Damn, it was nice to have a backseater that appreciated the fancy stuff! Maybe it was time to talk to Shaughnessy about getting some college under her belt and going to AOCS. In six years or so, Gator might just find he had a little competition.
Then again, if her eyesight held up, she just might have her eyes on the front seat! From the way she was enjoying the aerobatics, she just might.
“Admiral? Lieutenant Commander Flynn to see you, sir,” COS said.
Tombstone looked up from his desk and frowned. He’d known this day would come soon enough, and he still hadn’t decided how to handle it. The more he tried to ignore Tomboy, the more he found her creeping into his thoughts. He could spot her in seconds in the crowded dirty-shirt mess in the forward part of the ship, and lately he’d taken to avoiding the VF-95 Ready Room. Every time he stepped into it, she was there.
She’d noticed, he was certain. How could she not know something was wrong when the man she’d flown with for a year, day in and day out, in combat and on routine hops, suddenly started avoiding her?
“Show her in, COS,” he said. Well, absent a plan, he’d have to play it by ear.
“Commander,” he said formally, while COS lingered at the door.
“Admiral, thank you for seeing me,” she responded. Her voice was low and steady, although her usually light complexion looked starkly pale against the flaming red hair. She wore khakis, ribbons, and her wings, every inch the professional naval officer and pilot that she was. Suitable dress for a junior officer to see the admiral.
“Please — sit down,” he said, gesturing to a chair in front of his desk. For a moment, he considered asking her to sit on the couch, to put her at ease. After all, if this meeting was difficult for him, it had to be doubly so for her.
“Thank you — I’d prefer to stand, if that would be all right with you, Admiral. This won’t take long.” She paused and took a deep breath. Then she placed her hands at the open collar of her khaki shirt, slid one hand inside, and tugged. Her wings popped off and lay, shining gold, in the palm of her small hand. She looked down at them for a moment, and then sighed.
“What the hell are you doing?” Tombstone snapped. For a moment, as her hand went inside her shirt, he’d been afraid that — no, it wouldn’t have been possible. Tomboy make a pass at him? On the ship? Never.
“Quitting. You won’t ask me to — you wouldn’t ever ask that of your own backseater. But it’s obvious to me that that’s what you want. I thought I’d save you the embarrassment.” She stepped forward, reached across the desk, and gently placed the wings in front of him. Her hand lingered on them for a moment, as though saying good-bye. Then she stood, straight and proud, and looked him in the eyes.
“Thank you for seeing me, Admiral. I’m sorry to have disappointed you.” She turned and walked toward the door.
Shock held Tombstone in place for a few seconds. Tomboy quit? Why would she ever think that’s what he wanted? How could she?
As she reached for the doorknob, his throat suddenly unfroze. “Commander! Tomboy! Now just hold on one damned minute!” He was out of his chair and around his desk in a split second. He grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around to face him. Face to face, her head barely reached his wings. She was looking down, but he saw one tear trace its way down her pale cheek.
“Sit down, Tomboy,” he said, shoving her gently toward the couch. Her call sign came to his lips automatically. “That’s an order.”
She resisted for a second. “Please don’t make this any harder than it is, Admiral. You don’t know what it took to come here. I won’t change my mind, no matter what you say.”
“Just sit down. I’m not asking you to change your mind-” not yet, anyway, he added silently “-I just want to talk to you for a moment.”
She nodded jerkily and walked around the coffee table to sit perched on the edge of the couch. Her eyes were still locked on the floor.
Tombstone sighed, berating himself for having let it come to this. Of course she’d thought he wanted her out! How could she not, when he’d avoided getting near her for the last month.
He lowered himself into the chair at right angles to the couch and leaned back. It was his mess, and it was up to him to straighten it out.
“I have a problem, Tomboy. Not you, me. Somewhere between the Kola Peninsula and the Spratly Islands, you started to be something to me besides a RIO. I don’t know exactly when or how, but I do know that’s true. When I realized it, I started avoiding you. I didn’t want to put you in an uncomfortable position, I told myself. You couldn’t handle it — at least that’s what I wanted to believe. The truth is that I couldn’t.
“Do you know I almost called you every day while you were on shore duty and I was at the war college? Every day I thought about you, wondered what you were doing. I didn’t, though. I was afraid that I’d call you and hear you act surprised, or that you’d just treat me like your old pilot. I’m ten years older than you are, Tomboy, so I use that word literally. Or maybe you’d feel uncomfortable with a rear admiral calling you, asking if you’d like to go to a Patriots game some weekend. So I took the easy way out. I was afraid of rejection.”
“I wish you’d called,” she said softly.
“Let me finish,” he said abruptly. “In the last month, I’ve been running scared. You’re one of the finest RIOs I’ve ever flown with, male or female. You’re good, so good it almost scares me. I’d rather fly with you than anyone else. But then you and Batman seemed to hit it off, and — and, damn it, you’re assigned to my ship! I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t do anything. Do you understand?”
Finally, she looked up. Miraculously, the tears had cleared from her eyes. “That’s not what I thought.”
“I know what you thought, and I should have figured it out before. You can’t quit, Tomboy. I don’t want you to, and the Navy needs you. Those junior women pilots coming up behind you need you, too.”
“And what about us? Is there an us?” she asked. “Not now, I mean. But this tour won’t last forever, Tombstone. In another year, we’ll both be rotating back to shore duty.”
“Do you want that, Tomboy?” he asked, suddenly afraid his voice would crack.
“Yes. Very much so.” Her eyes were shining, and the color had returned to her cheeks. “I can live with where we are now. And a year from now, things will be different.”
He stared at her, hope growing in his heart. “You mean that?”
“You’re an idiot, Tombstone, if you can’t see that I do,” she replied tartly. “If I’m allowed to call the Admiral an idiot, that is.”
“Sometimes the Admiral is,” he answered softly. “And he’d like to do something idiotic right now.”
“Then I’d better be leaving before I compromise your reputation,” she said, abruptly standing up. She held out her hand. “We have a deal, I believe.”
He unfolded himself slowly from the chair and took her hand. For a second, the urge to pull her close to him, to feel the lithe body mold itself to his, was almost unbearable. Then he focused on the sharply pressed uniform, the rows of combat medals on her chest, and the empty spot marked with two little holes in the shirt above the ribbons. He released her hand and crossed over to his desk in one step.
“I believe you’re out of uniform,” he said gravely, and handed her the wings.
“It’s customary for a senior officer to pin the wings on,” she said, closing her hand over his.
He slipped one hand inside her shirt, feeling the silky softness of her breast on the back of his fingers. He positioned the wings above her ribbons and pressed the two prongs through the holes already in her blouse. Fumbling under her shirt, he slipped the two retaining clips, commonly known as nipples, over the back of the prongs, firmly attaching her NFO wings to her uniform.