What happens when your internet crush...

Shows up in real life?

First Lieutenant Thane Carter has experienced great success as the senior platoon leader of a military police company at Fort Hood. But tbh, his love life stinks. Thane wishes his maddening—and off-limits—new coworker, Lieutenant Chloe Michaels, could be more like his online friend “BallerinaBaby.” It’s complicated, all right—especially when Thane learns that his workplace nemesis and his internet crush are one and the same!

Despite a no-nonsense background as a West Point grad-uate, army officer and Fortune 100 sales executive, CARO CARSON has always treasured the happily-ever-after of a good romance novel. As a RITA® Award–winning Mills & Boon author, Caro is delighted to be living her own happily-ever-after with her husband and two children in Florida, a location that has saved the coaster-loving theme-park fanatic a fortune on plane tickets.

Also by Caro Carson

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A Texas Rescue Christmas

Not Just a Cowboy

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The Bachelor Doctor’s Bride

The Doctor’s Former Fiancée

Doctor, Soldier, Daddy

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

The Lieutenants’ Online Love

Caro Carson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07765-1

THE LIEUTENANTS’ ONLINE LOVE

© 2018 Caroline Phipps

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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This book is dedicated to the women of West Point,

the ones who came before me, especially the Class of ’80, who first proved we belonged,

the ones who lived it with me, especially Chriss, who dragged me off post to have fun in Alabama, Texas and Panama, and Gill, who can make me laugh even while we’re doing push-ups in a sawdust pit at Airborne School,

and the ones who continue the Long Gray Line after me, especially 1LT Bethany Leadbetter, who so patiently answered this Old Grad’s questions about today’s service—and who is proof that the US Army has the country’s best and brightest in its ranks.

Beat Navy.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Today, I was desperate for tater tots.

Chloe stared at her blinking cursor, her finger hovering over the enter key on her laptop. One second, not even that, was all it would take for that sentence to be sent to him, no way to take it back. Would he think she was dumb or would he think she was funny?

It shouldn’t matter. The man was no more than a series of words on a screen, a modern-day pen pal. She wrote to him with BallerinaBaby as her user name. He wrote back as DifferentDrummer. A freebie conversation app had matched them up months ago and they’d been writing back and forth ever since, but Chloe knew that wasn’t the same as being real friends in real life.

It shouldn’t matter, but it did. She wanted to make him laugh. Something about his notes lately made her think her anonymous correspondent had been having a hard week. He had talked to her through all the crazy months she’d been bouncing from one place to another. He’d listened to all her thoughts and worries and hopes. It was the least she could do to help him out if he was tired and overworked. Friends and lovers ought to take care of each other. Chloe believed emotional support was just as important as physical compatibility in a relationship, so—

Chloe snatched her finger away from the enter key. She was looking at nothing more than the basic white screen of an outdated app, yet she was worrying about emotional parity in a relationship. She needed to keep the proper perspective on this...this...whatever it was.

What should she call it when her digital pen pal felt like a better friend than the living human beings around her? Borderline insanity?

She didn’t know any of the human beings around her, that was the problem. She didn’t know anyone in the entire state of Texas. She was newly arrived in a new town for a new job. All her stuff was still in boxes. The only constant was her pen pal. She didn’t want him to think she was dumb, because if she lost him, too...well, she’d lose the most reliable presence in her life for these last five months.

Her cursor was still blinking. Tots.

Tater tots. Was that what she was going to talk about? She was going to talk about tots when what she was honestly feeling was lonely?

“Roger that,” she said out loud, and hit Enter.

The alarm on her wristwatch went off. Time to get ready for work.

Chloe carried her laptop with her and set it by her bathroom sink so she could keep an eye on the screen. If Different Drummer was online, he would answer immediately. It was one of the things she loved about him. She smoothed her hair back and twisted it into the low, tight bun that she was required to wear every day.

Her cursor blinked in silence.

Tots!

Men didn’t really joke about food cravings, at least not the men in her world, and there were plenty of men in her world. They talked about women, especially their breasts, and they talked about drinking, especially beer, but they didn’t joke about food cravings.

The cursor kept blinking.

Food cravings. What had she been thinking?

She’d probably, finally scared off Different Drummer. There were so many jokes about women and food cravings, he might think she was confessing some kind of hormonal thing, a craving like pregnant women were supposed to get. Worse, maybe he thought it was a monthly craving. Guys were so squeamish about things like that. A definite turnoff.

She hadn’t been trying to turn him off. She hadn’t been trying to turn him on, either. It wasn’t like anyone could seduce a man with a line about tater tots.

She jabbed a few extra bobby pins into her bun. Seduce him. Ha. She didn’t even know what he looked like. The simple little app didn’t have the capacity to send photos. She scowled at her reflection in the mirror. With her hair pulled back tightly, her face devoid of any makeup—she’d just sweat it off at work, anyway—she didn’t look like any kind of seductress.

She pulled a sports bra over her bun carefully, then wrestled the rest of the way into it. Good thing she was flexible. It was the kind of bra that didn’t let anything show, even when she was soaked in sweat, the kind of bra that kept a girl as flat as possible, because bouncy curves were frowned on in her profession.

She pulled on her comfy, baggy pants and zipped up her matching jacket, checking her laptop’s screen between each article of clothing.

He had to be offline. If he was online, he would have answered her...unless he was turned off by a ballerina who was obsessed with tater tots. Which she wasn’t.

She yanked on her best broken-in boots. If there was anything she needed to stop obsessing over, it was him, the mystery man who always seemed to get her sense of humor, who always seemed as happy to chat with her all night as she was to chat with him. It was too easy to forget it was all an illusion. She wasn’t really Ballerina Baby; he wasn’t really a unique man who marched to the beat of a Different Drummer, a mystery man who sent her long notes and found himself hopelessly charmed by her words.

Was he?

Today, I was desperate for tater tots.

Blink, blink.

Nope. He wasn’t hopelessly charmed. It was time for Ballerina Baby to join the real world.

Her fingertips had just touched the laptop screen, ready to close it before leaving her new apartment, when a sentence in blue magically appeared.

You crack me up.

He got it. She’d made him laugh. Mission accomplished.

The next blue sentence appeared: Or am I not supposed to laugh? The word desperate sounds rather...

Desperate? she typed one-handed. Then she stuffed her wallet in her pocket, but not her car keys. She knew from experience that if she started chatting to Different Drummer, she’d lose track of time and forget that she had to be somewhere. She bit down on the metal ring of her key fob, holding it in her teeth to leave two hands free for typing. She wouldn’t forget about work as long as she had her car keys in her teeth.

Another blue line appeared on-screen. They say most men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Chloe raised one eyebrow. They slipped in famous quotes now and then, just to see if the other person would identify the quote, their own little nerdy game. This one was no challenge. How very Thoreau of you. (Too easy.)

He replied, You, however, are not like most men. (I knew it was easy.)

For starters, I’m a woman. Her words showed up in hot pink as she typed—the app’s choice for female users, not hers.

He sent her a laughing-face emoji. I was thinking more along the lines that you don’t seem to lead a quiet life. You also never sound desperate. I don’t think you’d be quiet about it if you were.

