by Julie Miller
J.C.’s whole body relaxed into a smile as the first ray of hopeful sunshine broke through her brooding mood. She propped her hands on her hips and breathed in deeply, as if taking in her first breath of fresh, morning air.
Of course. A life. She had one. She just needed to get out of here and get on with it. A couple of miles of power walking should do the trick to get her started.
She dumped her coffee in the sink, packed her laptop in her bag and headed for the bedroom to change. She needed to talk to people. Say hi to Norm. Interact. Reassert her power over her own thoughts and actions. She needed to get back into the moment and get out of the past. The future would take care of itself.
She quickly made up the antique four-poster bed and changed into a pair of running pants and matching jacket. She grabbed her weights and headphones, tucked her keys into one jacket pocket and pepper spray into the other.
J.C. locked her door and jogged down the stairs. Ethan McCormick was just a man. A man who wouldn’t commit to more than two weeks with a woman. Needing her help on his promotion was just a built-in excuse to say goodbye and move on to his next conquest when he was done with her.
If she were to give advice to another woman in her situation, she would say to go for it. Keep your eyes wide-open. Keep your heart in the moment. Take advantage of the time limit and let the man make your body happy for a couple of weeks. Then move on. Take the edge off your desperation to find a long-term relationship.
Ethan himself had said he would give her anything she needed to return the favor of pretending to be his bride-to-be. He’d been talking money or gifts.
But J.C. intended to ask him for something much more personal.
Two weeks of bliss.
She was grinning like the Cheshire cat by the time she strode out onto the riverwalk beside the Potomac.
J.C. GRIPPED THE WEIGHTS in her fists and swung them in rhythm with the two-step tune playing on the country music station in her ears. In her mind, she hummed along to the Texas anthem, but she was concentrating on her breathing and elevated heart rate. The breeze off the river was cool, tinged with the greenish scents of the thickening grass and budding cherry trees atop its banks. But beads of perspiration gathered at the small of her back and tickled between her breasts as the springtime sun warmed her muscles with its heated caress.
Oh, yeah. She was large and in charge of her world once more. Fit, fine and ready for fun. She’d brainstormed a more succinct, less personal ending for her article. And she had plenty of time to shower and change before her meeting so that she could drive uptown and find the perfect gown for tonight.
Something elegant and understated, in keeping with Ethan’s country-clubbish goals. But something that emphasized her best attributes. Her legs? Cleavage? Let’s see, what did Ethan like? J.C. giggled like a naughty schoolgirl. She could hardly emphasize that in public! Maybe she should just go for easy access, or—
Suddenly a man’s hand clamped around her arm and dragged her out of step.
J.C. screamed as she stumbled against a wiry chest. “Let go of me! Hel—!” A sweaty palm stifled her mouth and the pungent smell of unwashed skin stung her nose.
She stomped on an instep and shoved with her free hand. She heard words of warning, but they were muffled by the earphones and music. She reached for the pepper spray, but the hand at her mouth latched on to her wrist. Trapped in her attacker’s painful grip, she twisted her body to angle a knee toward his crotch. “I swear to God, I will—”
Black hair.
Ice chilled her veins and worked her heart into a pounding panic inside her chest. The tattooed bicep, the un-shaven face, the bleary black eyes all came into focus. Fear was eclipsed by shock. Anger quickly took its place. She stopped fighting and started thinking. “You again.”
The creep from the bar last night. Déjà vu.
He was breathing hard with the exertion of controlling her. The stale smell of hangover breath brushed past her nose. The instant he released her, J.C. put an arm’s length of fresh air between them. But she didn’t turn her back. He held up his hands in surrender and spoke in what sounded like a whisper. “I tried to get your attention, lady, but you didn’t hear me.”
She jerked the headphones from her ears and hung them around her neck. She read worry rather than apology in his expression. She rubbed at the pinched skin on her wrists. “Whoever taught you it was okay to grab a woman like that?”
