On Thin Ice (Special Ops) Read online

  Her passion is what kept her going, not the medals, the awards or the stardom. “She has silvers and gold,” her father had said in a television interview; “but she’s more priceless than all of them combined.” She was always pushing the limits, he had said. That was true. She had precision on her triple Axel jumps, the triple loops she loved to do, and the double salchow, along with other moves, but she was always trying to create beautiful, individually artistic routines. She was always pushing the envelope on her jumps, trying to increase them, make them higher with more rotation. She had been the first to pull off a quadruple Axel in competition; she hadn’t hit it in practice. She had sustained several bruises and almost one serious injury, but even though her coach pulled it from her program Akira wouldn’t be stopped. She put the jump back in while she was on the ice. She didn’t tell anybody she was doing it, she just did it and she nailed it. That jump, along with her artistic program had won her the Olympic gold. Her father had been sure to tell Jet of how unhappy, and happy, her coach, Keiko Takahashi had been. She was happy they won, but not so happy that Akira had taken the risk. She was still proud of her and from the pictures Jet had seen Keiko was all smiles in every photo opportunity, with her arm wrapped around Akira in a protective and proud manner. “She hates the media attention,” her father had said. “She was always so nervous about it so Keiko was always the mother when we weren’t allowed to be behind the scenes or in the interviews. Akira felt safe with her.”

  He wasn’t sure why Aaron had given him so much information, but he had and Jet had filed it away in his mental database while trying to tell himself not to make his admiration anything more than professional respect. How could he not respect her? Despite risk of injury she never held back. She was a lot like her father in that regards. He never gave up or allowed other people to dictate what he was and was not capable of doing and neither did she. Between Aaron and Sakura Jet couldn’t imagine Akira turning out any differently than the determined young woman she was.

  Akira was smart, talented, hard working and ambitious, which Jet found admirable. She didn’t give up; she wouldn’t give up. She pushed herself harder than most kids ever pushed themselves. Akira was one of the best ice skaters in the world. Even though she wasn’t competing as much now, she wasn’t going for the gold, she was still skating, touring, and helping other young skaters perfect their skill when she could. She liked getting involved and helping people. She had a heart of gold and diamonds and that was all genuine Akira. She was also soft and smooth and beautiful and he liked her, but she was just too young for him. Despite her profession of love for him he knew she couldn’t feel that and he shouldn’t feel it for her, but he couldn’t turn off the television.

  It was crazy that he had even met her. It was crazy that he even had to remind himself not to start to like this girl, because that’s what she was in his opinion, too much or in the wrong way. He had met her father two years earlier. He had once upon a time been one of their packages. He had gone over to South Korea; at the time the Squadron had been told Aaron had gone to North Korea when he shouldn’t have. Aaron told the story differently. He said he had gone over to South Korea and ended up being abducted, taken to North Korea and held captive. Jet believed that summary of events over the lies the government had told him. Either way it went Jet had to go over to North Korea to get him when legally he shouldn’t have. This rescue mission was sanctioned, although not legally so, via a close confident of the President of the United States. Basically that was their way of telling Preston that whatever man went over there was on his own if he got caught because they would deny all involvement and would never own up to being the ones to ask an American to go over there.

  Aaron had friends in high places and they wanted the man brought home. That job had been Jet’s assignment and because of getting him home, even with all the hush-hush secrecy over where Aaron was being held, there was still one of those fancy parties Preston hated attending so much. Fortunately for Preston he wasn’t on the invite list, but Jet was. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to get back out there and go retrieve the next package, but he didn’t have a choice. At that party is where he first met Akira. When he first saw her it was because he had arrived early. Sakura had told him to arrive at four, but apparently the party didn’t actually start until six. Aaron had taken him around his property, stopping at the ice rink. “She’s still practicing. She’ll be late if I don’t tell her to get out of there and get ready.” He had asked Jet to come in with him. They were just getting a visual on the ice when Keiko approached from the other side door. She had gone to take a call she had said. When they reached the ice Akira was gearing up for something, a jump he assumed but ice skating wasn’t in his database back then. What he did realize was that Keiko, the woman Aaron had introduced to him as his “daughter’s” trainer, had the look of fear on her face.

  “What the hell is she doing?” Aaron stepped forward and Keiko placed her hand on his arm.

  “If you startle her now she’ll risk greater injury and could kill herself. She’s too far into the setup and going too fast.” He could see both parties holding their breath as Akira lined up for a jump and took it. He counted six rotations. He didn’t even know anybody could do that. And she landed the darn thing without even a shake before going into a rotational spin that he also knew nothing about. He knew both of the people standing near him were breathing sighs of relief. He also knew when she stopped turning and stopped skating both parties next to him took the moment to yell at her.

