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She recognized the trademark charm of her boss’s aide.
“Good morning to you, too,” she said to the dial tone. “I’m just fine, and how are you?”
She put down the phone.
A summons to Winston Fairchild’s office. She made a quick check of her lipstick, satisfied that none of it had ended up on her teeth. Then she grabbed her briefcase, on impulse throwing in her clutch purse.
Winston Fairchild III. Everything a woman could want in a man. Intelligent, refined, cultured. A Harvard graduate. Distinguished family. He was exactly the kind of man her family would welcome for Sunday dinners, holiday weekends. So suitable that she might even be considered a normal Banks Bailey were he escorting her. Even her grandmother had asked her why she didn’t invite him to the family compound.
Chessey allowed herself the briefest of fantasies. A fantasy involving classical music, reading the hefty Sunday New York Times together, drinking cappuccino.
Completely unattainable, Chessey concluded, knowing that she was not like any other Banks Bailey cousin and therefore Winston Fairchild had a habit of looking at a point just above her head, far, far away, whenever they passed each other in the hallway.
Chessey knocked first on the wood paneled door and, on hearing a vague response, entered the corner office. She had only been summoned once before, two years ago for Winston Fairchild III’s one-minute “glad to have you on board at the State Department, fill out your withholding form at my secretary’s desk” talk. She noted that the ficus in the enamel planter still looked dead.
The office was more crowded than she remembered.
The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two congressmen and a Defense Department undersecretary. Chessey quickly recovered from her gee-whiz reflex. She held out a slim, manicured hand to introduce herself to the general, Winston having conceded the duty with a vague you-know-everyone-here wave.
As she exchanged introductions with the New York representative, she saw what looked to be a circus performer with his feet up on the table.
He slouched against the cushions of the chintz couch and reared his head back to catch the peanuts he threw in the air. He never missed. After four such dazzling feats, while explaining to the horrified congressman from Arizona that he once did this two hundred times in a row, the performer did a double take in her direction. A peanut landed in his lap.
He was breathtakingly handsome—but only if you went in for strong, primitive types. The kind with hard, square jaws. Frankly appraising blue eyes. Sharply defined muscles. Coarse, callused hands. Incongruously boyish smiles.
Which Chessey didn’t.
She stood a little closer to Winston, whose scent was familiar because she had smelled it just the day before on a scent strip in Town & Country magazine.
“I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you,” she said, holding out her right hand to the stranger. “Chessey Banks Bailey.”
Rather than shake, he gave her the once-over—twice—and then howled.
“Whooee! I knew there was something I’ve been missing for the past two years!”
His words were delivered with an inappropriate leer. Chessey bristled and then gaped first in reproach and then astonishment.
“You’re Lieutenant Derek McKenna!” she exclaimed.
“One and the same, darlin’,” he said. He uncrossed his ankles, dropped his boots to the floor and rose to take her into his arms.
Before she could marshal a protest, he kissed her. Full on the lips, enduring her small fists against his chest as he would an annoying but helpless fly. His mouth possessed hers, claimed her as the spoils of a conquering hero and when he abruptly let her go, she felt strangely bereft, as if she were a doll cherished and then discarded by a child.
She steadied herself with a hand on the back of the wing chair in which Winston sat.
If she had been given time enough to hope that Winston would come to her aid with gentlemanly rebuke, she was to be disappointed.
He said nothing.
Kisses like this didn’t happen to Baileys.
Nor, she would suspect, to Fairchilds.
She wondered if Winston might harbor the ridiculous notion that she had provoked the lieutenant. If she were at fault for this appalling behavior. The other men were shocked—shocked!—but they gave her no mind. Indeed, their eyes followed Derek, who sprawled on the couch.
Winston, on the other hand, shook his head disapprovingly.
“Totally untrainable,” Lieutenant McKenna announced. “Not suitable for American audiences. Bound to cause more trouble than I’m worth.”
“Soldier,” the general said sternly.
Chessey touched her chest to still her galloping heart. Shock was being replaced with outrage, outrage that was all the more potent because it contained the niggling iota of attraction. McKenna barely noticed her, which made her outrage spiral upward like a tornado.
