The Captains' Vegas Vows
Caro Carson
They gambled on a long shot. Will the bet pay off?They have nintety days before the state of Texas will grant these strangers a divorce from their impetuous Vegas wedding. Captain Helen Pallas is certain she's not cut out for marriage.And Captain Tom Cross doesn’t believe in love.Yet working in the same unit – and assigned to married quarters – Helen and Tom know the attraction is real. It’s a long shot, but could they be betting on happily-ever-after?
They gambled on a long shot
Will the bet pay off?
They have ninety days before the state of Texas will grant these strangers a divorce from their impetuous Vegas wedding. Captain Helen Pallas is certain she’s not cut out for marriage. And Captain Tom Cross doesn’t believe in love. Yet working in the same unit—and assigned to married quarters—Helen and Tom know the attraction is real. It’s a long shot, but we’re betting on happily-ever-after.
Despite a no-nonsense background as a West Point graduate, army officer and Fortune 100 sales executive, CARO CARSON has always treasured the happily-ever-after of a good romance novel. As a RITA® Award-winning Mills & Boon author, Caro is delighted to be living her own happily-ever-after with her husband and two children in Florida, a location that has saved the coaster-loving theme-park fanatic a fortune on plane tickets.
Also by Caro Carson (#ube6aaefc-be65-5851-91e9-e59f2167e18a)
The Lieutenants’ Online Love
How to Train a Cowboy
A Cowboy’s Wish Upon a Star
Her Texas Rescue Doctor
Following Doctor’s Orders
A Texas Rescue Christmas
Not Just a Cowboy
The Maverick’s Holiday Masquerade
The Bachelor Doctor’s Bride
The Doctor’s Former Fiancée
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
The Captains’ Vegas Vows
Caro Carson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07827-6
THE CAPTAINS’ VEGAS VOWS
© 2018 Caroline Phipps
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This book is dedicated to the men and women
of the real 720th Military Police Battalion at Fort
Hood, Texas, and the 89th Military Police Brigade,
in which I was privileged to serve, once upon a
time. Thank you for continuing to assist, protect and
defend the soldiers of the United States Army.
Contents
Cover (#ua01b0f71-4d0f-5f2e-8823-8a904169c830)
Back Cover Text (#uc7b84008-2aa6-5a35-b453-7ff6e41e39e4)
About the Author (#ua02136de-f23c-5d16-bec9-f20309c2a216)
Booklist (#u5776cd67-645d-5202-96da-b07852464e55)
Title Page (#ufe14b3bc-784f-5781-8fa9-2f1a027f8875)
Copyright (#u4966434b-151f-5c35-aeab-2b36424abdc4)
Dedication (#u0c39f80a-b22a-5ec7-8340-8c1c22bd3261)
Chapter One (#u5be7efe5-ac4c-59fc-b740-be70d40be34e)
Chapter Two (#u841de09c-9b73-569c-9cae-1f6746502dcb)
Chapter Three (#u0a0500d8-a3fe-5902-bbe3-c3c11ce7a4d2)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ube6aaefc-be65-5851-91e9-e59f2167e18a)
The first time she woke up, she was surrounded by diamonds and gold.
It was magical. It was right.
She smiled because she wasn’t awake enough to laugh, then she slipped back into sleep.
The second time she woke up, she blinked in the night, awake enough this time to be aware of the sounds of a city beyond the room. Beside the bed, diamonds and gold reflected the lights that filtered in, color after color, as if there were a party outside, turning the diamonds into a kaleidoscope. Since her pillow was very soft under her cheek, and since her whole body felt wonderfully soft and relaxed, too, she fell back asleep.
The third time she woke up, the diamonds and gold were brilliantly lit by the steady, white light of the sun.
She stared at the bedside table, an entire piece of furniture made of gold. The clear base of the lamp upon it was filled with diamonds. Why would anyone fill a lamp with diamonds?
Her brain began to grind into gear. The table had to be brass. The diamonds had to be crystals. That was only logical; no one had the money to fill a lamp with diamonds.
She wasn’t in her own bed—also logical. Of course she wasn’t in her own bed, because she’d moved out of her lonely house in Seattle and was driving 2,500 miles to Texas, staying in a different hotel in a different state each night.
The trip wasn’t exciting, just routine, because she was an officer in the US Army, and she had no choice but to move when the army told her to move—which, so far, had been five times in the past eight years. Each move had been predictable, from her initial training course in Missouri to her first assignment at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, from there to a deployment overseas, then back to Bragg. Her promotion to captain had been followed by another training course in Missouri, followed by two years as a company commander at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, just south of Seattle.
Everything occurred in the proper order on the proper timeline. Every time she was moved, she filled her car with suitcases, duffel bags and a reliable little toaster oven. The army stored her furniture, delivering it when they left her in one place for more than half a year. When it was time for the next move, the army sent workers to box it all up and store it again.
Because her life was full of duty, predictable duty, and because every mile she traveled was the shortest distance between two army-ordered points, and perhaps because it was nearly her thirtieth birthday (although thirty wasn’t any more significant than any other age—really, it wasn’t), she had decided to add some excitement, taken a detour and stopped for the night in Las Vegas.
Vegas, baby.
Oh, my God, I’m in Vegas.
Captain Helen Pallas bolted upright in the bed and realized immediately that not only was she in Vegas, she was nude, and she had a horrific headache. She pressed one hand to the side of her head and yanked the white sheet up to her neck to cover her breasts, which caused a little avalanche of rose petals to cascade down the sheet to her lap.
She was sitting in a bed—a gold bed—full of rose petals, a thousand of them under her legs, even between her toes. She stopped pressing her palm into the side of her pain-filled head and instead ruffled her newly bobbed hair, dislodging more petals. They fluttered over her shoulders and down her spine to land with a soft tickle behind her bare backside.
Roses are always going to make me think of sex now.
Helen clutched the sheet more tightly. Was that a real memory or had it been a dream?
“Roses are always going to make me think of sex now.”
“Is that a bad thing?” he murmured in her ear, laughter always underlying that deep bass. They’d just been laughing; they were going to laugh again.
She snuggled into him a little more deeply, loving the way they fit together, spooning on their sides with her bare back against his warm chest, loving the strength in his arm as he kept her securely against his body.
“Red roses are supposed to represent true love,” she said. “Romance. Not the hottest, wildest night of sex in your life.”
“True love and romance.” He scooped up a handful of rose petals and pressed them to her breast, cupping them to her skin. When he slid his thumb slowly over the curve of her breast, the velvet of a petal created a fragrant friction. “Like this?”
She shifted in response, sliding her legs together, feeling the pleasant abrasion of his masculine legs against her smooth ones, enjoying the casual intimacy of their bare feet touching. “No, I mean a wholesome, pure kind of love. You’re using roses to make me think of hot sex again. Right this second—yes, just like that. That’s sexy.”
He slid the handful of rose petals down her body, their softness exquisite, her skin more sensitive than she’d known it could be. Everything with him was better than she’d known it could be. She smiled even as she shivered when his hand stopped just below her belly button.
He kissed her shoulder, scraped his teeth along it gently, then a little lick, another kiss. “But the roses came after I pledged myself to you. So did the sex.”
He slid the petals lower still, down to the most sensitive part of her body, and gently pressed them in a firm circle, or two, or three. She tried to breathe deeply, but anticipation had her panting. He let go of the petals to slip his hand under her thigh, to lift her leg and position her a little differently. A little better. “First, we promised true love.”
