The Majors' Holiday Hideaway

by Caro Carson

  “I wouldn’t say I was fluent in Spanish. Those were just common phrases at the restaurant last night. Easy enough.”

  But he’d noticed that she’d lapsed into Spanish around Spanish-speaking people. He was impressed with her language abilities, and it made her feel as good as a child being given a ribbon for winning a spelling bee.

  “I’m certified in Danish. Swedish is close, though, so I’m trying to identify the similarities and differences.”

  “So, you’re working?”

  Yes.

  “No, it’s just fun, like a crossword puzzle. I like languages. It’s kind of my thing.”

  “You’re an interpreter at NATO?”

  No.

  “Yes, and a speech writer. If one of our generals has to give a speech to a university in Denmark, guess who writes out every word for him phonetically?”

  “You.”

  “Yep. Hoo-ah, right? Combat translation.” She was less of a soldier and more of an office geek, and she knew it. “I’m Airborne certified, though, believe it or not. Kind of a waste of the army’s money, it turns out, but I guess the army didn’t know I was going to turn into a desk weenie when I was a brand-new lieutenant. I know I didn’t expect to.”

  He studied her again for a moment, his gaze steady. “There are tens of thousands of people who can hump a backpack and fire a rifle and fall out of a plane. I’ve never met someone who serves her country by being a savant at languages. Don’t disparage yourself.”

  “A savant?”

  How casually he soothed her with the sole of his foot, an easy slide of his masculine weight down her shin. “That’s what Tom told me about you. He failed to warn me I was going to be knocked out by your gray eyes. I was completely speechless when you first walked into the garage, you know.”

  I love...this.

  He knocked her out, too. Knocked her sideways with these casual compliments. This was their third day together, and she was so sadly addicted to his style of conversation. She loved his ability to make her laugh, his generosity in bed and out, his...his everything.

  She had to stop thinking about how much she was going to miss him. They had four whole days ahead of them, a ton of time. “Well, for starters, he may not have mentioned it because I think Tom only has eyes for Helen’s eyes.”

  “As it should be.”

  “I agree. It’s rare, isn’t it? Once in a lifetime stuff.”

  He returned to his book. She thought their conversation was over when he said, so very quietly, “Don’t settle for less, India. It’s out there.”

  It’s right here.

  Her heart broke at the thought, because she could not remain here. She tried for a perky tone of voice. “Well, I hope it’s in Europe. I’ll never be stationed anywhere else.”

  He looked at her sharply.

  I’m too valuable in Europe. She could never tell him that. She couldn’t tell anyone that.

  She was certified in far more than German, Danish, Dutch and Flemish. Those were her cover. She didn’t just write speeches for the highest-level commanders; she traveled with them, serving as an aide-de-camp when they were meeting with officials from certain nations or traveling to certain countries.

  Being an aide-de-camp was her cover, as well. She wasn’t an interpreter on those trips, just a staff member, one who had to make sure the transportation would show up at the right building, at the right entrance. One who had to make sure the hotel rooms were ready, the restaurants were reserved. During summits, she waited in antechambers with the staff of the leaders of the countries that were hostile to the United States. She pretended she didn’t understand their languages. She listened, sometimes while simultaneously talking to a hotel’s waiter about how the American general preferred his coffee.

  She gathered intelligence. She was not trained as a spy—nor was she paid as a spy—but that was essentially what she did, when asked. She’d been able to alert the American contingent when the prince of a Middle Eastern nation had decided to abandon talks early, because she’d overheard his aides confirming runway availability at the local airport. They’d foolishly used their phones to set up the logistics while the female American officer was pretending to listen to music on her silent headphones, tapping out an imaginary beat on her skirt, lounging in a window seat in the staff break room with her pantyhose-clad ankles crossed. She wasn’t James Bond, but she traveled across Europe and kept her ears open to a dozen languages in the service of her country.

  I’ll never be stationed here in Texas with you. We can’t hope for it...but would you hope for it? Are you hoping for it?

  Her smile felt weak. “The army doesn’t need someone who speaks Danish here in Texas. It would be nice, though, to come back to a line unit. I do all this embassy office work, while you’re in leadership positions. You’re the battalion S-3? Before that, probably a company commander.”

  He nodded.

  “Leading troops directly. That’s what being an officer is all about. It’s what I thought I’d be doing. I started as a platoon leader, but then I got sidetracked with all these language degrees—”

  “India.”

  She was skilled at pretending she understood nothing. There’d been that checkpoint in a hostile country when she’d been detained too long. For hours, they’d tested her, trying to ascertain whether or not she really didn’t understand their language. The heavily armed men had sharpened their knives as they’d described how they were going to carve their initials in her skin if they raped her. She’d just checked her watch as if she was bored, then mimed that she was thirsty, while praying that the ambassador would quickly realize his convoy was missing one lowly officer. Her acting skills had passed the test. She’d been released.

  She’d gotten a medal for something else, officially.

  “It’s not very high speed,” she said, “but someone has to know the difference between Dutch and Flemish, right?”

