The Majors' Holiday Hideaway

by Caro Carson

  From that moment, Aiden hadn’t wanted to take his hands off India—and, incredibly, that was the perfect attitude to have, because India wanted to have her hands on him, too. He was drunk on sex with India, high on the constant contact with her skin. She’d asked him to stay for supper last evening. He’d shrugged on his shirt, she’d stayed in her robe, and they’d talked until the pizzas had baked their way from frozen to deliciously hot. A bottle of wine...back to bed.

  How can life go from hell to heaven in a day?

  He was so aware of himself this morning, of where he was, how the air felt cool on his neck, how the sun felt warm on his face. Inside, too, he felt like he was seeing himself differently for the first time in ages.

  In front of a new gas fireplace, he’d been drawn out by questions that had reminded him of the life he’d lived outside of the past four years. India had wanted to know about the sports he’d played in high school—football, but the coach had required them all to run track and field in the spring, and Aiden had ended up being more dedicated to the discus and the long jump than football.

  She’d wanted to know about his first year away from home. He’d been homesick at West Point and unable to admit it to anyone around him, barely able to admit it to himself, because they were all trying to be tough, invulnerable cadets in Dress Gray, wanting to prove they deserved to walk in the hallowed, historic footsteps of generals and presidents and astronauts. Eighteen and homesick had been a hard thing to be in the same barracks where Schwarzkopf and Aldrin had slept.

  He’d forgotten so much.

  He’d forgotten his own origin story.

  Ah, Aiden. There you are. I remember you now.

  He watched his boots as he strode across the bridge, each step striking the planks, each plank acting like a sounding board, amplifying the sound as it bounced off the surface of the water below. Even his footsteps sounded better. They had more depth, a satisfying resonance.

  Last night, when he and India had eventually fallen silent in front of the flames, she’d taken his hand and led him to her bed. She hadn’t asked him if he’d like to spend the whole night; he hadn’t asked if he could. They’d fallen asleep like a couple of innocent puppies piled together, arms and legs and noses all on top of each other, all touching, all night.

  And this morning? Her shy confession that she was out of condoms had charmed him. She’d come into the bedroom this morning with the empty box. They’d used three and the box had originally had...three.

  It had been a brand-new box the day before? He’d teased her: I thought you said these were left over from a long-ago trip. It must not have been a very good trip.

  But her chin had gone up, a little defensively: I decided I didn’t trust him enough to sleep with him. But I’d been prepared. There’s nothing wrong with that.

  No, there isn’t. He’d sat up as she’d sunk onto the mattress next to him. What made you decide you could trust me?

  She’d tugged on a corner of the pillow, then fallen still. I don’t know. What made you decide you could trust me?

  I don’t know, but I do.

  Yes. I do, too.

  He’d left her while she showered. At his house, he had a box left over from a less satisfying weekend, too. While he was home, he would shower and shave and bring back a change of clothes to take her out to dinner tonight. He was going to take India out to dinner. It might be out of order, but it was a step he didn’t want to skip.

  He walked up his back steps, walked into the empty living room of his own house—and got blindsided.

  Poppy’s tower of blocks stood abandoned, unfinished. Olympia’s mini beanbag chair was still indented with the shape of her. The sudden weight of missing his children dropped on him, nearly driving him to his knees.

  He took the hit standing, ambushed by his own emotions, the ache of longing killing the joy that had compelled him to come here.

  Another emotion, another hit: guilt. How could he have been thinking of heaven when his children were so far away? He’d walked across that bridge while rejoicing that his life had taken a turn for the better, but how could anything that excluded his daughters be for the better?

  He had no easy answer—he didn’t want to think about it.

  Move out, soldier. He’d come here with specific objectives. A shower, a shave, a change of clothes—a box. Lines from the Ranger Creed had been ingrained in his mind years ago: move further, faster.

  But as Aiden walked through his house toward the stairs that led up to his bedroom—and Poppy’s bedroom and Olympia’s—he snagged a plastic toy vacuum and set it by the colorful play kitchen. He picked up Olympia’s dinosaur-print nightgown and Poppy’s Batman cape and carried them upstairs, each move ingrained by four years of fatherhood.

  He tossed each article of clothing on the appropriate bed. This was who he was: a man with a family. He was a man who constantly fought clutter and laundry. He had children, and that would never, ever change. Only the type of toys and the size of the clothes would.

  Ah, Aiden. There you really are: you’re a single parent.

  He stopped again, just inside his own bedroom, and heard his wife’s voice: Let’s make this an adult oasis.

  Ah, Melissa. After reading enough parenting books for the two of them, she’d been determined that parenthood wouldn’t cause their marriage to erode, only to strengthen. They’d set inviolable date nights—and they’d actually done pretty well keeping those dates, although they’d quickly learned that no schedule was inviolable with infant twins.

  Once the babies were sleeping longer stretches through the night, they’d been moved to their cribs, the bassinets had been banished from the bedroom, and Melissa had reclaimed the master bedroom as an adult oasis. The decor was a sedate, soothing navy and gray. The bed had never been used as a surface to fold laundry or to sort through bills. The door had been kept shut during the day, so toys and pacifiers didn’t creep in.

