by Cat Johnson
“Um, I skimmed it.” Tuck hoped that lie didn’t show. He had opened it, but only to see what days they had off for holidays and school breaks. “That rule is in there?”
“Yeah. Something to the effect of no faculty member may engage in a personal or inappropriate relationship with a student or another member of the faculty.”
Tuck’s forehead creased in a frown of disbelief. “What? That’s ridiculous. I mean the student part, that’s fine, but with each other? We’re adults. It’s archaic.”
“Yeah, but you’re forgetting OSU was founded way back in the eighteen nineties. Folks were a little more Victorian in their thinking then.”
“Well Jesus, Logan. The university could update the rules every century or so, don’t you think?” He scowled.
“Sounds to me like you’re interested in engaging in a personal and or inappropriate relationship with Becca. So why do you want to leave?” Logan’s gaze was once again more intense than Tuck was comfortable with. Like the man could read his thoughts.
Maybe Logan was right. He might have pursued a relationship, rules be damned, if she were into him, too. Which she obviously wasn’t. “Do I need to repeat myself, Logan? She’s not interested.”
“You could have fooled me.”
Frustrated and ready to be done with this conversation as well as this party, Tuck let out a sigh. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe I don’t.” Logan shrugged. “And maybe she hasn’t stopped looking this way since Mark dragged her off. Of course, she could be interested in me and that’s why I keep catching her staring in this direction.”
Logan’s smirk had Tuck frowning. Real nice friend he had. Nothing like a little teasing to rub salt in the wound. If Becca was looking his way, it was probably because she was afraid he’d go spreading tales about their night together and ruin her reputation. As if he would ever do that. She really didn’t know him at all, which made his gut twist a little more.
He let out a huff of breath. “You really won’t let me leave?”
“Nope.” Logan shook his head but looked a little too amused for Tuck’s taste.
“Is that an order?”
“Does it have to be?”
This whole situation was getting more and more unbelievable. He glared at Logan. “Why are you trying to make me miserable?”
“It’s fun.”
“Great. Thanks. Glad I can be of service amusing you, but since there’s that rule and all, I think I’d better leave. Don’t want to get nailed for fraternizing or anything. You wouldn’t want me getting fired right before the big training retreat.” Tuck grasped at straws. Anything to get out of being in the same room with Becca. It was as good an excuse as any, and it wasn’t even a lie. They’d definitely fraternized, a few times.
“Oh, I think it probably wouldn’t count since she hadn’t officially started work yet. Besides, how could you have known, right? Nope, you can stay.” Logan continued to look amused. “You want another wine?”
Yes, with a beer chaser and some bourbon on the side. Tuck let out a snort. “Sure. What the hell.”
“Great, I’ll take one, too, while you’re there.” Logan grinned and waited, not moving.
Tuck shook his head and pivoted toward the bar . . . where he saw Becca standing. Now he had no way to avoid walking past her, and he would bet next month’s pay that had been his supposed friend’s plan.
He glanced back at Logan. “You know, you can be a real bastard sometimes, sir.”
He’d made sure to emphasize the sir. Logan deserved the dig. Pulling rank to make him stay at a damn party that had nothing to do with ROTC or anything else remotely related to their department or the army.
Logan laughed. Apparently there was nothing like torturing a man to raise another man’s spirits. With a huff, Tuck headed for the table where the wine was set up. Hell, maybe he would just grab a bottle and a few cups. That would cut his in and out time considerably.
Luckily, Ross was doing a good job keeping Becca occupied. Good man. He rose a notch or two higher in Tuck’s esteem. Her boss currently had Becca bogged down with the mean-looking librarian ladies. He might just get out of this thing without having to talk to her again, because if he did have to and they weren’t surrounded by a bunch of her coworkers, he might be tempted to give her a piece of his mind. He wasn’t sure Miss English professor could handle what he was thinking right now.
