by Julie Miller
Lee sank into her chair with a sigh of dramatized disappointment and clutched at her bosom, jangling rings against necklaces. “Are you giving this thing a chance?”
“A chance to what? He’s a Marine—married to the Corps. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that kind of dedication when it comes to national security. But I want a man who’s going to be there for me when I need him. A man whom I can count on to come home to me after work, and trust not to be tempted when his job keeps him away from me.”
She sat up straight on the edge of the chair, feigning confidence that all her training had helped her separate reality from a fantasy life she couldn’t have and shouldn’t want.
“I’m enjoying the fling for what it is—a little sex, a little research—but I don’t expect anything more out of it.” She pointed a reprimanding finger at the older woman. “You shouldn’t, either.”
Lee tutted a mother-hen sound between clenched teeth. “I’d like to meet this guy and see what makes him such a selfish jerk.”
“Ethan’s not a jerk. I didn’t say that.” The instantaneous instinct to defend the major was a sobering reminder that she did want that fantasy life. But that didn’t mean she believed it was going to happen. She consciously softened her tone. “He’s giving me an opportunity to spend a lot of time with other military couples—”
Lee’s forehead crinkled with delighted surprise. “Oh?”
“I don’t mean like that! He does just fine on his own, thank you very much.” Uh-oh. Revealing too much. Lee leaned forward, her hazel eyes sharp, seeking more juicy details. J.C. steadied her reaction with a deep breath. “I mean, it’s like going undercover to observe and ask as many questions as I want, but my heart’s not going to be broken when he leaves me.”
Lee crossed her arms with a huff and sat back in her chair. “Do you hear yourself?”
J.C. shrugged. “What? I’m being realistic.”
“‘When he leaves you’? You don’t believe in romance, do you, honey?” Lee came around the desk, sat on the arm of J.C.’s chair and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “It’s plain as the nose on your face that some man hurt you somewhere along the way. I used to think it was all your degrees and unhappy clients that had inured you to the possibility of finding your own man. But now I see it’s nothing clinical at all. You’re nursing an old-fashioned broken heart.”
“I am not.”
“Then why don’t you give this Ethan a chance to win yours?”
Kindness softened Lee’s expression beneath her garish makeup. This wasn’t about winning a bet. The gentle challenge in her mentor’s eyes was about wanting something good for someone she cared about.
But J.C. refused to answer. Giving Lee’s hand an appreciative squeeze, she stood and excused herself. “I have a lot of work to do. I’d better finish going through those messages.”
“He got under your skin, didn’t he?”
J.C. stopped at the door.
And under her dress and into her pants and halfway into her…
J.C. didn’t even want to consider the end of that thought. Her heart was off-limits to any man in uniform. She wouldn’t be hurt the way her mother was. The way she’d been hurt before.
Maybe if she denied any emotional connection out loud, her brain and heart would wise up and believe it, too. She turned and faced Lee with a conciliatory smile. “I’ll admit that Ethan’s a great kisser—in a class by himself, even. I’ll admit we had sex and that I’d do it again. I’m looking forward to doing it again.
“But physical attraction doesn’t mean anything. I won’t be sentimental over Ethan McCormick forty years from now the way you are with Bobby Tortelli.” She turned the doorknob; she was done defending what she did or didn’t feel. She was tired of trying to figure it out. “Now I really do need to get to work.”
AN HOUR AND A HALF later, J.C. rolled the kinks from her neck and stood up to stretch behind the walls of her cubicle. She’d finally finished making notes and sorting the messages into three piles—those praising relationships with military hunks, those with complaints, and those with a specific question to address in her column.
But before she tackled the hundred plus e-mails from the Dr. Cyn Web site, she needed coffee. Mocha latte would be nice. Her first date with Ethan had been over mocha latte.
Her last date would be coming sooner than she wanted.
She tipped her head to the ceiling and silently cursed the remorseful thought. As strong and delicious as both could be, she didn’t need mocha latte or Ethan McCormick to get through life. Right now, she would settle for something sweet and loaded with caffeine.
