Stranded with the Sergeant

by Cathie Linz

  “So what’s the problem?” Joe demanded.

  “The problem is that none of these children are Sergeant Major Martin’s.”

  Joe frowned. “But that’s not possible. He told me his daughter’s class was here for a tour.”

  “His daughter’s class is here for a tour.”

  Joe had a bad feeling. “You mean…?”

  “That I’m Sergeant Major Martin’s daughter?” the sexy teacher said with a smug smile that didn’t bode well for him. “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

  Chapter Two

  Prudence Martin watched chagrin flash across Joe Wilder’s handsome face. She’d never seen eyes so Mel Gibson blue. In fact, this Marine favored Mel in several ways—same color brown hair, same square jaw, same humorous glint in his so-blue eyes. Although she could have sworn that she’d seen a glimpse of panic when he’d first entered the room, now she thought she must have imagined it.

  He had the same erect military posture of most Marines, but Joe Wilder had something else. A presence. The kids noticed it. They’d quieted noticeably since his arrival.

  The khaki service uniform he wore, with its crisp shirt and matching tie and web belt with darker trousers, wasn’t the best color in the world on most men, but she doubted anything looked bad on this man.

  And she was stuck spending the weekend with him. Some women might dream of spending time with a sexy man in uniform. Not her.

  “Sorry for the confusion, ma’am,” Joe was saying, his voice as smooth as the rest of him. “When your father referred to you as his little princess, I naturally thought…”

  “The wrong thing,” she interrupted him to say. She hated her father’s nickname for her. Little Princess. Just hearing it set her teeth on edge.

  “I see that now.” The earlier once-over visual he’d given her was back, only much more restrained now that he knew she was his commanding officer’s daughter. Prudence was used to that information making a difference with men—with Marines in particular. Which was one of the major reasons she avoided contact with them.

  She’d agreed to have Sergeant Brown accompany her on this field trip because she’d known the man since she was a kid. He was as old as her father and a personal friend.

  The same was not true of Joe Wilder.

  She’d have to tell her father he wouldn’t do for this assignment. He’d have to find her someone else. Until then, they might as well begin the tour of the base. There was no reason Joe couldn’t do that. She’d then speak to her father about a replacement for the remainder of the weekend.

  “Okay, class, listen up now. Sergeant Wilder is here to begin our tour of the base. He’s going to give you some background information about the history of the base and then begin the actual tour. Go ahead, Sergeant Wilder.”

  She was a bit surprised by the deer-in-the-headlights look Joe gave the gathered group of twenty-five kids. Maybe speaking in front of a group wasn’t his thing? But then a Marine never showed any fear. And Joe was no different. His voice was strong, his demeanor confident as he began speaking.

  “Listen up, everyone. You may address me as either Sergeant Wilder or sir. I’d like to welcome you all today to Camp Lejeune, a United States Marine Corps base, where we train the Marine Air/Ground Task Forces defending our country. Okay, let’s start the tour.” He seemed in a big hurry to get out of the small conference room all of a sudden.

  “First tell the class a bit more about the base’s history,” Prudence suggested.

  “Well,” he drawled, “the base has been here a long time, ma’am.”

  “How long?” she pressed, enjoying putting him on the spot. There was something about the confidently sexy smile he’d flashed at her when he’d first walked into the room that had irked her. Equally irritating was her own response, the quickening of her heartbeat, the awareness of his vivid blue eyes and good looks.

  And then there was that moment when he’d leaned close as if to kiss her. She hadn’t been expecting that. She’d gotten used to men keeping their distance.

  Turning to the class, Joe said, “Anyone know how long the base has been here?”

  Two hands shot up. Since Joe had asked the question, she let him select which student would answer. He picked Pete Greene, a whiz with facts and figures. “Since World War Two, uh, 1941 to be exact, sir.”

  “Okay, let’s start the tour,” Joe said again.

  Prudence held out a hand, stopping the mass exodus. “I think the class would like to know where the base got its name.”