The problem was, what he was really thinking—and had been since that morning he’d said good-bye to her—was how they’d not only had one hell of a good night but they’d also gotten along great. And if she hadn’t left for New York, that night could have been repeated many times over. He’d liked her. A lot. Enough to want to see her again, both in and out of bed.
What a load of crap that notion had been. It was obviously not what she wanted. He wasn’t what she wanted. Apparently, when it came to dating, Oklahoma rodeo cowboys weren’t good enough for hoity-toity East Coast English professors with doctorate degrees.
The wine splashed out of the cup and onto the tablecloth. He ignored it and planted the glass bottle down with a thud. He grabbed the tiny cups, thinking one of those nice pint-size plastic ones would be much more fitting to his current mood than these flimsy, thimble-size pieces of garbage.
“Tucker.”
Crap. He tried to ignore the small voice behind him and make his getaway, but her hand on his arm stopped him in mid-step. How had she gotten away from talking with the nasty sisters so quick?
Too late to speculate, because now she had him in her clutches, literally. He stayed put, making Becca walk around to the front of him.
“Wine?” He thrust one cup at her. Let Logan get his own. This was his damn fault anyway.
“Sure.” She took it and raised the cup to her lips, which only made him remember the taste and feel of her kisses.
He shook that vision from his mind and remembered he was mad at her. “So, I was surprised to see you. You know, here. In Oklahoma. When I thought you’d be in New York.”
“You were surprised to see me? How about me seeing you? What are you doing here?” She kept her voice low, but what it lacked in volume, it made up for in intensity.
He shrugged, trying to look more casual than he felt about this conversation. “I’ve been working here for a year. What are you doing here?”
“You know why I’m here. I got hired as an associate professor. What I didn’t know is you work here, too. Why didn’t you tell me?” Her narrowed gaze swept him from head to toe. “And you’re in the army? You seemed to have neglected to mention that, too.”
She was actually mad at him for keeping secrets? That was ironic.
“You didn’t ask.” He raised the cup to his lips and nearly drained it in one swallow. When she was still looking at him like he was a liar, he repeated. “What? You never once asked what I did for work.”
“That’s because I thought you rode bulls for a living.” A frown creased the brow between her perfectly shaped eyebrows.
He forced his focus away from her looks and back to the subject at hand. “Becca, there aren’t very many riders who can earn a living just from riding bulls. Not at that level of competition anyway.”
“How was I supposed to know that? You said you had an envelope full of cash just from coming in second that night.” She ditched her cup on the table and crossed her arms over her chest.
Tuck let out a laugh. “Yeah, I had an envelope full of twenties. Not hundreds. It wasn’t like I competed in and won the national finals in Vegas, Becca. There’d be a lot of extra zeroes added to the prize money if I had. All I did was take second in one event in a little local rodeo.”
“I don’t know that kind of stuff. I’m a New Yorker. There’s no rodeo there.”
He cocked a brow. “Actually, there are rodeos there, and I hate to correct a professor, but you’re no longer in New York. Now it seems you live in Oklahoma, doesn’t it? You see, darlin’, the blame swings
both ways. You never told me what you were doing here.”
“It didn’t come up.”
“Actually it did. That morning, when I asked you to spend the day with me. Remember your answer? You said you had a meeting. An important one. That it was the whole reason you’d flown here to begin with.”
“That’s all true.”
“I’m sure it is, but that might have been a nice time to mention this meeting was an interview at OSU for a position that if you got it would mean you would no longer be living a thousand miles away in New York, but instead just a few miles down the road from where you and I spent the night sweating up the sheets.”
The sheets comment had her looking horrified. He didn’t care.
“You wanna know what I think, darlin’?” Tuck didn’t wait for the answer. Now he’d gotten started, he was on a roll. And as pansy ass as this white wine was, it had been a long time since he’d eaten lunch and the second cupful he’d downed in one gulp had gone to his head enough to loosen his tongue. “I think I was good enough to scratch your itch for a night, but that’s it, because you think I’m not good enough for you.”