  And at night...

  Well, unless they were actually making love on those nights they weren’t both exhausted, the door had been left open, so they could hear if their children were in distress. And, despite all the books’ warnings about not letting children get in the habit of joining them in bed whenever the whim struck them, they’d let the children climb up in the mornings for family cuddles before breakfast. That hadn’t been bad for their marriage; those had been some of the happiest times they’d had.

  We should have had more.

  But they hadn’t.

  For the past two years, his bedroom had just been a bedroom, not an adult oasis. Nothing close to adult activity took place here. He’d never brought a woman into this bed, because he had two little girls who made very effective chaperones. He couldn’t imagine the awkwardness of having a rumpled and sleepy, sexually satisfied woman sitting at the breakfast table, mystifying his daughters with her presence.

  If he was being brutally honest—what the hell, as long as we’re filleting my heart open—he didn’t want to have a lover watch him lose a battle with Olympia over food or with Poppy over her choice of clothing. Maybe some small part of him worried that it would be a little emasculating to fill those sippy cups in front of a woman he wanted to seduce.

  A woman like India.

  The thought of her set him in motion. He took off his jacket and tossed it on the bed, then unbuttoned his shirt as he crossed the room and kicked off his jeans in the master bathroom. He didn’t wait for the water to heat up, but stepped into the shower while it was still punishingly cold. He stayed there after it turned too hot.

  An adult oasis. That had not been part of his life, not for two years. There’d only been casual nights at a hotel or at a woman’s home, now and then. But the last twenty-four hours...

  The combination of a willing and beautiful bed partner and absent children had never happened before. It was little wonder he’d overindulged.
Cold water, hot water—none of it dampened his body’s primitive determination to keep indulging.

  He could bring India here, tonight after dinner. In the morning, she could eat breakfast in that silky bathrobe, and nobody would be here to be shocked. No little girls would ask questions. India could eat in the nude; it wouldn’t matter at all, as she sat at the kitchen table in one of the chairs that didn’t have a booster seat strapped to it securely. The toy vacuum, the block tower—she’d know the minute she walked into the house that his life revolved around preschoolers.

  He slammed off the shower and shook the water out of his military-short hair.

  No.

  Yes. You’re a father.

  He knew that, damn it, but on the walk here, he’d felt different. Still himself, but a version of himself he hadn’t caught a glimpse of in years. He wanted more time to rediscover the man who’d been a whole and complete person for thirty years, before children had entered his life.

  He wanted to keep discovering India, too. He wanted to laugh over Best Lover awards, and he wanted to make her laughter stop by taking her breath away. Desire for her simmered like lava under the surface even now, waiting for another opening, for a chance to expand, for oxygen. He was so effortlessly learning how she liked to be touched, how to soothe her, how to excite her—how to bring her to a second orgasm when she’d been limp from the first. She’d sounded awed as she’d whispered in his ear, It’s like you’re the master of my body.

  Once she saw him as a dad, once she had to step around a tricycle on the back porch and over a scattered tea set on her way to the master bedroom, she wouldn’t see him as a master of anything anymore, except the master of preschool chaos.

  That poor widowed father...

  He towel-dried himself roughly. Not happening. Not today.

  He counted the days as he shaved. India was leaving the morning of the twenty-fourth. Including tonight, he had five nights with her, total. That was all. He’d been alive for thirty-four years; he hoped he’d be alive more than thirty-four more. Out of his entire lifetime, taking five nights with India Woods didn’t make him a bad person. It didn’t make him a bad father.

  He wouldn’t have planned anything that excluded his children, yet this time with India did exclude them, and it was good. Good for him, good for her. No one was going to be hurt by a few days of happiness. These unexpected days were a gift out of the blue, a chance to reconnect with himself, a chance to connect to a woman as a man, not as part of a three-person unit.

  He pulled a fresh shirt over his head, and immediately imagined India pulling it back off. She would pull it off him, and she’d do so today, and he would feel lighthearted in a way that he’d almost forgotten how to feel.

  Don’t forget that box of condoms.

  Not a chance. They weren’t in the nightstand by his bed, because the adult oasis had long been only the place where a tired single parent slept. Instead, he dug in a bathroom cabinet for the civilian toiletries bag he used for overnights with women who understood that was all the time he could spare them, because they knew he had children. He threw on his jacket, stuffed the box in a pocket and headed back out of his house without stopping to straighten a damn thing.

  This week was different. This time with India was different. He looked up as he crossed the bridge to see her walking toward him—then running toward him. He scooped her off the ground and spun her around and kissed her in the bright sunlight.

  If the stars had aligned to give him an early Christmas gift, then he intended to enjoy it. He would take India out to dinner tonight, to an intimate cantina. He’d spend their dinner date not talking about children, not being given advice on how to handle upcoming stages of development, not commiserating with a woman over the way the county had redrawn the elementary-school boundaries.

