Her Rebel Heart
Jamie Farrell
Contents
Glossary of Military Terms
Introduction
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
The Complete Jamie Farrell Book List
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
To Buttercup - may you one day reach the stars.
Glossary of Military Terms
Because Lance is a military pilot and Kaci is a military ex-wife, there are several military acronyms used in Her Rebel Heart. Here’s a quick cheat sheet.
BCG – Birth Control Glasses, aka military issue prescription glasses
LT – lieutenant, the lowest rank a commissioned military officer in the Air Force can have. (Enlisted Air Force ranks go from basic airman to chief master sergeant.)
C-130 – cargo airplane
Herc – short for “Hercules.” The C-130 Lance flies is formally known as the C-130 Hercules.
MREs – Meals Ready to Eat, aka military field rations
IP – Instructor Pilot,
Capt – short for Captain
USAF – United States Air Force
STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. (Fun fact - this one isn’t a military term! It’s an acronym in Kaci’s academic world.)
LEOs – Law Enforcement Officers, aka the local cops
ROTC – Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, a training program to prepare officers to be commissioned into the military upon college graduation
FAA - Federal Aviation Administration
F-15, F-16 - Fighter jet models flown by the Air Force
Her Rebel Heart
Book #1 in the Officers’ Ex-Wives Club series
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A sexy military pilot, an unpredictable physics professor, and a side-splitting adventure in unexpected love!
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Kaci Boudreaux is every Southern mama’s nightmare, including her own. This former Miss Grits would rather tromp around in boots shooting off potato guns—and her mouth—than dress pretty and play nice with the boys. Especially her chauvinistic fellow professors, her ex-husband, and those military cargo pilots she accidentally started a war with.
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Lance Wheeler is every Southern belle’s dream, except his ex-fiancé’s. After being left at the altar, he’d love to take his C-130 and fly far, far away. But since his bird technically belongs to Uncle Sam (as does he), a distraction in the form of a feisty fireball of a physics professor will do while he’s waiting for his next deployment with the Air Force.
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He’s into her for the fun. She’s into him for the challenge. But when their secrets start slipping out, their hearts will be on the line. She needs roots. He wants to see the world. What will they do about needing each other?
The Officers’ Ex-Wives Club Series:
Her Rebel Heart (Lance and Kaci)
Southern Fried Blues (Jackson & Anna Grace)
Moonshine & Magnolias (Zack & Shelby)
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Chapter 1
Lance Wheeler should’ve been at his wedding.
He had the rings. The church. The tux. The reception hall, the caterers, and the flowers and cake and photographer. He had next week off for his honeymoon.
But as of five days ago, he no longer had a fiancée.
As of an hour ago, he’d ditched his friends and their efforts to cheer him up.
Somewhere between the time he’d met Allison and this past Monday, when she’d decided her life was going in a different direction, he’d lost his taste for the party scene.
Would’ve rather been up at thirty thousand feet, just him and his bird dancing between the earth and the sky. Flirting with the heavens while he worked out this weird mix of pain, loneliness, and a surprising tremor of relief. Unfortunately, his commander had grounded him while he got his head back on straight.
So here he was, on a hard wooden stool on a lonely Saturday night, a full beer taunting him on the bar.
This was what he was supposed to do. Get drunk. Find a chick. Screw around.
Embrace bachelorhood.
Problem was, he couldn’t remember how.
Someone shuffled to the bar beside him. “Gimme a tequila, sugar. And if you got a chaser that’ll make my ex disappear, I’ll take that too.”
Lance twisted his neck to investigate and almost fell off his stool.
She couldn’t have stood taller than five-four and had the right amount of curve on every inch of her petite body. The breasts under her pink T-shirt, the hips in her tight jeans, even her slender arms and neck had graceful arcs to them. Her blond hair fell in waves about her smooth, round cheeks, and her eyes were sparks of blue mischief even while her pink lips were drawn into a fierce line.
Her hands trembled. She fisted them and pressed them into the bar.
A fighter.
His groin stirred. So did his pride. Some guilt, too.
She flicked a glance in his direction.
He should’ve gone back to minding his own business.
But when she did a double take, her eyes widening and her lips parting, all of his blood converged south.
“Evening,” he said.
Her knuckles were white, but she was smooth, coordinated grace when she nodded to his beer. “You fixin’ to drink that? Because if not, I’d be happy to toss it on back.”
An honest smile tugged his lips. That hadn’t happened in six days. “All yours so long as I get to watch.”
“It have anyone’s name on it already?”
It did, but she wasn’t there.
And the she in question didn’t drink beer. Or do shots. Or say fixin’ to. “Nope.”
