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“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 the 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.
Tom looked away. He wasn’t going to watch this, but then there were the sounds of a scuffle on screen, and he looked back. The chapel doors had burst open, and young, rowdy men had come charging down the aisle. They’d been looking for a cell phone they’d left behind—they’d been part of the wedding a half hour before Tom’s. But they’d been drunk and loud and Tom had instantly pulled Helen behind himself to protect her. She was an army officer, he knew that, and she was in great shape physically, he knew that intimately, but she’d been wearing a floor-length, slim-fitting dress, not clothing for self-defense. And she’d been his bride.
Nobody would hurt his bride.
The video ended.
“I’m sorry.” Colonel Reed somberly closed his laptop and stood, causing Tom to come to his feet, as well. Captains didn’t stay seated when colonels stood, even colonels who’d said Call me Oscar to a kid in elementary school.
“Sorry for what, sir?”
“Tom.” He sighed as if he’d said much more and checked his watch. “It’s almost noon. Let me take you to lunch somewhere off post. We’ll talk.”
There were two knocks on the office door, quick, cursory. The door opened before Colonel Reed could say enter. A sergeant abruptly stopped short with the doorknob in his hand. “Excuse me, sir. I thought you had left for lunch. I’m sorry. I was just coming in to see if you’d left the papers on your desk for the incoming officer. I didn’t know you were—”
“Understood. Has she arrived yet?”
“Yes, sir. She’s right here.”
“Send her in.” The colonel glanced at Tom. “Stand by. This won’t take a moment.”
Tom walked away from the desk to stand near two wingback chairs in a corner, which meant he didn’t see the person who rapped on the frame of the open door, two firm knocks.
But he heard a woman speak. “Good morning, sir.”
Tom turned around, and his bride walked in the door.
* * *
Helen strode into her new brigade commander’s office and stood at attention in front of his desk.
Thank God for military courtesies. No matter how exhausted she was, she could function in this setting. She knew what to wear—her camouflage ACUs, or Army Combat Uniform—and she knew the brigade commander would be wearing exactly the same thing. Only their ranks and the sewn-on last names over their right pockets were different. She knew how to stand—heels together, arms straight at her sides, hands in loose fists, thumbs pointing downward. She knew to keep her gaze straight ahead, her chin level.
And, despite an eighteen-hour drive that had extended to twenty hours because of a lengthy detour around a massive wreck in Albuquerque, despite the gritty feeling of her eyeballs and the way her brain was clamoring for sleep, she knew what to say: “Good morning, sir. Captain Helen Pallas, reporting as ordered.”
She’d made it just before noon. Thank goodness. If only Tom Cross could see her now, standing at attention in uniform at the desk of the 89th MP Brigade commander and provost marshal of Fort Hood, then Tom would understand why she’d had to leave their little Vegas fantasy so quickly. Why she’d had to leave alone.
The brigade commander didn’t return her greeting.
She waited.
The colonel didn’t say anything. He did not tell her to have a seat or even to stand at ease.
Great. He was going to be one of those jerks who liked to toy with those in their command, putting them through all kinds of nonsensical tests.
Fine. She could stand here all day in silence.
With a soft curse that sounded suspiciously like “cheese and crackers,” the colonel dropped the papers he held and stabbed the space bar on his laptop. He looked at the screen. He looked at her. “Captain Pallas...”
What? At ease? Have a seat? Welcome to Fort Hood? What?
He looked to a corner of the room behind her. “Captain Pallas, I believe your husband is here.”
What? Good God, what was her ex doing now? She felt her blood run cold. There was no limit to the lows to which Russell Gannon would stoop. He was leaving Seattle to be stationed at Fort Hood, too, of course—their joint domicile had been set before they’d gotten their divorce—but he shouldn’t be moving for a couple of weeks yet, and he had no earthly reason to be at the 89th MP Brigade headquarters in any case. He was a chemical corps officer, not military police. The only reason he could be here was to stir up trouble for her.