He ignored the question and moved closer, ducking his head to whisper. J.C. backed up the same distance. He muttered a curse as foul as his breath, his voice crystal clear now. “It’s Corporal Guerro, ma’am. We met last night.”
“I know who you are.” She now recognized him as the man who’d been arguing with Norm in the parking lot. “How did you find me?”
“I’m not stalking you,” he insisted. “But the guard wouldn’t let me up to your apartment.”
“I should hope not.”
“Look, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I don’t want to be hurt!”
It was stupid to stand here and argue with this idiot. But when she stepped to the side to move past him, he blocked her path. He wouldn’t let her pass on the other side, either. J.C. held her breath to squelch her furious resentment and curled her toes inside her Reeboks to hide her trembling. If she retreated the way she’d come, he’d probably chase her down and grab her again.
This was so not okay.
“How did you find me?” she repeated, keeping her voice as calm and even as when she addressed a client. Whatever reason prompted him to give up a night of sleep and track her down couldn’t be good.
“With this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, white cardboard rectangle. She immediately recognized the geometric design and black block print. Oh, no. A business card. Her business card.
J.C. lunged for the mini personnel file, but Juan flipped his hand up into the air, holding the card well out of reach. He laughed at her instinctive, foolhardy reaction, fully aware that he had the advantage right now. Regrouping, J.C. rocked back flat on her feet and schooled the panic from her voice. “I didn’t give that to you.”
He slipped the card deep inside his front jeans pocket, accurately guessing she wouldn’t try to retrieve it from there. “Manny found it in your purse and pocketed it before the major clocked him.”
Ethan. Yes, Ethan. He’d put this jerk in his place. A surge of adrenaline emboldened her to lie. “Ethan and I are engaged to be married. He won’t be pleased to know you’re following me. I think he made it clear last night that I’m off-limits to you.”
“Yeah, well I’m not interested in your teasing ass, lady. Make a fool out of someone else.” His black eyes burned red with the remnants of alcohol and fatigue. “I just want to know what you told him. I already got some black marks against me, and when I report back from leave tomorrow, I don’t want to be sent straight to the brig again.”
Brig. Military jail. Her father had spent a few nights in one. Not encouraging. “You’ve been in the brig before?”
Guerro nodded with an arrogant tilt to his chin like, yeah, so what? “I got a temper on me. Especially when I’ve been drinking.”
“You were drinking last night.” She’d been in bigger danger than she’d suspected.
“Look, lady, what did you tell him?”
“Major McCormick?”
“McCormick, yeah. He’s not with my unit, but those officers, they all know each other. Am I screwed for hittin’ on his girl?”
Apparently Ethan’s charade had been convincing. But she didn’t know him well enough to gauge how far he would take last night’s incident, or whether he considered the problem handled. J.C. shrugged, seeing traces of her father’s personality in Corporal Guerro’s loose-cannon desperation. “I don’t know if he intends to report you or not.”
“Tell him not to.”
“I don’t think you can give a major an order.”
“I’m not. I’m asking f
or a favor. From you.” She owed this man nothing, except, in an indirect way, her introduction to Ethan. “I swear to God I didn’t know you were his girl when I moved on you. But you were playin’ me and deserved some payback. I can’t go back to the brig. They’ll strip me all the way down to PFC if I get in trouble again.”
With every agitated word, he hunched closer.
J.C. backed away slowly, fighting the urge to run. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”
But his fingers dug into her forearm. Shaking her. Stopping her. “Do it, lady. Make it right. You owe me.”
“Are you threatening me?” She bit down against the pain and jerked against his bruising grasp. “The major won’t like that, either.”
He swore in two languages and jumped back, holding his hands up high where she could see them. “Just find out for me, will you? Don’t let him make that report. Now that I know you two don’t live together, I’ll call you.”
He knew…? He’d spied…? “You’ll call?”
He flashed his teeth in half a grin that she found more threatening than amusing. “I got your card, remember?” He pointed a grubby finger at her. “Make it right.”