She was typing while holding car keys in her teeth. Quietly desperate? He didn’t know the half of it.

Were you able to procure the tots? Tell me you did it noisily.

Shamelessly. I bought a big bag of frozen tots at the grocery store a couple of hours ago. They didn’t survive long.

You killed them already? All of them?

All of them. A one-pound bag.

Blink, blink.

For a moment, just one tiny, insecure moment, she worried again that she’d turned him off. Ballerina Baby didn’t sound like the kind of woman who would eat a whole bag of tater tots at one sitting, did she? The next second, impatient with all these self-doubts, she sucked in a faintly metallic breath around her key ring and shoved aside all the insecurity. This was her friend—yes, her friend—and sometimes a pause was just a pause.

I’ve shocked you into silence with my brutal killing of a bag of tots, haven’t I?

Not at all. I’m deciding how best to advise you so that you won’t be tried for murder. I don’t think they’d let you write to me from jail. I’d miss you.

Chloe’s fingers fell silent. He’d miss her, and he wasn’t afraid to say it. He was so different from all the other men she knew. So much better. Would he find it weird if she suddenly switched gears and wrote that?

Instead, she wrote: If I hadn’t killed them all, they would have sat in my freezer, taunting me, testing my willpower. No, they needed to die. ’twere best to be done quickly.

Very Lady Macbeth of you. (Too easy.)

Yes, well, unlike Lady McB, I ate all the evidence. I guess I shouldn’t feel too superior. In order to eat her evidence, she would have had to eat the king’s guards. Rather filling, I’d imagine.

He had a quick comeback. If Macbeth had been about cannibalism, English class would have been much more interesting.

Ha. She smiled around the car keys in her mouth. At any rate, ’tis done. Half with mustard, half with ketchup, all with salt.

Then you’re safe. We can keep talking. How was the rest of your day?

If only the last guy she’d seriously dated had been so open about saying he liked her. If only any guy she’d ever dated had been like Different Drummer.

But the car keys in her teeth did their job. They were getting heavy; she had to go.

I wish I could stay and chat, but I gotta run. And then, just in case he thought she was an unhealthy glutton, she added, Time to go burn off a whole bagful of tater calories. Talk to you tomorrow.

There. That didn’t sound desperate or obsessed or...in love. She couldn’t fall in love with a man she’d never met.

Looking forward to it, Baby.

But if they broke their unwritten rule and arranged to meet in real life...

The alarm on her wristwatch sounded again.

If they met in real life, he’d find out she was no ballerina—not that she’d ever said she was, but she’d never made it clear she wasn’t. She certainly wasn’t the kind of woman who was any guy’s baby. Most guys were a little intimidated by her, something it had taken her a few years to realize.

But with him? She could show so many more sides of herself. The soft side, the insecure side, the side that worried about making friends, and yes, the side that adored the ballet. A lot of pop psychology criticized the digital age for enabling everyone to pretend to be someone they were not while they were online, but Chloe felt like this situation was the opposite. The anonymity let her be her whole self with Drummer, not only her work self. She’d be crazy to mess with a good thing. She’d follow the rules, and not try to figure out who he really was.

She picked up the last item she always wore for work, her patrol cap. The way she slid the camouflage cap over her hair, the way she pulled the brim down just so, were second nature to her. The cap was well broken-in; she’d been wearing this exact one throughout her four years as a cadet at West Point, the United States Military Academy.

Although she was so familiar with her uniform that she could dress in the dark in a matter of seconds when required, Chloe checked the mirror to be sure her uniform would pass inspection, as she’d been trained to do. The American flag on her shoulder and the name Michaels embroidered over her pocket were the same as they’d been since she’d first raised her right hand as a new cadet at the military academy and sworn to defend the Constitution.

The embroidered gold bar on the front of her hat was new. She’d graduated in May, so now she owed the US Army five years of service in return for her bachelor’s degree. She was going to serve those years in her first choice of branch, the Military Police Corps. She was a second lieutenant now, the lowest rank of commissioned officers, but she was a commissioned officer with all the responsibility and authority that entailed. After four years of West Point in New York, three weeks of Airborne School in Georgia and four months of military police training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, she was ready to lead her first platoon of MP soldiers here in Texas. So ready.

Tonight, she’d be riding along in a patrol car with the officer on duty, the first of a few mandatory nights familiarizing herself with the post she’d call home for the next three or four years. Once she knew her way around the streets of Fort Hood, she’d take shifts as the officer on duty herself, the highest-ranking MP during the midnight hours, the one who had to make the final decisions—and the one who had to accept the blame if anything went wrong.

First impressions were important. After West Point, Air Assault School, Airborne School and Military Police Basic Officer Leadership Course, Chloe knew exactly what was expected of her. She looked at the officer in the mirror and wiped the smile from her face. She could be Ballerina Baby tomorrow, cozying up to her Different Drummer and being as soft and girly as she liked.

In private.

Tonight, it was time for Second Lieutenant Chloe Michaels to go be a badass.

* * *

First Lieutenant Thane Carter was done being a badass—at least for the next twelve hours.

He was almost home. His apartment building was visible through his windshield. He kept moving on autopilot, parking his Mustang, getting out, grabbing his long-empty coffee mug and locking the car. He put on his patrol cap, an automatic habit whenever he was outdoors in uniform, pulling the brim down just so, and headed for his building, a three-story, plain beige building, identical to the five other buildings clustered around the apartment complex’s outdoor swimming pool.

His primary objective for the next twelve hours was to get sleep, and a lot of it, ASAP—as soon as possible. Perhaps he’d wake up after a few hours and have a pizza delivered to his door later tonight, but then he’d go right back to sleep until dawn.

At dawn, he’d get up, put on a fresh uniform and return to duty at Fort Hood, where he was both the senior platoon leader and the acting executive officer in a military police company. That MP company, the 584th MP Company to be exact, was currently short one platoon leader, and Thane was feeling the pain.

There were normally four platoon leaders in the company, each officer in charge of roughly thirty enlisted personnel. Most of the year, MPs trained for their wartime missions, the same as every other kind of unit stationed stateside, rehearsing likely scenarios, keeping up their qualifications on their weapons. But MPs were unique: roughly one month out of every three, they pulled garrison duty.

Fort Hood was a sizable town, a military installation where sixty thousand soldiers and civilians worked and where tens of thousands lived with their families. Garrison duty required MPs to perform the functions of a regular civilian police department, patrolling Fort Hood in police cruisers as they did everything from traffic control to answering 911 calls. During that month, one of the four platoon leaders was always on duty as the officer in charge of law enforcement.

Except there weren’t four platoon leaders at the moment, only three. Covering the night and weekend shifts among just three lieutenants meant that each of them was pulling a thirty-six-hour shift every third day. Officers didn’t get the next day off after working all night. Thane had worked Monday, then Monday night straight on through until Tuesday evening. That thirty-six hours had been followed by twelve hours off to sleep, hit the grocery store, get his uniform ready for the next day. Wednesday would be a straightforward twelve-hour day, but getting sleep Wednesday night was critical, because Thursday morning would start another thirty-six-hour shift straight through to Friday evening.