She ached with desire as she listened to his voice.
“They showered us with rose petals after.” He held her in place with a strong hand on her hip, and stroked into her, joining their bodies. They sucked in their breaths, in unison, at the sensation. “Love first, then roses.” Another smooth stroke, his velvet friction inside her, the velvet roses all around her. “So rose-scented sex, hot sex, all the wild nights in our future—” his body inside hers, his hands on her skin, his words in her heart “—started with pure, wholesome, true love. Wouldn’t you agree—”
Stroke.
“—Mrs.—”
Stroke.
“—Cross?”
“Oh, my God.” Helen whispered the words in a panic. Her head throbbed. Her mouth was dry. She was married.
Was she?
She grabbed a fistful of her hair and tugged gently, but she couldn’t remember anything else. The night wasn’t even a blur in her memory; it just wasn’t there at all. Yet here she was, naked in a bed, panicking on a pile of petals.
Mrs. Cross?
No. Please no. I would never—
She wasn’t Mrs. Anyone. She was Captain Helen Pallas, and she was never going to change that for a man, never again, no way, no how. Her divorce had been final just two days ago. She’d gotten the court papers, gotten her army orders, gotten on the highway.
She let go of her hair and slowly held out her left hand. Diamonds and gold surrounded her ring finger, glittering in the morning light as she trembled.
She’d gotten married.
A doorbell rang. Helen snatched her hand back to clutch the sheet more tightly around her neck. This bedroom was part of a suite, because the door was open a few inches and she could see a little bit of a Liberace-worthy candelabra and a shiny satin sofa in the next room. It sounded like a door in that living room opened, then men’s voices murmured. She looked frantically around the floor, but not one piece of clothing cluttered the carpet. She kept the sheet clutched to her neck with one hand as she stood and started jerking the rest of the sheet off the bed with her other hand, petals fluttering in the air like startled butterflies.
“Will that be all, sir?” asked one male voice.
“Yes.”
Helen stopped moving. That one syllable, yes, was spoken in a voice so deep, she knew it was the man who had said other syllables, words like sex and love, words that had made her melt.
Dark hair—he’d had dark hair. And he was big, not just tall but broad shouldered, hard muscled and—and tan skin, and—
And—
She could only hiss at herself for not knowing who had put a ring on her finger. She yanked the giant California-king-size sheet free and started wrapping it around herself. The sheet was white, but the red petals had left pink splotches everywhere. She’d heard of sprinkling rose petals on a bed, of course, but she’d never heard that the luxurious, romantic gesture caused stains. No one mentioned that part.
Of course it ruined the sheets. What romantic gesture didn’t turn into a disaster?
“Thank you, sir.” The more-talkative man sounded so cheerful, Helen could only assume he’d gotten a generous tip. “Congratulations again to you both. Just call us if you need anything else, anything else at all.”
Helen held her breath, but the deep voice she listened for didn’t make any answer. The outer door opened and shut again. With the sheet wrapped around her chest and securely tucked under her arms, she braced herself for the coming confrontation. She stood still, practically at attention, and waited for the man who’d said yes to come into the bedroom to talk to her, his new bride.
A bride. Good God, Helen, what is wrong with you?
She’d been through this once already, and once had been one time too many. If this Mr. Cross was any kind of decent human being, he’d know—he must know—that she’d been drunk last night, and he wouldn’t dream of holding her to any drunken promises she might have made.
She didn’t want to rehash a night she could barely recall with a man she could barely recall. She was thirsty. Her stomach was unsettled. She needed breakfast. If this Mr. Cross would let her eat and then let her go and pretend nothing had ever happened, that would make him Mr. Right.
She heard some rustling about in the next room and swallowed down her sense of...anticipation? Surely not. Panic? She didn’t like to think of herself as someone who panicked. She was an army officer. She could handle whoever came through that bedroom door.
Nobody did. Instead, a shower started running. The hotel suite must be very big, with more than one bathroom, because the bathroom attached to this bedroom was empty. Somewhere beyond this bedroom, her groom was taking a shower, something apparently more important than checking on his new wife.
Stop expecting anything else. Ever. From anyone.
The fake gold and fake diamonds in the bedroom furniture were ridiculous. The rose petals were impractical and staining, and the gold-and-diamond band on her finger was—well, it was returnable, surely. She just needed to go tell her supposed groom that he could return it, and if any kind of legal document existed, they’d have to undo that, too. Yes, she’d just tell...what was his name?
“Mrs.—”
Stroke.
“—Cross.”
Stroke.
Cross. Tom Cross. Not Thomas, but Tom. It was coming back to her.
Helen kept facing the bedroom door, but as she looked at the opulent bed out of the corner of her eye, something else in her brain stirred. Something significant had happened on that bed. Sex, the wildest sex of her life, had taken place there, and it had been... She held her breath again, willing her brain to work.
Fragments, just little bits and pieces of memory, ran through her mind, but they were enough. It wasn’t that the sex had been wild. It hadn’t been a Kama Sutra reenactment or anything, but it had been...unrestrained. She’d been unrestrained, fearlessly surrendering to him, letting him set the pace, letting him have his fill of her. She’d felt so safe, so relaxed, she could do anything, say anything, have anything from him she wanted. Over and over again, she’d responded to his touch, to that deep voice in her ear—oh, what exactly had he said?
Her skin felt warm. Her heart was beating hard. She’d loved whatever he said, she knew that much, because her body was responding—please yes more—to her fractured, incomplete memories.
Arousal was useless right now. Helen couldn’t crawl back in that bed and wait for the man to get out of the shower, even if she wanted to. Which she didn’t. She couldn’t—she needed to extricate herself from this situation and get back on the road to Fort Hood. She had to report to her new unit by noon tomorrow. There were no clocks in this room, but judging by the sun, it was full morning, and she still had at least eighteen hours to drive. She was not going to report late to her new post because of a one-night stand. That wasn’t acceptable to the army. It wasn’t acceptable to her. Captain Pallas would never be so unreliable. Never so unprofessional.
How many times had her ex-husband mocked her for that?
Once, Helen, just once, would it kill you to be late to formation when I want to have sex with my wife? Not every chick in the military is as uptight as you are, thank God.
The headache that had started to recede came back in full force, but Helen couldn’t let a little thing like physical pain stop her. She had orders to obey.
She’d taken an oath for the army long before she’d made any vows with this Tom Cross. Unlike a husband, the army would never change its mind. Legally, she had to be in Texas by 1200 hours tomorrow, or she would be AWOL—absent without leave.
A real commitment like that made decisions easy. She would bid farewell to this Tom Cross, give him back his ring and hit the road. There was no other option.
The sound of the running water stopped. Helen marched out the bedroom door, head throbbing. The sheet trailed behind her like a train, a mockery of a wedding gown. This wasn’t a real marriage, anyway, thank goodness. She wouldn’t survive another goodbye like the one that had ended her real marriage. This was just a one-night stand. She’d never had a one-night stand before, but how hard could it be to say goodbye to a stranger?
There was no dark-haired man in the gilded living room. Instead, there was breakfast for two, a beautiful table set with linens and silverware and more roses, white and pale pink and pastel yellow, forming delicate bouquets in mini crystal vases.
Roses are always going to make me think of sex with you.
Not just sex, but sex with you. She’d forgotten that part. There’d been something special about him.
Or at least she’d thought so while under the influence—obviously, or she wouldn’t be here right now, staring at a wedding breakfast while her stomach churned and her mouth felt like it was full of cotton.
