The Marine Meets His Match

by Cathie Linz

  “I could pick up something inexpensive, a CZ, at one of the discount stores.”

  “CZ?”

  “Cubic Zirconia. Only a jeweler would be able to tell it’s not real, if I get something realistic carat-wise.”

  “Okay. I’ll leave the ring to you. But I’ll pay for it.”

  “Under fifty dollars. I don’t want to be worrying about losing it or anything.”

  “How would you lose it? I thought you were supposed to wear an engagement ring all the time and not take it off.”

  “That’s in a real engagement, which this isn’t.”

  “Okay…But spend at least a hundred. I don’t want people thinking I’m cheap.” He used the stylus to change screens. “I made a checklist….”

  “If you’re that prepared, I would have thought you’d have come up with a better cover story for your fiancée than saying the name of the first woman that came to mind. What did you tell her about me?”

  “That you were a bookseller.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I may have said that you used to be a swimsuit model,” Rad couldn’t resist teasing her.

  “You what?”

  “Just kidding.”

  “I should hope so. No one would believe I was a swimsuit model.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because real women have curves and I’m a real woman.”

  His eyes strolled over her from head to toe. “I had noticed that.”

  “I have hips.” She pointed to them as if he needed help locating them.

  “Yeah, you do.” He nodded approvingly.

  “Swimsuit models never have real hips.”

  “I like females with hips. And long legs. And long blond hair and green eyes. In fact, there are a lot of things I like about you.”

  His comment made her feel as if she’d swallowed a goldfish. Not that she’d ever done that, but still…

  She had this strange fluttery feeling of what…anticipation? Is that what this was? She anticipated the next Harry Potter book, but it didn’t make her all funny inside.

  Great. Now she knew what this was. It had just been a while since she’d experienced it, and never to this extreme. This was sexual attraction. This was her hormones leaping up and yelling yes, yes, yes, come to momma.

  This was her inner-female responding to all that yummy male testosterone wrapped up in Rad’s six-foot-plus body.

  Serena firmly ordered her hormones to shut up. She could not afford to be ruled by sex here. She needed to be a savvy businesswoman. To be practical. To be Serena Serious. “You don’t know me at all.” There, that was a practical, factual statement, even if she had delivered it in a too-breathy voice. Since when had she started sounding like Marilyn Monroe at Kennedy’s birthday party?

  “But I want to get to know you,” Rad murmured. “And I need to if we’re going to pull this off. Tell me what I should know.”

  “That I don’t think this is going to work,” she muttered. Not if leaping hormones got in the way.

  “Of course it will work. We just need to do some prep work. Winning any battle is predicated on good recon and accurate intel ahead of time. I know you’re a bookseller, and the Realtor told me you’ve been here a year. That’s all I know.”

  “I’ll write you a brief bio tonight then you can enter it in your PDA.”

  He shut the hi-tech device down and turned his full attention to her. “Some things are unforgettable. Forget writing the bio. Have dinner with me instead and we can work out the details while we eat. I know a good seafood place down on the beach. Unless you have other plans?”

  “I suppose it would be a good idea to get our stories straight.” That was her practical side speaking.

  “Affirmative.”

  There, that was his military voice. Not his bossy military voice, just the crisp tones. Crisp was good. She could handle crisp. She could even do crisp herself. “Okay, then.”

  It wasn’t okay when she nearly tripped over the long skirt of her dress when he handed her into his car a few minutes later. You’d think she’d never gotten into a silver gray Corvette before.

  And you’d be right. She’d never gotten into a Corvette of any color before. The men she tended to date drove sensible cars like four-door sedans. Buicks or Oldsmobiles. Not low-slung race cars.

  She was surprised and pleased to discover that Rad didn’t drive as if he were trying out for the Indy 500. He showed no sign of road rage when a car filled with teenagers cut him off or when an older driver pulled in front of him and barely went the speed limit.

  Twenty minutes later, Serena was seated at a table with an ocean view and a huge plate loaded with fresh steamed shrimp. The place wasn’t fancy. The tablecloths were red-checked oilcloth instead of white linen. But the food smelled heavenly and the view was great. White-topped waves tossed their frothy manes as they landed upon the smooth beach with rhythmic regularity.

  “This is nice.”

  Rad nodded. “You’ve never been here before?”

  Serena shook her head.

  “You’re not originally from around here, are you? No accent,” he added.

  “I’m from all over. Mostly east coast although we lived in Indianapolis for a year when I was eight.”

  “Are you an army brat? You said your dad had been out of the military for a while now.”

  “He left the army when I was ten.” Her crisp tone of voice made it clear that she didn’t welcome any further discussion on that topic.

  “What made you decide to settle here?”

  “My best friend lives here. We were college roommates our freshman year at UNCW, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. I came to visit her for her wedding several years ago and liked the area. I’m an ocean person, so I like being on the coast.”

  “I know what you mean. My older brother Striker has a beach house out on Pirate’s Cove. It’s a little island off the coast. I get over there as often as I can when he’s not using the place. Since he’s moved to San Antonio, it’s vacant a lot of the time.”

