The Colonels' Texas Promise

by Caro Carson

  From the positive, friendly way Juliet spoke to Matthew about Daddy, Evan guessed Matthew had been shielded from the truth of his father’s actions. Juliet must have expected her son to think it was a point in Evan’s favor to be associated with Rob. From the look in Matthew’s eyes, Evan wasn’t so sure.

  I’m nothing like your father.

  Judging from the hostility being directed Evan’s way, Matthew sensed this—and maybe that was a strike against Evan.

  Or maybe bringing up his father had made Matthew realize that Evan was sitting where his father should be.

  Either way, that baby Juliet had loved so much would be living under Evan’s roof soon. Matthew didn’t know it yet, but he wasn’t going to be happy about it at first. What he might never know was how much Evan wanted to do right by him and his mother, how awed Evan was by the bond between them.

  But Evan knew.

  He returned Matthew’s gaze with neither hostility nor sympathy. Go ahead and figure me out, kid. Test me. Get to the bottom of this. I’d do the same if I were you.

  Chapter Five

  Juliet stopped her car at the exit of the ice cream parlor’s parking lot. Where should she go from here?

  She’d felt the change in the air just before they’d all thrown in their spoons and declared defeat. For a few minutes there, things had been going so well. Now she had a child frowning in the back seat and a man deep in thought beside her.

  “I’ll take you back to your car,” she said to Evan, and turned the car toward post.

  “What would you like to do for dinner?” he asked.

  In the rearview mirror, Juliet saw Matthew go on alert, like a watchdog who heard a noise that was out of place.

  “I’m so full, I can’t think about dinner.” It was a cowardly response, but it bought her a little time.

  She felt the weight of Evan’s gaze on her. Could she not fool him about anything? There was a definite drawback to being with someone who knew her so well.

  Evan tipped his head toward the back seat. “I’ll bet Matthew will be thinking about dinner soon enough. I think middle school was when my mom started calling me ‘the bottomless pit.’”

  “No, I’m full, too,” Matthew said immediately. “Can we just go back to the hotel, Mom? Please?”

  Matthew sounded whiny, which meant he was upset. “Sure, honey, but we have to take Evan back to his car first.”

  Matthew threw himself back into his seat in a huff.

  She didn’t take her eyes off the road. “That kind of thing won’t get you what you want any faster, young man. Did you think we’d just leave Evan in the parking lot and let him walk home?”

  She could feel Evan’s gaze. She’d sounded like such a mother just then, hadn’t she? Did Evan think she was a good mother? A pushover? Too strict? She was probably all of those from one day to the next. Maybe from one hour to the next. She hoped she got it right often enough that Matthew would turn out okay, despite...oh, everything. Everything she’d done wrong. Everything she was trying to fix.

  She slowed to a stop at the post’s main gate and took out her military ID to show the military police on guard.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am.” The MP on duty took her ID card and bent to look in her window to see who her passengers were. Every adult had to have a photo ID to get on post, not just the driver, but Evan hadn’t moved to get his ID out of his wallet.

  The MP did a little double take. “Colonel Stephens, sir. Good afternoon.”

  Evan acknowledged him. “Afternoon.”

  Ah, of course. Evan commanded the MP battalion. They must all know him by sight. The guard handed back her ID with alacrity and waved them through with a crisp salute.

  It was like being with a celebrity. Should she find that sexy? She did—more feelings she hadn’t bargained on feeling.

  She sighed. So far, nothing this day had gone like she’d expected.

  “What were you expecting,” Evan asked, “for us to do tonight?”

  That was an alarming little bit of mind reading. “Matthew and I have a little routine. The hotel has a fridge and a microwave, but we’re out of frozen dinners at the moment.” She craned her neck to see her slouching son in the rearview mirror. “What do you say, Matty? Subs again? Pizza? Or should we go to the PX and get another frozen lasagna to nuke?”

  “I don’t care.”

  Juliet was just about to sigh again when Evan set his hand on her seat’s headrest, an easy reach for him. She could feel the heat of his hand behind her ear, sense the strength of him, this man in command of hundreds—

  “Really, Juliet?”

  She swallowed. “Really what?”

  “You walked into my office two and a half hours ago. Your plan was to just...” He glanced toward Matthew and kept his voice even and polite, but he wasn’t happy with the situation. “To collect on a promise and call it a day? See you next week at the courthouse? Go home and eat lasagna for two, not three?”

  Great. Now both of the guys in the car were scowling at her.

  She didn’t have any brilliant plan from this point on. She braked as the next stoplight turned red. Red light after red light—she knew where she wanted to end up, but there didn’t seem to be any way to drive there smoothly.

  If that wasn’t a metaphor for her life, she didn’t know what was. She knew where she wanted to end up—happily married, raising a happy family—but damn if she knew how to get there. She’d tried the swept-off-her-feet-by-infatuation route with Rob, but that had been a dead end. Relying on an old friendship with Evan had seemed like a better path, but this road wasn’t going anywhere she’d expected, either.

  Evan wanted to know what she’d expected to do for dinner tonight. Dinner? She wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d gotten to Fort Hood and found out that Evan Stephens had forgotten all about their pinkie promise.

