Need You for Always (Heroes of St. Helena)(54)
Emerson wasn’t sure what overcame her, but one minute she was staring up at Dax and wondering why his eyes looked so soft, and the next she was stepping into him and wrapping her arms around his middle. Without hesitation, his big arms came around her, until she was completely engulfed in 250 pounds of bad-boy brawn and gentle steel.
Emerson allowed herself to lean into him for just a second to collect herself, to absorb how amazing it felt. Her life had become some abstract equation of love and duty, balancing her own needs against those of her family. Yet a guy who professed to be allergic to obligation had the emotional awareness to give her what no else in her world took the time to understand.
Unwavering support.
“This doesn’t change anything,” she said into his strong chest. “And I’m still mad at you.”
She felt him chuckle. “I figured as much when I saw the pureed broccoli in my breakfast. The bits were too small to pick out but big enough to make my eggs green.”
“It was a quiche and broccoli is the supervegetable. All the big-boy soldiers eat it because it makes them grow up tall and strong.”
His pecs danced under her cheek. “I think I’m good.”
It doesn’t look like Elsa’s castle?”
Dax looked out at the five pint-sized survivalists in training, all sitting knee to knee, crisscross at his feet in a “Bug Huddle,” as Pixie had called it. He was at the head of the huddle, as crisscross as his leg would let him. “Which one of you is Elsa?”
Giggles erupted among the troops. When no one spoke up, he asked again and the girls looked at each other like Who is this guy? And just when Dax was about to tell them to run until they were too tired to giggle, because Lord knew he was too tired to hear any more giggling, Violet raised her hand.
She was in jeans and her Lady Bug uniform, but unlike last time, she had on hiking boots, a red knit cap, and matching mittens—and no wings. “Hey, what happened to your wi—”
Emerson jumped up from the picnic table behind Violet and started slicing her hand frantically across her throat, a clear indication that she needed him to cease his interrogation immediately. Distress call heard and understood, he coughed and finished, “Your Converse?”
Violet looked down. “These are my hiking boots. See?” He did. And he wasn’t impressed. They were pink, with pink sparkly laces—and not a speck of dirt on them. As if she’d never been hiking a day in her life. “And Elsa’s not a Lady Bug, she’s the princess from Frozen, Lovely Co-leader Mister.”
Dax scrubbed a hand down his face. And here he’d thought today would be easy. Because, surely, how difficult could it be, hiking in the park and teaching a couple of capable kids to build a shelter using limited supplies? They could walk, talk, read, and giggle—surely they could follow simple instructions. Making it through Ranger selection and his sixty-one days of spec-op training at Fort Benning had been easier.
“Well, according to the official Loveliest Survivalist Campout rules,” he said and could imagine his brothers laughing. A big military badass like him quoting Lovely rules.
But he was already sitting on the ground, crisscross applesauce, as Violet had instructed, and wearing a stupid-ass hat. Might as well commit.
He held up the book as proof. He felt like he’d been pretty clear, and the troops had been nodding, but now that he was done explaining, they were looking at him as if he were an alien with three heads. Who was slow in the three heads. And perhaps had cooties. “To qualify, the shelter needs to be constructed from a single eight-by-ten tarp and things found in nature.”
He pointed to the pine boughs he’d collected and tossed in the center of the Bug Huddle. Then he smiled, because he’d learned that when he didn’t make a conscious effort to look friendly, the little brunette with freckles would duck her head to avoid eye contact and try not to cry. And she was disappearing behind her curtain of hair.
Next to her sat the blonde with curly hair who came with a note explaining that she couldn’t eat dairy, gluten, peanuts, soy nuts, corn nuts, nuts of any kind, refined sugar, imitation sweeteners, soda, or food coloring. Dax couldn’t remember if air was on that list but ignored the food coloring and sugar part since he was certain those Astro Pops were not made with real fruit juice. The poor kid was so buttoned up Dax could barely see her face peeking out from beneath her jacket.
“Well, Elsa made hers out of ice, isn’t that nature?” This came from the one with the Coke-bottle glasses.
He leaned down and squinted at her name badge. “Kenzie, right?” She nodded. “Why don’t we make one out of a tarp like the rulebook says?”
At his suggestion all of the girls’ faces fell. Except for Kenzie’s—hers went combative. “Is that because you can’t make one from ice or because the rules say we can’t use ice?”
He looked at his co-leader for some help, but she was too busy pretending to organize the handouts on indigenous plants for the Fun Forest Foods portion of this survival training class. She was also grinning behind the handouts, he could see it in her big green eyes. Sure, they’d had a plan coming into today—divide and conquer—so he’d taken shelter and she’d taken food sources in the wilderness. But a little backup would have been nice.
“Since it needs to be less than thirty-two degrees for ice to form”—Dax licked his finger and put it in the air as a cool breeze blew by, scattering the pine needles and carrying the fresh scent of Christmas and rich earth, but his finger didn’t freeze—“and it’s clearly not below thirty-two, it would not be a naturally occurring element in the wilderness we are going to enter.” And since they still didn’t look like they believed him—him, the guy who had survived being stranded in the desert with only his rifle, his blade, and his ruck—he added, “It will be insulated, so it will keep you warm even if it did snow.”