  “You could have killed yourself!” Keiko yelled.

  Akira stood on the ice with an innocent smile on her face. “But I didn’t; now did I?”

  “But you could have young lady,” her father barked.

  “But I didn’t,” she teased with a big smile on her face until she caught sight of Jet standing behind her father. After that she stopped speaking, and from the look in her eyes Jet could tell she liked what she saw. She was just a kid, a smart one, but still a kid.

  “Get ready for the party. And I don’t care if you don’t want to go. You’re going.”

  “Okay,” she said swiftly.”

  Aaron had taken him outside. “She’s been trying to get out of it all week. Glad she finally changed her mind about holding up in the rink.”

  Jet could venture a guess on what changed her mind. The way she looked at him told him she wanted to meet the man who had saved her father because she liked what she saw. Up until that point she probably assumed he was against her type—if she had a type. He knew he was going to have to put his guard up and shut her down if she tried anything.

  She had tried something and he had shut her down. He had called her a kid the second he thought her conversation was going to turn toward the path of asking him for a date. She had assured him she was all woman. She was twenty-two then, still as gorgeous, still as desirable and still too young for him. He was also involved with Charlie at the time so he wasn’t free to be on the market for another relationship. Once she knew that she had smiled and said, “it’s good to be with somebody who appreciates you.” And with those words he figured he had read her all wrong. She wasn’t interested in him romantically and for him that was a good thing. Maybe she was just being nice because he saved her father’s life. It was a party for him because of his “bravery,” as Aaron had said. He hated these things.

  His age, and his status of not being single, hadn’t stopped Akira from befriending him. She sent him emails, even though he wasn’t sure how she had retrieved his email address unless she secretly went into her father’s contacts. Aaron had his email because at the party the President’s aide had insisted the two men keep in contact should ever either of them need anything. It was all a little too friendly for him. He was used to retrieving the package and going home. They could go on about their life, and he would go on with his. And ironically, Aaron never used that email address, but Akira had. She had used it a lot.

  At first he thought it was just h
er way of keeping in touch with the man who saved her father’s life. He was almost forty-four years old when he first met her. He was about five months away from his birthday. She was still twenty—two no matter how close she was to her birthday. He didn’t see somebody this young trying to start something with him on a romantic level. But the emails went from short, three to four sentence emails, to longer, more “getting to know you” type emails. Ironically, for a man who looked for red flags those emails hadn’t raised any for him because he was too old for her and he was sure she knew that. He even talked about Charlie in a few of those emails and she had been more than supportive of the relationship telling him that he should marry her.

  Then, those supportive emails turned into something that quickly raised the red flag. The moment she sent him an instant message with “I had a dream about you last night,” he should have known nothing good could come of any correspondence that started with those words. But he was caught up in work and he sent a short reply of, “oh yeah…what was I doing?” What she wrote in return shocked him. Maybe shock was an understatement. It knocked the wind out of him. She had dreamed he stripped her naked on the ice and proceeded to take her body for his pleasure.

  The words nearly made him choke on his coffee. First of all, sex on ice in the skating rink would be beyond cold. Secondly, she shouldn’t have been thinking things like that, let alone dreaming about them. She was too young and innocent for those kinds of dreams. He told her as much and the conversation ended until she sent him an email telling him that she hoped they could still be friends, but she just thought he should know that she loved him. She wanted him to know that she was in love with him and that she thought she was the best woman for his world and he was the best man for hers.

  He thought distancing himself would be the best solution to the problem, but he didn’t just want to drop her without saying anything so he sent a reply letting her know that he thought that she needed to move on. “When you grow up you’ll understand,” he had said. He thought it was the nicest reply possible until she emailed him back with a biting remark about how he had put her down because of her age. “You don’t have to be old to know what love is, Jethro.” She rarely called him by his full name but she had in that email. “If you don’t love me, or can’t love me then just say so. You don’t have to try to hurt my feelings to make me hate you because I’ll never be able to hate you no matter how much you break my heart.” She told him she wouldn’t email him again, but she hoped, when he was ready to be her friend again that he would email her. He hadn’t. Emailing her would have been like leading her on and he couldn’t do that to her.

  Until three months ago he hadn’t even seen her. Her father had sent him an email insisting he attend a celebration party they were throwing for her and so, even though he could have found a thousand reasons to say no, he went. He didn’t know why he had gone. He tried to explain it to himself a dozen times, but he didn’t have an answer. He dragged Alex along, trying to introduce her to somebody closer to her age. Alex and Carissa had called it quits; Jet and everybody else had seen that coming. They had nothing in common really and seeing as though Alex kept referring to her as the package it just didn’t seem as if they ever connected the way a romantic relationship needed to be connected to survive. The only person he hadn’t really thought of as the package was Natalia and they all knew she was off limits. Jet figured if it weren’t for Micah that Alex would have ended up with Natalia, but that ship had sailed and it wasn’t his to board. Carissa wasn’t the right woman for him either. Eventually the two had figured it out and parted ways.