  “Is he a Marine as well?”

  “He’s in the reserves. Most of his time these days is spent running King Oil and chasing after his baby son. He’s as smart as a tree full of owls, to quote my Texan brother.”

  “Did you grow up in Texas?”

  “No, although I did spend a summer or two there. Like you I grew up all over. My dad was a Marine, he’s retired now. All my other brothers are Marines.”

  “All? How many are there?”

  “My momma had five sons. The youngest two are twins.”

  “Are you the second oldest?”

  “No, that honor goes to my brother Ben. I’m the middle child.”

  “Which means, if I remember my birth order character traits correctly, that you’re the peacemaker in the family.”

  “Negative. That role falls to Ben. What about you? Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No. I’m an only child.”

  “Which means you’re a high achiever and expect a lot from life.” At her surprised look, Rad added, “Hey, I’ve read some of that birth order stuff, too. As an adult, only children tend to have high self-esteem.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “Not me.”

  “Why not?”

  “My dad didn’t want me getting a big head.” Her tone was mocking but she could feel the muscles in her neck tensing up.

  “Sounds like he gave you a hard time.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Did he hit you? Beat you?”

  Not with his fists but with his words. But she couldn’t say that because her throat closed and her mouth went dry.

  She reached for her iced tea. The condensed moisture made the glass slippery and she almost lost her hold on it. The ice cubes clattering against the sides sounded unnaturally loud in the sudden silence.

  “Steady there.” Rad reached over to straighten the glass and set it back on the table. His fingers brushed against
hers.

  Had he tried to capture her hand in his, she would have snatched it away. Instead he gently rubbed his thumb against the back of her hand.

  Serena frantically tried to come up with something sophisticated and funny to say, but was so distracted by her awareness of him and her turbulent emotions that all she could come up with was, “I don’t like talking about my childhood.”

  Right. That was an understatement. Brilliant, Serena. She pulled her hand away, exiling it to her lap where her fingertips continued to hum from his touch.

  “Then we’ll talk about something else. Like how we met.”

  She frowned. “We met at the school two days ago.”

  “Where you were madder than a rained-on rooster.”

  She lifted an eyebrow at him. “Another of your Texan brother’s quotes?”

  “Actually that was one of my grandfather’s.”

  “Yes, well, if I was aggravated with you, I had good reason.”

  “So you told me at the time. But we obviously can’t use the truth in this case about how we met, so we need to come up with something else. How about you saw me and fell instantly in love with me?”

  “How about you saw me and fell instantly in love with me,” she instantly countered.

  His slow smile was worth the wait. “That’ll work too.”

  Okay, there went her hormones again. Time to haul out the common sense practical stuff. “I think we should just go with something vague, like we met through a mutual friend.”

  “That sounds boring.”

  “Boring is good.” Hormones are bad. Bad hormones. Behave.

  “Marines are not into boring.”

  “Fine,” she retorted. “Then you think of something.”

  “Hmmm…”

  She noticed the outer corner of Rad’s eyes got all crinkly when he was thinking.

  “My brother Striker met his wife when they had to work together,” he continued. “And my brother Ben met his wife through her brother.”

  “Neither scenario would work in our case. I’m telling you, we should go with mutual friends. It’s the simplest thing.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  Did he really have to sound so doubtful when he said that? “And how did you romantically propose to me?” she asked. “Did you get down on bended knee?”

  “How about the beach?” He nodded at the view out the window where the surf washed in. “I proposed to you on the beach at sunset.”

  “Only one problem with that. From here, the sun rises over the Atlantic ocean, it doesn’t set over it. See, it’s details like those that are going to get us in trouble.”

  He raised a dark eyebrow. “You’d rather I proposed to you at sunrise?”

  “No.” She refused to allow her heart to beat a little faster at the thought of him really proposing. She’d regained control of her wild inner-female self and she planned on keeping her locked up indefinitely. Serena Serious was in charge now. “We’ll stick to your proposing on the beach. We don’t have to say when.”

  “Heidi is gonna want to know the juicy details.”

  “Who says we have to tell her?”

  “I do. Or she’ll get suspicious. So here’s the story. We met through mutual friends and I proposed on the beach here on Topsail Island while the sun set over the sound, not the ocean. You’re an only child, you went to UNCW and got your degree in…?”

  “Business administration,” Serena replied.

  “Before opening your own bookstore, you worked at…?”

  “Various jobs, including the district manager of a large bookstore chain.”

  “You moved here to coastal North Carolina…?”

  “Two years ago. Before that I lived in Raleigh, and before that I was in the Boston area, and Virginia Beach before that.”

  Rad continued his questions through dessert and the drive home. It wasn’t until Serena walked into her apartment later that evening that she realized that while she’d practically supplied him with her résumé, and even confessed her love of dark Belgian chocolate, Rad hadn’t told her anything about what he did in the Marine Corps. Other than the little he’d told her about his family, he hadn’t said much about himself at all.

