For Love or Duty

by Beth Rhodes

  For Love or Duty

  By Bethanne Strasser

  Copyright 2012 Bethanne Strasser

  Cover Art created by Elaina Lee of For the Muse Designs

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Thank you, God, for all that I am.

  To the man who inspires every hero I write, thank you for all your love and encouragement.

  And for the best group of friends a writer could have, I love you Passionate Critters.

  ~BS

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Tall. At least six feet. Light brown hair with streaks of blonde from the Spring sun. Blue eyes. Familiar, like the boy next door. The man who stepped down from the over-sized pick-up truck had been coming into the convenience store every week for about two months.

  Valerie Standish—store clerk extraordinaire—admired the relaxed fit of his jeans, the tight T-shirt stretched over well-defined muscles; even the combination of work boots and ratty, old baseball cap added to the All-American package, part red-neck and definitely work driven.

  But it was his eyes, their blue rivaled a Colorado sky. They didn’t warm, nor were they particularly friendly, but when he laughed, they transformed the hard planes of his square unsmiling jaw into a face meant to seduce. Not me, she thought when he came through the front door. He took the side aisle back to the beer cave and disappeared into the refrigerator.

  She sighed, a familiar chord resonating through her gut like nerves on a first date. Down, girl.

  When a young woman with a cute, chubby little boy on her hip set a half-gallon of milk and small container of baby formula on the counter, Valerie straightened and pulled the lighter display away from the edge where the baby could reach it. End of the month. Those last few days before the first of the month, when state allowances had run out and needs still had to be met.

  “I need a carton of Lights, too.” The woman’s voice broke as she hesitated over the request.

  Valerie asked for I.D. with an inward grimace. But she’d done her share of smoking years ago and could hardly judge. “There you go. All together, that’s forty-eight dollars and ninety-seven cents.”

  “I really need to quit.” She blushed.

  Valerie gave her attention to the boy, tickling him under his chin before taking the money and making change for the fifty. “It took me twelve years to quit.”

  “What is this, AA for smokers? It’s my turn. Get the hell out of the way,” a raspy, slurred voice growled.

  Val looked up in annoyance. Rough customers in the store were not unusual. She had no patience for them.

  The poor mother, on the other hand, jumped as if she’d been hit and took a step out of the man’s way.

  “You’ll wait your turn, sir, and do so without name calling.” Not recognizing him as a regular, Valerie forced a smile.

  With a tighter grip on the boy, the customer gathered her belongings.

  This man was big, even bigger than Blue Eyes. But where Blue Eyes was hard, this jerk had a lousy beer belly around his middle. His face sagged, as if he’d spent too much time at the corner bar. Mean, that was her first impression of him.

  “You have a good weekend, hon.” Valerie offered the farewell, not wanting to rush now that she knew The Jerk didn’t like waiting. Working here did not mean she had to tolerate meatheads.

  The boy cooed to Valerie and she smiled back.

  As they left, Valerie eyed The Jerk. He stank of desperation. His eyes touched her, making a slow wander down her figure, but they were lifeless and dull.

  “Now, this is more like it. Open the drawer real slow and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  The pulse in her throat bumped against her skin. Her nerves clamored against her stomach walls. Okay. Mean might have been too mild.

  She froze when the guy laid a small gun on the counter in front of her and covered it loosely with his big, grubby hand. Her gaze flew to his, her mind to the man in the beer cave. Was he still there? Had he left when she wasn’t looking?

  “That’s right. No one’s here to save your sweet rear.”

  She opened her mouth, a curse on her tongue.

  His hand came out of nowhere and slammed against her jaw, knocking her into the cigarette shelves. Her head rang, but she kept her feet under her. The store was quiet. No one remained to help her.

  Righting herself, she took a deliberate step up to the counter, and her foot connected to the button flush against the floor. A signal to the world outside. Her only hope. With shaking hands, she punched in a total for the cash register.

  Her ear ached something fierce and her jaw throbbed, but Valerie wasn’t about to die for the job. She pulled the measly bit of cash from the drawer. “Here. Take it and go, okay?”

  The Jerk grinned and ran the edge of the gun down the side of her breast. “Keep being good and maybe Randy will give you a prize.”

  She backed up and a sound of repulsion escaped.

  The man’s face grew red, and his thumb released the safety.

  “You don’t want to do this,” she whispered.

  “Hey Randy. Long time no see.”

  Valerie almost peed her pants when Randy turned to look at the newcomer, and the gun in front of her wavered.

  The beer guy hadn’t left.

  A mixture of relief and panic swelled against her breastbone. Please don’t do anything stupid.

  Blue Eyes dropped a six-pack on the counter hard enough to make the bottles rattle.

  “If you’ll wait a minute while I’m taking care of this gentleman,” she forced from trembling lips, “it’ll only be a minute.”

  Blue Eyes’ smile was easy going, as if he didn’t notice the gun or the man with the handful of cash next to him. “Sure, no problem. Randy and I go way back. How’s your sister doin’ anyway, Randy? What’s she got now, four kids?”

