Accidentally in Love with the Pilot

by Teri Anne Stanley

  Maybe she was rethinking their arrangement. Was she bored already? She sure hadn’t been bored fifteen minutes ago when he was inside her.

  Probably he was overthinking everything. He was vacationing in her life, not the other way around, though he had seen her beginning to crack the past week. When she hadn’t been able to work, she’d been a nervous wreck. It stung a little that he’d been uninvited to her family dinner, but he decided it was probably more of an attempt to be kind and give him a break from the wild and woolly Wallaces.

  Should he tell her that he didn’t mind hanging out with them as long as he didn’t have to try to get them to pay attention to him? Hell, as long as he could sit in a corner and just observe the madness, he liked being around them.

  Bzzzt. Bzzzt. His phone vibrated from the nightstand. Unknown number. Probably a telemarketer. If it was important, they’d leave a message. His shorts were in a heap at the foot of the bed, and he tugged them up before leaving the bedroom.

  “Hey,” he said, passing her on the way out of the bathroom. “What do you want for breakfast? Waffles? Eggs Benedict? Crepes?”

  She blinked at him. “Whatever you want to make is fine.”

  Great. That was so helpful. “Okay. Anything you don’t want?”

  “I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”

  “Okey dokey,” he muttered, stomping off toward the kitchenette. Seriously? She wasn’t even going to let him cook for her? “Cap’n Crunch it is.”

  He turned to see her watching him with those big eyes of hers—the ones he would never be able to forget. He smiled at his own sentimentality.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing. I just was thinking that if you aren’t hungry, maybe I’d just have cereal, too.”

  Her mouth twisted up on one side, and her brow creased. “I’m hungry,” she clarified. “I just don’t want you to wait on me. It makes me feel…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d feel better if I was the one doing things for you.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve been fighting you to let me help you all week, remember?”

  “I do. And now I’m better, so you’re not allowed to take care of me anymore.”

  Okay. He knew when he was beat. “You know what?” he finally said. “I’m kind of in the mood for chocolate chip pancakes. Will you eat some if I make them?”

  She smiled reluctantly. “Only if I’m allowed to do the dishes.”

  “Sold.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Where’s Ben?” Harry demanded as soon as Megan came through the door of her parents’ house.

  “He had some other things to do today,” she told her nephew, for what would be the first of about eleventy-seven repeats. He had to run some errands. He had another commitment. He had to see a man about a horse. Okay, she didn’t use that last one, but by the time everyone had quizzed her twice—about why Ben wasn’t with her—she was ready to scream.

  Of course, she was also ready to scream because she missed him. She’d only left him an hour ago, and she was wondering how soon she could get away to see him again.

  “Will Ben be subbing for you at work anymore this week?” Beth asked with a raised eyebrow.

  What did that mean? Did Beth think Megan was trying to groom a replacement manager? Did she know about the contest Megan had entered?

  Whoa. Paranoid much?

  “No, I think I’m back to full speed now,” Megan said, slicing onions for the hamburgers, trying not to lose a finger in the process. “There were a few things he needed to take care of today.”

  “When does he go fight more terrorists?” Harry asked, grabbing a slice of cheese.

  “A couple more weeks.” Two more blissful, sexy weeks.

  “How long will he be gone?” Beth asked.

  “Nine months.” Forever. Suddenly, those two more weeks he’d be in Las Vegas seemed very short.

  “It’s kind of romantic, don’t you think?” Beth asked. “You can write him actual letters and send him packages.”

  Probably not, but she tried to muster an enthusiastic, “Sure.” She put the knife in the sink. “Excuse me. I’m going to go wash up.” She just needed a minute.

  “You okay?” Beth asked. “Are you sure you’re feeling better?”

  “Yeah.” No. She made her way to the bathroom, where she checked, and yes, she was beginning to spot.

  So she was not pregnant. A wave of sorrow and loss crashed over her, which was so dumb. This was supposed to be a good thing. Certain proof she and Ben hadn’t made a colossal mistake on her birthday.

  There was no need to feel like her world was ending or to wish she could curl up on the cool tile floor and suck her thumb for the rest of the day. It was just a damned period. Like a hundred and fifty or so other ones she’d had. No big deal.

  Just a little spotting. Beth had bled a tiny bit before she found out she was pregnant with each of her kids. Megan tried not to feel a sprig of hope rising, but decided she wouldn’t sound the alarm just yet. No reason to get all twisted up, in case she had to change her announcement to Ben.

  Why then, as she took care of things and washed up, were her eyes leaking? She sniffed hard, took a couple of cleansing breaths, and opened the medicine cabinet. Surely there was some Visine in here. She wasn’t going to go back down looking anything like she’d been crying.

  “Megan? Honey? Are you okay?” Her mother’s voice startled her, and she knocked half the contents of the medicine cabinet onto the counter. “What’s going on in there? Let me in.”

  The doorknob rattled.

  “Okay, just a minute.” She glared at herself in warning and reluctantly undid the lock.

  “Oh, baby.” Mom’s voice was all it took for every no-crying intention she had to flee and the tears to come.