When she’d been a company commander, spouses and ex-spouses of the soldiers in her command had come to see her, often to demand money, reporting a failure to pay child support or alimony. Twice, civilian women had come to Helen’s office, accusing their enlisted husbands of adultery, demanding courts-martial for what was, in the military, a legal offense. Once, a man had come to demand that she, the company commander, order his enlisted wife to move back home from a lover’s house. The emotional drama was detrimental to what the military called good order and discipline, so commanders did have to deal with their soldiers’ relationship problems. She’d handled each case, using her legal authority and her common sense. Never had Helen expected to be the one in trouble, rather than the one adjudicating the situation.
All this went through her mind in a flash: Good God, what is Russell doing now?
But then the colonel spoke toward someone behind her and said, “Tom, you left a key fact out of your story.”
Tom?
“Helen.”
That voice. Oh, that voice—it woke up parts of her tired brain, her tired body—but the word husband hadn’t made her think of Tom for even a second. Russell was her husband, had been her husband, and he was awful. More awful than she would have believed if she hadn’t lived it. But Tom? Tom was barely her husband, if he was her husband at all. She hadn’t had any time to verify that his story was true and a marriage license existed.
Thank God, again, for military training. Helen kept her chin up as she turned around. There he was, not her ex-husband, but Tom Cross, standing there in the same uniform she wore.
Damn, he looked good. I slept with that.
He was in the army—had she known that? He wore the same captain’s bars as she did. She tried to remember.
Nothing. There was no specific memory, but somehow, she had known he was in the service. Maybe it was because his haircut looked military even in the civilian world of Las Vegas. It wasn’t something she’d consciously thought about at the hotel, because every man in her world had a military haircut, but it must have registered subconsciously.
Or maybe it was the way he’d carried himself with a confident military bearing, even when he’d been wearing no more than a towel. As she looked at him in his uniform, the vision of him gorgeously, gloriously nude was the one thing that was easy to remember. She knew exactly what his chest looked like under that camouflage. She knew exactly how his skin tasted.
She needed to stop remembering that. Captains didn’t get flushed in their colonels’ offices.
It was incredible to be standing in the same office as Tom. He’d known she had to report in by noon at Fort Hood, and he’d gone to the trouble of finding out where and in which unit she’d be. He’d come to find her.
Something—hope? No. Vanity, perhaps. Something made her heart beat hard, so hard it hurt. Tom Cross must have strong feelings for her. He wasn’t letting her slip away so easily.
Oh, Tom. I’m so sorry, but I don’t know you.
But wait—
Tom. The commander, Colonel Reed, had called him Tom. He’d said Tom had already told him their story. With a jolt, Helen realized Tom had tracked her down, but only so he could beat her here and talk to her brigade commander before she could. About what?
Relationship drama, detrimental to good order and discipline. There was nothing else to talk about. This was no grand romantic gesture; this was professional sabotage.
“I take it this is a surprise for all three of us.” Colonel Reed sat behind his desk and made a magnanimous, sweeping gesture with his hand. “Go on. You two catch up.”
Helen walked over to the wingback chairs and, for the sake of privacy, stood close to Tom.
He faced her as a soldier faced inspection. His face had no expression at all. Not aggression, not curiosity. No welcome. Certainly, no warmth.
She kept her voice pitched low, although the commander could probably still hear everything. “Are you stationed at Fort Hood?”
“Yes.” He bit the word out. So much for being a lover who hadn’t wanted to let her go. Never expect anything else, ever.
“Why did you track me down like this? I told you I’d take care of the legalities. Did you think I wouldn’t keep my word?”
He narrowed his gaze at that. “Did you change your mind?”
“Of course not,” she hissed. “I promised you I’d get the divorce under way, and I will, but I just got on post half an hour ago. I haven’t had a chance to even type ‘how to get a Las Vegas divorce’ into a search bar yet. Cut me some slack. I’ve been driving for twenty hours. You knew I would be.”