  So when it came to getting Akira’s mind off him and onto somebody else he thought of Alex. Out of all the men out there Alex was the only one he would trust with a heart as fragile as Akira’s heart. But she hadn’t taken to him. No; she stood there with the same look of admiration she had the last time he had seen her. And much to his surprise he felt something for her too. He tried to kick it out of his mind. He didn’t need the fog of lust to take over him—not with this young woman. He had made the mistake of telling her that he and Charlie had broken up. She had asked about her and the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. He saw the glint in her eyes and the smile that tugged at her lips. He knew he should have, and could have, lied and just said that Charlie was fine, but instead he let the proverbial cat out of the bag and there was no putting it back inside.

  Now he sat here thinking about her. He thought about the time Sakura and Aaron had invited him for lunch. Aaron had something turn up at work that was going to make him late and Sakura had told Jet to go walk along the property and enjoy himself while they waited. It would only be another forty minutes or so, she had said. He went for a walk and that walk led him right to the ice rink. In his mind he believed he stumbled upon Akira while she was skating, but the reality of the situation was that his feet had led him to the rink because he wanted to see her.

  She was a solo skater, but for this show she was doing a partner skate. He had heard the co-training coaches talking about the charity event and how having two major solo skaters pair up would be a huge draw. She was still doing the single skater thing during the show, but they had two pair skating routines together. He had watched how she did the spins, and how the man had taken her hand and then she leaned out into an extension that had her parallel with the ice as he turned her in an extended circle. She looked beautiful and at peace. The connection she had with her partner for the routine made him slightly jealous, which was crazy because he knew this is what he wanted—for her to move on. He shouldn’t have felt any twinge of jealousy. He should have walked away, but he stayed in the shadows and watched her through the next routine. When he saw the guy holding on to her ankles and using his upper body strength to rotate her above the ice he felt his gut tighten. She looked as if her head was coming too close to the ice and he swore to himself if that fool injured her he was going to break every bone in his body. And then, when he threw her in the air and she rotated vertically before landing perfectly he was in awe of her skills, but his gut was also on edge just thinking of how dangerous the move was. She loved skating; it was in her blood and he figured she would never be able to let that go. That meant she would always push the envelope and test her limits by pushing herself beyond them. He had gotten lost in the beauty of her, not just her skating, but her body and her form. He knew he shouldn’t have, but he was starting to feel things for her; things he had no right to feel.

  Any other package and he would not have willingly accepted invitations to home events, but for some reason with Aaron he accepted. Not even a week after lunch he got another call from Aaron. “My wife wants you to come for tea,” he had said and instead of Jet turning it down he went. Maybe he went because he secretly knew his chances of seeing Akira were high. He was torturing himself. A smarter man would have walked away and never looked back; but not him. He accepted every invitation that came. And for the first time in his life he was watching ice skating. He had gone back and watched the recordings of her in the Olympics. He hated watching the Olympics yet he had watched the recordings so he could see her move. He found her other competitions on down to the shows she had done while traveling in the Champions Tour and he watched those too. The last show he had watched with her was a live competition. He had watched the two hour show of men in far too tight tights and women he didn’t know and didn’t care about just so he could watch her short program and long program routines. She had two of them but because they were in between other skaters he had to wait for it. He had silently been rooting for her. Or maybe not so silently. When the judge with the balding head and out of control mustache gave her an eight while everybody else had given her a ten he was off the couch cursing the jerk out. Her performance was a solid ten and that creep knew it. That’s the moment he knew he had a problem. What man would be sitting around watching figure skating and getting so upset that he was ready to punch the man who had just given his girl an eight instead of the
ten she deserved? His girl? She wasn’t his and he knew that. Still, those words had come out his mouth. He had professed that somebody paid the judge off to make him lower the score, and seeing as though the audience had booed the scoring too, Jet figured they agreed with him. That was her last in the competition realm and even with the eight she still took home the trophy.

  He had heard the announcers talking about the fact that she had vanished from competing a few years back and while she was still doing shows she hadn’t competed. They were surprised she came back as a “final hoorah,” as the commentator had said. It was her official retirement from comps she had said, because the one she had taken before hadn’t been proper. She hadn’t said goodbye, but now she had. She was going back to touring and working with the charity programs she liked to work with. She had done college via correspondence for advertising and design because she wanted to donate her skills and time to help the charitable organizations come up with eye-catching campaigns. The fact that he knew that much about her life, her skating, her personal choices, told him that he was definitely thinking of having something with her even if he was fighting it tooth and nail.