  She worked in any country except her own. She had very little family, just a mother who traveled constantly herself. It made India perfect for her position. She wasn’t tied down to a husband. She had no children. She was...untethered.

  Whether she was standing at her medieval window or sitting on a modern couch, she was just passing through. She was not part of something—except for the US Army.

  In service to her country, she was sent on missions with no notice. She bluffed her way through dangerous situations several times a year, but to most of the army, to practically every other soldier of any rank or station, she was just an officer who’d lucked out and gotten a lot of free advanced degrees in foreign languages, courtesy of Uncle Sam. She couldn’t say a word about her real service, and for years, she’d told herself that didn’t matter.

  It mattered to her what Aiden thought of her. Just once, just once, it would be nice if—

  “You have a rare skill, India. You use it in service to your country. I respect your dedication.”

  Down the hall, a nine-foot custom-cut pane of glass shattered.

  The cursing resumed.

  Chapter Nine

  Sex with a sensual woman was great.

  Sex with India Woods was more than sex—and it was more than great.

  Aiden was too experienced, too mature and, he hoped, too brave to pretend otherwise. He recognized more when he saw it. He didn’t want to lose it.

  That meant he needed to look at their situation in the cold light of day—reason enough to literally open his eyes. It was full morning. Bright light forced its way through every seam in the bedroom’s closed shutters, unstoppable, illuminating a sleeping India. Aiden lay still and appreciated the way the sun kissed the curve of her bare shoulder.

  Her face looked so peaceful. He was grateful for every smile he’d received from those lips, for every touch from her fingers. He loved the way the corners of those eyes crinkled with lau
ghter when she got his jokes. He was humbled that so much beauty was only the exterior of a woman who had a mind that grasped so many more languages than he ever could, who had a heart that had chosen a life of service like he had. In the bright light of day, the truth was easy to see: India Woods was not a vacation fling.

  From that first moment he’d laid eyes on her, he’d known, hadn’t he? It had been so easy to picture her sharing his pillow. He should have known when they’d spoken by the bridge; his first instinct had been to hold her hand. Simple lust didn’t make a man want to hold a woman’s hand as they walked in the sun.

  Every leadership cliché he’d ever heard seemed to mock him now. Begin as you mean to go on. He had begun as he’d meant to go on. He’d meant to spend a selfish week enjoying himself as the object of a beautiful brunette’s attention. He’d reveled in the way she saw him as a man and not as a widower and parent.

  It wasn’t the beginning he wanted to change. He would never choose to go back and undo those Bloody Marys.

  It was the going on part he wanted to change. He did not want to say goodbye to India on the morning of Christmas Eve. He could persuade her to stay—he was arrogant enough to believe he had that ability—but staying meant she’d find out he wasn’t the man she’d thought he was at the beginning.

  Too late for that cliché.

  Honesty is the best policy.

  Too late for that one, too. He hadn’t lied, though. She’d never asked him if he had children. He’d so easily slipped into the prefatherhood version of himself, it had never occurred to her to ask, perhaps.

  He could have offered the information. He hadn’t.

  Practice how you’ll play. His high school coach’s favorite. If the track meet would be held outdoors in the heat, then practicing indoors in the gym was poor preparation. Then there was army’s version: Train the way you’ll fight. Since battles could be fought in mud, soldiers trained in the rain. Battles could erupt in the middle of the night, so units trained at night. If they’d have to hump twenty pounds of gear on their backs during a battle, then each soldier had to hump twenty pounds of gear during road marches across a safe, stateside post.

  Aiden knew this. He trained six hundred soldiers in accordance with that principle. He needed to apply it to this situation. Any relationship he had with India beyond this week would be with the Aiden who dealt with real life, the man who lived for two little girls who shared their deceased mother’s green eyes. If he was going to sleep with India on Christmas Eve, he’d do it at his house, with his children tucked in their beds, just down the hall.

  He could almost imagine it. Almost—but there was some fear there, some anxiety about having four people around a table that held three. But four could happen. For the first time since he’d lost Melissa, it was a possibility. How it would look was still hazy, but he could envision something where before there had been only a blank.

  He watched India sleeping, then reached out to move a strand of hair off her face, so that it wouldn’t tickle her nose and wake her up. He’d done that the very first time they’d slept together. He wanted to do that for a very long time to come—and that meant he’d have to do it with children tucked into their beds in the rooms next to his.

  Practice how you’ll play. Train the way you’ll fight.

  If he continued to build this relationship as a bachelor with no family, then neither of them would be prepared to handle the reality of life with his children. The race would be lost before it began, the battle lost before a shot was fired.

  Losing India had become an unacceptable outcome. Aiden needed to tell her about his daughters. The clock was ticking, after all. Their third night was over.

  India rustled around a little bit, then opened her eyes to look at him over the pillow. It was more like a squint, actually. She wasn’t a morning person.

  “What time is it?” she mumbled.

