by Beth Abbott
He actually missed the weight of his rifle over one shoulder. It was comforting.
But then, as rough as parts of London were, you didn’t have the need to be armed and plated in the same way you did in downtown Basra, or even out at Bastian, which had been his last overseas deployment.
After almost two years, he was still coming to grips with civilian life.
Before he’d gone into the military, he’d been a kid. Fresh from high school, not keen on trying further education, he and Casey couldn’t wait for their adult lives to start. They hadn’t even told their parents. They’d just headed straight to the army careers office and enlisted.
They’d taken to army life like ducks to water, and both had been fortunate to have been spotted by the young Lieutenant Thornton, and taken under his wing.
Of course, their physical size helped. A shade under six and a half feet, and already decently muscled from years playing sport in school, both Luke and Casey excelled at anything physical. It hadn’t taken long for them to pack on another forty pounds of solid muscle, and as they’d developed into men, they’d become the ideal soldiers.
Despite their size, Luke and Casey excelled at stealth. Casey had become an expert marksman, which was how he’d been teamed up with Matt a lot, and had been seconded on many occasions into other teams, used as an added layer of protection when they were out on missions.
It was estimated Casey had had about eighteen kills under his belt when he’d been medically retired. Yet that wasn’t the figure that counted.
The important number, was the one which indicated how many coalition men and women were still alive, as a result of the protection he had given them, and that figure was up in the hundreds.
Luke cleared his throat, and noticed that his fingers trembled as he tried for the fourth time to put his tie on straight.
Dammit, he had to stop thinking about Casey!
Being up in the East Midlands again this last weekend had left Casey front and centre in his mind.
It had been a frustrating few days in all. Once he’d found out that the houses he was looking for had been demolished, he’d gone to the neighbourhood and canvassed the few shops and pubs. He’d discovered that one of the houses had been divided into two flats. The downstairs had been occupied by an elderly couple, but apparently the upstairs had been let out to a young woman. She’d been described as a brunette in her twenties. Not a brilliant description, but he’d taken it. Someone else thought she’d worked in a restaurant on High Street, but wasn’t sure which one, as there were four or five.
He’d eaten in one of them on Saturday night, and questioned the waitress, but she hadn’t known much more than he already knew. He’d have to try and canvass the others when he went back up next weekend.
Unfortunately, when he’d tried last night, he’d discovered none of them opened on a Sunday. He’d forgotten that in these smaller towns, Sunday was still something of a dead loss.
“Aha!” Luke looked at his tie, as if suddenly, magically it had tied itself. Yup, that looked good.
As he reached for his jacket, Luke thought about the waitress from Saturday night. Could she have been any frumpier if she tried? He chuckled. And then stopped.
That was it!
Goddamn it! She was trying to look frumpy.
Luke suddenly pictured the young woman as she’d been on Saturday.
When she wasn’t actually making eye contact with the other servers, or in direct conversation with customers, her face was alert and observant, and she followed what was going on with avid interest. Yet when she approached his table, her head went down and she seemed to shrink into herself.
What was with that?
He had no doubt it was a deliberate action, but he couldn’t see why. When she’d actually spoken to him she seemed intelligent enough, and yet the more he thought about it, he felt that she was putting on an act.
He tried to picture her eyes, but failed to recall anything beyond the thick rimmed glasses she wore.
She was slim, he recalled, with a nice tight ass. Yeah, it didn’t escape him that he couldn’t picture her eyes, but would have recognised her ass from twenty paces!
Well, he was a guy! And an ass guy at that! Luke smirked to himself.
He guessed she had a decent chest, as she’d seemed quite rounded up top, but with that fugly damn cardigan on, it was hard to tell.
He tried to picture her face again. Clear skin, he recalled, small nose, but again, all that sprang to mind were those damn glasses.
Man, he must be losing it.
