. “It’s come to the general’s attention that Commander Hutton had not been rotating you back stateside for six months out of every year.”

  Khat frowned.

  “I believe you know your enlistment is up in another six months?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, this is good because the general is ordering you to SEAL Team Three at Coronado to work in their Intelligence unit during that time frame. She’s well aware of your ability to gather reliable intelligence, and as you know, actionable intel is what saves SEAL lives.”

  Khat looked over at Mike. And then she stared at Mac. He had no expression on his face. Licking her lower lip, she said, “That means my op here in Afghanistan is over?”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess I saw this coming,” she admitted softly. She felt Mike sit up, giving her a worried look. Holding his gaze, she whispered, “It’s okay.”

  “I talked to Dr. Mason earlier and he said that in ten days you should feel pretty normal,” Mac said. “I’m ordering you here to Bagram. We’ll crate up anything that’s yours at Bravo and get it here to be shipped on to Coronado. Are you happy about working in our intel unit?”

  Khat felt so many emotions, some grief stricken, others, genuine relief. “Yes, Chief, I’d like that very much.”

  Mac smiled a little. “And I understand Tarik has popped the question to you? You’re going to marry this frogman?”

  Smiling a little, Khat traded a tender look with Mike. “Yes, he has. I said I would marry a frog.”

  “Well,” Mac growled with a wicked grin, “he’s one lucky bastard.”

  Mike said nothing. His focus was on Khat and surprisingly, she was taking the change of orders without a lot of emotional reaction.

  Mac got up, handing her the orders. “You need to sign on the bottom there.” He handed her a pen and a clipboard to write on.

  Khat reclaimed her hand and read the orders. She signed them and returned them to Mac.

  “Next order of business,” he said, “is that you’re marrying this guy and he’s already signed over his insurance and everything else he owns to you.”

  Gulping, Khat looked down at the papers and noticed Mike’s signature on them. After glancing over at him, she signed on the dotted line. She never wanted to have to collect on this set of papers. If she did, it meant Mike had died in combat. It was real. Khat felt as if she were stepping from one world into another. She would miss her op, miss staying in her father’s family village in the winter. But she also finally believed Mike, that she deserved a life of her own. She deserved him.

  “Now,” Mac said, taking back the signed papers and stuffing them in his briefcase, “you’re going to be flying out of here on General Stevenson’s private Air Force jet. Not a bad ride home.” He grinned.

  “General Stevenson is here?” Khat asked, excited. She loved the woman.

  “Yes,” Mac said, closing the briefcase. “She’s here for a lot of reasons, and I don’t pretend to know her business. I do know that she’s going to drop over to see you. She makes a point of visiting any of her women who are wounded.”

  Mike saw Khat’s eyes light up. Her cheeks flushed with excitement. But he wasn’t sure about the Army General at all who Khat worked for in the Shadow Warriors operation. Women from all the U.S. military services had volunteered to go into combat beside men. It was a top secret operation to prove, one way or another, that women could handle ground combat, and few knew about it. The idea had been hatched by General Stevenson and she headed it up. Somewhere along the line, Khat’s SEAL handler out of J-bad, had allowed Khat to stay on a grueling, dangerous op for five damned years without realizing her handler, a SEAL commander, wasn’t sending Khat home for six months out of the year. Instead, he’d allowed her to remain in Afghanistan, which was against the rules that General Stevenson had set up for her women volunteers. Mike suspected the SEAL commander had done it because she created solid, reliable and actionable intel that helped U.S. military black ops to catch or kill Taliban in the area of the villages she worked with. And reliable intel was hard to come by. Khat was a gold mine in that sense, to the Intelligence community, but they’d taken advantage of the fact her father’s people, their village, was part of the area that she was responsible for as an operator. Khat wasn’t going to leave those villages wide open to either the Taliban or Hill Tribe attacks. She stood between both groups, protecting her relatives in Dur Babba, as well as other nearby Shinwari tribe villages

  “One more thing,” Mac told them. “I talked with Captain Shaheen and he requested that as soon as you get released from the hospital here, you’re to stay with him and his wife, Emma, at their villa. You okay with that, Sergeant?”

  “Absolutely,” Khat said. “Better than the women’s B-huts here on base.”

