Sergeant Darling

by Bonnie Gardner

  Mary held up her hands. “Okay,” she said. “I won’t pry. But it’s about time.”

  “What’s about time?”

  “If I told you, you’d have to kill me,” Mary quipped, then turned and hurried to her own office.

  Was she that transparent? Patsy wondered, still humming. She stopped herself, only to find the song on her lips again a few minutes later. Patsy shrugged and smiled to herself.

  People might figure out why she was so happy, she told herself, but for now, the who was her secret. Her relationship with Ray was too wonderful, too new, to share with anyone. Not even Nancy, who was now out on maternity leave and not likely to divulge anything to anyone for the time being.

  Patsy continued to hum and looked through the pile of medical records on the receptionist’s desk. No one she knew.

  She picked up the top file from the stack and headed out to the waiting room to call the first patient back to the intake area. As she scanned the room for the female airman whose name was listed on the folder, she happened to overhear a snatch of conversation.

  “That Pritchard sure is a hot piece of property,” one battle-dress uniform clad man said to the one next to him. He nudged the guy in the ribs and winked.

  The man’s leering attitude annoyed Patsy, but it wasn’t anything she hadn’t heard before. She turned away in her search for Airman Meredith Palmore.

  But before she could call for the woman, another snippet of conversation reached her ears.

  “Yeah,” the same man said. Patsy glanced toward him and studied the name on the tape stitched above the left front pocket of his BDU. Hagarty. Didn’t ring a bell.

  “She’s going out with Radar, you know, the guy with the B.C. glasses?”

  Now Patsy had to listen. She was more interested in what they had to say about Ray than herself. She was really interested in what his squadmates thought of the man she was beginning to care so much about.

  The other man nodded.

  Patsy all but held her breath as she waited to hear the rest of Hagarty’s statement. She leaned closer as the man lowered his voice.

  Hagarty nudged the other man and went on. “You know, in the squadron we got us a pool going on how long it’s gonna take for him to get her in the sack. Want in on it? I reckon as Prickly as Pritchard is, it’s gonna take him a right long time.”

  Patsy’s heart stopped beating. She couldn’t believe what she’d just heard.

  She’d believed that her growing relationship was private, just between her and Ray. And to hear strangers talking about her—no, taking bets about them—was chilling.

  Her blood turned cold and her fingers went numb and she dropped the file. She turned as a possibility occurred to her. Had Radar been talking about her to his teammates in the locker room?

  She glanced back over her shoulder to the two men still sitting in the waiting room.

  How else could Hagarty know they were seeing each other? Surely not from her chaste outing with the baseball team. She and Ray barely went anywhere else….

  Patsy had believed that what she and Ray Darling had shared was something special. Apparently, he’d just been interested in bragging rights.

  How could he?

  Chapter Ten

  Ray and the rest of his team were on standby. The fighting in the Middle East had accelerated, and Special Operations Combat Control was being called in to secure a town that had been identified as a stronghold for the resistance to the United Nations peacekeepers, of which American forces were a part. Now, Ray was finally going to get a chance to use the skills he’d trained so hard to get. They were making ready to go at a moment’s notice, and in spite of his eagerness to get into the action, Ray couldn’t help but think this was not the right time to be leaving Patsy.

  After taking inventory of his gear and making certain that all was in perfect order, Ray slammed his locker shut and tried to rehearse in his head what he would say to her. He’d have to go by the clinic to pick up a refill on a prescription, and he’d be sure to see her there.

  He knew she would have already figured out that something was up and would not ask questions, but he wondered just how much of his feelings for her he should divulge. He let out a short, quick breath. What if it really was goodbye? Forever. Should he tell her his feelings, or would it be kinder for her never to know?

  “Worried about the mission, Darling?”

  Ray jerked around to see who had asked the question. Damn, he hated it when they used his name like that. But it was just Rico Scanlon. The sergeant’s face showed no malice, so Ray figured he hadn’t meant anything by it. He let it pass.

