Patsy drew in a deep breath and turned, pasting on an artificial smile. No sense in letting gorgeous Ray Darling see her lose her cool. That was certainly not the image she had worked so hard to project at the clinic. “She’s gone,” Patsy said with forced calm as she hurried back to her seat and primly placed her napkin on her lap.
“I do have my own transportation,” Ray said as he seated himself again. “I didn’t hitchhike to get here. I know that we special ops guys are known to be rough and tough, but we do draw the line.”
“What?” Prickly Patsy shook her head. “What does that have to do with me being stranded here, miles from home?”
“I didn’t walk,” Radar replied with the type of patience one reserved for five-year-olds—or idiots. “I do have a car.”
“A car?” Sheesh, she sounded like a moron. “Of course. Well, I’ll just eat my salad and we’ll go.”
“I think not,” Ray said firmly, sounding nothing like the darling sergeant she had begun to think of him as. “Your aunt paid for a full meal. We will eat the entire meal. And we’ll enjoy it.” He sounded just like a drill instructor.
“Yes, sir,” Patsy snapped, then approximated a salute.
Ray chuckled. “At least, you used the right hand.” Then he dug in to his salad, and Patsy was glad he was occupied for the time being.
She made a face, and turned her attention to her own salad. “This is a little nicer than staying home with my dog, my VCR and black-and-white movies,” she murmured, her mouth full. Now why had she volunteered that particular morsel of information?
“You like old movies?” Ray asked, his eyes brightening with interest.
Patsy blushed. Ray had picked right up on her comment. Were they actually trying to make conversation? She swallowed. “Yes. And I hate it when they’ve been colorized. It makes them look too bright. Too artificial.”
“And seeing things in shades of gray isn’t?”
Did he want to argue, or was he merely making conversation? Patsy swallowed another bite of salad. “You know what I mean. The colors are often wrong.”
“Yes, I understand. Do you just enjoy the classics, or anything not in color?” Ray forked another bit of salad.
“My favorites are Casablanca, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Maltese Falcon.”
“A Humphrey Bogart fan, then,” Ray concluded. “What about the Three Stooges or the Marx Brothers?”
“Too silly. No woman likes them. What’s funny about three grown men poking each other in the eye and bonking each other on the head?”
“Harold Lloyd?”
“Better. At least, he’s not mean-spirited. But I prefer stuff that pretends to have a plot.” Patsy swallowed. Had she really said that?
Ray chuckled. He had such a nice smile, Patsy couldn’t help noticing. “I have to confess that I like old science fiction movies.”
“Attack of the Killer Centipedes, and The Blob that ate Albuquerque? Those kinds?” Patsy suggested, making up names.
“Planet Nine from Outer Space. Probably one of the best worst movies ever made.” Ray laughed. “And one of my favorites.”
Patsy couldn’t help smiling. Was Ray actually a fan? “You know Ed Wood?”
“Know him? I love him!” Ray broke into a wide grin. “I probably have every one of his movies memorized.”
You would, she couldn’t help thinking, but in a nice way. Ray had been reputed to be smarter than the average airman, but she’d never really had a conversation with him until now. What chitchat they’d had always seemed to lean toward the weather or the reason he was at the clinic. Now she was finding out that his interests were different than those of the typical airman, but she’d bet he was into computer games. If not computers themselves.
“I just ordered the complete Wood collection off the Internet,” she found herself confessing.
“Oh, man,” Ray said. “I think I’m falling in love.”
Then the waiter arrived with their food, and Patsy turned gratefully to her Deviled Crab. Saved by the dinner bell, she couldn’t help thinking as she chewed. Another minute and she might have found herself inviting Ray to her place for an Ed Wood Film Festival.
In spite of her reservations, Patsy was enjoying her “date” with Ray. Of course, she’d never let on to Aunt Myrtle. And deep down she knew that she wasn’t ready to invite this man, any man, into her home. She still had secrets she wanted—no needed—to keep.