  That’s when she remembered another trait of middle children. They can be secretive.

  Chapter Three

  “You what!”

  Serena winced at her best friend’s shriek and held the phone away from her ear for a second. Needing someone to talk to, Serena had curled up on her couch and called Lucy as soon as she’d stepped inside her apartment. She returned the receiver to her ear in time to hear Lucy say, “Start over again.”

  “The Marine who came to Becky’s school’s Career Day bought my building. And I’m engaged to him.”

  “To Bossy Marine Man who scared my little girl?”

  “Yeah.” Serena’s voice sounded freaked even to her own ears.

  “Is he there right now?”

  “No.”

  “Then get out the Pistachio Pistachio ice cream, I’m comin’ right over.”

  “Thanks, Lulu.” Serena used the nickname she reserved for special occasions, and this one sure qualified.

  She and Lucy had become friends as freshman college roommates at UNCW. Lucy had gotten pregnant and married after that first year, but she and Serena had remained very close.

  By the time Serena cleared the junk mail from her pine dining table and got the ice cream out of the freezer and the bowls out of the cabinet, Lucy was knocking on her door.

  The first thing she did was put her hand on Serena’s forehead. “You don’t feel like you’re running a high fever.”

  “I’m not.”

  “If you’re not delirious with a high fever then why would you say you were engaged to Bossy Marine Man?”

  “His name is Rad Kozlowski.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a Marine name to me. The Marines I know have solid, tough American names like Harry or Bud.”

  “His name is the least of my worries.” Serena dug the red plastic scooper into the ice cream and dumped a sizable portion into Lucy’s dish and then another huge scoop into her own.

  “What did he do to you?”

  “He bought my building and then offered to cut my rent in half if I’d help him.”

  “The rat buzzard. What did he want you to do? As if I couldn’t guess.”

  Serena withdrew the spoon she’d just offered Lucy. “Before I tell you anything else, you have to swear you won’t leak a word of this to anyone.”

  “I swear.”

  “Not even your husband.” Serena waved the flat-ware for extra emphasis.

  “What if we need him to beat up your Marine?”

  Lucy’s husband Alec was built like a linebacker, because he was one. He’d played that position in college. “We don’t need Alec to beat up anyone. Now swear, on this carton of Pistachio Pistachio, that you won’t tell a soul what I’m confiding in you.”

  Lucy solemnly placed her hand over the Ben & Jerry logo. “I swear. Now tell me what the rat buzzard wants you to do. Wait, let me eat a bite of ice cream first….”

  Serena quickly did the same.

  “Okay,” Lucy mumbled around the cold dessert. “Tell me.”

  “He wants me to pretend to be his fiancée.”

  Lucy frowned. “Is he gay?”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For thinking the way I do. I thought that was his reason for asking me and he acted like I was crazy instead of it being a reasonable possibility.”

  “So is he?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “That’s a very emphatic reply. Care to tell me how you can be so sure?”

  “He almost kissed me. This is definitely a guy who likes women. Which is the problem. It seems there’s a general’s daughter who’s been chasing him, and—”

  “He’s using a fiancée as an excuse to ge
t rid of her.”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “Why you?”

  “My name just happened to slip out because the girl confronted him right after I met him at the school and we had a run-in.”

  “You didn’t tell me you had a run-in with him.”

  After taking a huge bite, Serena dabbed at her chin with a paper napkin. “I didn’t think it was worth mentioning.”

  “Clearly it made an impression on him—you made an impression on him if your name was the first that came to his mind.”

  “Do you think I’m really stupid to go along with this?”

  “You haven’t told me much about what ‘this’ actually is.”

  “Pretending to be his fiancée.”

  “For how long?”

  “As long as it takes for her to lose interest. Look.” She waved the contract at Lucy. “He even had this drawn up so I would be assured that my rent would be reduced, both for the store and the apartment. It’s all here in writing.” She jabbed the document with her index finger and broke her nail in the process.

  Lucy took the paper from her and looked it over. “It also says that this is not a real engagement and does not constitute a proposal of marriage. I’d say the guy was commitment shy.”

  “He has nothing to worry about from me in that department.”

  “Because you’re commitment shy too.”

  “With good reason.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Yeah, maybe. You don’t really give most guys a chance to screw up. You dump them before they dump you.”

  “It’s safer that way.”

  “Not all guys are like your father.”

  “Most aren’t sweet like your Alec.”

  “Yet here you are engaged to a bossy military man, your worst nightmare.”

  “Yes, but I’m not really engaged. This is just a simple business arrangement.”

  “It’s a lie. And you better than anyone should know how messy things can get as a result of a lie.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that now.” Serena was upset enough with the present situation. She really couldn’t emotionally afford to dig up her past mistakes at the moment.

  “Okay. I’m just saying that things can get complicated.”

  “I realize that. But I couldn’t pass this up. The economic reality is that I need this decrease in the rent. Things have been tough.”