She walked up to the table, gathering her train around her. Silver domes were keeping the plates warm. Nothing about this beautiful table said one-night stand. It was her idea of a real wedding breakfast, every detail of it lovely, as if the man who’d ordered it had wanted her to have the best. She could be the pampered bride of the perfect man.
Tears stung her eyes.
She could be a sucker. Any man could play the prince for twenty-four hours. Her ex-husband had pulled it off for several months, actually, before the two years of misery had begun. This Vegas guy was being charming for one meal. Helen wasn’t going to get all mushy because some man she’d frolicked with in a king-size bed was being charming for one meal.
She ignored the sparkle of the ring on her finger as she grabbed a crystal goblet and chugged orange juice like it was water from a canteen during a twelve-mile road march.
Better. She plunked the empty goblet down and lifted a silver dome. The heavenly scent of bacon made her mouth water. She took one bite before reaching for the carafe of coffee. It would help her headache and keep her awake for the eighteen-hour drive that lay ahead of her. She held the strip of bacon between her teeth, so she could use two hands to pour.
“Good morning, beautiful.”
That deep bass—Helen whirled around, cup in one hand, carafe in the other, bacon dangling from her teeth.
Good God, he was gorgeous.
I slept with that?
Mr. Cross had short, thick, black hair, yet his eyes were an arresting, brilliant blue. He leaned more toward rugged than pretty, with the great bone structure that could sell expensive watches or yachts in a magazine for men who wanted to be more manly. But no—it wasn’t that rugged handsomeness that would make men want to be like him. It was the way he carried himself, the way he stood before her with only a towel wrapped around his waist, unselfconscious despite being half-naked, that really knocked her out. Confidence was sexy to her. A man with an athletic body and a handsome face who seemed in charge, in control—and comfortable to be so—was sexy as hell.
I slept with that!
Well, damn, she was impressed with herself.
He smiled at her, a real smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle and revealed some perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth. Where had she found this man?
She didn’t realize she was smiling back as he walked across the room toward her—confidently, of course—until he took the dangling strip of bacon from her mouth. Her smile faded as she looked into those blue eyes. He was really looking at her. Only her. All his attention was on her.
“Good morning,” he said again. He tossed the bacon onto the table, slid his arms around her and kissed her.
She melted instantly, going completely boneless in some kind of Pavlovian response that required no conscious thought at all. The cup and saucer slid from her fingers to hit the floor with a crash, the carafe landed with a thud in the tangled train of sheets, but she wouldn’t fall, not as long as he held her in his strong arms. She made a little sound, a whimper of longing, a pant of excitement, and he broke off the kiss to cup the back of her head in his hand and whisper over her lips. “I thought I dreamed you. You’re real.”
They stared at each other a moment, then he was kissing her again and she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She couldn’t keep any thought in her head, except to know she could surrender, she could lose herself and let go, and she’d be safe and happy and a part of him. She was glad when his hands untucked the sheet, grateful when he nudged her back toward the couch, where they fell together as they pushed yards of sheets and one plush towel out of their way. She was greedy to touch him once more, to feel again all that strength and power and male grace. She wanted it all, forever.
Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?
I do.
His body filled hers completely, and the whole world became just the two of them and the way they felt, the way they made each other feel, the way they moved together. They whispered their amazement to each other in syllables that never became full words—ah, oh, ess—and in words that never became sentences—my, you, there. They climaxed together, then lay still, catching their breaths in silence.
I now pronounce you man and wife.
Mrs. Cross started to cry.
Chapter Two (#ube6aaefc-be65-5851-91e9-e59f2167e18a)
The woman beneath him started to laugh—or at least for a second, Tom thought she was laughing, because they’d laughed together last night.
This was different.
“Helen?”
She had one hand over her eyes, her ring hand. The sight of that diamond and gold band choked him up, too, a sob of gratitude sticking in his throat, gratitude that he’d finally met the woman he’d dreamed of. His wife. His wife.
His wife was crying.
“Hey, Helen. What’s going on?” His voice came out a little more husky than normal, emotion making his throat tight, because she was wonderful, and he didn’t want this wonderful woman to be upset. About anything. Ever.
She took in a shivery breath, one he felt through her whole body and his, joined as they were. He kissed her hand and she lifted it away. Her eyes were closed and her lashes were wet, although no tears had spilled over. He brushed her hair away from her cheek, savoring their physical closeness, skin against skin, and he waited. His wife often paused before speaking, but she always answered him. He loved that about her. He would never have to cajole, beg or plead with her to talk to him. She was the last woman in the world who’d resort to giving him the silent treatment.
Helen opened her eyes, those beautiful warm brown eyes, and looked at him the way she’d been looking at him since their eyes had first met across a crowded casino.
“I...” She cleared her throat.
He waited.
“I can’t believe I did this.”
“This?” He raised one eyebrow as he looked down at her. “This seems to be what happens whenever we’re in the same room. We’ve been doing this all night.”
He smiled gently at Mrs. Tom Cross. It was an emotional morning. Crying was a normal reaction at weddings. He kissed the corner of her eye before a tear of joy could slip away.
The slight salt on his lips did something to him. To his heart. He felt it expand, like a lion stretching in the sun, full and satisfied. Content—he felt supremely content, heading into the rest of his life as a married man.
“All night?” She looked away, and pressed her fingertips into her forehead, like someone trying to think hard. “Yes, of course we have.”
“Of course,” he echoed her, and shifted some of his weight off her. “It was our wedding night.”
She shielded her eyes with her hand as if looking at him was as painful as looking into the sun. “It really was?”
He frowned. She hadn’t meant that to sound like a question, surely.
She held her hand out a little way to look at her wedding ring. “This is really...real?”
Another emotion tried to crawl up the back of his throat, threatening his contentment. He swallowed it down and kissed the tip of her nose. “Is that question really real?”
She didn’t smile.
He suddenly couldn’t, either. “You’re serious. You don’t remember?”
She looked away again, concentrating, but after a moment, she shook her head. “No.”
Alarm tried to choke him, but he beat it down. This was temporary. They’d had a lot to drink and not a lot of sleep. Helen would remember.
He’d tell her. “We picked out that ring together. It nearly made us miss getting the marriage license. Vegas may be 24/7, but even their government offices close at some point. We got there in the nick of time, just before the stroke of midnight, Cinderella.”
She didn’t smile. She didn’t even hold his gaze.
“You don’t remember buying the ring?” Alarm, panic—he swallowed them down, but damn, they made it hard to speak.
She looked at him, eyes bright with unshed tears.
He spoke as gently as possible. “What do you remember?”
“Um...just...”
Helen took another shivery breath beneath him. He made sure most of his weight was on his forearms, tensing his arms, his shoulders. It didn’t change anything; her breathing was still too shallow, too rapid.
He could barely breathe at all.
Tom remembered that she’d loved her dress. She’d been so happy with what she’d called the perfect dress. He wanted her to remember happiness. “Don’t you remember your dress?”
She shook her head.
“The ceremony?”
“No.”
Our vows? You said you loved me, and you would love me forever. You promised.
Even if he hadn’t been choking on this sense of dread, he wouldn’t have said those words out loud. Begging someone to love him never worked. He’d learned that early in life.
“Tell me what you remember.” His voice was quiet and gruff. It didn’t sound like his voice, nothing like the soldier he was, even as he gave her a command: “Tell me.”
