by Caro Carson
“I know you are, Helen.”
Her eyes widened a fraction in surprise. She clutched the sheet more tightly to her chest. “I’m traveling on orders. It’s at least an eighteen-hour drive, and I’ve only got twenty-two hours at the most to make it. I’ll barely have time to stop for gas and food.”
“That makes it more important for me to go with you. We can take shifts driving through the night. It will be safer.” Her safety mattered, because he remembered everything, and she was his wife. He’d sworn to love, honor, cherish her. You swore the same to me.
Helen sounded angry. “This isn’t some sexy Vegas game. This is real. The real United States Army, real orders, real clock ticking. You are a stranger to me. There is no way I’m going to spend eighteen hours in my own car with a perfect stranger.”
A stranger. Him.
The wall got higher, stronger. It felt so familiar. Thanks, Dad. You don’t want me for a son? Then I don’t want you for a father.
She abruptly stopped retreating. “Let me be clear. No means no.”
He laughed at that, knowing he sounded obnoxious. “I assure you, I can take no for an answer. It hasn’t been part of your vocabulary.”
“It is now. The answer is no. Do not cancel your plane ticket to wherever you were going. Do not cancel whatever plans you had. Don’t change anything for me. Just tell me where my clothes are, and I’ll be gone from your life.”
Don’t go. The wall around his heart felt the same, but his heart was no longer the same within it. With every beat, he wanted his wife.
She did not want him.
“Your dress is in the shower.” His words were stiff. Unemotional.
She frowned. “Why is it—Never mind.” The rosy flush reappeared across her cheekbones, across her chest.
He stayed where he was, towel around his waist, arms crossed over his chest. He was made of stone. He was the wall. Stone didn’t bleed. Walls didn’t beg.
Then Helen returned wearing her wedding dress, and he wanted to howl in pain.
She dropped the sandals she carried and started pushing her toes into the sparkling straps as she finger-combed her hair, a whirlwind of action in a long elegant gown.
“You need to slow down.” His voice was astoundingly even. Then again, why should it waver? The worst had happened. He’d fallen in love and had that love rejected. Everything from this point on was inconsequential. “Ten minutes won’t make a difference. Eat.”
“I should have left hours ago.” She gave up on her hair and dropped her hands with a sigh. “Look, Tom, you seem like a really nice man. I’m sure we had a really good night, but you can count yourself lucky that I have to go. This would have been a giant mistake. I’m not wife material.”
“Too late. Literally, you are wife material.”
That gave her pause. “Is there...paperwork?”
“The license was signed and kept by the chapel. They file it with the county. In two weeks, the official certificate will arrive in the mail.”
“I can’t believe I did this to myself.” The misery on her face infused her whole body. She seemed to fold in on herself, looking too small for the white column gown she’d worn with such confidence. “How could I do this to myself?”
Damn it. His heart wouldn’t stay behind any wall. He was supposed to care about his wife. He did care about her.
He took one step closer to her, but she stopped him with a raised hand. She raised her chin, too. “No—I’ll take care of everything. A divorce. An annulment. I don’t know, but I’ll get a lawyer when I get to Texas, and I’ll get this all straightened out, I promise.”
That wasn’t the promise she’d made the night before. It wasn’t the promise he wanted. He refolded his arms across his bare chest and didn’t get any closer.
“So, um, Tom, could you write your number down for me? For the lawyer? Quickly? I’m running so late.”
“It’s already in your phone.” They’d gotten married. Of course they’d exchanged all of this kind of information. “I have your number.”
She ran her hands down the sides of her dress. “No pockets. Do you...do you have my phone?”
He nodded toward a shining brass credenza, where both their phones had been tossed. His wallet was there, as well. He picked it up. “I have your driver’s license and your military ID.”
“Oh.” She laughed nervously. “That would have been bad, to leave without those.” She took the cards with one hand and stuck her other hand out to shake. “I guess this is goodbye, then. I’ll be in touch as soon as I find out what to do legally.”
