Uniformly Hot! Volume 1 from Harlequin: Letters from HomeBreaking the RulesComing Up for Air

by Rhonda Nelson

  Uniformly Hot! Volume 1

  Letters from Home

  Breaking the Rules

  Coming Up for Air

  Rhonda Nelson

  Tawny Weber

  Karen Foley

  The Few. The Proud. The Sexy as Hell! Enjoy this specially themed Military Romance bundle from Harlequin Blaze featuring irresistible soldiers from all branches of the armed forces. UNIFORMLY HOT! Volume 1 From Harlequin includes LETTERS FROM HOME by Rhonda Nelson, BREAKING THE RULES by Tawny Weber and COMING UP FOR AIR by Karen Foley.

  Table of Contents

  Letters from Home

  By Rhonda Nelson

  Breaking the Rules

  By Tawny Weber

  Coming Up for Air

  By Karen Foley

  Excerpt from To the Limit

  Twelve military heroes.

  Twelve indomitable heroines.

  One UNIFORMLY HOT! miniseries.

  Don’t miss Harlequin Blaze’s first 12-book continuity series, featuring irresistible soldiers from all branches of the armed forces.

  Watch for:

  LETTERS FROM HOME by Rhonda Nelson

  (Army Rangers—June 2009)

  THE SOLDIER by Rhonda Nelson

  (Special Forces—July 2009)

  STORM WATCH by Jill Shalvis

  (National Guard—August 2009)

  HER LAST LINE OF DEFENSE by Marie Donovan

  (Green Berets—September 2009)

  RIPPED! by Jennifer LaBrecque

  (Paratrooper—October 2009)

  SEALED AND DELIVERED by Jill Monroe

  (Navy SEALs—November 2009)

  CHRISTMAS MALE by Cara Summers

  (Military Police—December 2009)

  Uniformly Hot!

  The Few. The Proud. The Sexy as Hell.

  Dear Reader,

  I hope that you’re enjoying the UNIFORMLY HOT! series as much as I am! These guys are true heroes in every sense of the word. They’re tough and honorable and loyal…with a little bit of badass thrown in for good measure.

  When active-duty Ranger Levi McPherson—who is currently serving in Iraq—starts getting anonymous sexy love letters from home, he’s immediately intrigued and more than a little infatuated.

  Then he’s given the unexpected opportunity to go home for a few days. And Levi is making it his mission to uncover the identity of his mysterious letter writer—and then indulge in each and every one of her fantasies….

  Be sure to look for The Soldier next month, when Adam McPherson gets his story. He might have sacrificed part of his leg for God and country, but this soldier still has a lot of offer, whether he realizes it or not.

  I love to hear from my readers, so please visit my Web site—www.readRhondaNelson.com—or check out my group blog, www.soapboxqueens.com, with fellow authors and friends Jennifer LaBrecque and Vicki Lewis Thompson. We’re always hosting some sort of party in our magical castle.

  Happy reading!

  Rhonda Nelson

  Letters from Home

  RHONDA NELSON

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A Waldenbooks bestselling author, two-time RITA® Award nominee and Romantic Times BOOKreviews Reviewers’ Choice nominee, Rhonda Nelson writes hot romantic comedy for Harlequin Blaze. In addition to a writing career she has a husband, two adorable kids, a black Lab and a beautiful bichon frise who dogs her every step. She and her family make their chaotic but happy home in a small town in northern Alabama.

  Books by Rhonda Nelson

  HARLEQUIN BLAZE

  115—PICTURE ME SEXY

  140—THE SEX DIET

  158—1-900-LOVER

  172—GETTING IT GOOD!

  217—GETTING IT RIGHT!

  223—GETTING IT NOW!

  255—THE PLAYER

  277—THE SPECIALIST

  283—THE MAVERICK

  322—THE EX-GIRLFRIENDS’ CLUB

  361—FEELING THE HEAT

  400—THE LONER

  412—THE HELL-RAISER

  HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION

  973—UNFORGETTABLE

  1007—GETTING IT!

  HARLEQUIN SIGNATURE SELECT

  THE FUTURE WIDOWS’ CLUB

  THREE GUYS YOU’LL NEVER DATE

  “Her Hero?”

  This book is dedicated with gratitude to every

  past and present member of our armed forces

  and to their families who endure in their absence.

  I am humbled and so very thankful

  for your service.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  1

  March. Baghdad, Iraq

  ANOTHER letter. From her.

  Levi McPherson felt a current of heat snake through his weary limbs and settle hotly in his loins. A slow smile sliding over his lips, he sank onto the edge of his bed and ignored the various sounds echoing through the concrete barracks. The catcalls, the buzz of laughter, the odd guitar and video-game noises faded into insignificance as he carefully opened the envelope.

  Quite frankly, aside from the rare telephone call and e-mail, there was nothing more wonderful to a deployed soldier than a letter from home. Since arriving in Iraq some ten months ago he’d gotten letters from his former unit mates—Lucas “Huck” Finn and Mick Chivers—his parents, his sister, his nieces and nephews, his high-school algebra teacher and, hell, even his boat mechanic.