He had no right, no right at all!
“You don’t want me, General,” Derek pleaded. “First time I land a kiss like that on a Junior League matron, you’ll have to hide your head in shame for having set me loose.”
“Soldier,” the general repeated. “I’ve had enough of this nonsense.”
“I’m telling you, send me home,” McKenna said, with enough pleading in his voice that some of the men looked at their shoes, a single spark of decency within them realizing the unfairness of asking a man who had given so much for his country to simply do more.
And Chessey’s outrage deflated into a puddle of bewildered pity. He was clearly suffering. A man in pain. All that he went through... Whether from some kind of posttraumatic disorder or the simple and honest longing homesickness, he simply wasn’t in possession of his senses.
But he kissed me! Her outrage whimpered. He humiliated me in front of these men! And in front of Winston!
The general nodded in her direction.
“Ms. Banks Bailey, you deserve an apology for that behavior,” he said. “But I suspect this soldier isn’t going to give it to you. So I will. I am very sorry. He’s acting like a savage.”
“That’s why we need Chessey,” Winston said.
Need me? Chessey sat on the oak captain’s chair beside Winston. He handed her a briefing folder. The aide behind the desk passed her a calendar covered with pencil scribbles.
“Soldier, you’re going out there for one reason and only one reason,” the general said.
“And just what is that reason?”
“Because the enlisted men need you,” the general said evenly. “The enlisted men need to know that officers like you will lead them out of harm’s way and that officers like you won’t leave a man behind.”
“They already know that, just because we’re out of there,” he said. “I’m leaving.”
He stood up.
“Get the President on the phone.”
Derek uttered an oath.
“Give him the schedule.”
Winston handed McKenna the appointment calendar, which matched Chessey’s.
“We can play around with the dates so that you begin in three days,” Winston said. “And Chessey will be with you. You’ve already introduced yourself. Next time you want to introduce yourself to a woman, try shaking hands.”
Chessey endured McKenna’s frankly hostile gaze. It was hard to believe that moments before, they had been locked in an intimate embrace.
“Why do I have to take her with me?”
“She’s an assistant protocol specialist,” Winston said. “You need to be housebroken. She’s the best, like Mary Poppins without an umbrella and that silly hat. Trained the entire delegation to Zanzibar last month on how Zanzibarian table customs work.”
Chessey squelched a smile at the praise.
But Mary Poppins?
“And she’s a member of the Banks Bailey family,” Winston continued. “Can’t get a better pedigree than that. If there’s a right way to do it, the Banks Bailey family knows how—whether it’s tea parties, formal dinners, receptions or meeting a Queen.”
“I don’t need her,” McKenna said, gazing at Chessey levelly. “On my farm, she won’t do me any good milkin’ cows or driving a tractor. And even if I were to go off on your little tour of America, I’d prefer a woman who looks a little less wholesome than this Girl Scout.”
The gathering stared at Chessey, seeming to expect her to suddenly make a fire out of two sticks or sprout a green sash. Chessey felt a crimson blush flare on her cheeks.
“If Lieutenant McKenna needs a party girl to accompany him,” she said, “I am certainly not the appropriate choice.”
“Party girls he can get anywhere,” the general snorted. “He needs to be returned to a civilized state—being in that Baghdad prison must have warped him.”
“Or maybe he was always this primitive,” Winston observed. “In which case, Chessey, you’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“I won’t disappoint you.”
“I don’t want this woman,” McKenna said, looking at her. “Even if I was going on your tour, I wouldn’t take her.”
“Soldier, we know you’re not going to embarrass us with a cross-country display of your soda chugging and peanut tossing abilities,” the general said. “And I can only hope that you’re not going to kiss every single female in your path. But the schedule does present some very different experiences for you. Different social stratas.”
“Excuse me, General,” Chessey said, looking up from the folder. “My assignment is to go on the road, alone, with him?”
“Think of yourself as an animal trainer,” Winston said.