Back in the day, he only had to look at a woman under thirty to get a damn boner. Yeah, he grinned at his reflection, that was because you spent most of the year on a base with up to a thousand other grunts, and the only females you came in contact with were either wearing burkas or cammo! Neither of which were particularly flattering to the female form.
He and Casey had never lacked for attention from women. Hell, they’d even been offered a threesome a time or two.
Yeah, that was a ‘Hell No’, thank you, very much!
He’d seen his brother’s junk enough growing up, he didn’t need to see it again while he was pounding his cock into some sweet piece of ass! That was so never going to happen!
Thankfully, Casey had been of the same mind.
Luckily, they’d never really gone after the same girls, so there had never really been any competition between them. Casey had liked red-heads, and reckoned it was that fire in their hair that made them wild in bed. Yeah, right!
Luke liked, well, women generally, he supposed. Tall, short, curvy, slim. He didn’t really have a preference. He didn’t go for the ball-busters, but he liked a woman with a bit of personality. Someone he could talk to.
Luke rolled his eyes at the direction his brain was taking. He hadn’t had a relationship with a woman that lasted longer than a weekend since he left high school. ‘Once and done’ had been Casey’s motto. And to be honest, Luke hadn’t been much better.
Since he’d gotten out of the army, there’d been a few hook ups, but nothing more than one night stands.
Casey’s death had changed him, and probably not for the better, he had to admit. He hardly smiled these days, and rarely bothered interacting with anyone he didn’t have to.
Shit, he was probably going to have to talk to Matt’s wife tonight!
Bollocks! This would be the first honest-to-God conversation he’d had with a woman in …… 3 years 5 months and a week!
Best behaviour? Yeah, right.
He picked up the car keys from the bowl on the breakfast bar and made his way to the elevator, taking one last look in the hall mirror.
He tried to smile, imagining what he was going to say to the little lady when they met.
God, he looked like an asshole! Maybe he’d just let JT and Danny do the schmoozing.
He sure hoped the night ended early!
Chapter 9 -
Luke
“Oh, my God!” Matt groaned. “Suze, you don’t have to tell the whole world everything about the contents of Charlie’s nappy.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right!” Suzy laughed. “This from the guy, who, when his son let rip the most enormous fart during the Christening ceremony, turned to the priest, grinning his ass off, and announced, ‘That’s my boy!’.”
Luke couldn’t help but smirk. Suzy had spent the whole night telling them stories about Matt from before he was in the military, and frankly she’d had the guy blushing all night long.
JT had egged her on with stories from when they were on patrol in Helmand, which had her screaming with laughter.
She was an absolute sweetheart. So small compared to her husband, but with this amazing personality.
“So, tell me Suzy…” JT smirked at Luke before carrying on. “Do you have any sisters at home looking for some good guys?” He nodded towards Luke and Danny. “They’re a bit rough around the edges, but I reckon they’re halfway housetrained!”
&nb
sp; “Suzy doesn’t have any sisters, sorry guys.” Matt laughed.
Suzy hadn’t said anything, just sat with her chin propped up on her hands.
“Hmmm. Matt’s right, no sisters, sorry.” She smiled. “But I do have a friend who you might like.”
Matt looked at his wife, enquiringly. “Who, babe? Ellen?” He laughed.
“Yes, Ellen!” Suzy bristled, slapping her husband on the arm. “She’s amazing!”
Matt pulled a face, and twirled his finger as though to say his wife had gone loony tunes.
“She is.” Suzy insisted. “Look, she’s shy is all. She’s been though some stuff, and is hesitant to get to know people, but she has the most amazing personality, and she’s funny, and smart. She’s fantastic with kids.”
“Uh-oh!” Danny laughed. “When someone is selling the virtues of a woman by telling you all about their personality, that normally tells me that she’s fugly as all hell.”
“Nah, man!” Matt laughed. “Ellen isn’t ugly or anything. She just doesn’t try to make herself pretty. She’d probably look pretty good if she ditched the librarian look and got rid of her glasses. She’s got a pretty good rack.” He smirked.