  And he’d appreciated each and every one of them.

  But the letters he’d started getting from the Mysterious Ms. X, as Levi had begun to call her, were admittedly the ones he found himself anticipating the most during mail call. Though she never signed her name to any of the letters, but instead ended each steamy missive with a simple “Yours,” Levi knew she was a hometown girl because the return address was a post-office box in Bethel Bay, a sleepy little backwater town nestled just north of Hilton Head, South Carolina. Home, he thought with a pang of nostalgia, missing the scent of magnolia blossoms and salty sea air. Missing his mother’s meat loaf, tag football and sailing.

  The last most of all.

  Though he wasn’t home often enough to justify keeping his boat—a sweet little thirty-three-foot Columbia Boomerang—Levi couldn’t quite bring himself to sell it. Being out on the water, hearing the snap of the wind in the sails…Other than being on the front line of a battlefield, it was the only place he’d ever felt grounded. He loved the sea, the expanse and depth, the sheer vastness of it. It was easy to make sense of his own place in the world when he was on the water.

  And whoever Ms. X was knew it, too, because she’d mentioned seeing his father taking the Sabrina out for a turn around the bay. Levi winced. Damn, he really needed to do something about that name, he thought. Despite the fact that he’d painted over the moniker—that of his ex-fiancée, who’d literally left him at the altar two years ago—the bright-blue letters still bled through. He should have painted them over in black, he thought darkly.

  The color would have matched Sabrina’s miserable, faithless heart.

  Water under the bridge, Levi reminded himself, fishing the letter out of the envelope. It was done. Finished. Ov
er. Better that he find out now that she didn’t have the emotional strength to be a military wife. Hell, the first time he’d counted on her to keep the home fires burning, she’d gotten lonely and kept the sheets hot with an old flame. His lips twisted bitterly.

  Unfaithfulness was sort of a deal-breaker in his book.

  It was all for the best really. He’d been trying to find the kind of love his parents shared and had known deep in his heart that the connection wasn’t right with Sabrina. She’d been an ill-planned substitute. Since her, though he’d been left feeling a bit hollow on the inside, Levi had given up on the idea of marriage and family. He’d decided it simply wasn’t in his cards.

  He heaved a silent sigh and made a mental note to check in with Adam, his little brother, who was also currently serving in Iraq. Not that he necessarily needed to check in on him. Only two years younger than him, Adam was a crackerjack soldier, and Levi knew he would always have his back. But old habits died hard and, though it was unreasonable, he couldn’t seem to shake the pervading feeling that he needed to protect Adam, that even after all these years, it was still his job.

  Shrugging off a bit of unease, Levi unfolded the letter and felt a smile roll over his lips as the familiar feminine writing—neat and a bit loopy—filled the page.

  Dear Levi,

  I dreamed about you again last night. I dreamed you were home and, more importantly, mine. I dreamed you wanted me, really wanted me, that you walked through my front door, our eyes locked and a second later you were on me, taking me hard and fast against the door.

  Sweet mercy, was she trying to kill him? Did this woman have any idea how these letters affected him? How therapeutic the ones he wrote back to her were?

  You kissed me as though you needed my breath to breathe, you took my breasts into your mouth and suckled the peaks until I almost came. You slipped your wickedly talented fingers into my panties and I rubbed myself against you, satisfied…but not, wanting more. Needing more. I’m hot and muddled now, remembering.

  Welcome to the club, sweetheart, he thought, chuckling darkly. At the moment his balls felt like they’d been hit with a blow torch.

  It was the sort of dream I never wanted to wake up from, and when I did, I still tingled with release, imagined I could even still feel you there, deep inside of me. I ache for you in places I scarcely recognize, most notably…my heart.

  Imagination was an interesting thing, Levi thought, and in this regard she definitely had the advantage. She was imagining him. Obviously, she knew him. She’d cited too many little things in previous letters—including local gossip—not to know both him—and his brother, for that matter—relatively well.

  Meanwhile, his underinformed imagination had just enough sexy information from her to have him cocked, locked and ready to rock with a few strokes of her pen, but he had no face to put with the vision. Not exactly true. He’d put a face with the vision. An image of dark-red hair, big brown eyes and a mouth made for sin suddenly materialized in his mind’s eye. He sucked a breath through his teeth and gave his head a small shake.

  Off-limits, he told himself. Don’t go there.

  It couldn’t—wouldn’t—be her.

  He desperately wanted to know Ms. X’s identity, but until she slipped up—or he went home to investigate, which in his present situation was out of the question—he was completely at her mercy.

  Levi McPherson didn’t like being at anyone’s mercy, but after the Sabrina fiasco, when he’d looked and felt like a damned fool, particularly a woman’s.

  Furthermore, while the sexy nature of the letters was a stoker, there was something more at work here. He felt a strange sort of connection with his anonymous letter-writer. She got him. Truly got him. And that was more of a turn-on than anything she could write.