  But he hadn’t.

  “We have a lot to discuss,” Evan said. “I’d think dinner together would be a given.” This was said in a tone of voice that probably meant Evan’s staff needed to pay attention because he was about to lay out his plans. It would be sexy in an authoritative kind of way if it wasn’t directed at her, but since it was, Colonel Grayson didn’t need any orders from Colonel Stephens, thank you very much.

  Great, what a lovely family we make, all three of us scowling in unison.

  She kept her eyes on the red light. “I realize we have a lot to discuss. I also realize that you have a life that didn’t include me until two and a half hours ago. It’s Friday. I expected that you might already have plans for tonight, if I was even able to see you today. When I went to your office, I only half expected you to be there. You could have been out on a field exercise for the next two weeks or on a vacation cruise in the Bahamas.”

  The light turned green. Good, because she was just getting revved up. “You seem to think I should have plans for everything from this point on, but you’ll have to excuse me for not being that presumptuous. It’s not like I know a lot of men who would drop everything without any notice just because I showed up.”

  “Now you do.”

  “And it’s not like—” His words sank in. “I do?”

  “You do.”

  Another hard pang hit her, this time in her heart.

  He ran his thumb over an inch of her bared neck, a subtle move Matthew couldn’t see. “There’s no one I’d rather have dinner with. Nothing I’d rather be doing than spending time with you.”

  It took her breath away. All of it did. I’m overwhelmed—kissing her in his office—such a beautiful wife—dropping everything for her.

  What had she expected? Not any of this, not in her wildest dreams.

  “Pizza.” Matthew’s voice was loud and clear, zinging her attention from Evan to him. “I want pizza. In our room, Mom.”

  Juliet heard what her s
on didn’t say: Without this strange man I’ve never met before.

  She barely knew this man, either. He was a far cry from the college sophomore who’d pulled off a sweat-soaked T-shirt, twirled it into a rope, snapped it at her butt and made her spill her beer. Instead, he wore the uniform of a lieutenant colonel, looked her in the eye and told her he’d drop everything for her.

  She couldn’t do the same, not with Matthew as her priority. Expecting her child to immediately include Evan in their routine was too much, not when his whole life had already been turned upside down by the army’s orders that she move to Fort Hood, but orders were orders. They’d had to pack up and move.

  Liar. It wasn’t the army’s idea. You knew you were being promoted. You knew where Evan was, and you requested Fort Hood. You pulled a few strings, called a few friends at the Pentagon. You knew...

  She was grateful for the next red light. She needed to close her eyes for a moment, just a few seconds, because she needed to remember how to breathe.

  She felt two hundred pounds of man shifting in the seat next to her as Evan turned to address her son. His hand stayed, warm, just behind her head.

  “Pizza’s good, but have you had the really good Texas food yet?”

  “What’s Texas food?”

  “Barbecue, but not the sticky sauce kind. Have you heard of brisket?”

  Matthew must have shaken his head no.

  “You don’t want to miss out. Brisket is beef they cook over wood fires for an entire day. You can feel the heat coming off these huge pits of red-hot coals. I know one place where you can’t sit near the pits because they give off so much heat.”

  Juliet opened her eyes. The light turned green. She drove.

  “Sometimes the pit masters ask customers to bring them logs from the woodpile. They’ll hold up two or three fingers if they need two or three logs, and then people jump up from their picnic tables to grab ’em and bring them over. Of course, it’s usually kids who beat everyone to it, older kids, because adults are too slow and little kids can’t carry heavy wood. But the kids who help have to drop off the wood next to the pit and get back fast, because of the heat of the fire.”

  Juliet cracked her window open a few inches and breathed in the cool winter air of the Texas post she hadn’t come to by accident. February’s early dusk was approaching, but her mood was brightening with each glimpse of her son’s face in the rearview mirror. Matthew was waging a mighty struggle to stay aloof. Ice cream and red-hot firepits? Evan sure knew how to tempt an eleven-year-old boy.

  She parked in the parking space to the left of Evan’s. His car was the only one left in the row.

  The Corvette was too much for her son to withstand. His frosty disinterest went up in smoke. “Is that your car?”

  “It is.”

  Matthew scrambled out of the back seat, nearly banging his door into the Corvette, which gave Juliet a heart attack. Evan didn’t seem to notice the close call. He got out in a more leisurely manner, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his keys. Juliet needed to get out, too, so she could see Matthew. Over the roof of her car, she kept an eye on the top of Matthew’s head.

  Evan hit the unlock button on his key fob. “Go ahead, Matthew. Sit behind the steering wheel, if you want. See how it feels.”

  “Evan, no,” she protested.

  Matthew wasn’t going to wait for his mother to talk Evan out of it. He opened the Corvette’s door—fortunately, Evan was a human blockade to keep the Corvette’s door from dinging hers—and jumped in. Evan closed the door as Matthew jerked the steering wheel from side to side while sliding off the seat to see if he could mash the gas pedal.

  “Evan...no.”

  “At least one of you Graysons appreciates it.” He snorted in disgust. “A grandpa car.”