J.C. collided with Ben Grant on her way out into the hall. Papers flew into the air and rained down. “Oops. Sorry.”
“My fault. I wasn’t looking.” Ben’s stout fingers clung briefly to her shoulders until she regained her balance.
“Don’t tell me you brought me more,” J.C. teased, squatting down to help gather the scattered notes.
“’Fraid so.” Ben handed her the ones he’d retrieved, pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose and stood.
J.C. gladly accepted his outstretched hand and rose beside him. “Thanks. You’re a scholar and a gent.”
Though he was probably eight or nine years younger than J.C., he blushed at the compliment. “I try to follow a code of honor with the ladies.”
“I’m sure they love that.” J.C. smiled. “Are these all for Dr. Cyn, or are any of them actually messages I need to return?”
Ben shuffled through the notes and placed one on top of her stack. “You might want to give this guy a call. He said he had some business to discuss with you. He sounded pretty agitated on the phone.”
“Agitated?” J.C. immediately thought of Juan Guerro. It might just as well be a client fighting an anxiety attack. But logic couldn’t quite reach the panic button to calm her fears. She combed her fingers through her hair, straightened the fringe of her bangs, then raked her fingers through it again. “How do you mean? Agitated about what?”
Ben tunneled his hands into the pockets of his jeans and shrugged an apology. “He didn’t say.”
“But he asked for J.C.,” she clarified, “not Dr. Cyn?”
Ben nodded, shifting nervously on both feet as if picking up on her concerns. “I think so.”
She scanned the note from top to bottom, trying to read hidden meanings in Ben’s heavy-handed, block letter scrawl. Surely, Corporal Guerro hadn’t… “There’s no name.”
“He said he was someone you knew.”
“Someone I know?”
I’ll call you. Juan had promised. Threatened.
As if she’d suddenly stepped into a walk-in freezer, J.C.’s blood chilled in her veins. She hugged her arms across her stomach but couldn’t find any warmth. Though most of the office had cleared out by lunchtime on a Saturday, she stretched up on tiptoe, her gaze darting to every closed door and shadow, trying to see around corners and over cubicle walls. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was out there watching her, hating her.
Hating J.C. Not Dr. Cyn.
As she settled back on her heels, she couldn’t help but look down at the purpling bruises around her wrist. With the passage of time, the discolorations had risen to the surface and begun to take on the distinct shape of a man’s powerful grip.
“J.C.?” She flinched at the touch of Ben’s hand on her shoulder. He quickly pulled away. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m sorry.” She regretted the worry she’d put in his earnest green eyes.
Was this Juan’s promised call to force her to smooth things over with Ethan for him? Unless Ethan already had made trouble for him. In that case, she might be facing something much more dangerous than an “agitated” phone call. J.C. clutched at Ben’s sleeve, demanding answers. “Did the caller have an accent? Could you tell?”
“An accent?”
“Hispanic, maybe?”
“Naw. He was pretty angry, and I couldn’t
catch every word he said. But it was all in English.”
“You don’t have any clue…?”
They both jumped at the chirping sound from beneath her desk. “That’s my cell.” J.C. hurried back to her desk and reached underneath for her purse. She waved the messages at Ben and apologized. “I didn’t mean to grill the messenger.”
He took a hesitant step into her cubicle. “You know, maybe you should say something nice about the military in your column tomorrow. Readers might like you better.” J.C. pulled out her phone and flipped it open. She didn’t recognize the number. Ben was still trying to make a point. “You might get fewer calls.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, thanks.” But if a vengeful corporal was harassing her, a little controversy over Dr. Cyn might be the least of her problems. J.C. tuned out the rest of Ben’s suggestions and held her breath as she pressed the talk button. Don’t be him. “J. C. Gardner.”
“It’s Ethan.”
“Thank God.” Her edginess rattled out on a noisy sigh and her entire world shrank down to the sound of that clipped, authoritative voice in her ear.