  This time.

  “No, just wondering what to tell my girl,” he answered simply.

  “Nothing about the mission,” Scanlon warned. “Anything else is up to you.”

  Anything else was exactly what Ray was wondering about. He guessed he’d have to wing it.

  MARY BAILEY stuck her head into the examination room where Patsy was adding notes to a file. “The next one’s yours,” she said. “Exam room three.”

  “Sure,” Patsy said absently, still thinking about what she’d heard Hagarty say in the waiting room. She still hadn’t talked to Ray. She was too afraid of what she might do or say. “I’ll be done in a minute.”

  Instead of going on, Mary lingered at the door of the exam room.

  “Is there something else, Mary?” Patsy asked.

  The woman shook her head, hesitated, then shook it again. “Well, I wasn’t going to say anything, but I guess I’m going to butt in. Something’s bothering you. Do you need to talk about it?”

  Patsy shook her head. “No,” she said, but her tone of voice all but shouted that it was a lie. Yes, she did. She just wasn’t used to confiding in others about her feelings. As betrayed as she felt, she didn’t want to think that her brief interlude with Ray was over. Maybe, Mary could tell her what to do.

  “I heard a couple of the men in the waiting room talking about me and my boyfriend.” She drew in a deep breath. “They were speculating on how long it would take him to get me into bed,” she said all in a rush to get it over with. “I feel so betrayed.”

  “By those men?”

  “No, by R—I mean, by my boyfriend. How could he have been talking about us to them?” Patsy bit her lip to keep it from trembling.

  “From what you said, the men were just speculating. If your boyfriend had talked, they wouldn’t be wondering now, would they? I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions.”

  “But we agreed to keep our relationship private,” Patsy said. “If Hagarty knows, then somebody must have told him. I didn’t.”

  “Could he have seen you somewhere?”

  “Not that I can think of. We haven’t been dating that long. Mostly, I’ve been watching him coach his baseball team.”

  “Well, there you have it, then. Obviously, somebody saw you there.” Mary started to say something else, but another nurse called to remind them that patients were piling up in the waiting room. “Oops, we’d best get to work.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’ll think about what you’ve said.” Patsy closed the file she was working on and hurried to take care of the patient in examination room three. As much as she wanted to accept Mary’s explanation, it still made her angry. She felt almost…violated.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” a familiar voice said as she stepped into the room.

  “Sergeant Darling,” Patsy said, struggling to keep her voice even, businesslike and calm. It was one thing to calmly discuss Ray with Mary, but Patsy wasn’t quite ready to talk to him face-to-face. As much as what Mary had said seemed to make sense, she needed time to think about it before seeing him.

  “I assume you’ve got a mission pending,” she said coolly, though she knew full well that he did. She focused her attention on his file and did what she could not to look at Ray’s handsome, darling, traitorous face. If she did, she didn’t know what she’d do.

  She want
ed to talk to him. She wanted to slap him silly, but on the other hand she wanted to fling herself into his arms. What kind of fool was she?

  She was so confused!

  “Are you going to be okay about it?” Ray said, his voice laced with concern.

  Patsy bit down on her lip. How could he act as though nothing was wrong? How could he continue to pretend nothing had happened, and that he actually cared?

  Then again, he still didn’t know she’d found out about the pool. Patsy shrugged, but the tension was beginning to give her a headache. “I have no say in the matter,” she replied. “That’s up to your commander,” she said frostily.

  Were all men such jerks? Or was it just air force types? How could he act so innocent and blameless?

  “Patsy, honey. Is something wrong?” Ray reached for her, but Patsy stepped away.

  She turned and tried to study his open folder, but she wasn’t able to see a word on the page.

  If only she’d had a little time to process what she heard, her emotions wouldn’t be so raw right now. On top of her worry about his part in the upcoming campaign, it was just too much to handle….

  Ray’s fingers closed over her arm, but Patsy shook him off.

  “How dare you?” she demanded.