The blonde flicked a look over her shoulder. Her left cheek twitched. She slid onto the stool beside him, twisted so her knees touched his thigh, and pulled his beer to her spot. “Too kind of you.”
“Anything to help a lady in distress.”
Guilt stabbed him in the chest again, but he shook it off.
He wasn’t married. He wasn’t engaged. He wasn’t dating anyone.
He was absolutely, one hundred percent single. He was free to flirt with a sexy blonde.
Even if being a bachelor was still a foreign sensation.
Was Allison out drinking tonight? Was she with someone?
And would it honestly bother him if she were? Why should he want a woman who didn’t want him?
“You from round here?” the blonde asked.
“Today.” Not much longer if he had his choice. “You?”
She chuckled. “Sure, sugar. I’m from round here today too.” She angled closer to him, those perfect breasts mere inches from his arm.
He might’ve been out of the dating scene for the last three years, but he recognized a woman on a mission to make another man jealous.
And he didn’t mind
a damn bit.
Would’ve been doing the same if his ex were sitting in the bar, watching him.
The bartender delivered her tequila. She licked the salt off the rim with a dart of her quick pink tongue, tossed the glass back, and then expertly sucked the lime.
“You from round here just today?” he asked.
She winked as she finished the lime. “I’m from round the corner most every day.”
He slid a glance around the bar. Two guys were playing pool. Couples and groups occupied nearly every other table. A few people looked their way, but Lance couldn’t immediately pick out a jealous ex-boyfriend staring him down.
Just an older dude watching them.
Couldn’t blame the guy.
The blonde reached up and plucked at his short hair. He’d even gotten his wedding haircut before Allison dumped him.
“Got a little piece of something up there,” she said, but her eyes said this was all a game.
“You really want to make him jealous, don’t you?” he murmured.
“If it was legal, I’d strap the man to a rocket and send him back where he came from. But since it’s not, I’ll settle for demonstrating for him that I’m moving on. That okay with you?”
“Sure, seeing as I’m here today.”
“Awful darn nice of you.” She crossed her legs and put a hand on his knee. “I’ll owe you one. But I’m off men right now. Just so you know.”
“Even just for…today?” The words slipped out before he realized he’d even thought them, but he didn’t want to take them back.
Because her eyes locked on his, shimmering and intrigued, while her hand tightened on his knee. “What kind of girl do you take me for?”
“The kind who didn’t just get up and walk away.”
His heart knocked at his breastbone. His fingers shook. There was every possibility she would throw his beer back in his face.
Probably needed it. Would be a good wake-up call.
“You military?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t you ma’am me. What do you think I am, old enough to be your momma?”
“Old enough to be the sexy schoolgirl around the corner.” He didn’t even know her name, but flirting with this woman was making him feel more normal, less off-kilter and more focused than he’d been all week.
She’d probably shoot him down, but what the hell did he have left to lose?
“Just today, hmm?” She slowly licked her lips.
The sight of her tongue sent his remaining blood straight to his dick. “Today’s all we ever have,” he said.
Her other hand came to rest on his thigh, and she leaned all the way in to him. “So you know,” she whispered, her breath hot on his ear, her spicy-sweet scent tickling his nose, “I’m not usually this kind of girl.”
She leaned closer, those pink lips parting, her lashes fluttering down to touch her cheeks, and his brain short-circuited.
This sexy, outspoken woman wanted him.
This could be a setup, a hazy part of his brain whispered.
She could be batshit crazy, another part suggested.
But she was warm. She’d made him smile. And she’d also made him harder than he could ever remember being.
Because she was new.
Fresh.
The complete opposite of the wife he’d almost had.
Exactly what he needed tonight.
His body was on fire. She was gorgeous. A firecracker. And unlike a certain other woman no longer in his life, she wanted him.
He was a master of control on the flight deck of his C-130 Hercules, but his hands shook when he splayed his fingers over her back.
Her lips touched his, and instinct took over.
He angled his mouth against hers and tasted her lips. Her hands slid up his shoulders, up his neck, around into his hair, and her mouth parted for him. He plunged his tongue in, tasting salt and lime and sweet, hot heaven.
Allison’s problem hadn’t been Lance. He wasn’t broken. She hadn’t dumped him because there was something wrong with him.
There was nothing wrong with him.
He was strong. He was attractive. He was hot and hard and throbbing. He could have any woman on the planet, and the proof was right here.
With this sexy blonde practically climbing into his lap, her tongue in his mouth, her hands tearing at his shirt.
Allison’s life was going in a different direction?
Fuck her.
Lance’s life was going in a different direction too.