  He cupped the back of her head. “It’s time for me to tell you how beautiful you are. It’s time for me to tell you how lucky I am to spend the day with you.”

  She closed her eyes, but now she was smiling. “You really are the most amazing rebound guy.”

  She came willingly when he pulled her closer. He tucked her head against his chest and held her, knowing she was going to fall back asleep for another five or ten minutes. Then she’d be a little more awake—not completely, but enough. He’d learned three mornings ago that he was not the only person who woke up aroused.

  She drifted off. He could feel her breathing change when she came back to him, surfacing for the second time. He certainly could feel her hand as it drifted down his body. Lazily, sleepily, she rolled onto her back as he rolled on a condom, her thighs parting as she turned her head to kiss his shoulder without opening her eyes. He covered her body with his own, settling onto her, sliding into her, making love to her, bringing her with him into the bright light of the day.

  “Good morning,” he said, his voice so husky with emotion, it came out as a whisper.

  “This is the best way to wake up, ever,” she said against his throat. “So much better than an alarm clock. I wish I could take you back to Belgium with me.”

  “I do, too.”

  She pulled away to look at him, her gray eyes now awake and alert, and he knew she’d heard the regret in his voice. “But you can’t?”

  “I can’t.” He needed to explain why, and he would. Today.

  But they’d begun the day as they’d meant for the day to go on. He didn’t want to change course, not yet, not when she climbed out of bed and tugged his hand, bringing him into the shower with her.

  Honesty is the best policy. There was nothing more honest than this, than the way he worshipped her body and the way she lost herself in his. The honest truth, communicated in her kisses and her words—I wish I could take you to Belgium—was that neither one of them would be ready to part three nights from now.

  Things had to change. He would take her to lunch, explain everything, and they could begin again, once they agreed that they would be going on together for far more than three nights.

  She would know that the man who was kissing her now under the rainfall of a new showerhead would kiss her like this whether he was raising children or not. Their desire wouldn’t change when she found out the man who was driving her wild with his wet hands was also the man who dealt with clutter and laundry. She’d know he was still Aiden. She’d still want him for more than three nights.

  Wouldn’t she?

  He had no choice. He was going to have to tell her—

  She lowered herself to kneel before him.

  Later.

  Lunch.

  Lunch would come soon enough.

  Aiden closed his eyes, turned his face up to the falling water, and let India take him where she wanted him to go.

  * * *

  “McDonald’s? You want to go to McDonald’s?”

  India laughed at Aiden’s expression. “It may not be a big deal to you, but I’ve been living in Europe for the past four years. I want to go to an American McDonald’s.”

  She intended to drive him there, too. Tom’s pickup had been okay, and Aiden’s red pickup had looked new when she’d arrived in all her jet-lagged glory, but Helen had a Jeep, deliciously orange, with the kind of windows that could be removed and a top that could be put down. It was sixty degrees and sunny right now. India was taking the Jeep.

  “But...” Aiden took the rear window from her and set it down in the garage. “I know the closest McDonald’s has a big kiddie area. It’s always busy.”

  She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “We’ll sit as far away from it as possible. Other side of the restaurant—all the way across the restaurant.”

  Aiden was loosening the passenger-side window. He paused. Scowled.

  “What’s the matter? Is the window sticking?”

  He shook h
is head and hauled the window all the way out of its tracks in one swoop.

  India undid the latches near the windshield so they could pull back the canvas top. She kept one eye on Aiden as he carried the passenger window into the garage. He was still scowling.

  “It won’t be that bad,” she said. “Kids are like most critters. If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you.”

  He laughed at that, a single ha. He was amused. Wasn’t he?

  “You know what? It’s no big deal. We don’t have to hit McDonald’s. I can go in San Antonio or Corpus Christi. I’ll probably pass one every ten miles on the way to the coast.” The names of the next two cities on her vacation itinerary stirred more dread than anticipation. She didn’t want to be anywhere except 490 Cedar Highway. Three more nights...

  Aiden was right before her, close enough to touch, smiling at her now. “You just surprised me, that’s all. If you want McDonald’s, then I’ll take you to McDonald’s.”

  “Actually, I’ll take you.” She patted the orange metal. “I’m driving this machine. You can ride shotgun.”

  “Want to go cross-country for part of the way? I know some land we can cut across.”

  “Hell, yes, let’s do some mud-dogging,” she said, possibly the most American thing she’d said yet since coming back. “At least we can go off-road on the way there. I don’t know if my stomach will be able to handle getting bounced around once I stuff it full of fries.” Ugh, she sounded like such a wimp. “But it’ll be fun on the way there, getting windblown and jarred to pieces. It clears the mind.”

  Aiden kissed her before going around the vehicle to jump in the passenger seat. “Sounds good. Let’s arrive at McDonald’s with clear minds.”

  * * *

  The french fries were everything she’d remembered and more.

  “Delicious.” She dragged a salty, golden piece of nirvana through her puddle of ketchup, then placed it on her tongue.

  “If you keep groaning like that, we’re going to get thrown out for public indecency.”