The schedule was taking its toll. Law enforcement was important work. Necessary work. But after living the MP motto, Assist-Protect-Defend, for thirty-six hours straight, Thane was ready to assist himself right into the sack.

Alone.

To sleep.

He was single. Never married, no current girlfriend, not even dating. No surprise there. He’d worked—what? Thane counted it up in his head as he trudged from his parking space toward his mailbox, each step heavy with exhaustion. Twelve, twelve, thirty-six, twelve...hell, he’d only had twenty-four consecutive hours off one time in the past week, and it had been that way for weeks now. They really needed to fill that fourth platoon leader slot.

More downtime would help his sleep, but it wouldn’t help his love life. Having no time to date was only half the reason he didn’t have a woman in his life.

The other half was the scarcity of women with whom he could spend that precious downtime. The US Army was an overwhelmingly male space. Maybe 15 percent of all soldiers were women, but even so, the female MPs in his unit were off-limits. Whether he outranked them or they outranked him, dating someone within the same unit was a military offense, damaging to good order, discipline and authority, according to regulations, and grounds for a court-martial. Thane didn’t need a regulation to keep him from temptation there, anyway. In the Brotherhood of Arms, the women he trained and served with were brothers-in-arms, too. Teammates, not dates. Half of them were married, anyway, which put them off-limits by Thane’s personal code.

Of course, there were other servicewomen, single servicewomen, stationed at Fort Hood who were in units and positions that were completely unrelated to his, but there were roadblocks there, as well. Dating between an enlisted soldier and an officer was forbidden. Period. That knocked a couple of thousand women at Fort Hood right out of the dating pool. Since Thane was a commissioned officer, he could only date another commissioned officer who was not in his unit, but he rarely had a chance to meet female officers who worked in different branches of the army—that whole working thirty-six hours every third day had a lot to do with that. The police worked Saturdays and Sundays. And nights. And holidays.

Thane’s brother, still living back home in South Carolina, was head over heels for a woman he’d met at work, one of his clients. But Thane’s only “clients” were women who called 911 for help. Victims. Or they were women on the other side of that coin—not victims, but perpetrators. Two of the soldiers in his platoon had served a warrant on a woman suspected of check forgery today. Or was that yesterday? The days were all becoming one blur.

The odds of him meeting a datable woman at work were pretty much zero out of a million. Thane would’ve shaken his head in disgust, but that would’ve taken too much energy. One foot in front of the other, trudging past the apartment complex’s swimming pool, that was all he had the energy for.

Building Six’s mailboxes were grouped together in the stairwell. So were several of his male neighbors, all checking their mail at the same time, all in the same uniform Thane wore. At least one person in every apartment here was in the service. Everyone left Fort Hood after the American flag had been lowered for the day and everyone arrived home around the same time, an army rush hour. Everyone checked their mail before disappearing behind their apartment doors. They were all living off post in a civilian apartment complex, but the military influence of Fort Hood was impossible to escape in the surrounding town of Killeen.

As Thane used a key to open his little cubby full of two days’ worth of junk mail, he exchanged greetings with the other men. To be more accurate, Thane exchanged silent lifts of the chin, the same acknowledgment he’d been exchanging with guys since the hallowed halls of high school. That had been eight years ago, but still, that was the level of closeness the average guy reached with the average guy. A lift of the chin. A comment on a sports team, perhaps, during the NFL playoffs or Game Five of the World Series. Maybe, if he saw someone at the mailboxes whom he hadn’t seen in a while, they might acknowledge each other with a lift of the chin and actually speak. “You back from deployment?”

The answer was usually a shrug and a yeah, to which the answer was a nod and a yeah, thought so, hadn’t seen you around in a while, followed by each guy retreating to his apartment, shutting a door to seal himself off from the hundreds of others in the complex, hundreds of people roughly Thane’s age and profession, all living in the same place.

He had no one to talk to.

Thane started up the concrete stairs to his apartment, each boot landing as heavily as if it were made of concrete, too.

He lived on the third floor, a decision he regretted on evenings like this one. Thane hit the second-story landing. One more flight, and he could fall in bed. As he rounded the iron banister, an apartment door opened. A woman his age appeared in the door, her smile directed down the stairs he’d just come up. Another man in uniform was coming up them now, a man who wouldn’t be sleeping alone.

“Hi, baby,” the man said.

“You’re home early,” the woman said, sounding like that was a wonderful gift for her. “How was your day?”

“You won’t believe this, but the commander decided—” The door closed.

Thane slogged his way up to his floor.

Bed. All he wanted was his own bed, yet now he couldn’t help but think it would be nice not to hit the sheets alone. He had an instant mental image of a woman in bed with him. He couldn’t see her face, not with her head nestled into his shoulder, but he could imagine warm skin and a happy, interested voice, asking How was your day? They’d talk, two heads on one pillow.

Pitiful. What kind of fantasy was that for a twenty-six-year-old man to have? He was heading to bed without a woman, but it wasn’t sex he was lonely for. Not much, anyway. He wanted someone to talk to, someone waiting to talk to him, someone who cared what he thought after days full of people who broke laws, people who were hurt, people who were angry.

Better yet, he wanted someone to share a laugh with.

He scrubbed a hand over the razor stubble that he’d be shaving in less than twelve hours to go back to work. Yeah, he needed a laugh. There was nothing to laugh at around here.

His phone buzzed in his pocket—two shorts and a long, which meant he had a message waiting in his favorite app. The message had to be from his digital pen pal. The app had paired him up months ago with someone going by Ballerina Baby. He didn’t know anything about her, not even her real name, and yet, she was someone with whom he did more than nod, someone to whom he said something meaningful once in a while. He could put his thoughts into words, written words in blue on a white screen. He got words back from her, hot pink and unpredictable, making him feel more connected to the woman behind them than he felt to anyone else around here.

Thane took the last few stairs two at a time. He wanted to get home. He had twelve hours ahead to sleep—but not alone. There was someone waiting to talk to him, after all.

He unlocked the door and walked into his apartment, tossing his patrol cap onto the coffee table with one hand as he jerked down the zipper of his uniform jacket with the other. He tossed that over a chair, impatient to pull out his phone from his pocket the moment his hand was free. A real friend, real feelings, conversation, communion—

Today, I was desperate for tater tots.

He stared at the sentence for a long moment. What the hell...?

And then, all of a sudden, life wasn’t so heavy. He didn’t have to take himself so seriously. Thane read the hot-pink silliness, and he started to laugh.

The rest of his clothes came off easily. Off with the tan T-shirt that clung after a day of Texas heat. Thane had to sit to unlace the combat boots, but he typed a quick line to let Ballerina know he was online. You crack me up.

And thank God for that.

He brushed his teeth. He pulled back the sheets and fell into bed, phone in one hand. He bunched his pillow up under his neck, and he realized he was smiling at his phone fondly as he typed, I’d miss you. It was crazy, but it was true.

The little cursor on his phone screen blinked. He waited, eyes drifting idly over the blue and pink words they’d already exchanged. You killed them? he’d written, followed by words like murder. Jail.

He was going to scare her away. She’d think he was a freak the way his mind went immediately to crime and punishment. Did normal guys—civilian guys—zing their conversations right to felony death?