“You okay? J.C.?”
That impossibly deep voice dropped to a guarded hush. The warm, alert, slightly proprietary tone skittered along her nerves, sank into her bones and reassured her like a protective hug.
“I’m just glad to hear your…”
Reassured her? Whoa. J.C. quickly backtracked from the warm, fuzzy connection. She wanted Ethan for sex and research. Period. She didn’t want to depend on him to ease her fears or make her feel a little less alone. She didn’t want to start thinking he’d be there for a special word or comforting touch.
After two weeks, he wouldn’t be there for anything.
J.C. summoned her composure and a touch of sarcasm. “You’re just the man I want to talk to.”
He paused for nearly as long as she had. Listening to the long, even sound of his deep breathing, she wondered if he was shifting through mental gears the way she had, trying to get back to friendly yet distant relations after an unplanned emotion had popped through.
“Should I be worried you’re going to spring another crazy proposition on me?” he asked.
Indulging their incredible sexual compatibility was crazier than asking a woman he’d rescued in a parking lot to be his fiancée for a couple of weeks? She might have argued that before she’d gotten the anonymous message. But right now her mind was spinning with the possibilities of how to broach the topic without giving too much away.
J.C. was vaguely aware of Ben giving her one of his laid-back salutes and leaving as she curled her leg beneath her and perched on her chair. In the end, she chose the blunt approach. “Do you remember those corporals who got a little too friendly outside Groucho’s Pub the other night?”
A beat of dead silence put her instantly on guard. Of course, he’d remember them. “A man forcing himself on a woman isn’t my idea of friendly. But don’t worry about them—I made sure they reported back to their unit at Quantico.”
“You didn’t.” J.C. shot to her feet and circled her desk. “You contacted them?”
“My aide spoke to their commanding officer. Is there a problem?”
J.C. raked her fingers into her hair and silently cursed the incoherent panic that made a mockery of her level-headed survival instincts. That must have been Juan on the phone. He knew where she lived. Where she worked. He wasn’t afraid to take matters into his own hands to save his skin. She had to make this right. She stopped midpace and tried to sound reasonable. “You chewed them out already, Ethan, and gave one of them a bloody nose. Why don’t you leave it well enough alone?”
“You brought it up.” It was both a fair defense and a subtle question.
One thing she had learned from her father was that the best way to lie was to blend it with a grain of truth. “I was just curious to know how the Marines handle discipline. Would an offense committed off base and out of uniform be punishable by the Corps? Or would the local police handle it? You know that notebook I was writing in at the bar? I’m actually conducting some research for—”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” he asked.
She could hear him up and moving now. Busy and methodical—with a sense of purpose that alarmed her. J.C. crossed her arms and sank into her chair.
“Dammit, J.C. This is what I do. I handle security. I keep people safe. You don’t sound safe.”
Sound safe? How could he know? Did his ears hear unspoken fears the way his eyes saw every secret desire?
“Talk to me,” he insisted.
Those on-the-money instincts and that can’t-say-no-to voice stripped the last of her defenses. “I, um, got a phone call that rattled me a little.”
“Son of a bitch. He called you?” The movement stopped on the other end of the line, as if the tiny, hesitant admission had appeased his protective anger.
And drawn them closer in a way healthy lust never could.
“Actually he didn’t identify himself, and an intern took the message. But after he—” J.C. snapped her mouth shut, catching herself too late. If an anonymous phone call put Ethan on red alert, news of another physical confrontation would probably seal Juan Guerro’s fate. And thus, her own. She forced a laughing sound in her throat. “Forget about it. It probably wasn’t even him.”
“After he what?” The major didn’t miss a detail. “An unidentified caller isn’t going to scare you unless he made a threat over the phone or he’s contacted you before.”
She wouldn’t answer that one. She’d already made a dangerous mistake by confiding her fear to him in the first place. It wasn’t like he’d be there to clean up the mess after two weeks if things got worse. “Was there a reason you called?”