He let her stand with her hand outstretched. They’d just made love on the sofa. Now she expected him to shake her hand like a stranger?
It was enough to put that final stone in the wall—until he saw that the hand she offered him was trembling. The wall came tumbling down again, that quickly. His heart demanded that he take care of his precious bride. For better or for worse...
Helen dropped her hand. Her attempt at a smile only made the sadness in her eyes more obvious. “Goodbye, Tom.” She skirted around him to head for the door.
“Stop.” He caught her with a hand on her arm. “You’re not going anywhere until you eat.”
She looked at his hand on her upper arm, then raised her eyes to his. Dark eyes. Angry eyes. “Or else what?”
“Or else I won’t let you leave.”
The loathing on her face was not how he’d ever dreamed she’d look at him. He was being a pompous jerk, making rules for her like her ex-husband had.
He wasn’t her ex-husband. Not yet.
She didn’t need to be given orders. She needed help. He let go of her and walked past the sofa to pick up the house phone. The operator greeted him by name. Obsequiousness came with the penthouse suite. “Good morning, Mr. Cross.”
“I need the valet to bring the car around as quickly as possible. It’s urgent.” He turned back to Helen and gestured toward the table with the telephone receiver before he dropped it back in its cradle. “They’ll have the car up in five minutes. You might as well eat.”
She glared at him a moment longer, but apparently common sense won out, because she turned to the table and grabbed a croissant. She stuffed some bacon slices in it, then sloshed some orange juice into a glass and chugged it down.
With the croissant in her hand, she sketched him a sarcastic salute. “Goodbye, Mr. Cross.”
His bride walked out the door.
Chapter Three
Captain Tom Cross rapped on the frame of the brigade commander’s open office door. Two firm knocks: firm because he was a captain in the US Army, as the double black bars on his camouflage uniform attested, but only two knocks because the brigade commander was a colonel, three ranks higher than captain. It would be disrespectful to bang on the man’s office door demandingly.
“Come in.” Colonel Oscar Reed looked up from his paperwork. “Captain Cross. What brings you to my office on a Monday morning?”
“Do you have a moment, sir?” So I can tell you how much I screwed up?
“Come in. Give me a minute.” He returned to his paperwork, signed his name and tossed his pen down.
Tom stood in front of the desk, if not quite at the position of attention, then close enough. The formality of military courtesy fit his emotional state, or lack of it. Since approximately 1400 hours yesterday—two in the afternoon, when his wife of mere hours had walked out on him—he’d felt nothing. He was made of stone.
“Welcome back,” Colonel Reed said. “How was Utah? Friend’s wedding, wasn’t it? How’d it go?”
“Yes, sir. He’s married now.”
“Well, yeah, that happens on wedding weekends.” The colonel started to chuckle. When Tom didn’t join him, he sat back and kept his too-sharp gaze on Tom. “You’re standing there pretty formally. I take it you’re here
on official business.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why didn’t I hear from Colonel Stephens that you’d be coming?”
Lieutenant Colonel Stephens was the battalion commander. Lieutenant colonels wore a silver oak leaf as their rank, but they were commonly addressed as colonel, not lieutenant colonel. Higher-ranking colonels like Oscar Reed wore a black-embroidered eagle as their rank. The eagle was the bird in the phrase full-bird colonel.
The chain of command was like a ladder. Tom was the company commander of the 584th Military Police Company. He was responsible for every aspect of one hundred and twenty soldiers’ lives. The next rung higher was the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Stephens, responsible for four MP companies, including Tom’s. The next rung higher was Colonel Reed, commander of the 89th MP Brigade, comprised of five battalions located at five different army bases across four different states. Tom had skipped a rung, a very big rung, to speak to Colonel Reed directly.
Officers did not skip the chain of command.
Tom had. “I haven’t spoken with Colonel Stephens yet, sir. I wanted you to hear this first.”