  Mac chuckled and stood up. “No argument there.” He came over and instead of shaking her hand, he leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Now,” he told her gruffly, “I don’t normally go around kissing Marine Sergeants, but you’re going to become the wife of one damn fine SEAL, so that’s a little welcome kiss to our team.”

  Khat felt heat crawl up her neck and flare into her face. Her eyes grew moist as Mac straightened. She reached out and squeezed his large, calloused hand. “Thank you for all you’ve done for us, Mac.”

  He nodded, clearing his throat. Turning he looked down at Mike. “Have you set a date to marry this woman?”

  “Not yet,” Mike admitted, exchanging a warm look with Khat. “As soon as we know, we’ll let you know.”

  Mac nodded. “Good enough. Khat, safe journey home. Tarik, you’re on patrol in five days, so get your ass back to Bravo in four days.”

  “I will, Mac,” he murmured. “Thanks for letting me have some time alone with Khat.”

  “Stay out of trouble, will you?” He gave Mike a knowing look, one black eyebrow raised.

  Mike nodded. Did the SEAL master chief of his platoon find out about this morning’s scuffle with Jaleel? He hoped not, but the Marine security could have told him about it.

  Khat turned, eyeing her fiancé tenderly. “Things are working out, aren’t they?”

  He moved to sit on her bed facing her. “Are you very upset about those orders?”

  Khat shook her head. “In some ways. But you were right, Mike. When I was on that damn muddy slope a few nights ago, I realized a lot.” She held his hand, tracing her fingertip around his roughened palm. “I swear, it was like my whole life flashed before my eyes. I saw my childhood, my American mother, Afghan father…I saw everything. And seeing it now, at age twenty-nine, I realized a lot of things I hadn’t before.”

  “Like?” Mike coaxed, holding her unsure gaze.

  “Like I love you. That I want a home with you…maybe children if you’re all right with that?” She stole a hopeful look up at him.

  “Do you know how many times I’ve dreamed of you carrying our baby?” Mike admitted huskily.

  “No…but it’s nice to know.” Khat drew in a breath and added in a strained voice, “I’ve made a decision regarding my father. I can’t be around him in the future, Mike. I don’t want him invited to our wedding. I want my mother to come, but…I can’t handle him being around me…” She shrugged. “Before, I always took the blame for what happened, him disowning me, slapping me. I finally told Aunt Leeda,
who lives in my father’s village of Dur Babba, everything before we left her village a week ago. She was furious. I’ve never seen her so angry. She cried, and I did, too. She held me and told me I was a brave, beautiful woman warrior and that I should be proud of who I am. To not let my father decide who I am. Aunt Leeda told me to always walk proudly because I had earned a place in the hearts of her family and village. She said my father was lost, and if anyone should be disowned, it was him.”

  Mike grimaced. “I can’t say I disagree with your aunt. Is that what made you decide to let go? To look at a life with me?”

  She nodded and whispered, “Yes. Aunt Leeda gave me her blessing. She said I lived in two worlds, one Afghan, and the other American. She told me my spirit belonged in America because that is where I was born. My family roots belong in both countries, not just Afghanistan.”

  Mike wanted to hug that woman and thank her from the bottom of his heart. Leeda was smart and protective of her niece. She had seen the situation and made the call for Khat, not Jaleel. “What else?” he prompted, relieved that he’d stopped Jaleel from getting into Khat’s room that morning. Khat was trying her best to make good, healthy decisions for herself, and his love for her deepened even more. Khat had courage that few people ever would.

  “I was thinking…after we’re married, I’d like to go back to school and earn my degree in nursing. I’d like to become a registered nurse. And I love children so much, I want to devote my studies to either pediatrics or obstetrics.”

  “That sounds fine,” he murmured. “I want you happy, angel. Whatever you want to do is fine with me.”

  Rolling her eyes, Khat said, “Good, because Aunt Leeda thought it was a wise move.”

  God bless Aunt Leeda. She was the matriarch of Jaleel’s family in Dur Babba. And she ruled wisely, having Khat’s back. Mike grinned. “You’re going to make one hell of a nurse.” And she would. And she was going to marry him! Mike felt like the luckiest man on the face of this earth.