She must think he was a civilian. His screen name was Different Drummer, after all, nothing that implied he was either military or in law enforcement. They weren’t supposed to reveal what Ballerina called their “real, boring surface facts,” things like name, address, job. During one of those marathon chat sessions where they’d spilled their guts out, they’d agreed that anonymity was part of the reason they could write to each other so freely.

He hoped the way he used so many law enforcement references didn’t give away his real profession. It wasn’t like he was dropping clues subconsciously. Really.

He read her words. She made him smile with ketchup, mustard and salt. He wondered if she’d kept a straight face when she wrote that, or had she giggled at her own silliness? Did she have a shy smile or a wide-open laugh?

Then she told him she had to go. He had to act like that was perfectly okay. They’d talk some other time. But before closing the app he remembered the couple downstairs—Hi, baby, how was your day?

Ballerina Baby was the woman who’d greeted him after a long day of work.

Looking forward to it, Baby.

A subconscious slip? He’d never called Ballerina Baby just Baby before.

She didn’t reply. All his exhaustion returned with a vengeance. If Ballerina couldn’t talk, what good would it do to go out to exchange nods and grunts with everyone else?

He tossed his phone onto his nightstand and rolled onto his side, ready for the sleep that would overtake him in moments. But just before it did, he thought what he could never type: You mean more to me than you should, Baby.

Chapter Two

“Friday night. Almost quitting time, Boss.”

At his platoon sergeant’s booming voice, Thane tossed his cell phone onto his desk, facedown. He should have known that if he decided to check his personal messages for the first time in twelve hours, someone would walk in.

Thane could have stayed on his phone, of course. This was his office, and he didn’t have to stop what he was doing and stand when a noncommissioned officer, an NCO, walked in. But he didn’t want his platoon sergeant to see any hot-pink words that would encourage him to start giving Thane hell about women. As a commissioned officer, Thane outranked sergeants and other noncommissioned officers, but Sergeant First Class Lloyd had been in the army more than twice as many years as Thane. A platoon sergeant was a platoon leader’s right arm. The platoon didn’t run well without either one of them—and no NCO let his lieutenant forget it, either.

Sergeant First Class Lloyd was older, more experienced—and married, too. In other words, he’d enjoy razzing his bachelor platoon leader about his love life. Thane wasn’t going to give him a pink-fonted excuse to do it.

Thane kicked back in his government-issued desk chair and put his booted feet up on the gray desk that had probably served all the platoon leaders who’d come before him since Vietnam. Maybe even further back. The battleship-gray metal desk was old but indestructible. He liked it.

“I take it you didn’t come here to tell me the CO went home.” Retreat had sounded, the flag had been lowered, all the enlisted soldiers dismissed, but the lieutenants were still here because the company commander—the CO—was still here. It wasn’t a written rule, but Thane was old enough to know that it wasn’t wise for platoon leaders to leave before the company commander did.

“It’s Friday, sir. I wouldn’t still be here if the CO had left.” Just as the platoon leaders didn’t leave before the company commander, the platoon sergeants didn’t leave before the first sergeant did. Since the first sergeant didn’t leave before the company commander did, here they all were, waiting for Friday night to begin.

Thane watched his platoon sergeant head for the empty desk next to his own. Was the man going to take a seat and settle in for a chat? It wasn’t like him. Sergeant First Class Lloyd was a man of few words.

“Do you have any big plans for the weekend, sir?” asked the noncommissioned officer of few words.

“Just the usual.”

“Kicking ass and taking names?”

“Not tonight. Lieutenant Salvatore has duty.”

The man started pulling out desk drawers, then slamming them shut. “Whiskey and women then, sir?”

“Also not happening tonight.” Thane leaned back a little more in his chair and tucked his hands behind his head. “Sleep. Nothing but sweet sleep.”

His platoon sergeant spared him a quick glance. “You pulled another thirty-six hours, sir?”

An affirmative grunt was enough of an answer.

Without further comment, Sergeant First Class Lloyd sat in the desk chair and started testing its tilt and the height of its armrests.

“What are you doing?” Thane finally asked. “You planning on buying that chair after this test ride?”

“No, sir. Just seeing if I should permanently borrow it before the new platoon leader arrives.”

Thane sat up, boots hitting the floor. “Don’t get my hopes up, Sergeant First Class. Is there a new platoon leader coming in?”

“Yes, sir. In-processing on post.”

“About damn time.” Thane didn’t like the look on the sergeant’s face, though. “Let’s hear it. I can tell you got more intel.”

“Brand-new second lieutenant, fresh out of Leonard Wood.”

Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, was the home of the Military Police Corps. All new second lieutenants had to go through the four months of BOLC, Basic Officer Leadership Course, there. If that was all his platoon sergeant had on the new guy, it hardly counted as intel.

Thane leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head once more. “It’s that time of year. The college boys all graduate in May and complete BOLC in the fall. It would be too much to hope for to get someone with experience. It’s butter bar season.”

The term butter bar referred to the yellow color of the single bar that denoted the rank of second lieutenant. As a first lieutenant, Thane’s rank insignia was a black bar on the camouflaged ACUs he wore almost every day, or a silver bar on the dress uniform.

“Sergeant First Class Ernesto has broken in his fair share of lieutenants,” Thane said. “I’m sure he’ll handle this one. I just want someone to throw into the duty officer rotation. A butter bar will work.”

Sergeant First Class Ernesto was the platoon sergeant for fourth platoon. He’d been running fourth platoon without a platoon leader for three months, attending all the first sergeant’s meetings for NCOs and then the commander’s meetings for the platoon leaders, as well. Thane would bet money that fourth platoon’s sergeant felt the same way he did. Even a wet-behind-the-ears butter bar would be better than nothing.

“Well, sir, you’ll get to update that duty roster soon enough. The new LT already had one ride-along. A couple more ride-alongs this weekend, and you can add that name to your schedule.”

“Do you have a name yet?”

“Second Lieutenant Michaels. I’ll be right back.” Lloyd rolled the office chair out the door. Each office in the headquarters building held two desks. While fourth platoon had no lieutenant, Lloyd had been using the desk next to Ernesto, two NCOs doing their NCO thing, but the new platoon leader would be in Ernesto’s office now. Thane would have to get used to having his own platoon sergeant sharing this room again.

He picked up his cell phone and unlocked the screen. Pink words awaited him. Something came up, and I won’t be able to be by the phone tonight. There goes our Star Trek marathon. I’m sorry. The best-laid plans of mice and men...

They’d planned to write each other while watching the same channel tonight—so he knew Ballerina Baby lived in the United States somewhere and got the sci-fi channel on cable—but it looked like his evening was suddenly free. And more boring. The disappointment was sharp, but he had to play it cool. He wasn’t her boyfriend. He couldn’t demand to know why she was changing her plans, and he shouldn’t demand it. If Ballerina said she couldn’t make it, he believed her. Thane frowned. He also wasn’t sure who’d said the mice and men line.

Shakespeare? That was right nine times out of ten.

Gotcha. Robbie Burns. You’re not a fan of Scottish poetry?

Damn. She’d gotten him last week with Burns, raving about how she loved her new sofa that was the color of a red, red rose. No, but I’m a fan of Star Trek and I’m a fan of you. Now I only get one of those two things tonight.

