“Can’t say breast in a call sign. New Air Force, dude.”
Taking a roommate had seemed like a good idea at the time. Lance didn’t want to come home to an empty house while he waited for his deployment rotation to come up, and Juice Box had been living in an apartment with a leaky roof, questionable plumbing, and two hundred more a month in rent than Lance charged.
Having Juice Box here was like having a horny puppy that talked. He left shit everywhere, loved chasing sticks, had the attention span of a gnat, and tried to hump anything with legs and a pulse.
“Running low on beer again,” Juicy said. “Hey, can we bring dates to the squadron picnic next weekend? Got a buddy whose sister goes to school over at the college here, and he asked if I’d watch out for her.”
Lance’s sister had never had any issues taking care of herself, but that didn’t mean his big-brother instincts didn’t spike when Juicy was talking about anybody’s sister. “On behalf of your buddy, if you touch her, kiss her, say anything suggestive, or so much as imagine her naked, I will personally twist you into a human pretzel, light your hair on fire, and kick you off the ramp of my Herc without a parachute next time I’m in the air. Got it?”
Juicy grinned. “Lightning doesn’t let you threaten her boyfriends, does she? Hey, when’s she coming back to town?”
Four months.
Lance deployed in four months. He could tolerate this for four more months.
God only knew what Juice Box would do in the house while he was gone, but on some level, he knew having the kid here was better than living with a wife who didn’t want him.
Plus, if the deployment went well and he played his cards right, he’d have networked his way into a by-name request from another squadron, and he’d be putting the house up for sale and getting out to see the world.
But in the meantime, Juicy was a good distraction.
Not as good a distraction as the blonde would’ve been, but life was never perfect.
Chapter 3
Just after dusk, Kaci sat at the edge of the fairgrounds with Tara Shivers, her roommate and sometimes partner in crime. Tara was an adorable brunette. She’d been a friend of a friend looking for a new apartment at the same time Kaci had moved here just under a year and a half ago. They’d both been newly divorced from military men, adjusting to a new town, and eager to get on with their lives.
Like too many military wives and ex-wives, Tara was overqualified for jobs that required little to no experience, but underexperienced for jobs that required her educational qualifications. So she was taking classes toward an accounting degree at James Robert while working nights and weekends at Jimmy Beans, the coffee shop just off base. She was moderately more levelheaded than Kaci, which had made her the perfect choice as an assistant to keep Kaci from going too redneck and getting herself arrested tonight.
“Are you sure this is legal?” Tara said from her perch in the back of Kaci’s Jeep.
“Nothing illegal about improving a catapult.” Kaci flung her knife into the dry earth. She pried off the pumpkin’s top and shoved one of her ex-husband’s old medals inside. “I’m so done with military men. They’ve died on me, divorced me, and now they’ve taken my girls’ trophy. If I could put the whole lot of them in this pumpkin and launch them instead, I would.”
Especially the one who’d given her the hottest kiss of her life and then run away. She’d shove him in that pumpkin first.
Pompous bastard.
“Can mine go in too?” Tara’s flashlight bobbed in the night.
“Absolutely.” Kaci patched the pumpkin back up, then loaded it into a slightly modified Ichabod.
Her girls were winning this contest next year, dang it. No more arrogant, dark-haired, hypnotizing-eyed flyboys would beat her team.
He’d been right.
Even if his squadron had juiced their pumpkin, it wasn’t against the rules.
Not in this contest.
Which meant her girls simply had to have a better catapult. And she probably owed him and his team an apology.
Without kissing.
Sweet baby José, that had been the worst way ever to work off steam after a day of bad news. What she got for running out of tequila at home.
“So, ah,” Tara said, “usually wouldn’t you like to see where you’re aiming something like that? It’s kinda dark outside.”
“Miles and miles of cornfield, Miss Goody Two-Shoes. Hush on up and help, or get out of my way.”