  I know I should probably stop sending you these letters, but I just can’t seem to help myself. I’m bleeding my fantasies of you right onto the page—albeit anonymously—and it feels good to finally give voice to my feelings. My desires. I’ve wanted you…forever, and telling you in detail is the next best thing in the absence of the courage to actually admit who I am. Cowardly, I know, but…

  “Levi?”

  Levi looked up and saw a couple of his unit mates standing in the doorway. The grave looks on their faces made his heart rate skip into a frantic rhythm and a cold sweat break across his shoulders. And they’d used his given name, not “Remington”—as in Steele—the nickname he’d been given in jump school. Paper crackled in the wretched silence as his fingers involuntarily tightened.

  “It’s Adam,” Will Forrester told him. “Another damned IED.”

  Miserable roadside bombs, Levi thought as nausea clawed the back of his throat. A punch of panic landed in his gut, momentarily ending his ability to breathe. This had always been a possibility—they were at war, after all, soldiers on the front line of the battlefield. But no amount of mental preparation had readied him for this. He swallowed, dredging deep for the courage he knew he was going to need.

  “Where is he?”

  “They’re bringing him in.” Will swallowed. Hard. “He’s in bad shape, Levi.”

  Yeah, well, bad shape was better than dead, Levi thought, relief flooding through him. He’d seen too many damned flag-draped coffins lately, and putting his little brother in one was more than he cared to contemplate.

  Hang tight, bro. I’m coming.

  2

  Dear Levi,

  I saw your boat on the bay today and wondered what it would be like to make love on the water. You rocking inside of me while the boat rocked along the waves…

  Three months later…

  LAST WEEK, WHEN Natalie Rowland’s assistant, in a bout of unusual efficiency, had mistakenly gathered up her private correspondence along with her art gallery’s promotional mailings and stamped her return address onto what was supposed to have been—and would forever remain—an anonymous sexy love letter, then had personally carried it and the rest of the mail to the post office, Natalie had known a single blinding moment of panic as she’d belatedly realized that her private—God help her—no-longer anonymous letter had been posted.

  That gut-wrenching, miserable, hyperventilating, nausea-inducing panic paled in comparison with the news she’d just received.

  “Levi’s c-coming home,” she repeated, her voice a strangled croak. A familiar sense of unease made her stomach wobble in warning.

  Adam McPherson shifted, barely winced, and tossed the five of clubs onto the discard pile. Though she knew on some level that he had to mourn—and even resent, to some degree—the recent loss of his right leg below the knee, since returning home to his parents’ house in Bethel Bay a week ago from The Center for the Intrepid in San Antonio, Texas—the nation’s premier facility for amputee and burn victims—he hadn’t voiced a single complaint.

  She’d catch the occasional broodingly haunted expression, when she knew he was reliving the horror of the incident that had taken part of his leg, but the minute he caught her looking at him, he’d blink away the expression and smile. But that was Adam. A stoic goofball with hidden depths, and one of her oldest and dearest friends.

  She’d missed him terribly over the years and had looked forward to his visits home, but admittedly, this was not the sort of occasion she’d been hoping for. His mother had called her as soon as she’d heard the news and had kept her updated until Adam had made it back to town.

  Despite the fact that his surgery had gone well and he was healing nicely, recovery would be a long arduous road, but one she had every confidence he would tread with his usual wry humor and determination.

  Even if he had to do it with a prosthesis.

  His physical therapy was progressing well and, considering the recent advancements in prosthetic technology, he had every intention of returning to active duty as soon as humanly possible. Or so he said and, for his sake and sanity, Natalie certainly hoped so. At the moment Adam was staying with his parents in their beautiful bayside home
just a few doors down from her own cottage while recuperating.

  Speculation had run rampant during their high-school and college years as to whether their friendship would ever develop into something romantic, but that had never been a possibility. She inwardly smiled.

  Probably because she’d been in love with his older brother, Levi, for what felt like most of her life.

  Though she’d nursed a crush on Levi during high school—a crush that had started within a few days of the McPhersons’ arrival in Bethel Bay after Levi and Adam’s father had retired—Natalie could vividly remember the exact moment when she’d fallen in love with him.

  It had been another hot summer night at the beach, just one of many they’d spent gathered around a fire listening to music and hanging out. A few yards down the beach a couple had been arguing and, as time wore on, the fight escalated. Things hit a fever pitch, and the guy backhanded the woman across the face, knocking her to the ground.

  Without the slightest hesitation, Levi had raced down the beach and pummeled the hell out of the guy, who at the time had been at least twice his age. Show some respect, you weak bastard, he’d said.

  And she’d never forgotten it.

  Though that had been the defining moment for her, there’d been many more over the years. Levi was the type of guy who never missed an opportunity to do the right thing, even if it was hard. He was always the first to befriend the friendless, to champion the underdog. He was the kind of guy who walked little old ladies across the street, always stopped to help a stranded motorist change a tire and never failed to open a door for a lady. He was a rare combination, a dying breed of man—he was a gentleman and a hero, a beautiful badass who’d made her heart sing.