“So this isn’t official business. Or is this something personal that’s about to become official business?”
“This weekend...” Tom stood with his gaze straight ahead, finding it easier to focus on the wall than the man seated at the desk. Colonel Reed wasn’t just the brigade commander. He was also Oscar Reed, the man who’d lived next door when Tom was just nine years old. As a junior officer in his early twenties, Oscar and two other new lieutenants had combined their housing allowances to afford a big house with a swimming pool, right next door to Tom’s father. Dad had been a fighter pilot and a major in the air force at the time, several ranks higher and at least a decade older than Oscar and the guys. He had not been pleased with the new neighbors.
Tom had been thrilled. Oscar had taken pity on the nine-year-old boy who’d shadowed him, desperate for a role model. For a hero. For a man who paid attention to him.
Oscar hadn’t been able to change the oil in his car without Tom wriggling under the car, too. For the three years he’d lived next door, Oscar had patiently looked at every frog and spider Tom had caught. When Tom had decided to serve in the military, he hadn’t followed his father into the air force. He’d followed Oscar into the army. Hell, Tom was military police because the young Lieutenant Oscar Reed had been an MP.
To be serving now as a company commander in Colonel Reed’s brigade was an honor. And now, Tom had to tell Oscar Reed what a fool he’d been. Damn it, Helen. Damn you.
“This weekend...? This weekend what?” Colonel Reed stood suddenly, but he lowered his voice. “Son of a biscuit, Tom, tell me you didn’t spend the weekend in jail.”
“No, sir.”
“You didn’t break any laws?”
“No, sir.”
“Thank God. That would kill your career. Even I couldn’t get that off your record.” He nodded toward his office door, always open, part of his personal leadership style. “Go close the door, then put your fourth point of contact in a chair, dagnabbit. You’re making me nervous.”
Tom almost smiled at that. Oscar was the one and only man in the military who never swore. Tom had assumed he didn’t swear around him because he’d been a child, but now, coming back into his life as an adult, he realized that Oscar didn’t swear around anyone, of any age.
As Tom sat in the chair just to the left of the desk, the colonel slid his laptop off to the side and folded his hands on top of his desk blotter. “Out with it. What happened in Utah this weekend, besides skiing?”
“There was no skiing. The snow wasn’t great. I expected better for the first week of December, but it’s been too warm. It rained.”
Oscar just raised one brow at him. With a pang, Tom realized that was why he raised one brow as a silent question, too.
“I was stuck indoors with the wedding crowd around the clock. The wedding was Friday night. By Saturday morning, I couldn’t stand any more love and romance and couples talking baby talk to each other everywhere I turned. While I was stuck in the hotel lobby bar, I watched not one, but two, men propose in front of the lobby’s goddamned Christmas tree.” He glanced at the insignia for a colonel on Oscar’s camouflage uniform. “Sir.”
“Horrifying. What did you do?”
“I left Utah. I drove two hours to Vegas and got married myself.”
The colonel was utterly still for one second. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I was.”
“You got married to whom?”
An image of Helen was burned into his mind. A woman with cool elegance. A woman with warm energy. A woman who made him laugh, who listened to him, who opened her heart to him and told him all her hopes and dreams. She could giggle like a child. She could speak with wisdom. And she was sexy, the sexiest, the single most sensual woman he’d ever known. His dream girl.
“Some woman I met in a casino.” Tom closed his eyes; he didn’t need to see the colonel’s expression. He rubbed his forehead; he didn’t want to remember the moment he’d believed there really was such a thing as love at first sight.
“This was a legal marriage? Not some kind of dress-up photo op at the casino? A bartender didn’t officiate? You got a license?”
A license, so easy to get, so ridiculously cheap. A ring—he’d dropped a few thousand there, then a thousand more on the best suite in the hotel for their wedding night. Helen had insisted on paying for her own dress.