Tara’s laugh interrupted a hooting owl. “Miss Goody Two-Shoes? Have we met?”
“Stand back. I’m letting her rip.”
Tara scooted farther back. “Should’ve brought night-vision goggles.”
“You got a pair?”
“It’s the one thing of Brandon’s I didn’t burn.”
“Lordy goodness, girl. Why didn’t you say so?”
“I didn’t know exactly what you were up to.”
“Huh.” Kaci set the catapult, then stepped back and tugged Ichabod’s release mechanism.
The sound of rattling wood as the pumpkin took flight eased the ache in her chest and the irritation in her belly and brain.
Tara was right. She should’ve brought night-vision goggles so she could see if her tweaks to Ichabod were helping or hurting.
A soft thud echoed in the darkness.
“Aaahh,” she sighed.
Nothing like destruction and exploding pumpkins to lift a woman’s burdens.
“I thought you already did this after your divorce,” Tara said while Kaci grabbed another pumpkin and started cutting the top off. “Didn’t you say something about a blowtorch? Or was that in one of my books?”
“This ain’t about him. It’s about military men in general.”
“It’s a conundrum. They’re so hot in books, but such jerks in real life.”
“Amen, sister.” Kaci actually loved military men—for the most part, they were honorable and strong and handsome, just like her daddy had been. But there was so much about them she just couldn’t swallow anymore.
“You gonna tell me what happened today, or should I guess? No, wait. Can I guess? Please?”
She fought against a smile and lost. In addition to being an underemployed former military wife, Tara wrote romance novels in her spare time. “Go on,” Kaci said. “I could use a good laugh.”
“The pumpkin-chucking contest was actually a recruiting event for a black-ops mission requiring a team of redneck engineers, and they didn’t pick you?”
“Hush your mouth. You know I would’ve been first on that list.”
Tara laughed. “There were vampires?”
“You can do better than that, sugar.”
“Werewolves?”
“Getting closer.”
“Ol’ Grandpappy showed up with your secret love child.”
When Tara had discovered Kaci’s ex was thirteen years her senior, she’d given him the nickname. For that alone, Kaci would claim her for life. “Nope.”
“Oooh, wait. Did Mr. Kiss-and-Run show up?”
Her shoulders hitched. She forced herself to snort in what she hoped was disbelief while she stuffed her pumpkin with an old pair of uniform socks she’d found in a box of notes from her grad student days.
“He did! Kaci! You need to spill. Right this instant.”
Kaci plopped the pumpkin into Ichabod, checked the catapult’s settings, then gestured for Tara to stay clear. “Firing.”
She pulled the release mechanism, and Ichabod tossed that pumpkin like yesterday’s gravy.
Watching that gourd fly off and disappear into the night sent a thrill through her veins almost as heady as if she’d been riding a rocket herself, though infinitely less terrifying.
Which was exactly what had sent her to that bar a month ago, looking for a distraction for her life.
What should’ve been the highlight of her career so far—being asked to headline a conference on efficient combustion at one of the largest physics symposium
s in the world—had her shaking in terror.
Because going to the symposium in Germany meant she had to fly.
“Is he a werewolf?” Tara said. “Is that why he had to run away? Because he was about to shift into wolf form? No, wait. He has to take a wife so he can inherit his family business, so he’s engaged, but he doesn’t actually love her. Or—oh. Oh, no. He’s dying, and only a kiss from his true love will save him, so he goes bar-hopping every night to try to find her, but his time’s running out, and—”
“His team beat my girls,” she said.
Tara flashed her light in Kaci’s eyes. “Seriously? It was the guy from the bar?”
Kaci ducked out of the light. She grabbed another pumpkin and went to work hacking a hole around the stem.
“I heard a team from the base won,” Tara said.
Kaci nodded.
“He’s military? Stationed here?”
“Looks like.”
“Oh, Kaci, this isn’t good.”