  “Dare what? Touch you where somebody might see us?” He held his hands up. “Okay, if you’re still worried about other people finding out about us, I’ll keep my hands off,” he said with a slight hint of irritation.

  What did he have to be so irritated about? She was the wounded party. “Fat lot of good that would do now. You know full well what I’m upset about,” Patsy insisted. “Apparently, you’ve told everybody you know.”

  “About the deployment? You know darn well we’re not supposed to talk about that.” Ray looked at her, his expression innocent.

  How could the man be so dense? Or did he really think she wouldn’t give being the object of a betting pool a second thought?

  “Sergeant Raymond Darling, I am so angry with you right now that I can hardly speak,” Patsy finally managed through clenched teeth.

  “Angry at me? Why?”

  Could Ray really not know?

  “We’ve got guys piling up in here,” Dr. Brantley called from outside. “Let’s keep ’em moving.”

  “I don’t have time to discuss our personal business right now,” Patsy said, struggling to keep her tone even. “I have to look over your file and then take care of the next guy.”

  “Fine,” Ray said. “But this isn’t the end of it. I need to know what has got you so fired up.”

  “Oh, you don’t know?” Patsy said archly. “Figure it out. What could possibly have Prickly Pritchard ‘so fired up?’ as you so eloquently put it.” Patsy quickly scanned his file.

  “I have no idea. Enlighten me.”

  Patsy ignored him and slapped his file shut. “Your file is completely up-to-date. You can go.”

  Ray reached to pull his red beret out of the right thigh pocket of his BDU. “I’ll leave, but you owe me an explanation for your behavior. Meet me in the snack bar at…” He glanced at his watch. “Thirteen hundred hours.”

  “Humph,” Patsy managed, at the same time trying to squeeze back her tears.

  As if.

  RAY SAT IN THE BACK CORNER of the snack bar and glanced at his watch once again. It was already one-fifteen. If Patsy was coming, surely she’d be here by now.

  He glanced at the clock on the wall above the cashier’s station just in case his watch was wrong. Not that it was synchronized with his watch, which was set at ZULU time so that all of the parties involved in the mission, no matter where they were posted, could coordinate their efforts. Still, it was clear to him that Patsy was late. Or giving him the cold shoulder.

  He looked down into his half-empty glass of soda. He’d waited this long, he might as well give her another few minutes. He still had another thirty minutes left for lunch.

  The hand on the wall clock moved with maddening slowness, and still Patsy didn’t come. Maybe she was busy with patients, he rationalized. After all, this was to be a major deployment. She might be working through a waiting room full of men. He’d give her a few more minutes. If she didn’t make it by one-thirty, he was outta here.

  Danny Murphey came in and, without an invitation, set his tray down on the table, turned a chair around and straddled it beside Ray. He glanced at the half-full glass of soda and the half-eaten burger. “Waiting for somebody?”

  Ray shrugged and glanced at the clock. “Nope. Just taking every last minute of my free time,” he lied, standing and picking up his tray. He didn’t feel like dealing with Danny, and clearly, Patsy wasn’t coming. “Don’t know when I might get any more. Gotta go.”

  “Whatever,” Danny said. “I envy you, man.”

  “For what?” A girlfriend—if that’s what Patsy was—who couldn’t bother to see him when she knew he was about to be deployed into a dangerous situation on the other side of the world?

  “Getting to go on this mission. I got a training slot at Scott, or I’d be going with you,” he said, his mouth full.

  Ray shrugged. “Your loss is my gain,” he said. It really was too bad Danny couldn’t go, he thought. A mission was probably just the thing to knock him out of his self-pitying mood. In the meantime, he still didn’t know what was eating Patsy Pritchard, but he was damned sure going to find out.

  PATSY SAT IN HER DARKENED living room, feeling more miserable than she could ever have imagined. If she’d thought she could get away with it, she would have stayed at home until Ray’s squadron finally got its marching orders, but they were already understaffed at the clinic, and a broken heart wasn’t exactly a reason to call in sick. She vowed not to meet Ray, or talk to him, or listen to his flimsy excuses.