“Just...this. Kind of.”
“This,” he repeated impatiently. “Sex?”
She nodded.
She remembered the sex. That was all.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
His heart simply stopped beating.
She placed her palm over his heart, but only to push against him, bracing herself as she shifted a bit like she was going to get up.
He was still inside her. What was the proper etiquette for this? Was he supposed to beg her pardon and withdraw? What was the damned etiquette?
He pulled out of her body, breaking their connection, feeling his heart tear out of his chest at the same time. The misery on Helen’s face tore at him, as well. Regardless of what she remembered, she was still his wife, and it was still true that he didn’t want her to be upset, ever.
He wouldn’t allow it. He was a warrior, an officer in the US Army, trained to move forward, not to give up. He wouldn’t surrender to this heartbreak. He’d fight to ease his wife’s current pain. He could fix this.
He caressed her cheek once more with his thumb. “If you didn’t remember our wedding, then what was this? Don’t say it was just sex. There’s more to us than that. Why did you just make love to me?”
“I don’t know.” As she looked up at him, the tears in her eyes finally spilled over, running into her hair. “I just...when you kissed me... I guess I remembered something.”
He kissed her again. If this made her remember, this is what he’d gladly do. He kissed his wife, until death do us part, forever and ever, amen.
She melted under his kiss, opening her mouth, kissing him, until she gasped—no, she cried—until more tears ran into her hair.
“Helen, Helen.” He dried the tear tracks with the pad of his thumb. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“I need... I just need...”
He waited. She would tell him, talk to him, share her innermost thoughts with him.
“I need my clothes.” She pushed against his chest again, sat up, then grabbed a fistful of the rose-stained sheet and pulled it around herself. “I need my clothes.”
That kiss had been a start. She remembered something. She was just hungover. Some juice and water, some food—everything would be okay, just as he’d said.
“I think you need food,” he said.
“I need my clothes.”
He’d heard that tone of voice from her before, flat and uncompromising. It was how she spoke about her first marriage. About her ex-husband. Now she was using it with him.
He forced himself to smile. “Your suitcase is still in your car. You ran up here with nothing but the dress you had on. And me. We were all we needed.”
She seemed embarrassed by that. When he stood, she was definitely embarrassed, blushing and dropping her gaze.
He turned away from her. He picked up a silver platter from among the decorative roses he’d ordered as part of her first breakfast as his wife. “Food. How about some bacon?”
“How about a towel?” She held out the plush towel while keeping her face turned away.
First she made love to him, now she couldn’t look at him? No—first she’d stood in a wedding chapel and told everyone that he was everything to her, and now she couldn’t look at him.
Tom knew that routine. Dad putting a proud arm around his shoulders, introducing him as his son to other men. Dad refusing to even look at him after Tom had lost the hundred-meter dash. Dad driving away from the track, forcing Tom to run home, unwanted. Dad telling him he ought to thank him for the extra conditioning that he’d so clearly required. Thanks, Dad, he’d said sarcastically.
Tom tossed the platter back onto the table. Helen had pulled that towel off him, and now she needed to avert her eyes? He grabbed the towel out of her hand and retied it around his waist, sarcastically, if one could make a movement sarcastic. “Better?”
Helen’s face crumpled, just crumpled into tears, and the old wall that had so quickly gone up around his heart crumbled. She bowed her head.
Tom dropped to one knee by the sofa and ducked his head a little, trying to see her face. “I’m sorry. This is a rough way to start our first day. But I’m here with you, and you’re with me, and we’ll get through it. Some coffee, some food, a shower. You’ll feel better, and you’ll remember, dream girl, you’ll remember.”
Her head snapped up and she gasped.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Dream girl...” She remembered. He could see it in her face for one shining second.
Then it was gone.
Helen stood, clutching her sheet, and backed away from him. “I’m not your dream girl. I’m not anyone’s dream girl. I’m very sorry, but I don’t know you. You’re a stranger to me.”
Tom dragged himself to his feet, as if every inch of his six-foot-two frame was made of lead.
Helen took another step back. “I realize last night...last night must have been different than this, but please believe me, I don’t remember.”
Tom tightened the knot on his towel, but it didn’t matter. Nothing he did was going to make her treat him as anything other than a stranger.
She held her palm up like a police officer telling him to stop. “I need my clothes, and I need to leave.”
He held both hands up, an innocent man who wasn’t putting up any fight.
She kept backing toward the bedroom. Not a cop, then. More like a beautiful princess retreating into her fortress. “Do you know what time it is? Is it noon?”
“Nearly two o’clock.” He dropped his hands.
She looked stunned for one second, then she started gathering up the trailing sheet quickly. “I have to go. I have to be somewhere by noon tomorrow—”
“I know. Fort Hood.”
Surprise made her hesitate for a moment.
My God, she really remembers nothing, nothing we said, nothing we planned.
It hurt.
Pain was an old enemy. Tom had learned to deal with it before he’d learned to drive a car. Thanks, Dad. Helen wasn’t locked in a fortress—his heart was. It had been for a long time, untouchable, invulnerable.
Until Vegas.
Until Helen Pallas. She was the one person who’d found her way to his side of the wall. She’d wanted to stay there, forever, the two of them safe and happy together, so certain they’d never feel pain in their little world for two that he’d let the wall disintegrate. With Helen by his side, he didn’t need to be on guard. Hopes wouldn’t get dashed. Love would never be withheld in chilling silence.
Please remember. “I was here this weekend because I’d flown in for a friend’s wedding. Vegas was the closest airport to the resort they married at, across the state line, in Utah. Then I came back to Vegas, and I saw you. Everything changed. We decided I’d cancel my return ticket and drive with you to Fort Hood instead.” Please remember.
She took another step back. “That’s crazy. This isn’t some kind of honeymoon road trip. I’ve got orders to report to Fort Hood. I’m an army officer.”
“I know you are, Helen.”
Her eyes widened a fraction in surprise. She clutched the sheet more tightly to her chest. “I’m traveling on orders. It’s at least an eighteen-hour drive, and I’ve only got twenty-two hours at the most to make it. I’ll barely have time to stop for gas and food.”
“That makes it more important for me to go with you. We can take shifts driving through the night. It will be safer.” Her safety mattered, because he remembered everything, and she was his wife. He’d sworn to love, honor, cherish her. You swore the same to me.
Helen sounded angry. “This isn’t some sexy Vegas game. This is real. The real United States Army, real orders, real clock ticking. You are a stranger to me. There is no way I’m going to spend eighteen hours in my own car with a perfect stranger.”
A stranger. Him.
The wall got higher, stronger. It felt so familiar. Thanks, Dad. You don’t want me for a son? Then I don’t want you for a father.
She abruptly stopped retreating. “Let me be clear. No means no.”
He laughed at that, knowing he sounded obnoxious. “I assure you, I can take no for an answer. It hasn’t been part of your vocabulary.”
“It is now. The answer is no. Do not cancel your plane ticket to wherever you were going. Do not cancel whatever plans you had. Don’t change anything for me. Just tell me where my clothes are, and I’ll be gone from your life.”
Don’t go. The wall around his heart felt the same, but his heart was no longer the same within it. With every beat, he wanted his wife.
She did not want him.
“Your dress is in the shower.” His words were stiff. Unemotional.
She frowned. “Why is it—Never mind.” The rosy flush reappeared across her cheekbones, across her chest.
