by Caro Carson
It was his turn to frown. He’d bet she had no idea how anxious she sounded. “It’s been a long time since I was eleven, but I don’t think I would have been too happy to be left out like that. You wanted me to meet him first. What changed while we walked from my office to my parking lot?”
She dropped her too-determined smile. “There’s a chance that when you meet Matthew, you’ll change your mind.”
Not a chance. “I already told you kids don’t scare me.”
“Mine might. He was wonderful this morning, pinning on my rank. I just never know from day to day if I’ll get the wonderful Matthew or...or not.” Her frown was genuine, her next declaration emphatic. “It’s just a phase.”
“Are we talking about a phase like he’s gotten into drugs or he’s been sucked into a gang?”
“No, nothing like that. That was a very military police kind of thing to ask, by the way.”
“It happens.” Eleven years old. What had it felt like to be eleven years old?
“He can just be so difficult. Deliberately contrary.” Juliet ducked her chin a bit and peeked up at him from under the brim of her hat. “He’s been hard to live with, admittedly, but I’m certain it’s just a—”
“A phase. I got that. So, we’re talking about a kid whose dad doesn’t come to see him and who got sent to live at a new post by the US Army. He’s been living at the Holiday Inn for two weeks, and he had to change schools in the middle of the year. That kind of phase?”
She stilled, eyes wide like a deer caught in the headlights. A very beautiful deer with golden glints in her brown eyes, which he let himself remember for the first time in years how much he’d always admired. He’d noticed it one day in their junior year, when he’d made fun of her safety goggles in a chemistry lab. He’d never told her that he saw gold in her eyes.
“Are you sure you’re not a parent?” she asked.
“You don’t have to be a parent to realize that’s a lot on a kid’s plate. This is a bad idea. I don’t want to make things harder for him.” He opened the car door to get his sunglasses.
“You’d like him if you met him.” She blurted out the words.
He snapped his attention back to those golden-brown eyes. The way she’d taken a step closer, the way her hands almost reached to stop him—did she think he was going to get in the Corvette and drive off without her? Was she afraid he’d drive off without her?
It was hard to imagine Juliet Grayson afraid of anything. Evan grabbed his sunglasses, shut the car door and silently cursed the impossibility of having this conversation in his battalion parking lot. In uniform. He wished he could hold her, hug her against his chest until some of the tension that was humming through her subsided.
“I think you would,” she said more quietly.
He could only reassure her with his words. “I’m sure I’ll like him. He’s your kid.”
“And Rob’s.”
“I know he is. I know Rob, and I know you were married to Rob. This isn’t news to me.” Evan felt a touch of relief that she wasn’t afraid to bring up potentially difficult subjects. That was the Juliet he knew.
“It doesn’t bother you?” she asked.
“No.” An incredible lie, but now was not the time to confess how jealousy had nearly eaten him alive. “That has nothing to do with anything. When I said it’s a bad idea, I meant it’s a bad idea to spring a marriage on any child as a done deal. We can get married when the courthouse opens on Monday as easily as today. Matthew and I can meet under a little less pressure. You and I can spend the weekend catching up.”
He wasn’t going to say they’d spend the weekend getting to know each other, because they knew each other. They’d always known one another. Time had passed, and they’d had separate experiences during that time, but nothing had changed them. He was still Evan. She was still Juliet.
“You have a roundtable scheduled for Monday,” she said. “I’ve only been at Fort Hood for two weeks. I can’t show up Monday morning and ask for the day off. I can’t ask for any day off next week.”
“Next Friday afternoon, then, so we’ll have the weekend afterward. I’ll wear my blues to work. We’ll go straight to the courthouse.”
She clasped her hands behind her back—had they been shaking like his?—but she didn’t nod or agree.
“Why today? Is there some legality I need to know about?” Evan tried to imagine what that could be. The army could be a minefield of legalities that affected soldiers’ lives. “Are your household goods going to be put into long-term storage if you don’t give them a delivery address today? Are your orders for Fort Hood going to be changed if you’re not married?”
“I hadn’t even thought of those things. Stop, or I’ll have even more to worry about.”
“Then why do you want to go to the judge right this minute?”
“Because you said...” The flush was back—no, a blush. This time, she looked embarrassed, not aroused. She turned away from him, just slightly, and fixed her gaze on the colorful sign in front of the building that was painted with the battalion’s crest. The green shield depicted a gold gauntlet in a fist, enforcing order.
“Because I said what?” He watched her face as she put her thoughts in order.
“I’ve been in the army too long. For a minute there, I thought the best course of action would be to exploit my advantage. Strike while the iron is hot. Allow you no time to regroup after my ambush. If I let you stop and think about it, you might choose to retreat.”
“Not a chance.” He said it out loud this time.
“There’s always a chance, but you should have that chance. And I shouldn’t assume everything is a battle.” She turned her face toward him once more. “Forget I tried to rush it. I’m sorry about that. Back to the original plan. You should meet my son first, before you decide anything.”
She was afraid he was going to change his mind and leave without her. Juliet: afraid. Incredible.