“What the hell is going on?”
J.C. ignored his demand. “Did Walter Craddock invite us to something else tonight? I thought we had a break.”
“Just because you don’t answer me now doesn’t mean I won’t still be looking for an answer later.” Damn stubborn Marine. But thankfully, he finally moved on. “I wondered if we could meet. Without an audience. Something you said last night got me to thinking, and I want to take care of it.”
“The two weeks of wild sex thing?” She had to ask.
He didn’t laugh. “I’ve had some thoughts on that, too.”
“So, have you decided to repay my generous contribution to your promotion by giving me thirteen more nights like last night?”
“I don’t know. It depends.”
“On what?”
A seemingly endless silence baited her curiosity, filled her with doubt, stretched her patience to the limit.
“On whether I kiss you again.”
His stark statement touched her soul and awakened her body, giving her a buzz of anticipation that was part hope because she wanted it so much, and part fear…
Because she wanted it so much.
“How about dinner at my place?” she offered. “Around seven. We’ll eat whatever falls out of the fridge.”
“I’ll be there at nineteen hundred hours.”
J.C. didn’t know whether to look forward to this evening or dread the promised visit. But she got out her lip balm and smoothed it over her lips, just in case.
10
DR. CYN—
My husband is coming home for a forty-eight-hour furlough after being overseas for six months. I want to make the most of our short time together, but I’m worried things will be awkward for us after so much time apart. What’s the quickest, most effective way to seduce him?
Signed,
Lonesome for the Lance Corporal
“Lonesome, huh?” J.C. copied the question from her Web site into the text for her next column.
Her reader wasn’t the only one anxious about the man showing up at her door. From her spot on the purple chaise, she glanced up at the clock in the kitchen. Quarter to seven. Eighteen forty-five in Ethan talk. He would be here any minute.
She’d aler
ted Norman, the retired Navy M.P. turned building security guard, that she was expecting a guest and to let him in. But which Ethan would it be? The diehard Marine, determined to make the world a safer place, who followed a well-structured path whether it meant career advancement or keeping emotions in check? Or the sexy man who muddled through conversations and dance lessons with endearing self-consciousness, and who made love with his eyes almost as well as he did with his body?
She was half-afraid she was falling for the man.
Because that meant she could be hurt by the major.
J.C. shook off the sentimental notions and reprimanded herself. “You’re an advice columnist, not a poet.” She reread the question on her laptop. “The quickest, surefire way to seduce a man?”
She deliberated for maybe two seconds on her answer. This one was a no-brainer. With a knowing nod of her head, she typed,
Dear Lonesome—
Get naked.
Literally.
Lock up your clothes for the weekend. You won’t need them.
Most men are more interested in getting to the goods than in unwrapping the package. If you’re pressed for time, don’t waste precious seconds fumbling with snaps and hooks. And why throw away money on seductive lingerie that will wind up in a wad on the floor, anyway? Spend it on finger foods, instead. They’re a better alternative than a sit-down dinner for locked-in-the-bedroom-style weekends. Cleanup’s easy, and a dribble of chocolate fondue or a strategically placed olive can be a creative lead-in to round two—or twelve! Just make sure you have plenty of condoms on hand, and leave the phone off the hook.
Oh, and you might want to take a nice long nap before he gets home.
Good luck!
J.C.’s gaze slid to the clock again. Eighteen-fifty. She wiggled her bare toes in restless anticipation and briefly considered taking her own advice. Maybe she should slip out of her jeans and T-shirt and greet Ethan at the door naked. That would give him more than a hint on how serious she was about having sex with him again.
But a sager, less adventurous voice from her conscience urged her to keep her clothes on. No sense risking an awkward moment. As much as she knew he was interested, from the tone of his conversation earlier, Ethan might not be planning to take her up on her offer of an affair. Major Do-Right might be coming over to ask her more questions about Juan Guerro. Or worse, he might be having second thoughts about her after that romp in the back of the limo.