RAY ORDERED the Pecan Praline Pie just to extend the evening—even if he would have to run a couple of extra miles next week to make up for it. He might be as hard and tough as an armadillo’s kneecap, but he had to work at it. His weakness had always been dessert.
At least, Prickly Patsy had ordered dessert as well. Did she always eat dessert or was she, too, looking for a way to keep the evening going?
“I am going to regret this,” Patsy said as the waiter placed the Death by Chocolate in front of her. She inhaled the rich aroma. She hadn’t even taken a bite, and Ray thought she might swoon. That was certainly a side of Prickly Pritchard he would never have imagined. The guys at the base often wondered if she survived on a diet of pickles and prunes.
“That good, huh?”
“Just the aroma seems sinful,” she said, slicing off a piece with the side of her fork. She raised it to her lips, but didn’t open her mouth. “Maybe if I just look at it, and only breathe it in, I won’t gain twenty pounds.” She looked at Ray and grinned. “No, I’ll gain it anyway just from being in the same room with it,” she said wryly. “I might as well go for the complete experience.”
Patsy popped the chocolate confection into her mouth and slowly withdrew the fork. She wore an expression of pure bliss as she chewed, and Ray wondered if that was what she looked like when she made love. What would it feel like to have her underneath him and to give her that much pleasure? Would she respond like…?
He gave himself a mental shake to rid himself of the image in his mind’s eye, but he almost exploded as he watched Patsy eat. To keep himself sane, he took a huge bite of his own dessert, and understood why Prickly Pritchard had had such a powerful reaction. The desserts here were too damned good to be legal.
“Oh, man. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” he muttered.
“Even if paying for it will be hell,” Patsy said. “I’ll have to take a couple of extra aerobics classes to pay for this.”
“Yeah,” Ray said with a groan. “I’ll probably have to run ten extra miles.”
Patsy laughed and Ray loved seeing it. Here, she seemed so different from the stern, prickly nurse he’d seen so often in the clinic.
“I should think you’d be used to it,” she said. “Don’t you run wearing forty pound rucksacks on a regular basis?” She leaned on her hand and watched him with an interested expression.
“Not if I can avoid it.” Ray patted his stomach. “And after all I’ve eaten tonight, it might feel like I’m carrying two rucksacks.”
“You can handle it,” Patsy said. “You have plenty of muscles, from what I’ve seen.” She looked quickly down at her plate, but not too quickly for Ray to notice the flush that colored her alabaster skin with an embarrassed stain.
Was she thinking about the other day in the clinic when she’d had a free look at his rump, or was she embarrassed about making such a personal statement? Ray pushed his plate away and decided to change the subject. “Well, I’ve had plenty. More than plenty.” He signaled for the waiter.
“Sir?”
“We’re ready for the check.”
“The other lady took care of it,” the waiter said. “The one who left.”
“I see,” Ray said, annoyed that Miss Carter had paid for his meal. He’d fully expected to pay for this evening.
And it didn’t make him happy that the evening was about to come to an end. Considering Prickly Pritchard’s reputation for turning down dates, this was probably his one and only chance.
The question was: For what?
And why? was another question. The answer to that one was clear: he really liked this Patsy Pritchard. From what he’d learned about her tonight, there was a whole lot more to her than her clinic demeanor suggested. But was his attraction due to the challenge her “at-work” attitude presented, or was it a genuine attraction to the woman he’d glimpsed tonight?
He looked at Patsy again.
All of the above, he decided.
Chapter Three
Though she had enjoyed dinner with Ray once they realized they had interests in common, Patsy didn’t look forward to being trapped, alone with him in his car for the thirty-mile trip home. He was too big, too attractive, too real.
And it had been a very long time since she’d been with a real man. Not since Ace. And she knew how that had ended. If it hadn’t been for her sending him out that night, he would still be alive today.
“What’s the matter, pretty lady?” Ray asked as he escorted her out through the parking lot toward his waiting car.
Patsy jerked her head up to look at him. Had she been so transparent that he could read the mood on her face? She shook her head, more to banish the negative thoughts than to deny her mood. “Just thinking about something. It doesn’t matter.” Not to Ray, anyway, Patsy thought. To her, it mattered very much. Still. She glanced out at the quiet waters of the Gulf. “Oh, look at the sparkles on the water!”