Her eyes opened wide before they narrowed. He watched her nostrils flare. Phew, she looked even hotter when she got angry. “Let me tell you something . . . I could say the same thing about you. Did the thought of us seeing each other again even once cross your mind that night? No, more important than that, since that night have you even given me a second thought while you’re strutting around in your tight little jeans and assless leather chaps in front of all those perky young girls behind the chutes? Huh?”
Well, now. This was an interesting turn of events. Was Becca jealous? Still, it didn’t make him pull his punches when he said, “You don’t know me near as well as you think you do, darlin’.”
He had thought of her. Every damn day, and worse, every night. It had cost him hours of sleep he couldn’t stand to lose with his overly filled ROTC and rodeo schedule.
“Well, you . . . you . . .” She struggled for words. “You don’t know me, either.”
Tuck laughed. “Yeah. That’s become more than obvious. Excuse me. I need to get . . . somewhere.”
He was done with this conversation. He turned away from her and made a beeline through the sparse crowd to Logan. Orders or not, he had to get out of here. He needed to cool off was what he needed to do. Get away from her and all the emotions she riled up. Get alone to consider this new revelation. Jealousy was the last thing he’d expected from Becca.
Of course, it could just be the typical female reaction. The hellcat rising up inside her. She didn’t want him, but she didn’t like the thought of anyone else being with him, either. Then again, he’d noticed an insecure side to her that night. Maybe she did think he was a player and she was just a notch in his belt.
It was all too much for him to deal with here and now, under the watchful eye of both his boss and hers.
He paused just long enough to say to Logan, “I’m out of here.”
“Where’s my wine?” Logan’s gaze dropped to Tuck’s hand, where he held one empty plastic cup.
“I drank it.” Tuck waited to be dismissed.
His superior took his sweet time answering, but finally he nodded. “All right. You can go. I’ll see you tomorrow morning at PT. Zero-six-hundred.”
“Yes, sir.” Even a pre-breakfast workout sounded better to Tuck than spending one more minute here second-guessing himself and obsessing over Becca, his feelings, hers, that night . . .
Watch cap planted on his head, Tuck strode out of the room, and out of the building. The heat beating on his back was a welcome change after being trapped inside that room. Hell, maybe he’d even run back to his building. He could sure use the diversion.
Chapter Thirteen
“Everything all right?”
Becca glanced up, but the man in the uniform standing in front of her pouring himself a cupful of wine wasn’t the one who had her heart pounding. What was his rank again? His last name was written on his chest, but that didn’t do her much good since she was pretty sure she couldn’t call him mister.
“Um. Yes. Fine, Lieutenant.” She tried not to cringe as she heard the doubt in her own voice when she took a shot at remembering his rank.
“You can call me Logan, Doctor.” He smiled. “It’s only the cadets who have to call me Lieutenant Colonel or sir.”
“All right.” She nodded. “And please, call me Becca.”
She’d worked hard to get her doctorate, but she still felt strange being called doctor by anyone other than a student. It wasn’t like she was a medical doctor or curing cancer or something.
“Becca.” Logan returned her nod.
She’d seen Logan and Tucker talking. She could only imagine what that conversation had been about. Her. Them. That night. Still, Becca couldn’t stop herself from saying, “So I see your friend had to leave.”
Logan’s brows rose. “Yeah, he did. But he’s never too far away. If he’s not here on campus with the cadets, he’s at home alone in his apartment just off campus. Then of course, sometimes you can find him on the back of a bull at the rodeo.”
The way he was watching for her reaction after that rodeo comment told Becca he knew something. She opened her mouth but couldn’t figure out what to say, so she closed it again.