  “Why did they name it after a legume?” Rosa Santos asked. “Aren’t peanuts legumes?”

  “It’s Lejeune, dummy,” Pete replied on Joe’s behalf. “And it’s huge, over 153,000 acres.”

  Sinatra Washington raised his hand, his silver-rimmed glasses glinting against his dark mocha complexion. “Sergeant Wilder, tell them about the fifty-four live-fire ranges, eighty-nine maneuver areas, thirty-three gun positions and twenty-five tactical landing zones.”

  “Maybe you should lead this tour,” Joe replied. “Where did you get all that information?”

  “From the Internet, sir.” Sinatra, one of her most curious students and an avid fan of the Internet, held up the sheet of paper he’d printed from his computer.

  Not wanting to be left behind in any statistical discussion, Pete said, “I read about that, too. You both failed to mention the state-of-the-art Military Operations in Urban Terrain training facility.”

  “I’m telling you, these kids don’t need me here at all.” Joe’s voice may have been filled with humorous teasing, but she suspected there was an underlying element of fact there. He didn’t want to be here. He wasn’t comfortable around the kids. Oh, he tried not to show it, but there was a definite tenseness in his stance.

  “Camp Lejeune has a self-guided tour with twenty-five points of interest,” Sinatra stated.

  “Self-guided, huh?” Joe repeated.

  “Yes, sir. There’s even a tour book that coordinates with the signs for each numbered point of interest.”

  “Self-guided. Well, that’s great. Then you definitely don’t need me,” Joe stated with a hearty laugh.

  “You’re here to answer any questions,” Prudence reminded him.

  He wanted to tell her that to do that he’d have to have access to the tour book, which the kid with the glasses and strange name seemed to have printed off the Internet. He wanted to tell her that he’d only been at the base a few weeks, he wanted to tell her he wasn’t as dumb as he sounded. But most of all he wanted to get the heck out of here. Which meant starting the tour, whether he knew what he was talking about or not.

  “This building houses base headquarters,” Joe said as he opened the door and headed down the hallway. If the kids wanted to follow him, fine. No way was he staying in that tiny claustrophobic room with twenty-five kids a second longer. Flirting with her had distracted him for a while, but now that he knew the sexy teacher was off-limits, he didn’t have anything to keep his mind off of the panic.

  “The outside of the building looks like my church, only bigger,” Rosa said as she followed him into the hallway, as did all the other kids and along with their rebellious teacher. “Redbrick with that fancy white thing on top.”

  “A cupola.” At least that was one answer he could supply.

  Rosa frowned up at Joe. “I thought he was the director of the movie The Godfather.”

  “That’s Francis Ford Coppola,” Pete said, rolling his eyes at her.

  “An easy mistake to make,” Joe said, wanting to keep moving. “As I said, you’re inside Base Headquarters. From here the Commanding General oversees the daily workings of the entire base.”

  “And how many Marines would that include?” Prudence asked.

  The teacher had it out for him. Joe could tell by the questions she asked and by the way her lush mouth turned up in what he was coming to believe was a diabolical, if sexy, smile each time she asked them.

  Fine, honey. Two can play
at that game.

  “Sinatra, how many Marines would that be?” Joe said.

  Consulting his printout first, Sinatra said, “Approximately fifty thousand Marines, Navy personnel, civilian employees and military families, sir.”

  Joe liked this kid. As they passed the front lobby with its small display of historical swords, Sinatra discreetly passed him a copy of the self-guided tour book.

  “Thanks,” Joe murmured.

  “I know what’s it’s like to be picked on,” Sinatra told him with a reassuring smile.

  Jeez, he’d come to this. A middle school teacher was picking on him. Him. Joe Wilder. An experienced United States Marine. Being picked on, not picked up as was often the case, by a woman. A sexy woman. A woman who was completely off-limits to him, seeing as how she was his commanding officer’s “little princess.”

  He had to find a way to get out of this assignment.