The general chuckled. “My guess is that if you succeed at housebreaking this hero, you can pretty much pick your job here at the State Department,” he said. “Am I right?”
“Absolutely,” Winston agreed. “All he needs is a dress uniform, a stump speech you can toss off in a minute, and a quick, but thorough, course in manners.”
She stared at McKenna bluntly.
Definitely the manners. He needed the manners.
“I can have any job?” she asked.
Winston started to mumble about civil service requirements.
“I think the fine state of Arizona would be delighted to have you on board in its congressional offices,” the congressman from Arizona said. “How about New York?”
The New York congressman bobbed his head.
“If you pull this one off, you can have my job,” added the general.
“Chessey,” Winston said, in a voice soft as suede. “I’m counting on you.”
“You are?”
“Absolutely,” he said, and he took off his glasses. When his big brown eyes gazed into hers, Chessey felt as if he were seeing her—really seeing her—for the very first time. “Chessey, your country... I mean, I really need you.”
She looked down modestly but then did a one-eighty, boldly meeting his gaze.
Such a nice man, her grandmother had said once, when Chessey had described her job.
“The Fairchilds don’t have money,” her grandmother had added wistfully. “But they have more than made up for it in good breeding.”
“That settles it,” Chessey said. She looked at her charge boldly, determined to make sure the balance of power was established early. He hadn’t had the luxury of the good breeding of the Fairchild family, but he could learn. And she could teach him. “Lieutenant, we will start with lesson one. You are never to kiss me again.”
And she swept out of the room.
Not quickly enough to avoid hearing his reply.
“All right, all right, I’ll wait till you ask me.”
Chapter Two
“We’ll start with the uniform,” Chessey said, leafing through the schedule folder as she led him down the linoleum-tiled hall. Her sensible but stylish heels clicked smartly. “I know a tailor three blocks away who can have your dress uniform ready in one day. After your fitting, we’ll compose a five-minute speech that you can use for your first three appearances. That speech will be your new best friend. It will become as familiar to you as the pledge of allegiance, and you won’t need to use note cards. You’re going to want to keep eye contact with your audience.”
She could barely contain her delight—any job in the State Department! Offers from Congress! The top general of the country guaranteeing her future! She might end up with an office above ground and, maybe-just-maybe-oh-maybe, a window! She had no doubt that this was the kind of moment that came just once in a career. It certainly had never happened before.
The excitement of the assignment accounted for her skittering heartbeat and quickened breath.
She was so thrilled with her good fortune and so touched by his plight that she had nearly—but not quite—forgiven him for his boorish behavior. Probably had gotten flustered at the sight of a female—although his kiss had all the confidence of a conqueror taking his due.
Flustered, that’s it, she thought.
The darker prospect, that he was a natural-born jerk, she did her best to ignore.
Still, if they were going to spend the next thirty days together and if she was going to make a career move on her success transforming him into a gentleman, she’d have to let go of her indignation.
She wouldn’t even tell him that she could have done without the Girl Scout comment, that she had enjoyed being a Girl Scout and she didn’t see what was wrong with them.
“We’ll sit you down with a table arrangement,” she continued, balancing the schedule folder, calendar and her briefcase as she walked. “Even if you ordinarily are the sort of man who requires a seven-piece place setting with every meal, I’m sure you could use a refresher on manners. Conditions at the Baghdad prison were primitive, I’ve heard. By the way, I wanted to tell you that I saw you on television as you were taken to the Wiesbaden military hospital and, literally, I felt tears of pride welling up in my eyes. You really prove that Americans can overcome any...hey, where’d you go?”
She whirled around to see...nothing.
Nothing but an empty hallway that stretched the length of two city blocks. The State Department was big, with a total of twelve acres of office space spread out over eight floors.
If he had taken a wrong turn, it could take her hours to find him!
“Lieutenant McKenna?” she asked. “This way. I’m over here! Lieutenant? Lieutenant?”
Master of escape.
That’s what the news had called him, noting that after months of planning and several failed attempts, McKenna had slipped all thirty-two of his men out of the jail without a trace and had even gotten a day’s lead on the manhunt that followed.