He stayed where he was, towel around his waist, arms crossed over his chest. He was made of stone. He was the wall. Stone didn’t bleed. Walls didn’t beg.
Then Helen returned wearing her wedding dress, and he wanted to howl in pain.
She dropped the sandals she carried and started pushing her toes into the sparkling straps as she finger-combed her hair, a whirlwind of action in a long elegant gown.
“You need to slow down.” His voice was astoundingly even. Then again, why should it waver? The worst had happened. He’d fallen in love and had that love rejected. Everything from this point on was inconsequential. “Ten minutes won’t make a difference. Eat.”
“I should have left hours ago.” She gave up on her hair and dropped her hands with a sigh. “Look, Tom, you seem like a really nice man. I’m sure we had a really good night, but you can count yourself lucky that I have to go. This would have been a giant mistake. I’m not wife material.”
“Too late. Literally, you are wife material.”
That gave her pause. “Is there...paperwork?”
“The license was signed and kept by the chapel. They file it with the county. In two weeks, the official certificate will arrive in the mail.”
“I can’t believe I did this to myself.” The misery on her face infused her whole body. She seemed to fold in on herself, looking too small for the white column gown she’d worn with such confidence. “How could I do this to myself?”
Damn it. His heart wouldn’t stay behind any wall. He was supposed to care about his wife. He did care about her.
He took one step closer to her, but she stopped him with a raised hand. She raised her chin, too. “No—I’ll take care of everything. A divorce. An annulment. I don’t know, but I’ll get a lawyer when I get to Texas, and I’ll get this all straightened out, I promise.”
That wasn’t the promise she’d made the night before. It wasn’t the promise he wanted. He refolded his arms across his bare chest and didn’t get any closer.
“So, um, Tom, could you write your number down for me? For the lawyer? Quickly? I’m running so late.”
“It’s already in your phone.” They’d gotten married. Of course they’d exchanged all of this kind of information. “I have your number.”
She ran her hands down the sides of her dress. “No pockets. Do you...do you have my phone?”
He nodded toward a shining brass credenza, where both their phones had been tossed. His wallet was there, as well. He picked it up. “I have your driver’s license and your military ID.”
“Oh.” She laughed nervously. “That would have been bad, to leave without those.” She took the cards with one hand and stuck her other hand out to shake. “I guess this is goodbye, then. I’ll be in touch as soon as I find out what to do legally.”
He let her stand with her hand outstretched. They’d just made love on the sofa. Now she expected him to shake her hand like a stranger?
It was enough to put that final stone in the wall—until he saw that the hand she offered him was trembling. The wall came tumbling down again, that quickly. His heart demanded that he take care of his precious bride. For better or for worse...
Helen dropped her hand. Her attempt at a smile only made the sadness in her eyes more obvious. “Goodbye, Tom.” She skirted around him to head for the door.
“Stop.” He caught her with a hand on her arm. “You’re not going anywhere until you eat.”
She looked at his hand on her upper arm, then raised her eyes to his. Dark eyes. Angry eyes. “Or else what?”
“Or else I won’t let you leave.”
The loathing on her face was not how he’d ever dreamed she’d look at him. He was being a pompous jerk, making rules for her like her ex-husband had.
He wasn’t her ex-husband. Not yet.
She didn’t need to be given orders. She needed help. He let go of her and walked past the sofa to pick up the house phone. The operator greeted him by name. Obsequiousness came with the penthouse suite. “Good morning, Mr. Cross.”
“I need the valet to bring the car around as quickly as possible. It’s urgent.” He turned back to Helen and gestured toward the table with the telephone receiver before he dropped it back in its cradle. “They’ll have the car up in five minutes. You might as well eat.”
She glared at him a moment longer, but apparently common sense won out, because she turned to the table and grabbed a croissant. She stuffed some bacon slices in it, then sloshed some orange juice into a glass and chugged it down.
With the croissant in her hand, she sketched him a sarcastic salute. “Goodbye, Mr. Cross.”
His bride walked out the door.
Chapter Three (#ube6aaefc-be65-5851-91e9-e59f2167e18a)
Captain Tom Cross rapped on the frame of the brigade commander’s open office door. Two firm knocks: firm because he was a captain in the US Army, as the double black bars on his camouflage uniform attested, but only two knocks because the brigade commander was a colonel, three ranks higher than captain. It would be disrespectful to bang on the man’s office door demandingly.
“Come in.” Colonel Oscar Reed looked up from his paperwork. “Captain Cross. What brings you to my office on a Monday morning?”
“Do you have a moment, sir?” So I can tell you how much I screwed up?
“Come in. Give me a minute.” He returned to his paperwork, signed his name and tossed his pen down.
Tom stood in front of the desk, if not quite at the position of attention, then close enough. The formality of military courtesy fit his emotional state, or lack of it. Since approximately 1400 hours yesterday—two in the afternoon, when his wife of mere hours had walked out on him—he’d felt nothing. He was made of stone.
“Welcome back,” Colonel Reed said. “How was Utah? Friend’s wedding, wasn’t it? How’d it go?”
“Yes, sir. He’s married now.”
“Well, yeah, that happens on wedding weekends.” The colonel started to chuckle. When Tom didn’t join him, he sat back and kept his too-sharp gaze on Tom. “You’re standing there pretty formally. I take it you’re here on official business.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why didn’t I hear from Colonel Stephens that you’d be coming?”
Lieutenant Colonel Stephens was the battalion commander. Lieutenant colonels wore a silver oak leaf as their rank, but they were commonly addressed as colonel, not lieutenant colonel. Higher-ranking colonels like Oscar Reed wore a black-embroidered eagle as their rank. The eagle was the bird in the phrase full-bird colonel.
The chain of command was like a ladder. Tom was the company commander of the 584th Military Police Company. He was responsible for every aspect of one hundred and twenty soldiers’ lives. The next rung higher was the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Stephens, responsible for four MP companies, including Tom’s. The next rung higher was Colonel Reed, commander of the 89th MP Brigade, comprised of five battalions located at five different army bases across four different states. Tom had skipped a rung, a very big rung, to speak to Colonel Reed directly.
Officers did not skip the chain of command.
Tom had. “I haven’t spoken with Colonel Stephens yet, sir. I wanted you to hear this first.”
“So this isn’t official business. Or is this something personal that’s about to become official business?”
“This weekend...” Tom stood with his gaze straight ahead, finding it easier to focus on the wall than the man seated at the desk. Colonel Reed wasn’t just the brigade commander. He was also Oscar Reed, the man who’d lived next door when Tom was just nine years old. As a junior officer in his early twenties, Oscar and two other new lieutenants had combined their housing allowances to afford a big house with a swimming pool, right next door to Tom’s father. Dad had been a fighter pilot and a major in the air force at the time, several ranks higher and at least a decade older than Oscar and the guys. He had not been pleased with the new neighbors.
Tom had been thrilled. Oscar had taken pity on the nine-year-old boy who’d shadowed him, desperate for a role model. For a hero. For a man who paid attention to him.
Oscar hadn’t been able to change the oil in his car without Tom wriggling under the car, too. For the three years he’d lived next door, Oscar had patiently looked at every frog and spider Tom had caught. When Tom had decided to serve in the military, he hadn’t followed his father into the air force. He’d followed Oscar into the army. Hell, Tom was military police because the young Lieutenant Oscar Reed had been an MP.
To be serving now as a company commander in Colonel Reed’s brigade was an honor. And now, Tom had to tell Oscar Reed what a fool he’d been. Damn it, Helen. Damn you.