  The tour went more smoothly once he had the guidebook in his possession. He was able to tell the class about the massive live oak tree that was estimated to be over 350 years old. When one cocky kid asked him for the Latin name of the tree, he was even able to give that—Quercus virginiana.

  Things got a little trickier in the barracks. There was something unexpectedly provocative about being with Prudence in a room filled with so many mattresses. Maybe he wasn’t as bad off as he thought if he could think of sex at a time like this.

  Of course, another way of looking at things was that he was truly certifiable to be entertaining the thought of his commanding officer’s daughter and the word sex in the same sentence.

  And then there were all the kids, swarming around in masses and sucking all the oxygen from the room.

  “These beds are so little,” Pete noted in surprise. “And they’re bunk beds.”

  “Here in the Marine Corps, your bed is your rack,” Joe automatically corrected him.

  “A rack, huh? It looks like something you’d get tortured on,” Pete agreed.

  Torture was being in such close confines with so many kids. Even his first day of boot camp hadn’t made him this jumpy.

  “These beds…er, racks,” Pete quickly corrected himself, “are really clean.”

  “That’s because Marines have to learn how to make perfectly folded forty-five-degree corners on the sheets when they make their racks,” Prudence said.

  “No way!” Pete’s brown eyebrows shot up. “Marines have to make beds…er…racks?”

  “Affirmative,” Joe said. “They have to learn the Marine way of making their racks.”

  “You see, in the Marine Corps there’s only one right way of doing things and that’s the Marine way,” Prudence said in a mocking voice. Turning to Joe she said, “Tell the kids about the rest of Marine terminology. The floor is called…”

  She was the daughter of a Marine, she knew what it was called. She simply wanted to wipe the deck with him. Daddy’s little princess, indeed. Spoiled rotten needed to be added to that description. How dare she mock his beloved Marine Corps? He and the men she mocked put their lives on the line to protect her little fanny. But did she care? Clearly not.

  Narrowing his eyes at her, Joe straightened his already ramrod straight shoulders. “The floor is a deck,” he barked, startling her. Good. “To your right and left are bulkheads, not walls. Windows are ports. Above is an overhead, not a ceiling. Upstairs and downstairs do not exist. Instead we use topside and down below. You are facing forward. To your left is port and to your right is starboard. Behind you is aft.”

  “My dad has a boat and he uses those words,” Pete said, hurriedly adding, “sir.”

  “The terms are a result of the Marine Corps early origins as a sea service,” Joe said.

  The tour ended at the Beirut Memorial, commemorating those who died in the 1983 bombing of Battalion Landing Team 1/8’s Headquarters in Lebanon. Joe found it impossible to speak. For once, Prudence was quiet.

  By the time the class returned to base headquarters, Joe had regained his self-control. He fielded the kids’ questions as best he could on everything from the possibility of a top secret Marine Corps group that trained to protect earth from extraterrestrial life-forms to why his uniform was green.

  During that time, Prudence kept her distance. He could tell she didn’t like him. Which was fine by him. Maybe it would get him off this assignment.

  Baby-sitting a bunch of sixth-graders was hardly up his alley. He’d been trained in hand-to-hand combat, in Marine battle tactics and camouflage and survival techniques. Not kid stuff.

  Especially not now.

  A few years ago Joe might have laughed off this chore. But since the accident, his life had turned upside down. And he was the only one who knew it. Which is the way he planned on keeping things.

  “Daddy, this isn’t going to work,” Prudence stated as she perched herself on the corner of his desk.

  “Hey, princess, how did the tour go?”

  “The man you sent didn’t know much about the base.”

  “Well, he’s only been here a few weeks. Give the guy a chance.”

  She shook her head, sliding a strand of her dark hair behind one ear before saying, “I think it would be better if you found someone else for the job.”

  “Did Sergeant Wilder tell you to come talk to me on his behalf?” her father asked suspiciously.

  “No.” The question surprised her. “What makes you say that?”

