Light Up the Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

initial resistance, as he had to signal a second time.
    Trisha turned in time to see the guy she’d rescued coming over. A wake of sailors moved aside for him almost without noticing. You just didn’t get in the way of a guy who moved like that. Incoming battleship. No, a destroyer. She liked the analogy—big enough to be unstoppable, lean and long like he was, and enough speed and muscle to be absolutely lethal.
    She turned back to scowl at Michael, but it was too late. The damn fool was already on his way. He hadn’t looked any happier about it than she had.
    â€œMichael.” The SEAL stopped beside the table but didn’t set down the tray he held in his big, meaty hands. “Long time.”
    â€œAzerbaijan.”
    Trisha tried to think of any mission she’d ever heard of in Azerbaijan. Man, she’d barely heard of the country itself. Might never have, if it weren’t shoved up against Iran’s northern border. So, he did nasty secret stuff with a Delta commander, not a big surprise. She offered the guy a welcoming scowl.
    â€œI see there’s no need to introduce. Have a seat.” Michael nodded beside him.
    Untrue, but Trisha didn’t need Mr. SEAL’s name anyway. Didn’t want it. It would just be another thing for her to forget as quickly as possible.
    â€œDon’t want to interrupt.”
    â€œOh, sit down, for crying out loud.” Trisha hated when guys got all weird around her. She’d been sick of it from the first carefully planned prekindergarten date, arranged by her mother and attended by her nanny. And she was sick of it now. It was much more prevalent for a woman serving in uniform.
    The guy waited another beat before settling down beside Michael.
    He’d at least gotten some broccoli with his burger and eggs and fries and hash browns.
    â€œThere’s green shit on your plate.”
    â€œDon’t worry. I made sure it was dead first.”
    Okay, he was quick; she liked that even if she didn’t want to. She settled into silence, figuring that since he and Michael had sought each other out, they’d have something to say to each other.
    Nope.
    Like most of the military, especially in the Special Ops Forces, they were such guys. Kinda cute in a way, when it didn’t make her want to knock their heads together. So, any conversation was going to be up to her.
    â€œI think something’s wrong with the ceiling. It’s far too low for the width of the room. They should have gone up at least two more feet and gotten rid of all those pipes.” It really was a little oppressive. She’d seen the tallest Rangers duck to clear the gray pipes even though they weren’t actually that low; they just felt as if they were. The nameless guy hadn’t ducked, though he was taller than many of the guys who did. As if he knew exactly what was and wasn’t a threat.
    Michael inspected the ceiling again as if it were a target. “Add two feet per story. Nineteen or twenty stories from the bilge keel to the sky control room. That would be an additional thirty-eight to forty feet added to the ship’s height.”
    Sometimes she would just let him ramble. Michael would often go on for some time being all analytical before he realized that she was just messing with him. Soon he’d be talking about extra weight above the waterline and the necessary extensions to the keel to compensate. It was one of the several reasons it hadn’t worked out between them. He just didn’t keep up with her humor, and as a result, he never knew when to take her seriously. He’d dust her in tactics or situational awareness, but humor not so much.
    â€œDon’t go down any more decks,” the big guy said.
    â€œWhy?” He forked up some of his eggs as if this was a perfectly normal conversation. He cleaned up nice, real nice. The T-shirt they’d found for him, in Navy dark blue, stretched tight across his chest