“This weekend...? This weekend what?” Colonel Reed stood suddenly, but he lowered his voice. “Son of a biscuit, Tom, tell me you didn’t spend the weekend in jail.”
“No, sir.”
“You didn’t break any laws?”
“No, sir.”
“Thank God. That would kill your career. Even I couldn’t get that off your record.” He nodded toward his office door, always open, part of his personal leadership style. “Go close the door, then put your fourth point of contact in a chair, dagnabbit. You’re making me nervous.”
Tom almost smiled at that. Oscar was the one and only man in the military who never swore. Tom had assumed he didn’t swear around him because he’d been a child, but now, coming back into his life as an adult, he realized that Oscar didn’t swear around anyone, of any age.
As Tom sat in the chair just to the left of the desk, the colonel slid his laptop off to the side and folded his hands on top of his desk blotter. “Out with it. What happened in Utah this weekend, besides skiing?”
“There was no skiing. The snow wasn’t great. I expected better for the first week of December, but it’s been too warm. It rained.”
Oscar just raised one brow at him. With a pang, Tom realized that was why he raised one brow as a silent question, too.
“I was stuck indoors with the wedding crowd around the clock. The wedding was Friday night. By Saturday morning, I couldn’t stand any more love and romance and couples talking baby talk to each other everywhere I turned. While I was stuck in the hotel lobby bar, I watched not one, but two, men propose in front of the lobby’s goddamned Christmas tree.” He glanced at the insignia for a colonel on Oscar’s camouflage uniform. “Sir.”
“Horrifying. What did you do?”
“I left Utah. I drove two hours to Vegas and got married myself.”
The colonel was utterly still for one second. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I was.”
“You got married to whom?”
An image of Helen was burned into his mind. A woman with cool elegance. A woman with warm energy. A woman who made him laugh, who listened to him, who opened her heart to him and told him all her hopes and dreams. She could giggle like a child. She could speak with wisdom. And she was sexy, the sexiest, the single most sensual woman he’d ever known. His dream girl.
“Some woman I met in a casino.” Tom closed his eyes; he didn’t need to see the colonel’s expression. He rubbed his forehead; he didn’t want to remember the moment he’d believed there really was such a thing as love at first sight.
“This was a legal marriage? Not some kind of dress-up photo op at the casino? A bartender didn’t officiate? You got a license?”
A license, so easy to get, so ridiculously cheap. A ring—he’d dropped a few thousand there, then a thousand more on the best suite in the hotel for their wedding night. Helen had insisted on paying for her own dress.
“Yes, sir, all legal. She wants a divorce. Already.” Saying that sentence caused him pain. He should be feeling no pain; his heart was walled shut. You don’t want me? Then I don’t want you.
The colonel shook his head. “There has to be some easier way out of this. It’s been less than a day, hasn’t it?”
Tom did the math. “I’ve been married for thirty-four hours, sir. The Happiest Wedding Chapel did its due diligence in making sure we understood this was a legally binding ceremony.”
No backsies, Helen had said with a wink, because it was absurd to even imagine they’d want to change their minds.
Colonel Reed kept shaking his head and pulled his laptop closer. “Where did this wedding take place?”
“The Happiest Wedding Chapel. That’s the name of the place. You didn’t think I was actually using the word happiest to describe any of this stupidity, did you?”
The colonel rolled his eyes and chuckled as he hit a few keys. “No, but let’s keep this in perspective. You didn’t commit a crime. It’s not like you’re in here confessing that you’re a drug addict or something. A divorce is a pain in the rear, that’s all. This will become a story you can tell when you’re an old man like me, to prove you once had a wild youth.”
Wild youth? Tom was twenty-seven, a company commander with one hundred and twenty lives in his keeping. There was nothing either wild or youthful about military responsibilities. Colonel Reed was forty-two, a man in his prime, not old. The colonel was exaggerating, cracking a joke, trying to lighten the moment.
Tom tried to laugh, but thirty-four hours ago, he actually had been the happiest he’d ever been, and it didn’t make him happy to come to that realization while the colonel was typing on his laptop.
“Your chapel’s got quite the website. There’s got to be something about a twenty-four-hour cooling off period or morning-after annulments—”
“No, sir. We have to get a divorce.”
“That’s a nuisance... Well, looky here. They’ve got videos. Tell me there’s a video of this debacle. I have to see it to believe it.”
Ah, hell.
Colonel Reed was clicking his mouse with a little too much glee. “Look at this. You can watch anyone’s wedding. It says they keep it available for ten days—what a scam. They keep the video up so your friends and family can use the convenient links to send gifts to the bride and groom. Man, what an industry this is. They married someone every half hour this weekend. Every half hour! Was Elvis there? Did your bride wear showgirl sequins? Strategically placed feathers?”
“Oscar.” Shut up.
Tom hadn’t called the man by his first name in the three months he’d been under his command. Oscar had been his friend for almost twenty years, the big brother he’d never had. Colonel Reed was his commander.
It didn’t faze the colonel. He just waved a hand Tom’s way. “Okay, okay. Let me see this for myself.”
The laptop started playing familiar music, a contemporary song he and Helen both loved—of course. They’d been in sync about everything.
Tom cleared his throat, but he didn’t speak. He had nothing to say.
“Here comes the bride,” Colonel Reed said, shaking his head and laughing, like he couldn’t believe this was real.
It was real.
“Oh.” The colonel blinked at his screen. He glanced at Tom. “She’s a knockout. Not in a stripper-pole-dancer kind of way.”
Tom glared at him. What was he supposed to say? Thank you?
Colonel Reed was concentrating on the video, serious now. “Look at you. Look at you both.”
“No, thank you.”
“It’s like—It’s not what I was expecting. It’s like a real wedding. You had your blue mess uniform with you? Oh, right. From the Utah wedding. She’s very beautiful. Classy looking.”
The colonel finally fell silent, only that made things worse, because now Tom could hear Helen’s voice on the laptop’s weak speaker. She made him promises she’d had no intention of keeping.
She can’t remember. That wasn’t intentional.
She’d refused to stay and even try to remember. She’d cut and run.
Colonel Reed casually angled the screen so Tom could see it, the last thing he wanted to see. There was Helen, so beautiful in her white dress.
Stone. I’m made of stone.
The officiant spoke. “I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.” A handful of red rose petals were gently sprinkled over their heads, a blessing.
Tom looked away. He wasn’t going to watch this, but then there were the sounds of a scuffle on screen, and he looked back. The chapel doors had burst open, and young, rowdy men had come charging down the aisle. They’d been looking for a cell phone they’d left behind—they’d been part of the wedding a half hour before Tom’s. But they’d been drunk and loud and Tom had instantly pulled Helen behind himself to protect her. She was an army officer, he knew that, and she was in great shape physically, he knew that intimately, but she’d been wearing a floor-length, slim-fitting dress, not clothing for self-defense. And she’d been his bride.
Nobody would hurt his bride.
The video ended.
“I’m sorry.” Colonel Reed somberly closed his laptop and stood, causing Tom to come to his feet, as well. Captains didn’t stay seated when colonels stood, even colonels who’d said Call me Oscar to a kid in elementary school.
“Sorry for what, sir?”
“Tom.” He sighed as if he’d said much more and checked his watch. “It’s almost noon. Let me take you to lunch somewhere off post. We’ll talk.”