“Yes, sir, all legal. She wants a divorce. Already.” Saying that sentence caused him pain. He should be feeling no pain; his heart was walled shut. You don’t want me? Then I don’t want you.
The colonel shook his head. “There has to be some easier way out of this. It’s been less than a day, hasn’t it?”
Tom did the math. “I’ve been married for thirty-four hours, sir. The Happiest Wedding Chapel did its due diligence in making sure we understood this was a legally binding ceremony.”
No backsies, Helen had said with a wink, because it was absurd to even imagine they’d want to change their minds.
Colonel Reed kept shaking his head and pulled his laptop closer. “Where did this wedding take place?”
“The Happiest Wedding Chapel. That’s the name of the place. You didn’t think I was actually using the word happiest to describe any of this stupidity, did you?”
The colonel rolled his eyes and chuckled as he hit a few keys. “No, but let’s keep this in perspective. You didn’t commit a crime. It’s not like you’re in here confessing that you’re a drug addict or something. A divorce is a pain in the rear, that’s all. This will become a story you can tell when you’re an old man like me, to prove you once had a wild youth.”
Wild youth? Tom was twenty-seven, a company commander with one hundred and twenty lives in his keeping. There was nothing either wild or youthful about military responsibilities. Colonel Reed was forty-two, a man in his prime, not old. The colonel was exaggerating, cracking a joke, trying to lighten the moment.
Tom tried to laugh, but thirty-four hours ago, he actually had been the happiest he’d ever been, and it didn’t make him happy to come to that realization while the colonel was typing on his laptop.
“Your chapel’s got quite the website. There’s got to be something about a twenty-four-hour cooling off period or morning-after annulments—”
“No, sir. We have to get a divorce.”
“That’s a nuisance... Well, looky here. They’ve got videos. Tell me there’s a video of this debacle. I have to see it to believe it.”
Ah, hell.
Colonel Reed was clicking his mouse with a little too much glee. “Look at this. You can watch anyone’s wedding. It says they keep it available for ten days—what a scam. They keep the video up so your friends and family can use the convenient links to send gifts to th
e bride and groom. Man, what an industry this is. They married someone every half hour this weekend. Every half hour! Was Elvis there? Did your bride wear showgirl sequins? Strategically placed feathers?”
“Oscar.” Shut up.
Tom hadn’t called the man by his first name in the three months he’d been under his command. Oscar had been his friend for almost twenty years, the big brother he’d never had. Colonel Reed was his commander.
It didn’t faze the colonel. He just waved a hand Tom’s way. “Okay, okay. Let me see this for myself.”
The laptop started playing familiar music, a contemporary song he and Helen both loved—of course. They’d been in sync about everything.
Tom cleared his throat, but he didn’t speak. He had nothing to say.
“Here comes the bride,” Colonel Reed said, shaking his head and laughing, like he couldn’t believe this was real.
It was real.
“Oh.” The colonel blinked at his screen. He glanced at Tom. “She’s a knockout. Not in a stripper-pole-dancer kind of way.”
Tom glared at him. What was he supposed to say? Thank you?
Colonel Reed was concentrating on the video, serious now. “Look at you. Look at you both.”
“No, thank you.”
“It’s like—It’s not what I was expecting. It’s like a real wedding. You had your blue mess uniform with you? Oh, right. From the Utah wedding. She’s very beautiful. Classy looking.”
The colonel finally fell silent, only that made things worse, because now Tom could hear Helen’s voice on the laptop’s weak speaker. She made him promises she’d had no intention of keeping.
She can’t remember. That wasn’t intentional.
She’d refused to stay and even try to remember. She’d cut and run.
Colonel Reed casually angled the screen so Tom could see it, the last thing he wanted to see. There was Helen, so beautiful in her white dress.
Stone. I’m made of stone.
The officiant spoke. “I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.” A handful of red rose petals were gently sprinkled over their heads, a blessing.