He looked at her for the longest time, an eternal moment. “I’m glad you made it here in one piece. You look exhausted.”
“Thank you so much.” I feel worse. “So then, why are you standing in my brigade commander’s office?”
“Because,” he said, as he turned just an inch, so she could see the unit patch on his shoulder, “he’s my brigade commander, too.”
She rocked back on her heels as all her expectations exploded in front of her. She’d planned to make her first impression here without anyone knowing that she had a stupid, quickie, Vegas marriage to unravel. Nobody would need to know she’d had such a lapse in judgment. She wouldn’t lose their respect before she’d had a chance to earn it.
At Lewis-McChord, when she’d had to change the name tags on her uniforms from Gannon back to Pallas, the reactions had all been negative. Either she’d been pitied as a doormat who’d let her man walk all over her, or she’d been labeled a bitch who’d driven her man away. She’d been told that she should have tried harder if she took her marriage seriously. She’d been told that she shouldn’t have ever tried to be a wife in the first place, not if she was serious about her career.
She’d been so relieved to leave Seattle.
Fort Hood would be a fresh start. She would arrive at the 89th MP Brigade with her maiden name sewn permanently on her uniforms, and her failed marriage to Russell Gannon would be something that no one here would have heard about. For the last twenty hours, she’d clung to the fact that no one at Fort Hood would hear about her momentary insanity in Vegas, either. She and Tom would quietly get a divorce, a mere filing of paperwork to countermand the chapel’s paperwork, and what happened in Vegas would stay in Vegas.
Tom had ruined everything.
She put a hand on the back of the chair to steady herself and concentrated on the grain of the leather upholstery. “Who else have you told?”
“No one.”
“Can we keep it that way?”
He didn’t answer her.
She looked up into his face, that handsome face with those bluer-than-blue eyes, and some part of her instinctively felt safe with him. It was that Pavlovian response again: he was trustworthy.
But he was not. He’d talked to her commander without talking to her first. He’d betrayed her.
Tears stung her eyes. She was too damned tired, just physically worn out, to deal with this now. Behind her, Colonel Reed had started typing on his laptop, but she was acutely aware that he must be watching this surprise meeting. She looked into Tom’s eyes and silently mouthed one word: Please?
He dropped his gaze, and she realized he was looking at her left hand as she clutched the back of the chair. Her knuckles were white with the effort it was taking to keep herself together.
“If you want this to be a secret, why are you wearing your ring?”
She snatched her hand off the chair. She’d given up trying to twist that ring off about eight hundred miles ago. She’d forgotten she was wearing it at the moment, frankly—it didn’t feel strange or unusual. She could only assume that was because she’d had another band on that same finger for two years.
“I didn’t want to lose it. You can have it.” She twisted it once more, but it was still stuck. She held her hand out. “It won’t come off. You try.”
He took her fingers in his hand and looked at the band, a thin circlet of tiny diamond chips that managed to be fancy and yet simple at the same time, a nearly flat band that had no setting sticking up that might get caught on olive drab equipment, a good choice for a woman who wore a uniform every day. He looked from the ring to her. “No.”
“No?”
He let go of her hand. “I put that ring on your finger. I’m not going to take it off. You want it off, you take it off yourself. I never will.”
Her lips parted in surprise, but she didn’t make a sound. Nothing made a sound—not her, not Tom, not even the brigade commander, who was no longer typing. In the silence, Helen’s heart beat as if the man before her had said something romantic, but the hard look on his face had nothing of love in it. It was a challenge. He was going to make her be the bad guy.
The brigade commander cleared his throat. “Well, now that you’ve had a chance to say hello, sit down, both of you.”
Tom took the seat to the left of the desk. Helen took the one to the right. They sat as stiffly as if they were still standing at attention. Neither of them spoke.