There were two knocks on the office door, quick, cursory. The door opened before Colonel Reed could say enter. A sergeant abruptly stopped short with the doorknob in his hand. “Excuse me, sir. I thought you had left for lunch. I’m sorry. I was just coming in to see if you’d left the papers on your desk for the incoming officer. I didn’t know you were—”
“Understood. Has she arrived yet?”
“Yes, sir. She’s right here.”
“Send her in.” The colonel glanced at Tom. “Stand by. This won’t take a moment.”
Tom walked away from the desk to stand near two wingback chairs in a corner, which meant he didn’t see the person who rapped on the frame of the open door, two firm knocks.
But he heard a woman speak. “Good morning, sir.”
Tom turned around, and his bride walked in the door.
* * *
Helen strode into her new brigade commander’s office and stood at attention in front of his desk.
Thank God for military courtesies. No matter how exhausted she was, she could function in this setting. She knew what to wear—her camouflage ACUs, or Army Combat Uniform—and she knew the brigade commander would be wearing exactly the same thing. Only their ranks and the sewn-on last names over their right pockets were different. She knew how to stand—heels together, arms straight at her sides, hands in loose fists, thumbs pointing downward. She knew to keep her gaze straight ahead, her chin level.
And, despite an eighteen-hour drive that had extended to twenty hours because of a lengthy detour around a massive wreck in Albuquerque, despite the gritty feeling of her eyeballs and the way her brain was clamoring for sleep, she knew what to say: “Good morning, sir. Captain Helen Pallas, reporting as ordered.”
She’d made it just before noon. Thank goodness. If only Tom Cross could see her now, standing at attention in uniform at the desk of the 89th MP Brigade commander and provost marshal of Fort Hood, then Tom would understand why she’d had to leave their little Vegas fantasy so quickly. Why she’d had to leave alone.
The brigade commander didn’t return her greeting.
She waited.
The colonel didn’t say anything. He did not tell her to have a seat or even to stand at ease.
Great. He was going to be one of those jerks who liked to toy with those in their command, putting them through all kinds of nonsensical tests.
Fine. She could stand here all day in silence.
With a soft curse that sounded suspiciously like “cheese and crackers,” the colonel dropped the papers he held and stabbed the space bar on his laptop. He looked at the screen. He looked at her. “Captain Pallas...”
What? At ease? Have a seat? Welcome to Fort Hood? What?
He looked to a corner of the room behind her. “Captain Pallas, I believe your husband is here.”
What? Good God, what was her ex doing now? She felt her blood run cold. There was no limit to the lows to which Russell Gannon would stoop. He was leaving Seattle to be stationed at Fort Hood, too, of course—their joint domicile had been set before they’d gotten their divorce—but he shouldn’t be moving for a couple of weeks yet, and he had no earthly reason to be at the 89th MP Brigade headquarters in any case. He was a chemical corps officer, not military police. The only reason he could be here was to stir up trouble for her.
When she’d been a company commander, spouses and ex-spouses of the soldiers in her command had come to see her, often to demand money, reporting a failure to pay child support or alimony. Twice, civilian women had come to Helen’s office, accusing their enlisted husbands of adultery, demanding courts-martial for what was, in the military, a legal offense. Once, a man had come to demand that she, the company commander, order his enlisted wife to move back home from a lover’s house. The emotional drama was detrimental to what the military called good order and discipline, so commanders did have to deal with their soldiers’ relationship problems. She’d handled each case, using her legal authority and her common sense. Never had Helen expected to be the one in trouble, rather than the one adjudicating the situation.
All this went through her mind in a flash: Good God, what is Russell doing now?
But then the colonel spoke toward someone behind her and said, “Tom, you left a key fact out of your story.”
Tom?
“Helen.”
That voice. Oh, that voice—it woke up parts of her tired brain, her tired body—but the word husband hadn’t made her think of Tom for even a second. Russell was her husband, had been her husband, and he was awful. More awful than she would have believed if she hadn’t lived it. But Tom? Tom was barely her husband, if he was her husband at all. She hadn’t had any time to verify that his story was true and a marriage license existed.
Thank God, again, for military training. Helen kept her chin up as she turned around. There he was, not her ex-husband, but Tom Cross, standing there in the same uniform she wore.
Damn, he looked good. I slept with that.
He was in the army—had she known that? He wore the same captain’s bars as she did. She tried to remember.
Nothing. There was no specific memory, but somehow, she had known he was in the service. Maybe it was because his haircut looked military even in the civilian world of Las Vegas. It wasn’t something she’d consciously thought about at the hotel, because every man in her world had a military haircut, but it must have registered subconsciously.
Or maybe it was the way he’d carried himself with a confident military bearing, even when he’d been wearing no more than a towel. As she looked at him in his uniform, the vision of him gorgeously, gloriously nude was the one thing that was easy to remember. She knew exactly what his chest looked like under that camouflage. She knew exactly how his skin tasted.
She needed to stop remembering that. Captains didn’t get flushed in their colonels’ offices.
It was incredible to be standing in the same office as Tom. He’d known she had to report in by noon at Fort Hood, and he’d gone to the trouble of finding out where and in which unit she’d be. He’d come to find her.
Something—hope? No. Vanity, perhaps. Something made her heart beat hard, so hard it hurt. Tom Cross must have strong feelings for her. He wasn’t letting her slip away so easily.
Oh, Tom. I’m so sorry, but I don’t know you.
But wait—
Tom. The commander, Colonel Reed, had called him Tom. He’d said Tom had already told him their story. With a jolt, Helen realized Tom had tracked her down, but only so he could beat her here and talk to her brigade commander before she could. About what?
Relationship drama, detrimental to good order and discipline. There was nothing else to talk about. This was no grand romantic gesture; this was professional sabotage.
“I take it this is a surprise for all three of us.” Colonel Reed sat behind his desk and made a magnanimous, sweeping gesture with his hand. “Go on. You two catch up.”
Helen walked over to the wingback chairs and, for the sake of privacy, stood close to Tom.
He faced her as a soldier faced inspection. His face had no expression at all. Not aggression, not curiosity. No welcome. Certainly, no warmth.
She kept her voice pitched low, although the commander could probably still hear everything. “Are you stationed at Fort Hood?”
“Yes.” He bit the word out. So much for being a lover who hadn’t wanted to let her go. Never expect anything else, ever.
“Why did you track me down like this? I told you I’d take care of the legalities. Did you think I wouldn’t keep my word?”
He narrowed his gaze at that. “Did you change your mind?”
“Of course not,” she hissed. “I promised you I’d get the divorce under way, and I will, but I just got on post half an hour ago. I haven’t had a chance to even type ‘how to get a Las Vegas divorce’ into a search bar yet. Cut me some slack. I’ve been driving for twenty hours. You knew I would be.”
He looked at her for the longest time, an eternal moment. “I’m glad you made it here in one piece. You look exhausted.”
“Thank you so much.” I feel worse. “So then, why are you standing in my brigade commander’s office?”
“Because,” he said, as he turned just an inch, so she could see the unit patch on his shoulder, “he’s my brigade commander, too.”
She rocked back on her heels as all her expectations exploded in front of her. She’d planned to make her first impression here without anyone knowing that she had a stupid, quickie, Vegas marriage to unravel. Nobody would need to know she’d had such a lapse in judgment. She wouldn’t lose their respect before she’d had a chance to earn it.