Ray turned to follow her gaze and smiled. “The phosphorescence.”
“I used to think it was magic when I was a little girl,” Patsy murmured.
“Then you learned that it was a bunch of micro-organisms. Were you terribly disappointed?”
“Devastated,” Patsy admitted. “It destroyed my belief in fairies and mermaids.” She hadn’t realized it, but they had subconsciously changed their direction and were now heading toward the dark beach.
Ray chuckled. “I didn’t have any illusions to destroy. I’d already learned all about it before I saw it. The waters are too cold to hang around the beach at night in Washington, where I’m from.” He shrugged. “I didn’t see it the first time until I went to the navy dive school on Key West.”
The sea breeze off the Gulf was chilly. Patsy tugged the two sides of her sweater together, crossed her arms over her chest and tucked her hands into the opposite sleeves. As cold as she was, she really wasn’t ready to end this date with Ray. Even if she was still annoyed with Aunt Myrtle for tricking her into it. Even if her aunt’s intentions had been good. Even if this “blind date” seemed to be working out much better than Aunt Myrtle’s setups usually did.
She certainly wasn’t about to tell Myrtle that. Patsy smiled to herself. She wouldn’t dream of giving her aunt the satisfaction.
“Ah, that’s better,” Ray said.
Patsy looked at him just as the breeze picked up and blew her hair into her face. “What’s better?” She tried to shrug the hair out of her face, but only succeeded in getting it in her mouth, and she was too cold to uncover her fingers and brush it away.
“May I?” Ray asked, nodding toward the recalcitrant lock of hair.
She arched an eyebrow in assent, and Ray gently brushed the wayward strand away. He paused, allowing his fingers to linger on her cheek, and Patsy swallowed, wondering what would come next. Did she actually want him to kiss her?
What if he did?
No, worse than that. What if he didn’t?
Ray turned his face into the onshore breeze. To him, it was invigorating, reminiscent of his summers on Vashon Island on Washington’s Puget Sound. But, he hadn’t failed to notice the chill on Patsy’s cheek. As much as he didn’t want to end the evening so soon, it was time to get Patsy into the car or she’d be shivering, chilled to the bone.
“I think March is still a little cold for walking on the beach,” he said. “This is north Florida, after all.” Ray shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over Patsy’s shoulders.
Patsy looked up and flashed him a brilliant smile. “Thank you,” she said. Had she been shivering? “It didn’t seem quite this cold outside when I left Aunt Myrtle’s earlier.”
“The shore breeze can blow through you fast. I read somewhere that more people contract hypothermia when temperatures are above freezing because they don’t think they can and aren’t prepared.”
Ray touched Patsy’s waist and was surprised at how small she felt beneath his hands. But, then most women seemed small to him. Every woman except one: his mother. Even if she was only five feet nothing, she’d always seemed huge to him.
His mother. The last time he’d seen her or his father, he had just turned eighteen. That night he had left home, against his parents’ wishes, to enlist in the air force….
Patsy stumbled in the loose, shifting sand, and Ray automatically reached out to catch her. She looked up at him, and the expression in her face seemed expectant, questioning.
Ray wanted to reach down and tip Patsy’s chin up. He wanted to kiss her the way the guys did in all the movies, but he was Ray Darling, boy genius and adult nerd. He didn’t have the moves.
The night had been going so well up until this point. He wasn’t about to jinx it now. It would kill him if Patsy turned away. He caught her arm and any hint of the windy chill left him as welcome warmth suffused his blood.
“I…Ah…Thank you,” Patsy said, and Ray had to stifle a chuckle. Was that the proper etiquette for the situation?
“For catching me,” Patsy clarified.
“Any time,” he said flippantly. He wouldn’t have minded if she had kissed him by way of thanks, but she hadn’t, so Ray guessed the moment was gone. He sighed. Maybe if he’d had a normal childhood, he might know a thing or two about what to do at times like this.
