“Just try not to make everything so hard. It doesn’t have to be.”
“Easy for you to say,” she muttered, glancing back at her husband’s tush as he backed his way out of the truck.
The colonel reached up, grabbed a lock of her hair and gave it a gentle tug. She looked at him.
“Donna, give yourself—and Jack—a chance. Who knows? You two might end up enjoying being married.”
“Sure and what color blue do you think the sun will be tomorrow?”
He shook his head and stood beside her. “All I’m saying is, as long as you’re married—make the best of the situation. You didn’t trap Jack into a marriage. He volunteered for this mission.”
“Yeah,” she said on a sigh. “And him without a bazooka.”
“Cut it out,” her father snapped, and her gaze shot to his. “Make the best of this, Donna. Don’t throw away what might turn out to be a blessing because you’re too proud, or stubborn, or whatever, to admit that you actually like Jack Harris.”
“Don’t you get it, Dad?” she countered quickly. “It doesn’t matter if I like him or not. He’s not interested. Hell, I’m not even sure I am.”
“He’s not Kyle.”
“No, he’s not,” Donna said, tossing another glance at the man she’d married only days before. “Jack didn’t sleep with my maid of honor two days before the wedding. Heck, he doesn’t even want to sleep with—” She broke off quickly. Heat rushed to her cheeks as she realized that she was talking to her father about her lack of a sex life. Lord, when would she learn to shut up?
Thankfully, her father let that statement go, apparently just as eager to avoid such a talk as she was.
“Donna,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and turning her to face him. “Sometimes, life’s little surprises turn out to be the best thing that you could hope for.”
“And sometimes, it’s just another screwup by Donna Candello.”
“Donna Harris.”
She groaned.
Her father shook his head and pulled her close for a brief, hard hug. When she stepped back, she looked up at him hopefully. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in coming over for dinner tonight? Kind of help ease us into this moving-in-together thing?”
“Sorry,” he said. “I can’t. I think I may have a date.”
Her eyebrows lifted. Her father had hardly ever dated. “You ‘think’ you ‘may’ have a date?”
He nodded as his gaze moved past her to stare out into the side yard. “It’s a little iffy right now.”
“Who is she?”
He shook his head, meeting her eyes briefly. “I’ll tell you that if I can actually convince her to go out with me.”
“Why wouldn’t she?” Donna demanded. “You’re smart, handsome, funny, kind—”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” her father interrupted, laughing. “But why don’t you let me handle my love life and you concentrate on your own?”
“Yours would be easier.”
“What was that you said about cowardice?”
“Guilty.”
The colonel turned his head slightly. “Looks like Jack’s ready to go.”
Donna looked up to see her husband moving toward them, and told herself once again not to notice how well those jeans fit his long legs. Oh, she was in deep water here, and there was no one around to throw her a life preserver.
She started reluctantly for the steps, then stopped suddenly as if something had occurred to her. “Dad?”
“Yes?”
“What ever happened to the corporal?”
Thankfully, he knew instantly who she was referring to. “You scared the poor kid to death. He requested a transfer almost immediately.”
Donna grimaced. “To where?”
“Greenland. I think he wanted to get as far away from here as possible.”
“You mean,” she clarified unnecessarily, “from me.”
“Donna…”
“Some seductress,” she muttered more to herself than her father. “Come on to a man and he runs thousands of miles in the opposite direction.”
As she walked down the sidewalk, she met Jack’s gaze and felt another flutter of awareness streak through her. He waved to the colonel, then took her arm to escort her to the truck. And Donna couldn’t help but wonder if her husband would scare off as easily as that corporal had.
More important, did she have the nerve to find out?
Jack dismissed the private he’d enlisted to help move furniture, then stood back and surveyed his new bedroom. Donna was right. The place was small. And old. And falling apart. But it had one definite plus. It wasn’t in the NCO barracks.
“Jack,” Donna called from the other room.
On the down side, he was living with a wife he wasn’t allowed to touch. “Yeah?”
“Can you come here for a minute?”
Steeling himself against the sight of Donna’s bare legs and nicely rounded butt, Jack headed for her bedroom. Evidently it didn’t matter how prepared he was. One look at her and his body tightened like an overtuned guitar string.
He stood in the doorway, watching her as she struggled and yanked at one of two windows. Half bent over in her effort to shove the window open, her cutoffs crept high on her thighs, the worn fabric stretching dangerously thin across her curves. The midriff-length T-shirt she wore rode up on her back, displaying even more of her deliciously smooth, ivory skin.
His teeth ground together as he struggled to hold on to what little self-control he had left. “What do you need?” he asked.
She shot him a harried look over her shoulder and blew a lock of dark hair out of her eyes. “Help.”
He chuckled despite the pain in his lower body.
“This isn’t funny,” she told him, narrowing the one eye she had locked on him. “Somebody must have nailed this darn thing shut.” She grunted for good measure as she gave the window another shove. Nothing.
Sighing heavily, she straightened and glared at the closed window, while idly rubbing a spot on her lower back.