At Lewis-McChord, when she’d had to change the name tags on her uniforms from Gannon back to Pallas, the reactions had all been negative. Either she’d been pitied as a doormat who’d let her man walk all over her, or she’d been labeled a bitch who’d driven her man away. She’d been told that she should have tried harder if she took her marriage seriously. She’d been told that she shouldn’t have ever tried to be a wife in the first place, not if she was serious about her career.
She’d been so relieved to leave Seattle.
Fort Hood would be a fresh start. She would arrive at the 89th MP Brigade with her maiden name sewn permanently on her uniforms, and her failed marriage to Russell Gannon would be something that no one here would have heard about. For the last twenty hours, she’d clung to the fact that no one at Fort Hood would hear about her momentary insanity in Vegas, either. She and Tom would quietly get a divorce, a mere filing of paperwork to countermand the chapel’s paperwork, and what happened in Vegas would stay in Vegas.
Tom had ruined everything.
She put a hand on the back of the chair to steady herself and concentrated on the grain of the leather upholstery. “Who else have you told?”
“No one.”
“Can we keep it that way?”
He didn’t answer her.
She looked up into his face, that handsome face with those bluer-than-blue eyes, and some part of her instinctively felt safe with him. It was that Pavlovian response again: he was trustworthy.
But he was not. He’d talked to her commander without talking to her first. He’d betrayed her.
Tears stung her eyes. She was too damned tired, just physically worn out, to deal with this now. Behind her, Colonel Reed had started typing on his laptop, but she was acutely aware that he must be watching this surprise meeting. She looked into Tom’s eyes and silently mouthed one word: Please?
He dropped his gaze, and she realized he was looking at her left hand as she clutched the back of the chair. Her knuckles were white with the effort it was taking to keep herself together.
“If you want this to be a secret, why are you wearing your ring?”
She snatched her hand off the chair. She’d given up trying to twist that ring off about eight hundred miles ago. She’d forgotten she was wearing it at the moment, frankly—it didn’t feel strange or unusual. She could only assume that was because she’d had another band on that same finger for two years.
“I didn’t want to lose it. You can have it.” She twisted it once more, but it was still stuck. She held her hand out. “It won’t come off. You try.”
He took her fingers in his hand and looked at the band, a thin circlet of tiny diamond chips that managed to be fancy and yet simple at the same time, a nearly flat band that had no setting sticking up that might get caught on olive drab equipment, a good choice for a woman who wore a uniform every day. He looked from the ring to her. “No.”
“No?”
He let go of her hand. “I put that ring on your finger. I’m not going to take it off. You want it off, you take it off yourself. I never will.”
Her lips parted in surprise, but she didn’t make a sound. Nothing made a sound—not her, not Tom, not even the brigade commander, who was no longer typing. In the silence, Helen’s heart beat as if the man before her had said something romantic, but the hard look on his face had nothing of love in it. It was a challenge. He was going to make her be the bad guy.
The brigade commander cleared his throat. “Well, now that you’ve had a chance to say hello, sit down, both of you.”
Tom took the seat to the left of the desk. Helen took the one to the right. They sat as stiffly as if they were still standing at attention. Neither of them spoke.
The colonel sat back and looked between them. “I watched your wedding video online.”
There was an online video? Helen gave up and let her shoulders droop. This was a frigging nightmare. Professionally, personally...nightmare, nightmare.
“I want to know what happened between that ceremony and now? Why are you two so...at odds?”
Helen looked at Tom, who looked at her. He doesn’t know what to say, either.
“Let me try this again. Captain Cross tells me you want a divorce. Is that true, Captain Pallas?” The colonel’s tone of voice demanded an answer.
Helen took a slow breath. It was time to salvage what she could from this disastrous introduction to her superior officer. “We’re not at odds, sir. We are in agreement that we’ll get a divorce as soon as possible.”
“Why?”
“We met and married the same day, sir. It was...illogical to get married. We’re strangers.”
“You didn’t look like strangers at the altar,” he replied.
Sleep deprivation was making her delirious, because the colonel sounded almost sad. Kindly, paternal, sad.
Tom interrupted. “She doesn’t remember the ceremony, sir. She doesn’t remember anything. She—we—must have celebrated too hard.”
She felt flushed from different emotions. Embarrassment, anger—Tom made her sound like a black-out drunk.
I know better. She didn’t know why she couldn’t remember much about Vegas, but she’d never been a heavy drinker. She resented being painted as one now, here, in front of her new commander.
“That’s not true, sir. I remember some things.” She stated it as the truth that it was—but there was no way she could look at Tom, because he knew exactly what one thing she remembered.
Roses are always going to remind me of sex with you.
She kept her expression neutral. “But what I remember is not enough to base a marriage on, sir.”
Tom’s expression wasn’t quite neutral. She could see that he was clenching his jaw, probably biting back a comment about her memories that the colonel shouldn’t hear.
The colonel let them stew in silence for a good, long moment. “In the end, only the two of you can decide that.”
“Yes, sir,” Helen answered dutifully. She already knew the truth, though. She’d learned it the hard way in Seattle with another man. She wasn’t very good at being a wife. She didn’t care to try again and prove that twice.
“Now that we’ve got the initial shock over with, let’s try this again. Good morning, Captain Pallas. Welcome to Fort Hood.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re authorized five business days to complete your move to Fort Hood. You know the drill. Medical records, parking passes, physical fitness test, arranging delivery of your household goods.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tomorrow will be day one. Today, you need to recover. Get some sleep. You’ve had a big weekend, you’ve been driving for twenty hours straight—”
Damn it. The colonel had heard every word she and Tom had exchanged in the corner.
“—and you’ve apparently had quite the surprise just now. Regroup. Recover. Sleep. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tom, there’s been a change in our lunch plans, obviously. Escort your wife to your house instead.”
“Sir?” Tom sounded as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard that incorrectly.
Helen rushed to clear up the colonel’s misunderstanding. “I’m going to check into the BOQ, sir. Or VOQ.” An apartment-or hotel-style building on every post served as the BOQ, or Bachelor Officer Quarters, a place where single officers could live either permanently or for a few weeks while house-hunting. A big post like Hood might have a separate VOQ, Visiting Officer Quarters.
Colonel Reed corrected her. “There is no BOQ on post, Captain Pallas. It’s been privatized. It’s now a Holiday Inn.”
That sounded good to her.
Colonel Reed lined through an item on her paperwork and initialed it. “But you are no longer authorized a stay there. You are not a single soldier.”
“I really am, sir. Vegas was a mistake. We’re planning on a divorce.”
“You are not in any physical danger from your spouse, are you?”
“No, sir, of course not.”
“Then you will reside in the housing the army has provided. Tom already lives in a single-family home designated for a captain. Or captains.”
She looked at Tom in alarm. He took over the argument. “Colonel Reed, I need to point out that this would be a waste of time and energy. Once we’re divorced, she would have to move all her household goods again.”
The colonel raised one brow. “Do either of you know how long a divorce takes?”
She only knew the law in Seattle, Washington, where she’d married Russell. She wasn’t going to tell the colonel she’d already been divorced once. She’d seem deranged, getting married again so quickly in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“No, sir,” Helen said. “I haven’t had time to look up Nevada’s laws.”
“Nevada has nothing to do with it,” the colonel said. “That’s where you got married. You must file for divorce in the state you live, and that is now Texas.”
Helen had a sinking feeling she wasn’t going to like Texas’s law.
“One of you has to have lived in Texas for six months before you can begin the legal process—and yes, that is true of active duty military personnel, too.”
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