His platoon sergeant came back in, pushing a chair with squeaky wheels ahead of himself. Thane turned his phone screen off. With all the pink and blue letters, it practically looked like a baby announcement. Lloyd would have a field day with that.

Thane stood up. “I’ll help you move the rest of your stuff. You prefer the squeaky wheels, huh?”

“No, sir. That’s why I just upgraded. I’m going to leave this chair here.”

“You’re not moving back in?”

Lloyd had that grin on his face again, the one Thane didn’t trust. “Well, sir, maybe an experienced lieutenant like yourself ought to show the new lieutenant the ropes. Maybe we should keep one office NCOs, one office lieutenants.”

“No. No way. You’re not sticking me with some fresh college kid. He’s Ernesto’s problem to deal with, not mine. That’s what a platoon sergeant is for, to keep the rookie LT out of trouble.”

Lloyd only grinned wider. “It’s not my idea. Seems like the CO thinks you’d be the best man for the job. He told the first sergeant who he wants in each office. He wants you to babysit Lieutenant Michaels. I mean, train Lieutenant Michaels.”

Thane cursed and rubbed his hand over his jaw and its five o’clock shadow, suddenly feeling each one of the thirty-six hours he’d been working. He’d wanted a fourth platoon leader to come in to lighten his work routine, but he hadn’t wanted that new platoon leader to impact his daily routine this much. “That explains the grin on your face. I don’t suppose there’s any chance this lieutenant is OCS?”

OCS stood for Officer Candidate School. It was the quickest way for an enlisted soldier who already had a college degree to become an officer. Thane had only had a high school diploma when he’d enlisted, so he’d applied for an ROTC scholarship. After he’d served two years as an enlisted man, the army had changed his rank from corporal to ROTC cadet and sent him to four years of college on the army’s dime. His prior two years as an infantry grunt made him a little older than most first lieutenants. He thought it made him a little wiser as well, since most ROTC grads were entering the army for the first time. If this butter bar was coming to them from OCS instead of ROTC, then he’d have some prior service, and he wouldn’t be as much of a rookie. But Lloyd was still smiling. Not good.

“No, sir. Not OCS. Not ROTC, either. The word is that Lieutenant Michaels is fresh out of West Point.”

“Are you kidding me?” The third way to become an officer was by attending the United States Military Academy at West Point, one of the country’s oldest and most elite schools. Elite meant there weren’t very many West Pointers in the army in general. Thane had worked with several, of course, and he couldn’t honestly say he’d ever had a problem with a West Point graduate, but anything elite was automatically met with suspicion by everyone else, including him.

“Monday morning, sir, you get to share all your special secret lieutenant-y wisdom with a brand-new West Pointer. I’ll be over in Ernesto’s office if you need me.”

“You’re so helpful.”

“You’ve been up since yesterday morning, sir. The CO hasn’t. You should go home now.” But as Lloyd left the office, he stopped and turned around. “Oh, and one more thing. Your new butter bar West Pointer office buddy? Word is that Lieutenant Michaels is a girl. See you Monday, Boss.”

* * *

I wish I could sleep another four hours, but I’m burning too much daylight as is.

Thane glanced at the pink words as he poured raw scrambled eggs into a cast-iron skillet. Ballerina was going to have to dig deeper than that if she was going to stump him today. He’d slept until noon. The duty schedule had finally coincided with the right days on the calendar, and Thane had a whopping forty-eight hours off. He’d left the office Friday evening and didn’t have to be anywhere until he took over at the police station on Sunday evening.

He typed on his phone with one finger while he kept his Saturday morning eggs moving around with the spatula in his other hand. John Wayne. (Too easy. Really.) Why so tired?

Late night.

His flash of jealousy wasn’t easy to laugh off. A single woman out late on a Friday night? Thane knew, somehow, that Ballerina would have no shortage of interested men around her. He had no idea what she looked like, but she was so full of life, so fun and quirky, men must find her as attractive in real life as he found her online. She must laugh and smile a lot with her real friends; there was nothing more attractive. Or maybe she was shy, making intelligent wisecracks under her breath only to the one friend standing next to her. Also attractive.

This old app had no photo features. It didn’t matter what she looked like, anyway. She was attractive to him in a way that went beyond blonde, brunette or redhead. Not only did it not matter, it would never matter. Other men would compete to get her smiles and hugs. He had no chance of being one of those men, the one who would pursue her until he was her favorite out of them all, until he was the only man she wanted to be with.

He should be satisfied that he was the man who got her thoughts and words, at least for now. When she found someone to love, he wouldn’t even have that. Thane grabbed a fork and started eating from the skillet, standing up. Jealousy over a pen pal was stupid and he knew it. But...

She hadn’t been able to chat with him last night, because she’d gone out somewhere.

He stabbed the eggs a little viciously. All right, so Ballerina had a life. He could keep this in perspective. She’d said something last night about working off that bag of tater tots she’d eaten. Maybe she’d had a rehearsal or even a performance. If she wasn’t a ballerina, he still suspected she was involved with dance, maybe a dance instructor, or a choreographer. Like him, she often mentioned going to work out or being tired from a vaguely described workout.

He shoveled in more eggs and began to type. Out late for work or play?

There was a bit of a pause before she answered. Is this a trick question to see if I’ll give you a clue about what I do for a living? Do I work at night?

Busted. Of course it was.

Of course not. How about this—did you enjoy your late night or were you gutting it out?

I loved it. I’m a natural night owl. I wish more of the world was. Even as a little kid, I hated going to bed for school. Kindergarten is misery for night owlets. Owlings. Whatever the term is. Why couldn’t school have been from 8pm to 2am, instead of 8am to 2pm?

He put down the fork to type with two thumbs. You should’ve been a vampire. Do they have school-aged vampires? A kindergarten full of little ankle biters—literally, biters—who want school to start at 8 at night.

That doesn’t seem right, she answered. I think you have to be a grown-up and choose to become a vampire. I don’t think I would, though. I feel isolated enough already. If I became a vampire, I’d be so sad, watching everyone I know going to bed and knowing by the time they woke up, I’d be done for the day. I’ll just have to stay a human night owl. (Is that an oxymoron? A human owl?) I don’t have many night owl friends, though. In fact, you’re the only one I can chat with at 3 in the morning. And because I know how to follow the ground rules, I’m not going to ask why you’re sometimes awake at 3.

I’m a vampire.

Ha ha. I’m just glad that you’re a night owl, too. You really are the perfect pen pal for me.

Thane finished his eggs and left the iron skillet to cool. At least one woman out there thought he was perfect because of his crazy military schedule, not despite it. His last girlfriend, a civilian he still ran into too often in the small world of an army town, had pouted every night and weekend that he had to work. Pouting wasn’t as cute as it sounded.

Do you know the longest amount of time I’ve gone without talking to you? Ten days. And by talking, I mean writing to you in hot-pink letters, of course. Stupid app. It’s so cliché, pink ink for girls and blue ink for boys.

I know. I’m so used to it now, I get startled when I type anywhere else and the words are black instead of blue.

I love this app, though, because it made us pen pals. I enjoy talking with you as much as with any friend I’ve ever had.