  “You realize that you look as old as a grandpa to him, right?”

  “Juliet?”

  “What?”

  “Get back in the car.” He started to get back in his side.

  “Why?”

  He stopped midmotion. “We need to talk.”

  “Right this second?” She was afraid to get back in that private space with just him.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” Maybe she was stalling because she wanted to get back in that private space with him.

  “Because I said so. Isn’t that what a grandpa would say?”

  “You’re not my grandpa.”

  He opened his mouth to fire back, but then he started to laugh. “It’s like riding a bicycle, isn’t it?”

  Riding a bicycle. When he’d kissed her, she’d thought the same thing about sex.

  “Wh-what is?”

  “Teasing each other like this. Arguing for the hell of it, to see who’ll win.” He grinned at her. “You win. I’m not your parent. But I am going to be your husband, so, Juliet, my little turtledove, please get back in your car so we can talk about expectations, my sweet baby doll.”

  She got back in the car.

  He shut the door. Without a seat belt to restrain him, he faced her, one forearm leaning on the center armrest, invading her personal space within this private space.

  She could feel her heart pounding again. Rather than look at Evan, she peered over his shoulder, trying to see Matthew through the car windows.

  “He’s fine.”

  She did look at Evan then, to give him the sour look he deserved. “Your Corvette won’t be.”

  One corner of his mouth turned up. His blue eyes were turning darker in the dusk. “I really missed you.”

  She couldn’t look away.

  “Nothing’s changed.” His deep voice was soft, quiet in the small space.

  Everything’s changed.

  “It’s been two and a half hours since I said I wanted to get out of this parking lot, so I could touch and kiss the woman I’m so damned happy to see, and we’re still here.”

  “Hug.” But she was looking at his lips. “You said ‘hug’ this afternoon.”

  “I meant kiss.”

  Before she realized she should retreat, his palm was gentle against her jaw as his thumb traced her bottom lip lightly, deliberately. That same hard contraction of desire hit her, low and intense. The near-pain of it made her words a little desperate. “We’re still being watched.”

  Evan’s thumb paused. Slowly, he turned his head to look over his shoulder at Matthew in the Corvette. He turned back to her. “Nope.”

  “I thought—I thought you wanted to talk about—about expectations.”

  “Nope.”

  She wet her lips, a nervous move, but her tongue flicked against Evan’s thumb, a fleeting taste of warm-rough-salt. Evan closed his eyes. A full second passed, and then he leaned in and placed his lips where his thumb had been.

  It was a beautiful kiss, a charming prince bestowing a blessing on a woman asleep.

  Then Evan began to wake her. He kissed her again, her lower lip. And again, the left corner of her mouth. She felt him breathe in, felt his hand sliding to the softness under her jaw, lifting her face. He kissed her, his mouth fully on hers, a firmer pressure. Her lips clung to his for an extra moment as he lifted his head away just long enough for her to breathe in, too, the air between them warm, intimate. Her hands shifted a little uselessly, brushing against camouflage and leather upholstery.

  “I can’t—we can’t just make out in a car.”

  “We can. We are.” Evan traced the edge of her ear with the pad of his thumb. “Were you never a teenager?”

  “You’re thirty-seven.” She spoke against the warm skin of his jaw. “Thirty-seven, and—”

  “And I learned how to kiss in a car when I was seventeen. That’s twenty years to get it right.” He kissed her face as he spoke, gentle kisses here, harder ones there. “Twenty years, just so I could get this one moment right.” Sweet kisses h
ere, a passionate taste of her skin there. “Just for this kiss with this woman in this car. Right now.”

  That was the end of the preliminaries. Her mouth was taken by a man who knew how to kiss. He drew her into him like she was something desirable, someone he absolutely must have. The taste of him, the texture of him was exactly right.

  It made her want to cry, because it made her feel too much. Emotional closeness went hand in hand with physical closeness for her, but the physical pull wouldn’t last. Passion never did. And it made her angry, suddenly, that he would kiss her so perfectly when it couldn’t last. What did it prove?

  She could make him want her, too. She could kiss him and leave him weak, if that was all he wanted. A moment of mindless abandon? Easy. Meaningless.

  She kissed him without caution, tasting, breathing, nudging him to a slightly different angle, exploring deeply.

  Evan broke away, breathing hard, but she heard his soft curse. He pressed his forehead into hers, eyes closed. “Juliet, Juliet.”

  Oh, God. This was Evan. What was she trying to prove here?

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Sorry? Two weeks, Juliet. You’ve been here for two weeks. You should be sorry. We could have been doing this for two weeks.”

  She smiled a little. It was a compliment. It was nice to be wanted, but she knew she wouldn’t always be exciting and new. This pleasure wasn’t worth the inevitable pain. She sat back a bit, which only gave her a better view of Evan’s face, his eyes closed, his mouth set as if... She didn’t know what.

  What did she know about men and passion? Rob had always seemed turned on by her, too, but she’d learned the hard way that she wasn’t as exciting as another woman. Or two. Or three. Sex and emotions were two separate things. She got them confused too easily. “I’m sorry. I’m not really good at, uh, these things.”