“It’s just fine. He’s gonna stay on his side of the base, and I’m gonna stay far, far outside of it. It was one night. And I know better than to get involved with another military man. Besides, he was a horrible kisser.”
“You know what’s crazy?” Tara said. “I know I was a bad military wife, but every time I see a man in uniform, I still kinda want to jump him.”
“Girl, you got issues.” As if she could talk.
“I’m not the one shoving BCGs in a pumpkin. Crap. Birth control glasses. Dang it. Military-issue prescription glasses. There. That’s not too military, is it? I’m trying to quit speaking military. Did Ol’ Grandpappy really wear those?”
“Yep. And you do me a favor and give me ten minutes’ warning if you’re fixin’ to call him that to his face. I wanna be there.”
“Won’t happen. He doesn’t come to Jimmy Beans anymore.”
“Wish he’d do my office the same honor,” she muttered. She could do with seeing her ex less.
“Rumor is he wants you back.”
“He had a fling with his secretary after I left and realized how good he had it with me.”
Kaci was also nearly certain he’d issued his ultimatum—drop everything and have kids now, or they were over—without actually intending to follow through on it. But even though her parents’ marriage had been cut short when she was still in grade school, she had known without a doubt that husbands and wives shouldn’t have to threaten divorce to get their way.
Also, Ron had been right when he dumped her.
She’d never loved him the way a wife should. “I ever tell you about the time he made a pass at my momma?”
“Omigod, no!”
“Said he thought she was my sister.” Kaci loaded the pumpkin into the launcher. “That man just wants what he can’t have. Just like they all do.”
She double-checked Ichabod, then gave him an extra crank to see how much torque the catapult could take. “Fly good, magic pumpkin,” she said.
She stepped back. “Ready?” she said to Tara.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Great.” She tugged the release mechanism.
“No, wait, wait!”
The pumpkin whizzed into the darkness and the catapult bounced, its weight thudding on the ground. “What? What?”
“Fire!” Tara pointed in the direction the pumpkin had just sailed.
An orange glow flickered on the horizon. Small, contained like a campfire, but still a fire.
Directly in Ichabod’s firing path.
“Oh, shit,” Kaci whispered.
She didn’t hear the pumpkin thud to the ground.
But she heard something else.
Voices.
Loud, surprised voices.
“What do we do?” Tara shrieked.
Run.
She wanted to run.
But her daddy would’ve skinned her hide six ways to Sunday if she didn’t own up to her own messes.
“Get on up in the Jeep. I’m gonna go make sure nobody’s hurt. And don’t touch my pumpkins.”
Kaci might have been thirty-four years old, and her daddy might’ve been gone too many years already, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still scared to death of her momma. So she set across the field, praying everything was fine.
* * *
Lance couldn’t get the blonde off his brain.
The whiskey he’d been nursing helped marginally. So did shooting the shit with his buddies about today’s pumpkin-chucking contest. As did patting Gertrude, a stuffed wild boar they kept in the unofficial squadron bar.
Pony lived on the outskirts of town next to the fairgrounds. He had converted his backyard shop to a man cave and then opened it up for all of them to use. The building had water and electricity, and they all pitched in to keep it stocked with chips and liquor.
And the wooden bar tucked along the back wall kept taking Lance back to the night that he should’ve gotten married. To the sassy, intriguing blonde who’d been frank about wanting to use him to make her ex jealous.
To that moment he’d given in to weakness and thought he could be the kind of guy who made out with a woman without knowing her name.
She was more than a nameless woman, he’d discovered today.
In full daylight, she’d been undeniably gorgeous. Those blue eyes sparking, those pink lips pouty, and she’d known all the right ways to show off her assets.
She’d also been batshit crazy.
He shook his head and blinked at the flame glowing in the darkness. Pony touched it to the crumpled newspaper beneath the logs in the fire pit, and an old, familiar crackle joined the song of the night insects. A few of the guys had brought out one of Pony’s homebrew kegs, and most of them were kicked back around the circle, taking in the stars overhead.