His life was headed in the direction of getting laid.
Tonight.
Now, right here, in some bar, with—
“Who are you?” he gasped.
He didn’t know her. Her name. Her history. Why she needed to make out with strangers in a bar.
“You go on and call me anything you want.” She hooked her hand behind his neck again, her touch hot and confident and sexy as hell, but also—
Wrong.
Fuck.
He didn’t know her name.
He was kissing a woman, thinking about stripping her down and feasting on her most intimate parts, and he didn’t even know her name.
On the night he should’ve been getting married.
To a woman whom, just a week ago, he’d sworn he would love forever.
“Don’t stop now,” she whispered.
Pled, really. As though she wanted to disappear into the oblivion of him as much as he wanted to disappear into the oblivion of her.
To not be whoever she was anymore.
To live a different life through him.
He jerked back. “Sorry,” he muttered.
He couldn’t look at her. He ran a hand over his stiff hair and fumbled off the stool.
He could still taste her on his lips, still feel the brand of her touch on his skin, still hear the rush of his pulse banging in his head as his life came back into focus.
The gut-wrenching, heart-bending, bleak reality of who he’d almost become.
“Sorry,” he said again.
And before she could say another word in that sassy voice of hers, he charged out of the bar.
Chapter 2
Four weeks later…
Kaci Boudreaux might’ve been born with the face of a Southern belle and the brain of a quantum physicist, but she had the heart of a redneck. And today, for the first time in too long, that heart was in hog heaven.
Twenty feet down the way, the macho team from Gellings Air Force Base pulled the lever to release their catapult.
A satisfying thwack of wood and springs bounced through the air, followed by the even more satisfying crunch of a pumpkin exploding upon takeoff. Orange innards soared a measly twenty feet beneath the crisp October sky and rained down on the dry grass.
She whooped—a good ol’ rebel yell—and high-fived Zada Koury, her team’s student captain. “We got this, ladies!”
The Gellings team had one more pumpkin left to chuck in the fall festival today, but their catapult had too much torque, and the gourds didn’t have the surface tension necessary to withstand the force of the air pressure that came with the launch velocity. There wasn’t a pumpkin in the world with skin thick enough to survive being launched off that thing. Kaci would’ve loved to see it loaded down with a watermelon, or maybe a cannonball—man, that thing would probably give a boulder wings—but she was more excited about pending victory.
Her students, all ladies from the Physics Club at James Robert College, were about to be the first all-female team in the history of the Gellings Fall Fest to take home first place in pumpkin-chucking. And for tossing a gourd over a third of a mile at that.
If there was one thing Kaci Boudreaux knew, it was how to design a catapult. She’d nearly gotten herself a juvie record with that knowledge. But Ichabod, the catapult her team had entered, had been completely designed and built by the students.
“This means no homework for a month, right, Dr. Boudreaux?” Jess P
eterson, a freshman who’d jumped right into the Physics Club with both feet at the start of the semester, flashed an impish grin.
“Why would I deprive anyone of the fun of physics homework? I’m fixin’ to treat all y’all to some ice cream though.”
The military boys were loading up their last shot. One of them snickered. Another shoved a third. Three more huddled over their pumpkin, rubbing it and whispering.
The judge said something to them, and all eight or nine backed up. Two of them wiped their hands on their pants.
“This is it,” Zada whispered.
Kaci’s team crowded together.
“Think it’ll break again, Dr. Boudreaux?” Jess said.
“Darn near certainty.” Kaci pointed to the catapult. “See how tight they’ve got it wound down?” She geeked out, rattling physics principles and design theories until she realized she’d lost them, then fell silent and waited for that beautiful sound of wood cracking and pumpkin crunching into pie in the sky.
One of the guys pulled the release, and the catapult sprang straight with that perfect, reverberating ka-THUD!
But there was no accompanying squish.
No pumpkin guts.
Just a beautiful orange gourd slicing through the blue sky, a perfect arc, perfect height, perfect angle, perfect speed.
“Nuh-uh,” Kaci whispered.
“Wow,” one of the girls murmured.
“That can’t beat us, can it?” Zada said.
The black-shirted boys were all hollering, arms up, fists pumping, chest-bumping each other like Neanderthals.
Their pumpkin started its descent to the ground, a pinprick in the distance, too far away for the satisfying crunch of smashing pumpkin on impact.
And the boys were still hollering.
“That thing went a mile!”
“Did it land on the road?”
“If it did, that road’s sprouting pumpkins next spring.”
Zada angled closer to Kaci, her brown eyes thick with worry. “That went at least as far as ours, didn’t it?”
Her Rebel Heart Page 1