  “The fact that he’s no more pleased about being given this assignment than you are about having him along.”

  “There you go then,” Prudence said. “All the more reason to get someone else. You’ve got thousands of Marines here.”

  “I’m not the base commander here, princess. I was lucky to get Sergeant Wilder for this assignment on such short notice. I’m afraid you’ll have to cancel the field trip if you don’t take him.” Pausing, he looked over her shoulder to the open doorway. “Ah, here he is now. Come on in, Sergeant.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, sir,” Joe said, noting the cozy father-daughter setup.

  “You’re not interrupting. My daughter was just talking about you. She’s not happy at having you assigned to accompany her.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, sir.” What a lie! The truth was that Joe was filled with relief. “I’m sure you’ll find someone else.…”

  “Nonsense,” his commanding officer said. “As I was just telling my daughter, it’s you or no one.”

  Joe’s heart fell.

  Prudence looked equally disappointed with the news. “We’re not canceling this trip,” she said. “These kids have been looking forward to this for weeks.”

  “Twenty-five kids in the Blue Ridge mountains is a bit much for two adults to supervise, don’t you think?” Joe said, still holding out a slim chance of escaping.

  “Absolutely,” Prudence agreed, the first time she’d agreed with anything he’d said all day. “Which is why there will only be five students coming on the field trip. The entire class got to come on the tour of the base, but participation in the field trip to the mountains was limited to the top five finalists in our Class Knowledge Fair.” Hopping off her father’s desk, she kissed her dad on the cheek before turning to face Joe. “I guess it looks like we’re stuck with each other.”

  Chapter Three

  “I can’t believe you’re actually calling me for help,” Curt Blackwell noted, his amusement apparent over the phone line.

  A year ago Joe had stood up at Curt’s wedding as his best man. Funny how things changed. In the past, Curt had always been the loner and Joe the life of the party. Now Curt was happily married and had a young daughter named Blue. And it was Joe who was struggling.

  “This has got to be a first,” Curt was saying. “Usually it’s the other way around, me calling you.”

  “Yeah, well, enjoy it while you can, buddy, because it’s not going to happen very often. Not if you gloat like this every time I call you looking for some help.”

  “I won’t
gloat every time,” Curt replied. “Just this time.”

  “There’s no time for gloating. Just think of some way I can get out of this stupid mess.”

  “A Marine never avoids an assignment.”

  “He does if it involves escorting his commanding officer’s daughter into the mountains of North Carolina for the weekend.”

  “How old is she?” Curt asked.

  “I don’t know. Late twenties, I’d guess.”

  “Sounds like a plum assignment for a ladies’ man like you. What’s the problem?”

  “She’s bringing some of her sixth-grade class with her. She’s a teacher. And we didn’t exactly hit it off.”

  “What?” Curt sounded mockingly incredulous. “Another first! A woman who doesn’t fall at your feet? Wait till I tell Jessie.”

  “This is privileged material,” Joe said emphatically. “So don’t go blabbing anything to that cute wife of yours.”

  “Since when are the details of your sex life a matter of national security?” Curt retorted.

  “Since they involved the daughter of my C.O.” Joe used the abbreviation for commanding officer.

  “I guess you do have a point there. Okay, this will remain between the two of us.”

  “Fine. Now give me an idea of how to get out of this.”

  “If the order is an illegal one…”

  “Don’t I wish,” Joe muttered. “But last time I checked there was no law against getting stuck with a spoiled, sexy teacher who has it in for me. Nor is it illegal to be called on to fill-in for a public affairs officer who needed emergency surgery and couldn’t lead this weekend excursion himself. The order isn’t illegal, just a pain in the butt.”

  “Did you mention that you haven’t been posted down there in North Carolina very long—”

  “Affirmative,” Joe interrupted him to confirm. “Tried that approach. Unsuccessful.”

  “You said the daughter wasn’t fond of you. Did you—?”

  “Point that out? Affirmative,” Joe again interrupted. “Deemed irrelevant by the C.O.”