Luke nearly choked on his beer, as Suzy pulled herself up to her full, maybe 5ft 2” height and glared at her husband.
“Matthew Donald Johnson! Did you, or did you not, just tell your friends that Ellen had a ‘pretty good rack’? Please tell me that I heard you incorrectly, and that you didn’t just admit to having checked out my best friend’s chest?” Suzy looked her husband straight in the eye.
“Oh, my God.” Danny muttered under his breath, but loud enough for the whole table to hear. “She pulled out the middle name! That’s bad! Like your mum telling you off when she’s caught you sneaking a cigarette behind your father’s potting shed kind of bad!”
Matt was still grinning.
“Firstly, I did not ‘check out’ Ellen’s rack.” He insisted. “I’m a guy. We see these things without any conscious effort. And yes, I did rate it as ‘pretty good’.” He smirked. “Not to be confused with yours, which I would describe as a ‘freaking awesome rack’!”
Suzy, studied her man for a few seconds, but the leering grin on his face showed that he was completely and utterly smitten with her, and as quickly as she’d puffed up, she deflated just as fast.
She turned to the other men at the table, and without a hint of a smile said seriously. “He’s right you know.” She looked down at her chest at the same time as she grabbed her boobs and bounced them. “I do have a freaking awesome rack!”
Danny spit out his drink as the rest of the table burst out laughing.
“I bloody love you Mrs Johnson.” Matt hugged her to him.
“Good job, because I bloody love you too, Mr Johnson.”
The four of them settled into a comfortable silence, as they poured over the dessert menu.
“So, Matt…” Danny began, as the waiter walked away with their order. “Donald, huh?”
JT and Luke burst out laughing. The asshole was never gonna live that down.
Chapter 10 - Luke
“So, Luke…” Suzy began, sounding a little too innocent for his liking. “Matt tells me you were up in our neck of the woods this past weekend? Doing anything nice?”
“Just a bit of recon for a job.” Luke replied smoothly. “Sometimes, there are things we have to check which can’t be done on-line. There’s no substitute for boots on the ground.”
“Hmm-hmm. So will you be coming back up soon?” Suzy asked, taking a spoonful of her Pavlova. “God this is to die for!” She moaned.
“Luke will be back up next weekend, as it happens.” JT shot a smirk at his friend.
The glare Luke shot back should have shrivelled the guy’s balls to dust, but JT just looked smug.
“Cool!” Suzy grinned at Luke. “So, you’ll come over to ours for lunch next Sunday. I’ll get Ellen to come as well.”
Luke spluttered, and tried desperately to come up with a reason to decline without offending the little spitfire.
“Oh, suck it up man!” Suzy laughed. “She doesn’t have warts.”
Oh shit! Luke was sunk.
“Uh, Ok. Sure, that’d be great.” Luke agreed, wondering what on earth he was letting himself in for.
“So Danny, where do you live?” Suzy enquired.
“South!” Danny burst out unexpectedly, obviously afraid she was going to set him up on a blind date too. “Really far south.”
They all burst out laughing.
Luke looked around this group of his friends. They were probably the closest thing to brothers he had now.
So this was it. Four guys and a little lady. Wasn’t there a film out there with a similar title? Luke smirked down at his plate.
Suzy certainly wasn’t what he’d expected. Not that he’d expected anything in particular, but still. He hadn’t known many adult women, and the ones he’d screwed hadn’t been chosen for their conversation.
No, Suzy was a different type of female to the ones he was used to, and he actually felt comfortable with her, which was a first.
She was gorgeous, that was for sure, but he felt no stirring of lust towards her. She was Matt’s woman, so what did that make her to Luke? A sister, of sorts?
Yeah, that kind of fit perfectly.
Still, he appreciated her fun personality, and watching her with Matt, he certainly could see the attraction of having someone like that at home waiting for him.
A wife? And kid, or kids?