Logan smiled. “I’ve known Tuck for a long, long time. Not just since his billet here in the ROTC program. We grew up next door to each other. As a kid, he was in my house as often as he was home. He went through school in the same grade as my little brother. I’ve got a few years on them both, but I can’t remember a day the two of them weren’t getting under my feet, or getting into some sort of trouble.”
His casual friendly grin put her at ease, and the chance to get inside information about Tuck, even if he had acted like a jerk today, was too tempting to resist. She smiled. “You do know him well.”
“That I do. And I know even though he can be a real smart ass sometimes, there’s not a bad bone in that man.”
Again, she found herself taken off guard by Logan’s comment. She swallowed. “That’s good to hear.”
“So, you settled in after the move?”
“Mostly. I still have a few more boxes to unpack, but moving was actually less stressful than I thought it would be.” This she could handle. She’d been fielding this question for days now from family back home and people she’d just met here.
“Good. I’m glad. And there’s a staff directory with contact info for everyone who works here. In case you need anything, everyone is just a phone call away. You know who’s really good at unpacking boxes?”
“Who?”
“Anyone who’s in the military. Moving. Organizing. All that kind of stuff. It kind of comes with being in the army. Lots of moving around. Tuck and I are pretty much both experts at moving. You should give Tuck a call to help you.”
Becca couldn’t help her bitter laugh. “I’m sure he has plenty of other things he’d rather be doing.” Things. Girls.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Logan was sure doing his best to convince her Tuck was a good guy.
She let out a sigh. After how he’d acted, and how she’d reacted, she didn’t think she could bring herself to call him. Good thing Emma wasn’t here, exerting undo influence over her again, or Tuck’s number would already be dialed.
“It’s good to see you mingling.” A smiling Dean Ross appeared at her elbow.
She quickly reviewed the tail end of her conversation with Logan to make sure the dean hadn’t heard anything he shouldn’t have. As surreal as seeing Tucker here had been, Logan’s pushing her to call him was equally strange. She had heard people comment fate had led them to a current boyfriend or girlfriend, but after the past few weeks she had to wonder if maybe it hadn’t been fate or any other mysterious force in the universe at all, but simply meddling friends and family.
“Yes, I’ve been making the rounds, and just now the lieutenant colonel and I
were discussing the dreaded chore of unpacking.”
Logan grinned knowingly. “Yes, we sure were. I was offering my world-class advice on the best way to get that unpacking accomplished.”
The way Logan said the word, she got the sense somehow unpacking had become a euphemism for her getting in touch with, and probably doing so much more with, Tucker.
“Good. Good to hear.” Dean Ross slapped the other man on the back. “Logan and I have been getting together for a weekly poker game since he took over the ROTC program.”
She couldn’t imagine anything odder than the studious English department dean with his slightly wrinkled pleated pants and tie, and the lieutenant colonel in his combat boots and stiff camouflage uniform being friends. She was pretty sure there must be a good story to go along with the formation of that odd couple, but she didn’t feel up to asking about it now. She needed to get out of here and regroup after the shock of seeing Tucker.
Becca saw her opportunity to escape. She suddenly had the urge to call Emma. As amazing as it seemed, she needed her sister’s advice, which was a testament in itself as to how much this surprise encounter with Tucker had thrown her off balance.
“Ah, yes. Poker, the manliest of card games.” Grasping her last semblance of calm, she donned a smile and tried to look normal, as if a ghost from her very recent past hadn’t just stomped his combat boots right out the door of her welcome mixer.
She glanced around the room. She’d met and spoken to everyone here, and it seemed less crowded than before, so people had obviously begun to leave. That could have something to do with the waning cheese plate, which was down to not much more than the mangled rind from the Brie and a few crackers. Of course the room could feel emptier just from the absence of Tucker’s looming presence.
“If it’s all right with you, Dean Ross, I’m going to sneak out and get back to that unpacking we were discussing. Leave you men to discuss your cards.”
“Of course. You must have so much still to get done. I probably should have planned this little gathering for after you’d settled in more.”