Guerro backed off, turned and loped down the hill toward a line of parked cars. J.C. watched him, her unblinking eyes stinging with wariness, until he climbed into a battered blue sedan and pulled out into traffic.
She closed her eyes and heaved a sigh of relief. When she opened them again, the world looked normal. But she didn’t feel normal. She felt as if some unseen hand had just flipped the switch on a slowly ticking time bomb beneath her feet.
It wasn’t just the lingering stench of Juan Guerro’s sweat and booze on her clothes that bothered her. It wasn’t just the physical force and implied threats he’d surprised her with that hastened her walk into a quick jog back to her apartment.
It was the lie. The necessary deception that allowed her to write one of the fastest-growing editorial-and-advice columns in the country while maintaining what passed for a private life.
She prized her anonymity. It gave her the freedom to speak her mind, the opportunity to say the tough things that needed to be said about living and loving and making love. It gave self-conscious readers the courage to ask delicate questions, to come forward with issues that were just too hard to discuss with someone face-to-face. It distanced her from the crackpots who wanted to bed the sex lady and receive some hands-on therapy.
J.C. unlocked her door and slipped inside. She slid the dead bolt into place, then fastened the chain and locked the doorknob before leaning back against the frame. She was breathing so hard—from stress as much as exertion—that she could barely hear her own thoughts.
Without knowing it, Corporal Guerro had broken through that wall of anonymity. Her business card didn’t say she was “Dr. Cyn,” but it did bill her as a sex and relationship counselor and listed the number at the paper as well as her cell. If Juan called the work number and got Woman’s Word, would he be bright enough to connect Ethan’s Dr. Josephine C. Gardner with the controversial Dr. Cyn?
Maybe this would all blow over. After all, bright wasn’t the first word that came to mind when she thought of Guerro. Ethan had been authoritative enough. He probably saw no need to report Juan and Manny. There would be no mention of brigs or discipline. Juan could stay a corporal and forget all about her.
Sure, it could play that way.
She breathed a little easier. She pushed away from the door and stripped as she headed for the shower.
It had to play that way.
Because J.C. had no doubt that with his act first, think later style, Juan wouldn’t hesitate to tell Ethan, his buddies or the tabloids her real identity if it suited his purpose to expose her. Then she could kiss her privacy, her research and two weeks of bliss with Ethan McCormick goodbye.
“I THOUGHT THIS LOOKED like a nice neighborhood. And there’s a guard at the gate.” Ethan had waited patiently while she unhooked all three locks on her door. “Expecting trouble?”
But threats and deception and preconceived notions were the furthest thing from J.C.’s mind right now.
“Wow.” Not her most eloquent moment.
She held her door open and practically drooled over the man standing in the hallway. Ethan cut an impressive figure in his black evening dress uniform with a scarlet cummerbund wrapped at his trim waist and gold braid and buttons accenting the breadth and height of him. The number of colorful ribbons and pins adorning his chest gave him a commanding air of power and authority. He’d tucked his white, flat-topped hat beneath his arm and held a plastic corsage box in one white-gloved hand.
“Right back at you. That dress looks a hell of a lot better on you than it did on the hanger this morning.”
“You think?” J.C. twirled around, giving him the full effect of all the skin bared by double spaghetti straps and a modest décolletage. Everything else was demurely covered to her ankles, in deference to the stodgy requirements Ethan said the general and his committee preferred to see at official functions. But the hem flared to give her room to dance, and a touch of sparkle in the sheer overskirt made the outfit fun enough for her rebellious tastes.
“Definitely better than the hanger.”
J.C. smiled at the hungry timbre in his voice. “Your sweet talk’s improving.”
Ethan didn’t smile. He was busy assessing her from head to toe, lingering in places that made her toes curl into the carpet and her breasts tingle beneath the fitted bodice of the smoky blue silk. He had that same look in his eyes that he’d had last night at the bar—the look that said he wanted to eat her up. Here. Now. On the chaise. In the bed. Up against the wall. Anywhere he could have her. With his hands and mouth. His body. Would that most masculine part of him be as sleek and toned—and big!—as the rest of him?