Thane smiled down at the phone screen. After a long pause, more pink appeared.

Do you think that’s normal?

He stopped smiling. The answer, of course, was no. It wasn’t normal. He took the phone out to his balcony, all four feet by two feet of concrete perch, three stories above the earth, and looked down to the complex’s central swimming pool. Management had posted signs by the mailboxes that there would be a party today with free food. That party had started without him.

He didn’t care. There was no one down there he’d rather be talking with. If it isn’t normal, then we’re both abnormal. It’s easy to talk to you.

Agreed. Real people are hard.

I’m real, he wanted to write. But he didn’t.

Do you have a close friend in real life? she asked.

Define friend.

I think that means no. If you had a close friend, you’d just say yes. You wouldn’t ask me what a close friend is.

She had him there.

But I think you’re normal...for a blue ink person. I read somewhere that the majority of married women will say their female friends are their best friends, when asked. But the majority of men will say their wife is their best friend. I remember that because I thought it was sad that there are apparently a lot of husbands out there who think their wife is their best friend, but she prefers a female buddy. Are you really best friends with someone if that person doesn’t think you are their best friend, too? It’s too much like unrequited love.

Who was his closest friend? His platoon sergeant came to mind immediately. They worked together every day, aiming for the same goals. They relied on one another. But Sergeant First Class Lloyd was not someone who would catch a famous quote in conversation—or who would laugh about it if he did. Heck, the platoon sergeant couldn’t even call Thane by his first name. Thane was addressed as Lieutenant Carter or Sir. Sometimes LT, the abbreviation of lieutenant, or, if they were being really casual, Boss. That was it.

His company commander was another good man. More than a boss in the civilian sense of the word, but not a buddy. They shared some laughs, they were on the same page when it came to training and discipline, and they’d spent one Sunday in the field huddled over the same radio to get the playoff scores, because they cheered for the same NFL team. But the company commander was always the commander, with all the legal authority and responsibility that the position entailed. Thane was always Lieutenant Carter, no matter how many whiskeys they’d downed during officer-only dining-in events in the brigade.

Thane was pretty sure Ballerina Baby would expect him to call a close friend by his first name, at a minimum.

The only people at work who didn’t call him Lieutenant Carter were the other two platoon leaders. They were good guys. One was married, one was not. The married guy’s wife was named... Cecilia? Serena? Something with an s sound. If you couldn’t name a friend’s wife, he probably wouldn’t qualify as a close friend in Ballerina’s book. The other platoon leader was from Phoenix. Thane felt like he should get points for knowing that...okay, not a close friend. A friend, though. More than an acquaintance.

Laughter from the pool floated up to his balcony. Maybe he ought to care more that he didn’t have a friend at his own apartment complex.

He tried to put the ball back in Ballerina’s court. Do you have a real friend in real life?

Then he waited. She’d probably say yes. Jealousy reared its ugly green head again, and in that moment, he realized how selfish that was. His life didn’t allow him to make friends in a normal way. Military rules didn’t allow him to date any woman who interested him. Military schedules were demanding. Did he wish the same for Ballerina Baby? Just because he felt isolated, just because he felt lonely among the very same people whom he would willingly fight beside, that was no reason for him to wish the same for her. He wanted her to have it better.

Her reply was a question. You’re real, aren’t you, Drummer?

Poor Ballerina. She was the same as he, sharing all her emotions with a stranger through an app. It filled a need, for certain, but even she didn’t call him by his first name. No one called him by name.

Whose fault was that?

Thane looked at the pool party with new eyes. If he wanted someone in real life who would call him by name, then he should do something about it. He could start by putting on his board shorts and flip-flops, going down there and telling people his real name. “Hello, I’m Thane.” And that would be followed by...

What? Awkward small talk. He and Ballerina had moved past that quickly, months ago. He wasn’t the kind of guy who told jokes, but Ballerina answered his attempts at humor with her little pink Ha. That wouldn’t be happening in the group down there, people who were laughing between the barbecue grill and the keg of beer.

Thane Carter in apartment 601 left his balcony and shut the door against the Texas heat and the party noise.

I’m real, Baby, and I’m here for you.

* * *

Chloe Michaels in apartment 401 wriggled into a sitting position on the floor of her new living room, sitting up with her back against a moving box. She never took her eyes off her laptop screen.

I’m real, Baby, and I’m here for you.

She slid right down to the carpet again. Jeez. The most romantic words she ever heard weren’t spoken, but typed.

Drummer was the perfect man, and she was so glad to have him in her life. Normal or abnormal, she couldn’t help but spin fantasies about a man who was so open with her. Her latest was that he might be a billionaire, for example, so determined to find out who she was and where she lived that he’d buy the company that ran this pen pal app. Then he’d find her when she wasn’t expecting it. He’d stride up to her and say, “Hello, I’m Drummer. I wanted to meet you, touch you, kiss you and take you away from all this.”

Of course, even a billionaire couldn’t tell the US Army they didn’t own her for the next five years. She would stay a lieutenant no matter whom she met and fell in love with. Frankly, she wouldn’t want to go anywhere. She’d been sworn into the army as a new cadet just two weeks after she’d graduated from high school, and she’d been training ever since to be an officer. She wanted to do what she’d been trained to do.

She looked up from her laptop. Through her sliding glass door, past the edge of her little concrete balcony, she could see the swimming pool in the center of the complex. It was crowded. There’d been a flyer posted by the mailboxes about free burgers at the pool today. It looked like a full-on party to her.

This was where she lived now, and even if a billionaire named Different Drummer went to extremes to find her and then declared his undying love for her, she would not only stay a lieutenant, she would continue to be stationed right here in Texas. For years.

She ought to make friends here.

Drummer’s icon flashed, indicating he was typing. Her heart did a little happy flip. They could type back and forth like this for an hour or two or more. They’d done just that many times.

Ok, Miss John Wayne, you said you were burning daylight. Big plans?

Chloe looked out to the pool. She had no doubt she was typing to a real person, but he wasn’t a billionaire and he couldn’t come sweep her off her feet.

I’ve been invited to a party. I want to take a nap, but I think I should go.

Why?

We just established that we don’t have any close friends except each other. I love

Chloe stopped typing. She deleted the word love. They’d agreed that they were either normal or abnormal together. She didn’t want to cross that line from abnormal to freaky-girl-with-fantasies. She typed like.

I like our long chats. I would miss you, too, if we couldn’t write one another. But it wouldn’t hurt to have friends around here. I might need a ride to the airport, you know, or need to call someone to jump-start my car battery. I know you’d reach through the clutter of all these pink and blue letters to lend a hand if you could, but since you can’t, I ought to go to this party just to meet the people in my neighborhood. Could be a fireman or a postman in my neighborhood, you know? Right here on my very own street.

She hit Send. Good grief, she felt like she was cheating on the man, or at the very least suggesting to a boyfriend that they start seeing other people. She’d paraphrased what she could remember from an old song from Sesame Street, as if sounding like a cute child would soften her words. Abnormal was a mild term for her.

You should go. You’ll make friends fast, I know it.