  She wrapped her arms around Tripod and squeezed, hoping that feeling the warm-blooded dog’s heart beating against her breast would help to fill the aching hole in her chest that was growing larger by the minute.

  The doorbell rang, and Tripod wriggled out of her arms and bounced, barking at the top of her lungs, toward the door.

  “No, Tripod, no,” Patsy shouted firmly. She grabbed the dog, ready to put her in her crate to keep her from worrying her visitor—whoever it was—to death.

  “You can open the door, Patsy. I heard you talking to Tripod. I know you’re there,” a familiar voice said in a tone that brooked no argument.

  Ray.

  Why hadn’t she anticipated him showing up on her doorstep?

  She let go of the dog and slowly opened the door. Had she really not expected him to come here? Had she subconsciously wanted him to come?

  Tripod greeted Ray joyfully. Patsy’s greeting was significantly more restrained.

  Ray sank to his knees to pet the excited dog. “Oh, Tripod, I’m going to miss you when I’m away,” he said. Finally, the dog settled down, and Ray looked up at Patsy.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” Patsy said coldly as she closed the door. She didn’t want to let Ray in, but she didn’t want to air their differences in front of the neighbors, either.

  “Well, I want to talk to you.” He straightened so that the dog leaped on her hind legs to try to get his attention.

  “What do you want?” she demanded, her tone as hard as she could make it. If she didn’t harden her heart, she just might break down and cry.

  “You,” he answered simply.

  It was the wrong thing to say. Patsy turned quickly away, blinking furiously to stem the threatening flood of tears. Her eyes burned, her lids feeling scalded, but she managed not to cry.

  “The money from the bet wasn’t enough? Surely you made certain you collected before you took off for parts unknown.” She kept her tone icy, neutral, but she knew the hurt shone through. She kept her back to him. It was the only way she could keep the tears from falling.

  “Money? What the hell are you talking about?” He grabbed Patsy’s arm and jerked her around, forcing her to look at him.

&
nbsp; Patsy shrugged him off and backed away. “You know darn well what I’m talking about. The bet about when you and I ‘made’ it. The pool, I guess is a better term?”

  “Pool?”

  “For a smart man, you sure are acting dense,” Patsy said darkly.

  “Well, perhaps now would be the appropriate moment for you to provide me with the details, then,” Ray said, the expression on his face thunderous.

  “The pool Hagarty had going to see how soon you got me into bed.”

  Ray looked shocked, then, after looking as if he was remembering something, nail-spitting mad.

  “Who told you that?” Ray demanded, turning for the door. “I’m going to beat that Runt to within an inch of his life.”

  Patsy had never seen Ray so angry, and the vehemence of his wrath frightened her. She wasn’t even sure why Ray was so mad. Was it because Hagarty had spilled the beans? Or because he’d done it in front of her?

  Ray was jerking the door open.

  “No! Wait!” Patsy grabbed his arm, holding him back. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to hurt that guy. I already decked him once, when he said something about a pool after he saw us together.”

  Just then Patsy remembered hearing the name Runt Hagerty and she increased the pressure on his arm. “That’s right. He saw us together at the movie theater.”

  Ray looked away and muttered a curse. “Like I said, he said something to me about a pool shortly after that. But I thought I’d convinced him not to say anything about it. I hit him pretty hard.”

  Ray turned back and captured Patsy’s hands in his. She didn’t pull them away and that was the best thing that had happened all day. “You believe that I had nothing to do with this, don’t you?” He did everything he could to telegraph the extent of his sincerity to her.

  Patsy nodded and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. I should have asked you about it first.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about, Patsy. I shouldn’t have assumed I’d headed Hagarty off.” Just thinking about the guys on the team discussing his ability to get Prickly Pritchard into bed made his blood boil. “How did you find out about it, anyway?”