  Instead, he would watch India without watching the clock. He would tell her she was beautiful. He would feed her a bite of his own food from his own fork when she asked for a taste, watch the way she savored the flavor as the candle on the table flickered. India would ask him about his hometown. About his likes and dislikes in cars, in movies, in books. About him.

  He would answer her honestly. He wouldn’t be lying to her. He would be enjoying time with her, and she would be enjoying time with him.

  It all happened just like that. And afterward, as they were falling asleep together, skin to skin, he told himself there was nothing between them, nothing between them at all.

  * * *

  They couldn’t be naked all the time.

  For one thing, that shower door had been scheduled to be installed. A three-man crew had arrived in a truck designed to carry panes of glass. Aiden had spent the first hour in the garage, painting the boards for his bookcase a clean, crisp white. India had checked on Aiden as often as she’d checked on the installers, because Aiden had looked absurdly sexy as he’d wiped paint off his fingers with a clean rag. He looked absurdly sexy now, chilling out on the opposite end of the couch from her, reading a book.

  She’d put on a red sweater with her black jeans. Every time she looked up from her book to see him with his nose in his, she felt her cheeks flushing. The sweater made them look a little redder to start with. It was camouflage for stalking a man who would probably look too hot for words in camouflage.

  She’d never see him in uniform. He was only her lover while he was on vacation.

  The glass installers continued to call measurements to one another. They’d cursed up a storm when their first attempt at installing the custom pane of glass didn’t work, pretty hard-core cursing at that. It was a good thing there weren’t any children around.

  Aiden had set aside his book and walked down the hallway to check on their progress about half an hour ago. Male voices had murmured in the hallway, then Aiden had come back in with a can of sparkling water for her and retaken his seat on the opposite end of the couch. But now it hit her: she hadn’t heard any swearing in a while.

  “You told them not to curse, didn’t you?”

  He looked at her over his book. They were facing each other, backs against their respective sofa armrests, jeans and bare feet sharing the center cushion.

  “I really am an army officer,” she said. “I can handle cursing. I’ve been known to do it myself.”

  “Should I tell them to resume? Do you miss it?”

  He made her laugh, all the time.

  “No, but I—” No, but I’m going to miss you. She’d almost said it out loud.

  He was looking at her, so she concentrated furiously on the page before her, just so he wouldn’t ask her what she’d been about to say.

  It wouldn’t have been appropriate. This was a fling with a definite end date, and they’d both known that from the beginning. But she couldn’t help wondering what would happen after December 24. She was heading to San Antonio, then on to the beach town of Corpus Christi. She’d be missing Aiden the whole time. There’d be another guy someday, she supposed, once she was back in Belgium...but she couldn’t imagine a man generating enough interest for her to get in the vicinity of a bed with him.

  The rebound guy after her Rebound Guy was going to be a disappointment. It might be easier to just give up sex after Aiden.

  She peeked at him. He’d gone back to reading, so she returned to staring at him more than at her book. He flipped a page, calm and comfortable despite the installation crew in the house. She was glad he was here, to be honest, although it made her feel like a wimp to admit she wouldn’t have liked being outnumbered by these men if she’d been here alone. They were loud, which wasn’t the same thing as dangerous...but she would have kept her phone nearby.

  When she’d talked to Helen and imagined her ideal man, hadn’t one of her criteria been maybe even protective? She was going to upgrade that to definitely protective. The man who was casually keeping her foot warm with his own made an excellent bodyguar
d. His presence alone was enough to keep the crew from getting too loud and too disrespectful. Aiden was in his early thirties, an obvious athlete, a man in his prime, and he would never let her come to harm while they were together. She knew that like she knew the sky was blue.

  What about when they were no longer together?

  She was thirty-two and single. She handled the world on her own; this was a vacation from the ordinary. Having a protector was a change from the ordinary, but she shouldn’t get used to it. This wasn’t the first time she’d felt like she was overdue for a refresher course on close-quarters combat. She needed to get out of her high heels and back into her combat boots now and then. Maybe she could arrange to get herself sent back to Fort Hood when it was time to requalify on her weapons.

  They’ll send you to a range in Germany, and you know it.

  Her future did not include Aiden. How could any rebound guy replace him? She wouldn’t want to make Bloody Marys with another man. She wouldn’t want to walk a dog with another man or eat dinner in a candlelit Mexican cantina.

  It hit her again, just as hard the second time: I’m going to miss you—and not just in bed.

  But it was easier to focus on sex. She wished the shower installers would hurry. She wanted to get naked with Aiden and stop thinking. This week wasn’t supposed to involve thinking. It was supposed to be a vacation from being alone with her thoughts. A week of bliss with a man who wasn’t an ass.

  “What are you reading?” Aiden asked.

  The question forced her to come out of the brooding silence into which she’d unintentionally fallen. He’d intentionally broken that silence. He was too observant.

  “I’m attempting to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in its original Swedish.”

  “Right.” Aiden shook his head a little bit. “There’s an answer I never expected to hear. Is Swedish another one of your certified languages, or is it just another one you happen to speak fluently, like French and Spanish?”