Before he could do something stupid like offer to massage her strained muscles, he walked around the edge of her bed and straight to the window. Slowly, he inspected the wooden frame, giving himself time to adjust to the nearness of her. Damn. What kind of woman wore perfume to move furniture?
Obviously, he told himself as he breathed in the soft, floral scent, this one.
Keep centered, he warned himself. Mind on the job.
“It’s not nailed shut,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s just been painted over.”
“Perfect.”
“If you’ll get me a knife, I’ll open it for you.”
“Deal.”
Brushing up against him, she mumbled, “Sorry,” as she squeezed past and headed for the kitchen.
That incredibly brief touch shouldn’t have been enough to start a wildfire in his blood. But it had. Setting both hands flat on either side of the window, Jack let his head fall forward until his chin hit his neck. Closing his eyes, he concentrated the iron will he was known for to defeat this completely irrational hormonal attraction for his wife.
Hell, he didn’t even like her much. Well, all right, he liked her more than he had thought he would. But she still managed to give the impression that she was visiting royalty and he was a lucky, though unworthy, peasant to be allowed in her presence.
Just her attitude about this house was enough to underline all of the differences between them. He could tell by looking at her that she was disgusted to have to live in the place.
He lifted his head and looked out the window to the backyard. Knee-high, burned brown grass covered the lot, but there was a single, scrawny tree in the far corner and plenty of possibilities. He was willing to admit that the little house wasn’t much, but it was the first home he’d lived in since his parents had died when he was a kid.
The aunt and uncle he’d stayed with after the car accident had lived in an apartment and hadn�
�t exactly been the Ward and June Cleaver types. They hadn’t abused him or anything, though. In fact, they’d hardly noticed him at all until he’d turned sixteen and landed a part-time job. And even then, they’d only really been interested in his pathetically small paycheck.
Gritting his teeth, he pushed all of those memories to the deepest, darkest corner of his mind. That was over. That life was so far behind him, even the memories usually couldn’t catch him. But he’d been doing too much thinking lately. And that was her fault.
“Sorry it took me so long,” she said as she came back into the room.
Jack dismissed the past and focused on his present. “No problem.”
“I couldn’t find a sharp knife,” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken, and didn’t stop walking until she was right beside him. “Will this one be all right?”
A butter knife with a bent blade wasn’t exactly a precision tool, but he’d make do. He wanted to pry up the window and get the hell out of her bedroom as quickly as possible. “Yeah, it’s fine.”
His fingers closed over the knife handle, brushing against hers as she handed it to him. He swore he actually saw bright blue sparks rise from where they touched. He damn sure felt the sizzle. Right down to the soles of his feet.
Before he could blatantly ignore it, though, Donna took one long step back from him and put her hands behind her back for good measure.
His grip on the knife tightened as he deliberately turned to the task at hand. Running the blade along the painted-over seam, he cracked away the latest layer of white paint until the sash was free. Then he gave a hard shove and pushed the window open.
Instantly, a cold wind rushed in, carrying the scent of the sea. Donna inhaled sharply and smiled. “Isn’t that great?”
“Yeah. But cold.”
She grinned up at him. “Cold, yes. But not freezing. I talked to my old roommate this morning and she told me Baltimore got hit by a blizzard last night.”
The weather, he thought. They were actually discussing the weather.
Trying for a different subject, he asked, “So, was your roommate mad about you getting married and skipping out on your share of the rent?”
She shook her head. “Mad? No. Surprised? Yes. But it’s working out all right. She had wanted her boyfriend to move in anyway.”
“Handy,” he said for lack of anything better.
“Yeah,” Donna agreed with a ridiculously overbright smile. “All’s well that ends well.”
A long moment of silence stretched out between them.
She shivered slightly in the blast of cold air coming in the window. Jack lowered it several inches.
“Uh, do you want me to do the other window, too?”
Her smile faded as she shook her head. “No, one window’s enough for today. I would like it if you could find the switch on that refrigerator and turn it on. Though I’m still not sure it actually works with electricity.”
“No problem,” he told her, already moving, grateful for a reason to escape the too close confines of her bedroom.
“You always say that, you know.”
“Say what?”
“No problem. Isn’t anything a problem for you, Jack?”
He only had one at the moment. Keeping his hands off his wife. But all he said was, “Any problem can be handled.” He hoped.
“Before you go—” Her voice stopped him just inches from a clean getaway. He turned in the doorway and waited. “What is that?” she asked, pointing to the ceiling.
His gaze followed hers, then narrowed on an odd-shaped plaster bubble. Why hadn’t he noticed that earlier? he wondered, then knew the answer. He’d been keeping his gaze down, trying to avoid staring at Donna. He took a step closer, tilted his head to one side and studied the plaster oddity for a long minute before admitting, “I don’t know.”
“It’s right over my bed,” she observed unnecessarily.
He tossed her a glance. “You want to switch rooms?”
She looked around at the few things she’d already unpacked and he could tell she didn’t want to move any of it again. To reassure her, he took another look at the warped ceiling. “It’s probably just that the plaster’s gotten damp over the years. Most likely, the repair crews just keep slapping more plaster on it every year until it looks like a blister.”