  Within a second of being wrapped in her mother’s arms, she was sobbing and confessing the whole story, about how she and Ben were only sort of married because they thought she might be pregnant and they had rings, so maybe they really were married, but now that she probably wasn’t pregnant, but still wasn’t certain, she thought she would wait to tell him so they could just get a quick divorce even though they still didn’t know where they got married, and she wanted him to stay, but he couldn’t, and anyway this family was too much for him, and oh God, she was in love with him.

  Mom blinked for a moment, processing Megan’s stream of consciousness. “Let me get this straight. You met Ben and married him the same night.”

  Megan nodded.

  “We knew that part. But you didn’t remember getting married, so it was an accident. We kind of suspected that.”

  Megan grimaced.

  Mom patted her knee. “That’s okay, sweetie. Your dad and I woke up naked in the desert the day after we first met, covered in bug bites, and—”

  “Eww!” Megan covered her ears and laughed, which was probably the point of that story.

  “Honey, it’s going to be okay,” Mom said, pushing a tissue into Megan’s hand. Just like Ben had every time she’d sneezed last week. Oh, Ben. She broke out in a fresh wave of sobs.

  Another round of knocking on the door was accompanied by her brother’s voice. “Hey. You guys okay in there?”

  Megan shook her head violently, and her mother, fortunately, got the message because she said, “Megan’s still feeling a little under the weather. She’ll be okay, but you should probably use the downstairs bathroom for a while.”

  “Thank you,” she told her mom. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For lying to everyone.”

  Mom’s mouth quirked. “We knew you got married to a guy you knew for all of a few hours. The possibility of a pregnancy isn’t a huge shocker.”

  “Oh. So you aren’t disappointed in me?”

  Mom shook her head. “It’s not like you announced you’re quitting your job and running away to serve in the Peace Corps.”

  Or to work in the costume design industry.

  Mo
m went on. “I’m glad you finally met someone you care for so much. He’s so much more agreeable than all of those self-centered creative types you always brought around before.”

  Yeah. Those self-centered creative types. Like her. She’d almost blurted out her desire to enter the jacket she’d made in the bike show contest, but now was glad she hadn’t.

  “Do you know what you’re going to do next?” Mom asked.

  “I’m going to go downstairs and eat dinner?”

  “And then you’re going to go home and tell Ben how you feel. If it’s meant to be, the two of you will find a way to work it out. You’re going to invite him to stay with you as often as he can, and include him in all of our family events, and see what happens.”

  Mom had been making a lot of sense up until that last part. Include him in all of our family events?

  Yeah. Not likely.

  …

  “I wish I had a dollar for every hungover sailor who’s come in here asking if he’d gotten married last night,” the old man said, slapping his thigh and laughing. “But I’ll be damned if you’re the first one who’s disappointed when I tell him no.”

  “Well”—Ben pointed to the ring on his left hand and lied—“it would be good to know where these came from so we could undo it.”

  “You don’t have to wear it, you know.”

  Ben looked at the gold band glinting in the rays of the setting sun shining through the front window of the Littlest Big Wedding Chapel in Nevada. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  He didn’t take it off. He was going to be married a little longer, and he was having a good time.

  He got back in the car and checked the list. He’d been to fifteen wedding chapels today. Not a single one had a record of Megan or him.

  Each had made an interesting point, however. If they’d gotten married, they should have a license. If they had a license, it would be recorded with the State of Nevada. Eventually.

  In a state with so many impromptu weddings, it took a few weeks for things like that to get into the system. And Ben would be at sea by the time that was sorted out, in which case they might have to wait months to undo their marriage. Would that be so bad?

  His phone buzzed again, and he grabbed it, hoping for a call or message from Megan. But no, this was another unknown number. Frustrated, he hit the accept button so he could give the telemarketer a piece of his mind.

  It wasn’t a telemarketer.

  “Rutledge, what the hell? Why haven’t you been answering your phone?”

  “Parker?”

  “Yeah, man. Where are you? Everyone’s been calling all day.”

  He looked at his phone. All the numbers were unfamiliar, which made sense. He’d gotten a new phone and hadn’t synced his contacts. He put the phone on speaker so he could drive.

  “You know I’m still on leave, right?”

  “No, you’re not. You’ve got to get back to base before twenty-four hundred hours,” Parker said.

  “What?” He shot a glance at the clock on the dashboard. It was after six already. He was going to have to bust a nut to get there on time. “What’s going on?”

  “The usual. There was a snafu on the Nimitz, and the vice admiral’s canceling all leave. We all have to get recertified on…”

  Ben tuned out the details. He’d hear it all in triplicate when he got back to base. The take-home message was that someone, somewhere, had fucked up, and everyone else had to suffer the consequences because—

  He stopped himself, because he was the careful one, the one who loved the routine and repetitive nature of the training involved in his job. At least he had, before he’d spent a few weeks in Vegas and had his whole world turned inside out.

  “Anyway,” Parked wound up, “you’ve got to come back ASAP.”

  “I’m on my way.” Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  He wasn’t ready to go back to work. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Megan.