  Bushy brows furrowed deeply in the crags of Randy’s pudgy forehead. “My sister doesn’t—”

  Blue Eyes sent a solid left elbow into the thief’s temple, stunning him. Then faster than Val could register, Randy was on the floor. His hands were tied behind his back with a frayed rope, like the one that had been holding the cardboard candy display against the wall at the back of the store. Her rescuer kicked the gun and it slid down aisle three.

  “Oh, my God. Is he dead?” Horrified, the words echoed through her brain.

  “Would I tie him up if he was?” Blue Eyes pursed his lips as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. But the sound of sirens could be heard coming up the street. He snapped the phone closed and set it down. “I disarmed him and stopped him from robbing you blind before having his way with you and possibly killing you.”

  Her mouth gaped as shock continued to stall her brain.

  A soft moan rose from Randy’s prostrate form.

  “You could at least say thank you, you know.”

  That pulled her from the afflicting fog, and she sputtered. “Well, of all the—”

  “S-L-P-D. Freeze!”

  Valerie shrieked, making the man before her smile as he raised his hands and turned to the police officer. The smile boiled her already agitated blood. The nerve. Not that
she wasn’t thankful. She was. More than… And God! Blue Eyes, of all people. Classic damsel in distress meets knight in shining armor.

  Still, she would have said thank you without his prodding. Now it hardly seemed worth it. Pompous. He probably set this kind of scenario up with his buddy all the time, so he could play hero.

  “Put your hands on the counter real slow, mister.” The police officer thought Blue Eyes was one of the bad guys. Surprisingly, Blue Eyes did as he was told without a word of objection. The officer patted him down. “This your partner on the floor?”

  “No, sir.”

  Valerie opened her mouth to speak, even as his arrogant, challenging eyes met her brown ones over the six pack. The man actually shook his head, as if he was disappointed in her. Pursing her lips, she sighed. “They didn’t come together, officer. This man was shopping in the beer cave when Randy arrived to rob me.”

  The officer pulled a wallet from Blue Eye’s jacket pocket and flipped to the inside. “Captain Kevin Morgan. You from Fort Bragg?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  No wonder. A soldier. She should have known. Growing up near the military base, soldiers were a dime a dozen. And they didn’t typically resemble the men in the books she read, either—charming, honest, …humble.

  “Ma’am, if you wouldn’t mind, Officer Blakely’s going to come in and ask you some questions about what happened tonight.”

  Valerie nodded to the policeman, the temptation to tap her fingernails overwhelming. Her night had just gotten longer. “I should call my boss.”

  “Don’t worry. There’ll be time for that, too.” The officer in charge waved a hand at Kevin. “Follow me, young man. I’ll get your story, too.”

  For some reason, Valerie watched her fantasy man walk away, disappointed he hadn’t even said good-bye.

  Stupid.

  Chapter Two

  Kevin drove home without beer. His buddies were not going to be happy. Not only did he not have beer, he’d been gone over two hours. He pulled into the drive and shut off his truck. Darkness covered the street, broken only by the lamp posts along the residential road.

  “Where have you been, butthead?” Cheryl Brown stood in the shadows of his front porch, her hands on her hips. The flood light from his small garage on the left highlighted the dramatic, gaudy rings on her right hand, making even the bold-colored geometric shapes of her outfit seem conservative. There was nothing conservative about Cheryl, though. She might not have been more than a baby during the eighties, but she’d embraced it with all her passions and eccentricities.

  Kevin smiled easily at the sight of her and got out of the truck. The woman from the store was probably too polite to call anyone butthead, including the man who would have taken her and left her for dead. His stomach rolled at the thought. He was better off alone than with a prissy woman who couldn’t stand up for herself.

  “Where’s the beer? Quinn finished the last one an hour ago.” She blew a raspberry. “He got tired of waiting.”

  Kevin opened his mouth for a smart remark but closed it with a snap. “I don’t have it.”

  Cheryl came down the first step as he reached the bottom one, and they stood eye-to-eye.

  “Hey, shorty.” His world righted itself for a moment. “Thanks for holding down the fort for me. Sorry it took longer than I expected.”

  “Something happened, didn’t it? Are you okay? Where were you? On base?”

  “Yes. Yes. The Seven-Eleven. And no.”

  “What happened?” she demanded with a little stomp of her boot-heeled foot. Her eyes moved over him, looking for injuries; he knew her routine—mama hen.

  “Some guy came in and robbed the store. I was in the beer cave, saw him head to the counter and have words with the clerk. Next thing you know, he’s pulling a snub-nosed revolver and waving it around.”

  He’d been exasperated. What an odd reaction. Not fear or alarm, just what-the-hell? There was an old quality to it, as if he’d been around the block one too many times or as if, with everything he’d seen and done, the whole armed-robbery thing bored him.

  The sight of the gun touching the woman had finally ticked him off and made his heart pound. Thank goodness something had.

  “Not again. That store gets robbed every other month, it seems. Was Valerie working?”

  Kevin’s mind went blank. “Who?”

  “Valerie. Tall, blonde, pretty? You know. Jeez. You go in there enough. Don’t you ever talk to people?”

