Force of Nature Read Free

At times, he spoke as if he were charged a hefty fee for every word he used, creating contractions that didn’t really exist.
    “Cos, believe me, I
feel
like shit,” Robin admitted as he climbed into the truck, setting his pack on the floor at his feet.
    “Sure you want to do this?” Cosmo got in behind the wheel.
    “Yes. Shooting starts in just a few months.” A fact that scared the crap out of him. Was he really ready to open a movie? A lot of people were counting on the fact that Robin Chadwick could be a bankable box-office draw.
    Cosmo sat there, on the other side of the truck’s cab, just looking at him.
    Holy crap, that made him uncomfortable. Dude should have been a priest or a CIA operative. His mind-reading ability—or at least his ability to make it seem as if he could read minds—was off the charts. How the hell did he do that?
    Finally, Cos looked away. He put his truck in gear and pulled out onto the street. He didn’t say anything else, not for a good long while. It wasn’t until he was signaling for the turnoff into the navy base that he even glanced over at Robin again. “Janey’s worried about you.”
    Robin sighed. “Janey’s always worried about—”
    “I am, too.” Cosmo broke the bank, putting forth two entire sentences. “I’m not sure you should take this role, Rob.”
    Robin bristled. “You don’t think I can play a SEAL?”
    “This training is intense. You’re not in the kind of physical condition you need to be in, to—”
    “I can do this,” Robin said. “I’m going to do this.” Like he was going to turn down half a million dollars and a chance to work with Oscar-winning director Victor Strauss? “This movie puts me onto an entirely new level. After this, I’m a star.”
    “You’re already a star.”
    “No, I’m not. I’m a flavor. Yeah, I’ve lasted longer than a month, but
Riptide
puts me on the map.”
    Cosmo glanced at him.
“Riptide?”
    “Yeah. That’s the new title they’re going with—this week, anyway,” Robin told him. “My character gets framed for a botched assassination attempt on the U.S. President. I pretty much get caught up in this situation that I can’t escape from. Riptide—get it? But the bad guys have no idea who I am or what I’m capable of doing. I pretty much kick their asses and clear my name and save POTUS from a second assassination attempt. Plus I get the girl.” There was always a girl—a love interest—in a movie like this.
    Cosmo shot him another look, but said nothing.
    “It’s a popcorn movie,” Robin continued. “It’ll be my face on the one sheets. If I do it right and it opens big, I’m a star.” And if it didn’t open big, or if he somehow screwed it up by being indiscreet…
    “So that’s what you want,” Cosmo said with another of those penetrating looks. “To be a star.”
    “Yes,” Robin said, gazing out the window so he didn’t have to see Cosmo’s disbelief. But he didn’t need to see it to feel it. “It’s what I want that I can have, okay? So just…zip it. Not everyone gets to have the kind of relationship you have with Janey. So just…don’t go there. Please.”
    Cosmo, of course, wasn’t about to say anything. In fact, he didn’t speak again until he’d parked in the lot outside a single-story building, among a variety of cars, trucks, and SUVs that screamed alpha male.
    As they both got out of Cos’s truck, he gave Robin the most matter-of-fact warning in history. “This training is going to break your balls.”
    “Well, gee golly,” Robin said, hefting the strap of his pack up onto his shoulder. “Whatever are we waiting for?”
             
    Annie Dugan was sick and tired of late-night emergency phone calls.
    For months she’d lived on the brink of disaster, cursing the inevitable. She was a prisoner of the specter of approaching death, trapped in a corner yet still fighting like hell against the odds—for someone who, in the end, had gone and quit on