Allison hadn’t hated camping, but she’d always preferred doing it from the comfort of a hotel room. Nothing stopping Lance from sleeping under the stars tonight if he wanted to.
He didn’t regret that they hadn’t gotten married.
He regretted that they hadn’t parted ways sooner.
An odd thump sounded somewhere in the darkness.
“That you, Thumper?” Pony said.
Juice Box snickered and thumped his leg like that danged cartoon rabbit. “Feel better if you get some, old man. Already told you I’ll let you have that blonde from today, but if you don’t want her…”
“Life lesson number seventeen,” Lance said to Juice Box. “Don’t go for chicks who call you cheaters.”
Which was advice he needed to take for himself.
The fire was growing, flames licking at the wood, popping and fizzing. Pony lifted his glass. “How ’bout that trophy?”
They all lifted their own cups and agreed their catapult had been a thing of beauty.
Damn good to be number one.
At something, anyway.
The bonfire was picking up steam, crackling and glowing merrily in the moonlight.
He inhaled a deep lungful of night air and campfire smoke. Would be a beautiful night to fly. Get up there in the sky with the stars, forget about life and love and women for a while.
Juice Box straightened beside him. “Whoa, did you see—”
Another thump landed, along with a tink just beyond the fire. The reverberations shook the air, and they dove for cover.
Lance went on full alert, peering into the darkness. Rain misted down around them, stars still sparkling in the clear sky.
“What the hell?” Juice Box shrieked.
Fuck.
Not rain.
Beer.
Lance shot to his feet, Pony at his heels, darting for the keg, watching for more incoming—incoming what?
Beer spewed out the broken connector on top of the keg, the whole thing coated in stringy orange gunk.
Pumpkin guts.
“That’s my keg,” Pony yelped. “That’s my homebrew.”
“How do we stop it?” Lance said.
Beer coated his shirt and stu
ck to his hair and misted through the air. Someone popped up with a flashlight. Pony grabbed the pumpkin-slimed connector on the hose and yanked.
It didn’t budge.
“That’s fucking disgusting.” He grunted and yanked again, and the connector popped off.
A spray of beer shot straight in the air, then bubbled down to a slow runoff and stopped.
“Are we under attack?” Juice Box said.
“Where’d it come from?” Lance said. “Juicy! What did you see? Where did it come from?”
“Ah, that way.” He pointed west. “I think.”
Lance took off at a jog, senses alert for pumpkins or other flying objects. He could make out a glow in the distance—a flashlight? Car lights?—but in the dark, he couldn’t judge how far off it was. Yelling might make them stop.
Or it might tell the enemy where he was.
Probably stupid rednecks out joy-flinging. “Hey!” he yelled. “Who’s there?”
Pumpkins didn’t just fall from the sky.
Well, they could. But usually it would’ve been his crew dropping them off the ramp of his C-130, and much as the guys would’ve loved that, they still only dropped cargo, official or unofficial, when approved by the proper figures, and only under controlled circumstances.
There weren’t any missions flying on base tonight. Aero Club wasn’t running either. And they weren’t under any of the normal patterns for the closest local airport.
“Put the pumpkins down,” Lance called into the darkness while he continued to jog toward the dim light. “There are kids back here.”
“Oh, no. Y’all got kids over there? They’re not hurt, are they? We didn’t mean to hurt ’em. I just got really bad aim, and I swear I thought I was facing the other direction, and—”
His heart slammed to a stop and his groin twitched. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
He knew that voice.
Those sassy tones had been haunting him for hours.
“Oh, no,” she said again.
For the second time in less than twelve hours, Lance assumed battle stance while he stared down at the pint-sized blonde and her fantastic tits, ignoring the tingling in his chest and the hum of adrenaline spicing his blood.
“Oh, no, you got caught?” he suggested.
Her Rebel Heart Page 3