“I already decided. If a week could make any man change his mind, then you shouldn’t be with him anyway. You deserve better.” You know that—but he choked back the words, because her brown eyes suddenly glittered not with gold, but with unshed tears.
She tugged the brim of her hat down a half inch.
Time had passed. They’d had separate experiences, for certain, and hers had included a man who had changed his mind and broken a promise, hadn’t it? Rob Jones had been so much less than she deserved.
Evan shoved down the guilt. “Juliet, I won’t change my mind.”
“Twenty minutes ago, you didn’t know I was divorced. You didn’t know I was stationed at Fort Hood.”
A sergeant passed behind Juliet. Evan returned his salute without taking his attention off Juliet. He looked her squarely in the eye, unafraid, as sober and serious as he’d ever been about anything in his life. “You and I are getting married because we’ve had sixteen years to think about it, and neither one of us has changed our mind.”
They stared one another down for a moment.
The memories continued to bombard him, the times they’d gauged one another just like this, each holding their ground during debates over chemistry lab hypotheses or proper pizza toppings. In retrospect, he could see that their showdowns had been frequent but fearless, because they’d been so certain that their friendship wouldn’t be changed by championing opposing views. They’d opposed each other on lab reports and pepperoni just for the heck of it sometimes, because it was always invigorating, often fun, and it had made the rest of their friends either groan or place bets on which one of them would concede the point. Now here they were, debating how and when to get a marriage license. It felt natural.
Surrounded by the sights and sounds of his everyday life—the beige building, the battalion sign, the people in camouflage crossing the sidewalks—Evan was struck anew by the miracle of Juliet restored to his li
fe, standing here, right before him, right in the middle of his ordinary world. He shook his head slowly and started to smile.
“Lieutenant Colonel Grayson, can we please get in your car and continue this conversation somewhere, anywhere, away from here? I can’t touch you or hug you or have any kind of normal interaction with a woman I’m so damned happy to see, because we’re standing outside my own headquarters.”
“You’re happy to see me?”
“Ecstatic.”
“You want to hug me?”
“You have no idea.”
“Hmm.” She pressed her lips together skeptically, another expression he knew so well. It tugged at his heart. He hadn’t thought about missing Juliet’s expressions. Now that he didn’t have to miss them any longer, each one was making him realize in how much denial he’d been all along.
She pulled out a car key from somewhere in the vicinity of her skirt waistband. “Being in a car isn’t going to make us invisible, but I’m parked over there.”
“Lead the way.”
But she didn’t move. “You made a valid point. It’s been sixteen years. Next Friday will work.”
“Yes, it will.”
But she didn’t smile. In fact, she’d barely smiled at all in the past twenty-something minutes. Juliet had always been smart and sharp and driven, but she’d also been joyful. He knew her expressions, and her smile had been the most frequent of them all. Even at the end of a deployment to Afghanistan, she’d smiled on that airfield. Had life dealt her so many negative experiences while they were apart that smiles were less frequent than skepticism? That talking about her current life required stoicism?
There’d been nothing stoic or skeptical in that kiss in his office.
She kissed like the Juliet he’d known, the woman who loved life. She’d been the ringleader, the friend who’d coaxed everyone else to go to new places, to taste new foods, even to wear crazy hats or face paint, just for fun.
He was a man who didn’t like surprises in general, but to realize Juliet had lost her joy in life was the least welcome surprise of all. Evan assigned himself a new mission in life: to bring a little fun back into hers.
A lot of fun.
Exploit the advantage. Strike while the iron is hot. Give her no chance to retreat.
“We have some time before school’s out. Let’s go to your hotel room and get you out of that uniform.”
Chapter Four
He couldn’t be serious.
Evan Stephens couldn’t be asking her for a quick afternoon tumble in a hotel room.
Could he?
Juliet turned to walk toward her car. Evan walked beside her—close beside her. He was serious about honoring their marriage pact. He might be serious about the hotel, too. Maybe a compatibility test of some sort.
“Is that a line?” she forced herself to ask. “Something like, ‘Why don’t you slip into something more comfortable?’”
He bumped her shoulder with his, barely, a subtle touch because there were eyes everywhere, but he chuckled openly. Such a deep, masculine sound of amusement. Her heart pounded, but then again, it hadn’t stopped pounding since she’d walked into that headquarters building. When had Evan Stephens become such a...such a...such a man? A sexy man, not a brotherly buddy. A sexy, single man who oozed authority and athleticism. Women must fall all over him.
Of course they did. They always had, even when she’d thought of him as that brotherly buddy. Whole rows in the ballpark bleachers had been filled by sorority sisters enjoying the view as Evan Stephens stepped up to bat. Juliet had teased him about it, but she’d also been a little proud of him, pretty much in the same way the girls who had handsome brothers were proud. They enjoyed showing them off while simultaneously poking at them to keep them from getting vain. Back then, Juliet had felt so superior to those girls in the bleachers. After all, she could tease and joke with Evan anytime she wanted, without being a slobbering slave to hormones each time he’d stepped up to bat in those white baseball pants. Except—
Right now, when she pictured those ball games in her memory, she could only see how Evan had looked at home plate, poised with the bat over his shoulder, staring down the pitcher just before smashing a fast pitch over the fence. Home run—that smile he’d flashed at the stands as he jogged around the diamond, touching every base. Oh yes, Evan Stephens had never had trouble scoring...