An erotic image—sweaty, hot, graphic—leaped into her imagination.
Back off! Back off! Back off! Her brain shouted the warning too late as she suddenly flushed with so much heat that she thought she might faint. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the door and its frame for support and made a conscious effort to breathe.
In. Out. Left… Oh, shoot! Did everything come down to sex with this man? Had she talked and written about sex so much that it was constantly on her mind now? Out. No, in! Out. Was her reaction to Ethan’s virility this incendiary because her involuntary abstinence had dragged on for more months than she could count? Despite her training, she might no longer qualify as an expert on the topic. In. Out. He inspired her to do some serious, one-on-one research.
But J.C. couldn’t just drag Ethan into her apartment, strip off his uniform and demand his pleasuring skills as payment for pretending to be his fiancée when they were expected across town in an hour. He’d come here early to get their stories straight so it would sound as if they’d known each other longer than twenty hours—not to grab a quickie before the job interview-slash-inquisition began.
She had to cover her bases with the whole Juan Guerro incident first. Protect her alter ego. She’d promised Ethan she’d do whatever she could to help him get that promotion he wanted so badly.
Plus, she didn’t want to risk him saying no to her proposition and walking out before she got the chance to study the officers at the ball tonight. How attentive would they be to their wives or dates? How much flirting would they try to get away with? J.C. didn’t consider herself a great beauty, but she’d taken extra care with her hair and makeup and choice of accessories tonight. It was pretty shameless to set herself up as bait. But how many men would be like her father and chase after any sexy diversion that came along?
No, she couldn’t jeopardize her bet or anything else. Not yet.
She needed to break the charged silence gathering strength between them and get moving before she pulled him down for a kiss that would certainly make them late for the ball. With a teasing smile and a rustle of petticoats, she reached for the corsage. “Is that for me?”
“What?” He swallowed h
ard, and J.C. wanted to chase the bob of his Adam’s apple along the column of his neck with her parched tongue. “Yeah. Here. I wasn’t sure what kind of flower would go with your dress. But Captain Black recommended a gardenia for its neutral color, said it would go with everything.”
“Who’s Captain Black?”
“My aide de camp.” She’d heard the term, but he explained it, anyway. “My assistant at the DoD. You’ll meet him tonight.”
She opened the box and inhaled the waxy flower’s heavy, potent scent. She closed it just as quickly, blocking out the sudden image of other things, heavy and potent, triggered by the lush, exotic smell. “Tell him good recommendation. It’s beautiful. Thank you.” Trying not to breathe any more seductive scents, nor think any erotic thoughts, she ushered him inside and closed the door. The size of her already-tiny apartment shrank even further as Ethan strode into her living room.
“Nice place.” He crossed to the set of big double windows she loved. “Great view.”
“That’s why I chose it. With the river and monument park area to look at, I can almost feel I’m out in the country.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “You a small-town girl?”
Boy, they didn’t know much about each other, did they. “No. I actually grew up in San Diego. I love everything you can find in the city, but sometimes I just need to see some wide-open space—like the ocean or the mountains.”
He nodded toward the window. “Or the park. I can relate.”
“Have a seat,” she offered, pointing to the purple chaise and contrasting teal-and-lavender-print easy chairs. Ethan’s formal attire in the midst her colorful, bohemian decor reminded her of the different worlds they came from and would return to. It was an observation she found reassuring. J.C. was smart enough to know that sharing a sexual attraction didn’t mean anything deeper would develop. Their limited time frame should help keep things that way. “What about you? Where do you call home?”
Ethan sat on the edge of one of the lavender chairs, resting his elbows on his knees and leaning forward as if he doubted the delicate piece of furniture could take his entire weight. “Let’s see, nine countries on five continents in twelve years—”