“Something wrong?” Patsy asked.
“Not really. Just having some regrets.” Then realizing what he’d said, he stopped and looked down into Patsy’s lovely blue eyes. “Not about tonight. Not about you,” he said, his voice coming out huskier than he’d intended. He tried to figure out how to explain his family situation.
He shrugged. “When I got to thinking about summer in Washington, it reminded me of my parents.”
“Are they no longer living?” Patsy’s eyes always contained a look of sadness that seemed to deepen now. Ray wondered if she’d suffered some kind of a loss.
“No, they’re fine and healthy. At least, I think so. They’re just not speaking to me. For nearly ten years now.”
Patsy arched an eyebrow. “Why?”
“It’s not important.” Ray turned and trudged on. “We had different ideas about what I should do with my future,” he said, shrugging.
Patsy stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Family is important to me. I’d give anything to have my parents back.”
“They’re gone?”
“When I was in grammar school,” Patsy said softly, lowering her gaze downward toward the damp sand. “Aunt Myrtle raised me after they died in a plane crash.”
“I’m sorry.” What else could he say?
Patsy looked up at him again and flashed him a brilliant smile that seemed to light up the dark. “About what? That Aunt Myrtle raised me?”
“No,” Ray started to say, but then he saw that the quip was Patsy’s way of shifting from an unpleasant subject, so he dropped it. “I bet it was fun living with Myrtle.”
“It was,” Patsy said. “But it wasn’t quite normal. We lived in a big old house by the water, and I never felt comfortable inviting my friends over. We always had to be so careful, with all her antiques and objets d’art all around. And Myrtle was reluctant to let me do some of the things that I wanted to do, so I often rebelled.” She paused. “And I always wanted brothers and sisters.”
“Me, too.”
“You’re a lonely only?”
“Well, I was always too busy to be lonely, but yeah, I’m an only child. Let’s just leave it at that.”
They’d reached the parking lot, and there didn’t seem to be anything left to say. Ray was content to listen to the
night sounds as they trod on the crushed shells in the parking lot. The crunch of the shells, the wind as it whispered through the scrubby trees and the tinny sound of the jukebox from the Blue Heron all combined to create a unique symphony. And even if he never got another chance to go out with Prickly Patsy Pritchard, he knew he would never forget this night….
AT LEAST HE DIDN’T HAVE one of those teensy sports cars, Patsy thought with relief as Ray ushered her toward his compact recreation vehicle. The single guys at Hurlburt Field were divided into two groups: the ones who bought sports cars, and the ones who were into trucks and SUVs. Radar didn’t seem to fit into either category. Was that a good thing? She thought perhaps it was.
And he got points for opening the door for her, too. A CRV was a lot smaller than a truck or a sport utility vehicle, she realized once she was in the passenger seat and Ray had carefully shut the door. The two of them would be in close quarters in the front seat. Would he try to kiss her now that they were so close?
Patsy felt her heart rate increase, and she suddenly felt warm. Of course, she was still wearing Ray’s coat. It felt so good around her shoulders, almost like a hug. She could smell the fragrance of his aftershave and the manly scent that was uniquely him on the fabric, but reluctantly, she shrugged the jacket off.
“Be sure to buckle up,” Ray said, and Patsy complied, happy to have something to do for the moment. Then he closed the door, and the vehicle got even smaller.
Or was it just her?
How long had it been since she’d sat alone in a car with a man?
She couldn’t remember when. Once the kids were born, she and Ace had never seemed to be alone.
“Would you like to listen to the stereo, or would you prefer to talk?” Ray asked as he inserted the key into the ignition.
“Music, I think,” Patsy said, then wondered if Ray would interpret that as a rejection. “I’m curious to see what kind you like. Not techno-metal, I hope,” she said, forcing a smile.
Ray made a face, and Patsy hoped it wasn’t because he did like that kind of music. “I’ll let you decide for yourself,” he said, turning the key. He let the car idle while he selected a CD from a case he’d stashed in the console.
Sergeant Darling Page 3