“Something like that,” he said. “I already know what a nice girl like you is doing in a place like this, but if you want to invite me up to see your etchings—”
“Not funny.” She stopped abruptly and stabbed the unlock button on her key fob.
Evan whistled low at the car that had responded with a flash of lights to her button-jabbing. She’d bought the four-door sedan when it was already well used and had driven her child everywhere in it for years, adding tens of thousands of miles.
“The Mom Mobile,” she said, by way of introduction. She had all the enthusiasm of a resigned Eeyore.
“A Lexus,” Evan said. “Not exactly a sturdy minivan.”
“It’s very sturdy.”
“It’s red.”
“It’s got a good safety rating and a big trunk for hauling everything moms have to haul.”
“Juliet.” He crossed his arms over his chest, a move that was entirely too self-assured, too macho. “It’s a red Lexus. It’s luxurious. It’s high performance.”
“It’s—”
“It’s very you.”
She heard everything he put in that compliment. It was a come-on, a little too suggestive, a little too...Casanova. She’d called him that in college. They all had. Mr. Casanova, a teasing nickname their circle had given him for good reason. None of his girlfriends had lasted very long. Juliet’s stomach knotted up as a feeling of dread crept through her. None of her husband’s affairs had lasted very long, either, and in the end, neither had their marriage.
“The old me, you mean?”
Evan only knew Juliet-from-College.
She could barely remember that woman. “The truth is, I bought it when it already had seventy thousand miles on it, because it was affordable and practical. I’ve had it for two years.”
“Two years. A divorce present to yourself?”
“No.” She’d only been trying to pick up the pieces after Rob had traded in her car one day while she was at work. He’d taken off on a new Harley. She’d needed something reliable and reasonable, something available to buy immediately from a used car lot. But still...it was a red Lexus. She frowned at the shiny chrome wheels. “Maybe.”
Had she been defiant? Reclaiming herself by buying something that was to her taste, for a change?
Not consciously. She’d only been staggered by betrayal, struggling to hang on to her last shred of dignity after being rejected in bed and displaced in her own husband’s life—she and Matthew had both been displaced—for the third time.
Was she jumping from that frying pan into the fire with Mr. Casanova? The knots in her stomach pulled tighter. She put a little distance between them, walking toward the driver’s side of the car.
“It looks like it’s fun to drive,” Evan said. “I’ll let you drive mine if you let me drive yours.”
Definite innuendo there. She rounded on him, catching him looking not at her car, but at her legs.
He had those blue eyes back on her face and an innocent smile on his face in a fraction of a second. “Some things never change. When we were all wearing shredded jeans, you were more comfortable in shorts and skirts. You still are, or you would have worn the trousers with your uniform today.”
Women had the option of skirt or trousers with this uniform. Evan was right; she preferred the skirt. “If you know I prefer skirts, then you know I’m already comfortable. There’s no reason to go to my hotel room. None.”
His eyes narrowed just the tin
iest bit. She wasn’t fooling him. This man wasn’t distracted by either the full military regalia of her uniform or by her talk of motherly concerns. He kept looking at her as if he knew her, and he knew she was being defensive, wound too tightly to handle a silly tease.
Not sorry. I need to keep some defenses.
This man had said I’m overwhelmed and had cut right through her hard-earned, clear-eyed grip on reality, had cut deeply enough to expose a young girl’s fantasy. God, dear God, she knew better. She knew how fleeting infatuation was, yet she’d believed, wholeheartedly, in the fairy tale. Just for a few seconds, she’d felt like his beautiful future wife, one whom he kissed like she was precious, like she was desired. She’d wanted to capture that irrational joy in her hand by taking Prince Charming’s hand and running with him to the courthouse, logic and practicality be damned.
Evan had called that impulse insane.
He’d been right.
Her insanity didn’t faze him much; he remained unflappably friendly. “Why not change at the hotel? You’ll be able to have more fun this afternoon in civilian clothes.”
“Have fun?” It was the furthest thing from her mind. There was so much at stake here, everything that mattered in her life, everyone. Meaning Matthew. Today was a big test, the biggest of tests.
Evan laughed at her confusion. “Yes, let’s have some fun. You want Matthew to meet me. I’m not above stacking the deck in my favor by meeting him over ice cream.”
Juliet blinked. She was thinking about sex and betrayal and hotels and courthouses and all her worries about her son, and Evan was thinking of ice cream.
“Or tacos? I think I was always hungry when I was eleven.” Evan slid his sunglasses on, classic Ray-Ban aviators with mirrored lenses. “Tacos are sloppy. You might want to change first.”
The way he wore those Ray-Bans short-circuited her brain. It was so unfair that he should have gotten sexier as he got older.
It was distracting her from her purpose today. She needed to think of Matthew, her too tender-hearted son, who was right this moment navigating the treacherous halls of a new middle school, absorbing the thousand small hurts that went with being the newest student. She needed to think about what would be best for him. She did not need to think about the panty-dropping hotness of a military commander in Ray-Bans.