He hadn’t taken a wrong turn—he had given her the slip.
But the corridors of Washington office buildings were Chessey’s home turf, and she had an advantage. She stilled. And listened. And shook her head.
The telltale echo of cowboy boots treading on stone-cold government-issue linoleum.
“Lieutenant McKenna, you get back here right now!” she exclaimed, trotting down the hall at the fullest speed possible in her heels. She ignored the shocked stare of a secretary coming from the opposite direction. She knew, she knew...as a Banks Bailey she was ordinarily so dignified.
But dignity shmignity, that man was her future! Without him, she’d be stuck in a basement closet of an office until she reached the age of retirement! Without him, Winston Fairchild III would never look at her again and he’d certainly never bring his suitable self to the Banks Bailey compound for holidays. She’d still be the black sheep of the Banks Baileys, without the approval and respect of her family. This job, this lieutenant, this assignment meant a lot.
“Lieutenant McKenna, you’re not leaving! We have work to do.”
She ran down the stairwell at top speed. With a half-dozen frantic excuse me’s, she pushed her way through a crowd of schoolchildren and their chaperones gathered in the Diplomatic Lobby. Out on Twenty-third Street, she looked left and right.
And then she saw him.
“Lieutenant McKenna, I said we have work to do!”
She trotted after him, regretting her heels, desperate not to lose him as a Japanese tourist group clogged the sidewalk. He walked away with no more regard for her frantic shouts than he did for any other street distraction. The cabdriver leaning on his horn and bellowing at the driver in front of him. The jackhammer grinding cement on the next corner. The youth with a boom box playing heavy metal.
Still, he was not the type she could lose in a crowd. He stood out—taller than anyone on the street He wore a pair of worn-out jeans that fit low on his hips and a button-down shirt that showed the wrinkles of a twelve-hour transatlantic flight. It was white—the kind of white that reflects that dazzling sun. He had a muscular build, surprising given his time in prison, but Chessey remembered reading somewhere that he had required all his men to maintain absolutely peak physical conditioning. And had required nothing less from himself. His hair was cut a little longer than regulation. His skin was ruddy and sunburned, which only accentuated his blue eyes.
He garnered his share of second looks from women in his path, but not a flicker of recognition since, courtesy of an Army shave and a haircut, he bore little resemblance to the ragged hero who had led his men to the Turkish border.
“Derek McKenna, you stop right there!” Chessey shrieked, grabbing his elbow as he came to a stop at the crosswalk.
He glanced at her with a sorrowful expression that made her back off. Made her think, right then, right there, that maybe it was cruel to take a man like this and parade him around the country for a month. But then he followed his haunted-eye look with something approaching a leer and then pridesmashing dismissal.
“I’m not going with you,” he said. “Save your animal-training tricks for some other sucker.”
“They’ll call the President.”
He tilted his chin thoughtfully. For a scant second, as the sun played across his face, Chessey thought she saw warmth and longing in his eyes. On the other hand, it could have simply been glare.
“I’ve been giving the President some thought. I don’t think he will reinstate me. He can’t afford the bad publicity. So I’m going to do what I’ve wanted to do since the moment I got captured by the Iraqis. I’m going home.”
The light changed. He stepped forward. She held her ground in front of him. He took another step, invading her space with the natural scent of bay leaf and musk. She tilted her chin up, balanced on her toes, rued the fact that even with her heels he was a good six inches taller than she was. It was hard to look like an authority figure when she could hardly keep her balance and she still had to look up at him.
His mouth was scant inches from her, his sweet minty breath a whisper at her forehead. She wondered if he was going to kiss her again.
She wondered what she would do if he did.
“You have a problem with me going home?”
“I do. What about the enlisted men?” she asked, remembering how he had been thrown off balance by the general with just the same concern.
His eyes narrowed.
“What about ’em?”
“Their morale.”
“If the men don’t know that their officers will stick by them, then the military’s got a bigger problem on its hands than I could ever solve in a month of stump speeches.”
“You can’t go!”
She didn’t realize until he looked at his chest that her fingers, perfectly manicured in ballet slipper pink, were splayed along the rock-hard definition of his chest muscles.