“A blister,” she mused thoughtfully. “Yeah. That’s exactly what it looks like. Or maybe a pimple.”
“So, you’re okay with this?”
She glanced at him and nodded. “Sure. I mean, if it’s been this way for years, what are the chances it’s going to pop on me?”
He jerked her a brief nod, then said, “I’ll go get the fridge going.”
He only hoped the old appliance would be as adept at running as he was quickly becoming.
After sharing a frozen pizza and a cheap bottle of wine they’d picked up at the commissary, Donna and Jack retreated to their own bedrooms.
Lying wide awake in the moon-washed darkness, Donna stared blankly up at the plaster pimple on her ceiling. Her father’s words kept repeating over and over again in her mind.
It was tempting, she thought. The idea of treating this pretend marriage like a real one. After all, she was twenty-eight years old. If she was ever going to have a husband and kids, she’d have to start sometime soon. And Jack seemed like a nice guy. Hadn’t he leaped into the fray to rescue her father’s reputation? Wasn’t he being a good sport about living in this miserable little hut?
And…didn’t she get goose pimples just watching him walk across a room?
Sighing, Donna resettled more deeply into her pillow. None of this mattered, she told herself. Because Jack had already made it painfully clear that he wasn’t interested in anything more than a temporary marriage. So it was pointless for her to daydream about other, more pleasant possibilities.
Wasn’t it?
These thoughts were getting her nowhere. And now she had the extra added bonus of a deep, unsettling ache building slowly inside her.
Her gaze locked on the stupid pimple hanging over her bed. How hard would it have been for the contractors employed by the corps to just fix the ceiling?
Scowling and muttering darkly to herself, Donna stood on the mattress, directly under the giant pimple. Tilting her head back, she examined the darn thing as closely as she could. Finally she reached up and gingerly poked at the white, crinkly plaster.
Instantly the ceiling exploded.
What must have been oceans of water and tons of wet plaster dropped on her.
She screamed and ducked.
Jack bolted out of bed as if he’d been shot. Donna! He took the pitifully few steps that separated their bedrooms and threw her door open. Stunned at the disaster in front of him, he raced barefoot across the chunks of wet plaster and absently noted the sound of the rug squishing beneath his feet.
Bracing one knee on the waterlogged bed, he grabbed Donna and yanked her off the mattress. Holding her tightly, he demanded, “Are you all right?”
Slowly she lifted her head, then reached up and pushed her soaking wet hair off her forehead. Plucking a piece of plaster off her lips, she nodded. “I think so.”
“What happened?” he asked, even though he could see for himself that the damn ceiling had come down on top of her. He never should have let her take that room. He should have insisted on sleeping in there himself. She could have been killed.
“I popped the pimple,” Donna said, half turning in his arms to survey the damage.
“You popped it?”
“I swear. All I did was touch it. And boom! Just touched it. That’s all,” she said, her voice sounding faint, as if coming from a distance.
His heart racing, Jack pulled her closely to him. His arms closed around her and he ran his hands up and down her body, telling himself he was simply checking her for injuries. But she seemed all too healthy.
“Honestly,” she was saying. “I don’t know what happened. One minute everything was fine and the ne
xt minute, the world blew up.”
“It’s okay,” he told her. “I’ll call base housing in the morning. See about getting it repaired.”
She pulled back in his arms and looked up at him. Bits of plaster clung to her wet hair like an abstract crown, and her face was pale. “Guess our two-bedroom apartment just became a one-bedroom, huh?”
Jack stared at her, admiration rising in his chest. She was amazing. Her ceiling blows up in her face and there’s no hysterics. No crying. Damn it, he didn’t want to like her. He really didn’t. He could deal with wanting her and not having her. But blast everything, if he liked her, too, it would be too much.
His gaze slipped over her quickly. And just as quickly, he wished he hadn’t looked. Her nightgown, God help him, was soaked through, outlining and defining every one of her curves. His body reacted immediately and he took a half step back. Standing there wearing nothing more than his military-issue boxers and his dog tags, he suddenly felt every bit as exposed as she must.
Running one hand over the back of his neck, he shifted his gaze to the wreckage that was her room. “We’ll deal with this tomorrow. For tonight, you’ll sleep with me.”
He glanced at her in time to see one dark eyebrow lift into a high arch.
“I’m not suggesting anything more than sleep,” he said, determined that she not think he was using this situation to his own benefit. “We’re adults. We can share a bed without sharing anything else.”
“I suppose so,” she said quietly, picking her sodden nightgown off her chest with her fingertips. Stepping past him into the hall, she added, so quietly he almost missed it, “Seems like a waste of a good bed, though.”
Eight
It was more than a waste, Jack thought much later. It was damned torture.
Donna hummed tunelessly as she slipped into a deeper sleep. He turned his head on the pillow to glare at her. How in the hell could she sleep when only inches of mattress separated them?
But as that thought shot through his brain, he realized the answer. She wasn’t bothered by his nearness because she simply didn’t want him the way he wanted her. Hot. Sweaty. Moaning.
The Littlest Marine & The Oldest Living Married Virgin Page 20