  As he started the car and turned toward her place, he realized he might not be ready to say goodbye to her at the end of the month, either.

  He almost missed a stop sign and braked hard, drawing a honk from the car behind him. But he ignored it, because he realized he might never be ready to say goodbye to Megan, because he was crazy in love with her. When had that happened? How had that happened?

  Damn it. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  He wasn’t the man for her, no matter what kind of heat-of-the-moment agreement they’d made in a bar over too much of Blue Mountain’s best bourbon. If there was one thing he knew about Megan, it was that she deserved security and consistency. She needed a man who would be there for her no matter what, who could make her feel safe and loved and encourage her dreams. She didn’t need a disappear-at-a-moment’s-notice sailor with no sense of what a family was supposed to be.

  When he turned into the lot of her apartment complex, he was both relieved and terrified to see Megan’s car parked outside her front door, because that meant she was back from her parents’ house and he’d get to see her before he left.

  What was he going to say? How should he leave things? Tell her he wanted to come back when he could?

  He parked and pocketed his keys and walked to her apartment with the heavy steps of a death row inmate.

  With a deep breath, he opened the front door. He was greeted by a blast of top-volume angry punk music and every piece of Megan’s furniture pushed to one wall. Megan herself was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor.

  She looked up when he came in. When she registered his presence, she scrambled to her feet and dived for the stereo.

  The silence that filled the room was immediate and deafening.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey. I was just cleaning up a little bit.”

  “I see that. Did you spill something? It was clean when I left.”

  “Oh. No. It was fine. I just figured it might be time for a deep clean.” She turned away and didn’t meet his eyes as she said, “Every now and then I think you’re supposed to scrub stuff, right?”

  “I guess so.” She’d fit in perfectly in the military, doing work that doesn’t need to be done, just because it’s there. “I thought you’d still be at your mom and dad’s.”

  She shrugged, tossing her scrub brush into the bucket and grabbing an old towel to wipe up the suds. “I just felt the need to get some stuff done.” She looked down and tugged at a loose thread on the hem of her T-shirt.

  He could only think of one thing that would bum her out, so he asked, “What was Ron’s reaction to being asked to model at the bike expo?”

  “Oh.” She scowled. “I totally forgot.”

  Huh.

  She cleared her throat and tilted her head with a chipper smile and asked, “What’s new with you? How was your outing?”

  Bracing himself for her disappointment, he said, “I didn’t find anything out, but I did get a suggestion.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  “We should check with the marriage license office. If we’re married, they’ll have a record of it in a few weeks.”

  She didn’t answer, simply blinked at him.

  “We should put in a request to have it mailed, but they were closed today—”

  “Oh. Well,” she said, exhaling, but he was probably projecting his relief onto her. “You can go tomorrow.”

  He took the bucket while she tossed the towel into a pile of dirty laundry. It was his turn to avoid her eyes as he said, “Actually, I can’t do that tomorrow. I’ve got to go back to the base. Today. There’s an emergency training op scheduled.”

  She straightened a little and said, “Oh.” It was a short little surprised sound, and he couldn’t tell if she was disappointed or pleased, because she was turned away, fiddling with a pile of clean towels on the kitchen table.

  “They also moved up our deployment. Things are heating up in… I can’t tell you, exactly, but you can probably imagine.”

  “I’m sorry you have to cut your va
cation short.”

  He wanted to ask her if he could come back, if there was any chance they could take this thing to the next level. Or keep it on the level where it was, since they were already married. Or only drop it back a level to seriously involved.

  But in the time it took him to formulate a question, she’d picked up her pile of towels and started for the bathroom.

  All he managed to say was, “I’ll be out of touch for about three days, but then I get a couple days off before we ship out.”

  “That’s great. You can at least kick your feet up on the beach in San Diego and pretend you’re still on vacation.” Was that a crack in her voice, or was he projecting? “Oh. By the way,” she said, leaning back out of the bathroom to finally look at him straight-on, “I’m kind of crampy today. I’m pretty sure I’m about to start my period. Isn’t that great?”

  She didn’t even wait for his reaction before her head disappeared back into the bathroom.

  “Um, yeah.” That news wasn’t allowed to make it onto his feel-o-meter.

  Come on, dumb ass. Ask her if you can come back next week before you deploy. But the words were stuck, because her lousy attempt to appear nonchalant showed him exactly how much she’d be wrecked each time he shipped out.

  She yanked the bucket from him and dumped it in the bathtub, then shoved it under the sink. “I’ll take care of the marriage license thing. I bet I can do it online, even.”

  Of course she would. In between dropping off her sister’s shoes for repair and picking up new socks for her brothers.

  She marched out of the bathroom, to her bedroom, and started pulling the sheets off the mattress.

  He followed and grabbed his duffel. As he looked around to see what he needed to pick up, he spotted the bike jacket Megan had been working on all week.

  “When are you going to ask your brother-in-law to be your model?”

  She looked up at him like he’d spoken in Swahili. Or Shavian, he thought, seeing her tattoo of his name on her shoulder, but she finally said, “Yeah. I’ll call him this evening. I have to confirm some stuff I promised to do for my sister, anyway.”