  “Oh, uh…”

  Cheryl rolled her eyes and pulled him through the front door. The noise hit him first: the radio playing in the living room, a television on in the game room at the back of the house, and a group of people playing cards at the table in the kitchen.

  “Maybe you’re in shock.” She looped her arm through his with a suspicious look. “Or you’re dense.”

  When he closed the door behind him, the noise hushed. Down the long, dim hall to the kitchen, the card players gave a cheer for his return.

  Quinn strode down the hallway, carrying a cold adult beverage, his youthful frame disguising lean muscles. Kevin had gone a round or two with him in the gym. He only looked scrawny. “So, you hooked up with a woman, didn’t you?”

  “Ha. Yeah, that’s it. A woman—big, brawny, and named Randy.” Kevin pushed his buddy aside. “I guess you went out for beer.”

  Quinn hooked an arm around Cheryl, “You didn’t tell him, did you, love?”

  Cheryl ribbed him, stepping away as they entered the kitchen. “No.”

  Kevin narrowed his eyes at the slight blush rising to her cheeks. He couldn’t process the thought of Cheryl blushing over the pet name and, instead, pulled a bottle of water from the fridge and sat at the only empty seat at the round table. When Quinn opened his mouth, Kevin lifted a what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it? brow in his direction.

  His friend shrugged with a grin and leaned against the counter.

  Kevin’s phone rang and, one by one, Quinn’s and Tyler’s and Frank’s cell phones did too. From the living room, another chorus of grumbling echoed his groan.

  A call at eleven-thirty could only mean one thing.

  “Party’s over, boys,” Kevin announced as he stood and answered the phone on the wall.

  Like that, everyone was sent home or back to base with the order to regroup at zero five-hundred for a training op. The relieved expression on some of the wives’ faces didn’t go unnoticed as they ended the night. They reminded Kevin of why he’d always avoided long-term commitment. But training was nothing compared to being deployed to parts unknown.

  Finally, all of his guests were gone but Cheryl. He found her stacking cups in the sink and throwing paper plates in the garbage can. He’d thought she would leave with Quinn. “’Bout time you did something useful.”

  “Ha, ha. Very funny.” With a brush of her hands, she picked up her purse. “I’m outta here.”

  She made it to the front door then turned back. “Don’t think I didn’t notice how your story got conveniently cut short. I’m going to ask Valerie about what happened, but I expect a full report from you when you get back from this training op.”

  With a smart snap of his arm, Kevin saluted, “Yes, ma’am,” then watched as Cheryl got into her car and drove off down the road. She would hound him for all the details, no doubt, but the training op would give him a reprieve. Meeting with his commander about the incident tonight was a given. Formalities and accountabilities.

  He’d only done what any decent citizen would have.

  But Cheryl would want to know about the blonde—Valerie. Why hadn’t he noticed her before tonight? It wasn’t that long ago that he would have rated her on a scale of one to ten and, depending on the results, asked her on a date.

  Turning the lights out, he made his way upstairs to the loft. As he drifted to sleep, it was her brown eyes he saw in his mind. Her dark, pursed lips and smooth skin, drawn tight and pale from fear—or maybe aggravation, because she hadn’t seemed scare
d.

  She’d snapped at him—a pleasant surprise, which had brightened the whole episode.

  Maybe Valerie would be worth a second look after all.

  ~*~*~

  Kevin dropped his pack inside the door and dragged his feet to the sofa in the living room. Barely enough time to sleep before he needed to be at headquarters. If only his shower wasn’t all the way upstairs, he might actually get that taken care of, too. Snagging a clean shirt from a pile on the recliner, he laid it over the pillow in the corner of the couch and crashed.

  When his house phone buzzed on the end table, he cursed before answering. “Hello.”

  “Hi. I’m looking for Captain Kevin Morgan.” The voice. He knew it, but couldn’t place it.

  “Yeah. You got him,” he growled, making the person on the phone hesitated. “Can I help you?” He added in what he hoped was a more friendly tone.

  “I have a cell phone here that belongs to you. You left it on the counter Saturday night at the Seven-Eleven. I just thought you’d like to know so you could come get it.”

  Ah. The woman he’d met that night at the store—Valerie, he thought as her explanation triggered the memory of her accusing eyes and smoky voice. His body reacted in true post-adrenaline form.

  What was a woman like that doing working in a convenience store, anyway?

  “Oh, that’s where it went. I wondered.” He paused. He could get it tomorrow on the way to work. “Hey, thanks for calling.”

  She cleared her throat and made him grin. Maybe, perhaps, she was a little uncomfortable.

  He settled back onto the pillow. A little fun could be what he needed right now. “Hey. Are you working tonight?”

  “No.” Her answer was short and curt, making his smile bigger.

  “That’s too bad—”

  “Uh, yeah,” she cut him off. “The manager on duty will have your stuff. ‘Kay? I—er, thanks again for helping out. Take care, and have a nice life.”

  She hung up on him.

  Kevin laughed. Oh yeah, he would definitely be seeing her again.