He’d shut that idea down as soon as he’d enlisted. Too much heartbreak down that road.
But he wasn’t an enlisted man any more. He was master of his own destiny, up to a point, and the jobs they undertook were mostly routine these days. Ok, there was the occasional contract which might put him in danger, and a few times he’d had to go out of the country on a job. But nothing like being in the military, or on the front line in the war against terror.
No, there really was nothing to stop him becoming a bit more domesticated.
But could he put up with being around someone twenty-four/seven? Could they put up with him?
Maybe?
Luke’s attention was brought back to the table when Danny slapped him on the shoulder.
“You good, man?” Danny grinned.
“Yeah.” Luke smiled, looking around the table. “Really good.”
Chapter 11 - Ellen
“So, how was your night out?” Ellen asked her friend, as Suzy cuddled her son while he napped.
“Oh, my God, it was fantastic.” Suzy gushed. “The guys Matt will be working with are so nice. And so gorgeous!” Suzy giggled, looking around to make sure Matt couldn’t hear her.
“And all single!” She hissed at Ellen, wiggling her eyebrows as she did so.
“Hmm-hmm.” Ellen studiously ignored the hint. “So, was the meal nice?”
Suzy was obviously disappointed that Ellen was not going with the conversation she had planned.
“Yeah, it was really nice. The whole night was great.” Suzy adjusted herself. “Except these damn boobs! I had to express some milk last night before I could go to bed comfortably, and this morning they’re ready to explode, they’re so full. Do you think it would be mean of me to wake Charlie up when he’s just gone off? If he doesn’t feed soon, I’ll scream!”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.” Ellen smiled. “He’ll be due for a feed when he wakes anyway.”
Suzy grinned down at her son as he slept.
“Still, I discovered something else he has in common with his father last night.” Suzy looked up at Ellen innocently.
“Oh, what’s that?” Ellen asked.
“Well, it seems that both my boys really like my Mommy boobs!” She giggled. “I mean really, really like them!”
“God, Suzy!” Ellen blushed. “Really?”
“No, seriously!” Suzy laughed. “Matt caught me in the bathroom expressing milk last night, and instead of walking out
like I expected, he stayed to watch. Next thing I know, he’s stood there with a ferocious look on his face, his trousers filled with wood. Before I had a chance to get my bra back on, he’s swept me up, dumped me on the bed, and his trousers are around his knees. It was so bloody hot!”
“Suzy,” Ellen groaned. “You promised me. No more sex talk!”
“Who’s talking about sex?” Matt asked as he walked back in.
“Nobody.” Ellen replied as the same time as Suzy responded “Me!”
“I was just telling Suzy that I thought you had a fixation with my breast milk.” She smiled sweetly at her husband, trying not to laugh.
“Shit, no!” Matt laughed loudly, disturbing Charlie. “I can’t say that it bothers me, but the juice is best left for my son. I just have a fixation with your tits. They’re freaking awesome!”
As he said it, he leaned over the sofa and kissed his son on the forehead, stopping to nibble his wife’s neck before standing back up.
“And that’s my cue to leave.” Ellen laughed, standing to pick up her coat. “I’m glad you two had a good time. My man and I had a blast.”
She smiled, leaning down to give Charlie a kiss on his chubby cheek.
“But I’m gonna get out now, before you two get freaky again, and I see something that will leave me emotionally scarred for life.”
“Good thinking!” Matt grinned, coming up and giving her a brotherly hug. “And thanks again for having Charlie for us.”
“No problem.” Ellen smiled.
“Oh, and next Sunday, we’re having a family lunch. Meat, roast potatoes, veggies and everything. And you’re invited. One o’clock sharp. Don’t be late.” Matt announced.
Ellen looked at him in shock.
“Is Suzy cooking?” She asked innocently.
“Yes!” Suzy answered huffily. “Why?”
Ellen shot a look at Matt, and put up her hand, pretending to cover her mouth. “I’ll pick up the McDonalds on my way over.”