Oh. Chloe blinked at her screen in surprise. He wanted her to sign off and go to the party. What had she expected? That he would beg her to stay by her computer and talk to him and only him this weekend? He hadn’t caught the reference to the children’s show, either. She felt lonelier than ever. She couldn’t exactly tell Drummer that she’d rather type to him than meet real people, even though it was true.

She wrote a different truth. I appreciate your vote of confidence in my ability to make friends, but I don’t go to many parties. I doubt I’ll make friends fast. I’m not really a “life of the party” kind of girl.

That was an understatement. While it seemed everyone else was pulling keggers at their civilian colleges, alcohol was forbidden in the barracks at West Point, and cadets weren’t free to come and go as they pleased on or off post. Cadets who were caught breaking those rules faced serious punishment, even expulsion. Ergo, her party experience was about four years behind the average twenty-two-year-old’s.

Drummer’s answer was kind. Anyone who quotes Sesame Street is sure to make friends. How could anyone not like a person like you?

She felt a pang in her chest. He’d gotten it. He got her. If only...

I wish I knew you’d be there. It would be so much easier to put myself out there and say hello to strangers if I knew, at some point as I worked my way through the room, I’d eventually end up next to you. I’d be so glad to see your friendly face, and we’d kind of huddle together in a corner and ignore everyone as we updated each other on who was who at the party. I’d tell you not to leave me alone with the guy who just spent ten minutes lecturing me on the virtues of colon cleanses, and you’d say “What? That wasn’t the start of a beautiful friendship?”

One swift, blue word: Casablanca.

LOL. Yes, and we’d spend the rest of the party hanging out together and talking only to each other, nonstop, and I’d be so glad I came.

Chloe looked at her little pink scenario fondly. A little sadly. This was an even better fantasy than the silly billionaire one, but neither one could come true.

If that’s what you want, Ballerina, then let’s do that. There’s an event I could go to today, too. We’ll find each other afterward, and tell each other who was who at our respective outings. I want you to have a friend to call if your car battery dies. I could use one, too, for that ride to the airport. Let’s do this together. Deal?

Chloe looked at the friendly blue words, happiness and sadness warring within her. He was the perfect guy and he’d come up with a perfect solution, but the bottom line was that they both needed to find someone perfect outside of this app.

If she went out, he’d go out. So, for his sake as well as her own, she started looking around her apartment for the box most likely to be hiding her bathing suit.

It’s a deal. Talk to you later.

Looking forward to it, Baby.

Chapter Three

Life was better than she’d expected it to be.

The realization hit Chloe as she stood on her third-story balcony, performing a recon on the party down below. The Central Texas landscape was brown and sparse when she looked in between the identical buildings toward the horizon, but if she looked down, she saw a sparkling blue swimming pool. It was fall, but this was Texas, and there was plenty of warmth and sun to be had. Maybe Central Texas was more desert than tropical, but the whole apartment complex felt like a resort hotel to her.

Life had been pretty Spartan for the past four years. Room assignments at West Point had changed every semester; she’d had no choice but to move from one end of the same barracks hallway to the other, again and again and again. She’d always had a roommate, and they’d always slept in their assigned twin beds in alphabetical order. When she roomed with Schweitzer, Chloe Michaels slept on the left side of the room, because Michaels outranked Schweitzer alphabetically. When she roomed with Chavez, she slept on the right, but always, no matter which semester and no matter what her rank, she slept on a twin bed made up with a gray wool blanket that was stretched taut and tucked tightly into hospital corners, every single day for four years.

After graduation, the Basic Officer Leadership Course had housed her in the BOQ, the Bachelor Officer Quarters, at Fort Leonard Wood. The mini-apartment had seemed like a luxury despite being furnished in institutional army style with a vinyl couch and a chunky, square coffee table that had survived a whole lot of boots resting on it. Once more, she’d had an assigned roommate, but they’d had an actual kitchen. No more eating whatever was served in the mess hall three times a day. Even better, she’d had a bedroom with only one twin bed in it and a door that closed for privacy. That was a real luxury.

But now...

Chloe surveyed her new world. The complex had been built fairly recently, so everything was current, from the fresh paint on the buildings to the fresh carpet in her apartment. It wasn’t a long drive to post, and while there were cheaper places to live, this apartment was still in her budget. She didn’t need a roommate to split costs. She had the whole place to herself.

But the biggest luxury of all was this: the army hadn’t told her to live here. She could live anywhere she wanted to, as long as she showed up for duty. She’d visited five different apartment complexes. She’d chosen this place, Two Rivers Apartments. That was more than a luxury. That was freedom.

How strange—how intoxicating—to realize she’d never have to stand at attention during a room inspection again. She’d crossed a finish line in a race she’d been running since the day she’d graduated from high school. This was it. This was the view from the winner’s circle, a blue pool that she could swim in if she wanted to, or ignore altogether. Freedom.

She went inside, making a beeline for her laptop, an automatic reflex to share her joy with Drummer, before she remembered that he wasn’t online. He was at an event. She was supposed to go to a pool party and make a friend, someone who was not him. Someone who was not whom she really wanted to be talking to. Her pleasure dimmed a little bit, but she was going to keep her word and go, and then she was going to cozy up with Drummer later and tell him all about it.

She closed her laptop and headed down the stairs. The flip-flops that left her toes bare and the sundress that left her shoulders bare felt exotic. Her hair swished over her shoulders with each step and tickled her cheek. As a cadet, she’d only had an hour or two each night before taps when, if she stayed in her barracks room to study, she could let her hair down. At BOLC, she’d been able to wear it down when she was in civilian clothes, which had been most weekends. Now, she intended to pin it up only when she was at work. Luxury. Freedom. Control over her own hair.

There was music coming from the pool. She could smell burgers on the grill. Those were things she’d be able to put into words when she wrote to Drummer tonight. But she didn’t know how to describe the change in her life, this payoff for years of hard work, for years of voluntarily subjecting herself to strict rules and a demanding regimen, all with the hope that someday, she would be done and it would all have been worth it.

Someday was today.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. That quote would do, but she didn’t know who’d said it or in which book or movie.

I’m saying it.

Yes, she was. She’d arrived at the party—figuratively and literally. Chloe opened the gate to walk onto the white concrete pool decking. Life was good and it was only going to get better.

And that was when she saw...him.

* * *

Their eyes met across a crowded pool deck.

Thane had never seen her before. He would have remembered if she’d gotten out of a car in the parking lot or checked her mail in the stairwell. Her hair was long but not too long. Brown but not very dark, almost blond in the sunlight. She was tall-ish. And since they were staring at each other a moment too long, he could tell from this side of the pool that her eyes were as dark as his were light. She’d come through that gate smiling, like she was eager to be here, and that smile never dimmed as their gazes met and held.

He liked the way she looked.

Then the moment was over because she turned away to claim a chair, kicking off her flip-flops underneath it. She shook off a small case that dangled from her wrist by a strap and let it drop on the seat of the chair. It looked like a wallet. Thane’s law enforcement training automatically calculated the odds for a theft. She shouldn’t leave it sitting on a chair in plain view, even though this was hardly a high-crime area.