“Darlin’, I didn’t know my kiss could affect you like this,” he drawled.
She jerked as if he were a hot stove. He reached to the sidewalk and handed her the schedule she had dropped. He lingered a nanosecond at her long legs.
“I’m just trying to do my job,” she said stiffly. “It’s nothing personal.”
He stood up.
“Then you’ll understand that it’s nothing personal, but I’m going home.”
He stepped around her and walked across the street.
“But you’re a hero!” she cried, scrambling to keep up with him.
“I’m done with this hero business. Want nothing more to do with it.”
He held his hand straight in the air. A cab screeched to a halt in front of him.
“Where are you going?” Chessey demanded.
“The airport. It’s faster than walking to Kentucky.”
“I’m going with you.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he said, getting into the cab. “My pappy told me a long time ago that any woman I brought home with me had better be bride material.”
In a split second pondering the gray, sunless office she called her own and the sense of personal failure that was her constant companion, Chessey decided she didn’t care what a man named Pappy said.
She opened the cab door, took advantage of the lieutenant’s reflexive good manners by nudging him over to give her room and told the cabdriver to take them both to Dulles Airport.
“Here you are, sir,” the ticket agent said, handing McKenna a ticket envelope. She tilted her face to the side and smiled winningly. “One-way to Louisville, Kentucky, connecting with the commuter flight to the Elizabethtown airfield. Have a nice trip, sir.”
“Thanks,” McKenna said, fingering the envelope reverently. Home. He was finally going home. He grinned, knowing the ticket agent misinterpreted his expression as interest in her but being powerless to stop himself. “Thanks, ma’am.”
She blushed.
And then the protocol specialist shoved her way past him, throwing her briefcase on the counter.
“I’ll have what he’s having,” Chessey said.
“Oh,” said the ticket agent “Are you two together?”
“No,” Derek said.
“Yes,” Chessey said.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“This is a free country!”
“We’ve already discussed freedom in the cab,” Derek said impatiently. “I’m going home. You’re not going with me. A free country means I don’t have to be with you.”
“A free country means I can go anywhere I want,” Chessey corrected. “Miss, I’ll be going with him. Wherever he’s going.”
The ticket agent’s magenta nails poised above her computer keys.
“Sir?”
“Don’t give her a ticket. I don’t want her going with me.”
“You can’t tell her what to do.”
“Ma’am?” He pleaded.
“I want to go with him!” Chessey wailed.
Derek shook his head. Considering this woman was a maximum of five-five and had less than half his weight on her frame, she wasn’t intimidated and certainly didn’t back down.
The third man in the line waiting to buy tickets harrumphed.
“If she loves you and is willing to make a go of it, you should give it another chance, young man,” he offered. “Too many young people think that they can just walk out on marriages without—”
“I’m not married to her!” Derek roared. “She’s a protocol specialist at the State Department who’s aching to make a promotion on baby-sitting me for a month. She followed me in a cab and talked my ear off all the way here about duty to my country and freedom meaning that she could go anywhere I went.”
For emphasis, he jabbed his fingers in Chessey’s direction and wasn’t comforted by her smile.
On any other woman it would have been a come-on, but on this protocol specialist he figured it was pure trouble.
“Why, Lieutenant Derek McKenna,” she said, slowly and carefully enunciating every syllable of his name. And she added for the benefit of the few people in the line who didn’t immediately do a double take, “Derek McKenna. It must be the stress of being a hero that’s making you act so erratically. You need rest. And some reassurance that America loves you. Oh, Lieutenant Derek McKenna, we all think you’re wonderful!”
“Derek McKenna?” The woman behind Chessey repeated.
“Derek McKenna,” Chessey confirmed.
The woman stared. Derek felt a queasy feeling in his stomach as he watched her dawning recognition.
“Derek McKenna!” she shrieked. “I’m so delighted to meet you. Could I get your autograph?”
As the woman yanked apart her carry-on luggage to find something to write with, the man who had given him a lecture on marital behavior pumped his hand.