The colonel sat back and looked between them. “I watched your wedding video online.”
There was an online video? Helen gave up and let her shoulders droop. This was a frigging nightmare. Professionally, personally...nightmare, nightmare.
“I want to know what happened between that ceremony and now? Why are you two so...at odds?”
Helen looked at Tom, who looked at her. He doesn’t know what to say, either.
“Let me try this again. Captain Cross tells me you want a divorce. Is that true, Captain Pallas?” The colonel’s tone of voice demanded an answer.
Helen took a slow breath. It was time to salvage what she could from this disastrous introduction to her superior officer. “We’re not at odds, sir. We are in agreement that we’ll get a divorce as soon as possible.”
“Why?”
“We met and married the same day, sir. It was...illogical to get married. We’re strangers.”
“You didn’t look like strangers at the altar,” he replied.
Sleep deprivation was making her delirious, because the colonel sounded almost sad. Kindly, paternal, sad.
Tom interrupted. “She doesn’t remember the ceremony, sir. She doesn’t remember anything. She—we—must have celebrated too hard.”
She felt flushed from different emotions. Embarrassment, anger—Tom made her sound like a black-out drunk.
I know better. She didn’t know why she couldn’t remember much about Vegas, but she’d never been a heavy drinker. She resented being painted as one now, here, in front of her new commander.
“That’s not true, sir. I remember some things.” She stated it as the truth that it was—but there was no way she could look at Tom, because he knew exactly what one thing she remembered.
Roses are always going to remind me of sex with you.
She kept her expression neutral. “But what I remember is not enough to base a marriage on, sir.”
Tom’s expression wasn’t quite neutral. She could see that he was clenching his jaw, probably biting back a comment about her memories that the colonel shouldn’t hear.
The colonel let them stew in silence for a good, long moment. “In the end, only the two of you can decide that.”
“Yes, sir,” Helen answered dutifully. She already knew the truth, though. She’d learned it the hard way in Seattle with another man. She wasn’t very good at being a wife. She didn’t care to try again and prove that twice.
“Now that we’ve got the initial shock over with, let’s try this again. Good morning, Captain Pallas. Welcome to Fort Hood.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re authorized five business days to complete your move to Fort Hood. You know the drill. Medical records, parking passes, physical fitness test, arranging delivery of your household goods.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tomorrow will be day one. Today, you need to recover. Get some sleep. You’ve had a big weekend, you’ve been driving for twenty hours straight—”
Damn it. The colonel had heard every word she and Tom had exchanged in the corner.
“—and you’ve apparently had quite the surprise just now. Regroup. Recover. Sleep. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tom, there’s been a change in our lunch plans, obviously. Escort your wife to your house instead.”
“Sir?” Tom sounded as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard that incorrectly.
Helen rushed to clear up the colonel’s misunderstanding. “I’m going to check into the BOQ, sir. Or VOQ.” An apartment-or hotel-style building on every post served as the BOQ, or Bachelor Officer Quarters, a place where single officers could live either permanently or for a few weeks while house-hunting. A big post like Hood might have a separate VOQ, Visiting Officer Quarters.
Colonel Reed corrected her. “There is no BOQ on post, Captain Pallas. It’s been privatized. It’s now a Holiday Inn.”
That sounded good to her.
Colonel Reed lined through an item on her paperwork and initialed it. “But you are no longer authorized a stay there. You are not a single soldier.”
“I really am, sir. Vegas was a mistake. We’re planning on a divorce.”
“You are not in any physical danger from your spouse, are you?”
“No, sir, of course not.”
“Then you will reside in the housing the army has provided. Tom already lives in a single-family home designated for a captain. Or captains.”
She looked at Tom in alarm. He took over the argument. “Colonel Reed, I need to point out that this would be a waste of time and energy. Once we’re divorced, she would have to move all her household goods again.”
The colonel raised one brow. “Do either of you know how long a divorce takes?”