The apartment rent was just a little more than his monthly military housing allowance, an amount that increased as a soldier’s rank increased. Everyone here could afford about the same apartment, which meant everyone here was about the same rank, first or second lieutenants, a few bachelor captains, and a handful of mid-career sergeants whose allowances were equal to a new lieutenant’s. Not a hotbed of thieves, in Thane’s professional police opinion, but still, she shouldn’t leave a wallet out in plain sight like that.

She kept her back to him as she pulled off her sundress over her head. She wore a bikini underneath, but it was the sport kind like the female competitors wore on TV in beach volleyball or Ironman competitions. The suit suited her, so to speak. She wasn’t just slender, she was toned, the muscles in her arms and legs tight—nicely firm backside, too. He fully appreciated the sight of a physically fit woman baring an acre of smooth skin to the sun. Whoever had come up with the idea for a pool party was a genius.

She rolled her wallet up in the dress and tucked it in with her shoes underneath the chair, out of sight. Beauty, athleticism, common sense—he’d definitely never seen her around here before. Which meant the odds were that she was someone’s guest, which sucked, because the apartment residents were mostly male, so the odds were that she was here as some other man’s guest.

Or maybe not. She peeked to see if he was still there, a millisecond of a glance, before she pretended she wasn’t aware of him and studiously looked toward the barbecue crowd instead. The smile still lingered on her lips.

I’m still here, beautiful. It’s okay to be interested in me. I’m interested in you.

Thane tore his eyes away from that smile to look where she was looking. None of the men around the grill seemed to be searching for his girlfriend. Be single, be single. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Casablanca—in a flash, Thane thought of Ballerina and felt...guilty. Like he was cheating on her, which was ridiculous. They’d agreed they needed real-life friends and were both going out today to try to meet some. Instead, in had walked this beautiful woman, and his mind had chucked the friend quest far away and pulled the idea of a girlfriend close. That was fine, though. There was no reason in the world why he couldn’t find a real-life girlfriend. After all, a girlfriend could jump-start a car or give him a lift to the airport and do all those things a pen pal couldn’t do.

The woman—the very real woman—slid her hand under her hair and lifted it from the back of her neck for a moment. Then she let it go again, all that feminine hair falling over all that bare skin.

Thane looked away and took a deeper breath, a little extra oxygen to keep his thoughts from going haywire. But there was no doubt his thoughts were heading toward a whole new category of things that a pen pal couldn’t do.

“How about those Cowboys?”

One of the mailbox guys called the question to him while working the tap of a keg, filling a red Solo cup with beer. He held up one that was already full and nodded toward Thane with that look that said, Do you want one?

Thane took it from him with a nod of thanks. “I think the Cowboys will take the Packers tomorrow. You back from a deployment?”

“Yeah.” His neighbor shrugged.

“Thought so,” Thane answered. “Hadn’t seen you around in a while.”

His neighbor lifted his now-full beer in a bit of a toast, then sauntered away from the keg as Thane took a step in the other direction.

That was it, the complete guy conversation. Same as always.

It reminded Thane why he was here. He headed around the edge of the pool, walking with a purpose to get to the other side. He wanted someone to call him by his first name, and he knew exactly which person he wanted that to be.

“Chloe!”

And...damn it. There was the man she must have been looking for. Thane slowed his steps and took in the scene. The beautiful woman, Chloe, hugged the shirtless man who’d just run up to her with all the eagerness of a golden retriever.

Okay, so Thane wasn’t feeling too kind. The man slobbering for her attention was probably just a couple of years younger than Thane, and probably an officer, too. But that man had something Thane didn’t. He apparently had the affection of one woman named Chloe, whose smile for him was open, unrestrained. Dazzling.

Thane walked around the edge of the pool to her side. He was at the farthest corner from her, but even from this distance, that smile was everything. Some guys were breast men and some were into legs, and while Thane was all in favor of all of that, it was Chloe’s smile that really knocked his socks off. It was happiness. Who could resist happiness?

Apparently not the men around this pool. Two more men left the grill and hugged Chloe. She was surrounded. The guys all looked the same. Everyone had a military haircut, everyone was physically fit, no one was younger than twenty-one and no one had reached thirty yet. Only Chloe was special. Thane couldn’t take his eyes off her.

He didn’t think she was in the military. She had the fitness thing going on, but there was something about her bearing...

She was too relaxed. In the eight years since he’d first enlisted, he’d come to realize that military life tended to make soldiers feel like they were stealing moments of fun or relaxation between deployments or missions or shifts, which was how he felt because it was indeed what he was doing. This woman looked like she had time, like she was where she wanted to be and enjoying it.

Maybe she was a local. She could be a yoga instructor, all smooth muscle and Zen contentment, the polar opposite of him and his career.

The guys around her talked over one another, laughing and gesturing. Chloe was laughing with them, but this didn’t look like a boyfriend introducing his girlfriend to his pals. This looked like a reunion of people who were surprised to find each other here. Long-lost college buddies, maybe. That kind of thing happened in an army town all the time. Paths crossed unexpectedly with so many people coming and going as assignments began and ended.

She glanced his way and did a subtle double take when she saw that he was walking directly toward her. She didn’t look away. Neither did he.

Another man came running up behind her, full speed. She started to turn with an elbow raised in a defensive move but the man plowed into her, wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug and let his momentum carry them off the edge of the pool to plunge into the water.

Idiot.

Thane didn’t know a woman alive who appreciated getting thrown into a pool without warning. That fabulous smile of hers was going to be gone.

They popped up a couple of feet apart.

“Idiot,” Chloe said.

Exactly.

But then Chloe broke into laughter. “You are so, so lucky you still have all your teeth, Keith. I was about to clock you with my elbow when I realized it was you. You better be grateful I’ve got ninja-like mastery of my ninja-like reflexes.” They exchanged trash-talking banter until Chloe hoisted herself out of the pool.

Okay, she didn’t sound like a Zen yogini. She’d gotten in some good zingers, though. Now she sat on the edge, her hair a waterfall down her back, her feet still in the pool. “I don’t suppose any of you guys brought a towel? I don’t have one. I wasn’t planning on going in.”

“Me, neither,” said one of the dry guys. “Sorry.”

“The sun’s out,” said another dry guy. “You’ll be fine.”

“Hey, the keg’s been tapped.” The tackling guy hauled himself out of the pool and headed over to the keg, dripping wet.

College buddies, for sure. If any one of them wanted to try to become more, he’d best get his act together. Thane wasn’t going to hang back and wait for the pack of golden retrievers to grow up and man up.

Thane detoured a few steps to the chair where he’d thrown his things earlier and snagged his oversize towel with one hand. Then he walked up to the pool’s edge and crouched down beside Chloe. “I’ve got an untouched beer here and a clean towel. You’re welcome to one or the other or both.”

“I’ll take the towel, please.”

They were strangers, so her smile for him was polite, pleasant, still beautiful. Thane set down the beer so he could shake out the towel and let it fall around her shoulders, keeping the action quick and casual. “There you go.”

“Thanks.”

He picked up the beer and sat next to her, putting his feet in the water, too.

She beat him to the introductions, holding out her wet hand for a shake. “And hi, by the way. My name is Chloe.”

“My name is Thane. I wanted to meet you.”

They smiled at one another.

This feels like the start of a beautiful friendship.

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