One dark eyebrow lifted over his left eye.
“Wait a minute,” Donna said, inhaling slowly, deeply. “You said your bed? Are you trying to tell me this is your room?”
“That’s right.”
“Then—” She took a halting step backward. “Why would the security guard bring me here? To you?”
“That was no security guard, honey,” he said. “That was me.”
She stared at him. Bits and pieces of memory fluttered through her mind like autumn leaves in a whirlwind. Her gaze narrowed as she studied him, trying to fit his face with the half-remembered image of the guard who had been so kind.
Oh, Lord, she thought on an inward groan. He was right. It wasn’t a dark blue security uniform she remembered. It was a Dress Blue uniform. Jack Harris had been formally dressed last night for the Battalion Ball.
Maybe they’d all be better off if she simply looked for an oven to stick her head into.
“This is mortifying,” she finally mumbled. Drunk and rooming with a strange marine for the night. Waking up in only her underwear, in his bed, with no memory of how she got there.
Looking up at him, she forced herself to ask the fateful question. “Did we—” She jerked her head at the bed behind her. “You know…”
Jack felt his features tighten. Looking down into those deep brown eyes of hers, he clearly recalled having to strip off her gown and tuck her beneath the blankets. It hadn’t been easy, turning his back on a gorgeous woman, even a drunk one. But, damn it, there were rules about some things. Whether he liked it or not. “No. We didn’t ‘you know….’”
Finding her drunk, trying to get into the ball, had been pure chance. If he hadn’t stepped outside for a cigarette, he never would have seen her. Dressed as she was and as determined as she had been to get into the party, he had known that she belonged with some poor marine. It had seemed like his duty to keep the clearly toasted woman from embarrassing herself, and the damn fool who loved her, in front of his superior officers.
He had taken her to his room with the thought of sobering her up. But she’d fallen asleep almost immediately. Now he had to find out where she belonged and get her there.
Fast.
“Nothing happened last night, lady,” he said stiffly, turning his back on her to walk across the room and pick up his shirt.
“Oh.”
He glanced at her unreadable expression and didn’t know whether she was relieved or disappointed. Either way, though, it didn’t matter a damn to him.
“Now, why don’t you tell me who I should call about you?” he asked, determined to get her the hell out of his life as quickly as possible. Before the rest of the hotel guests woke up and someone saw her leaving his room.
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” she said, gingerly stepping into her red velvet dress, “I am no longer drunk, so I don’t need you to phone anyone about me.”
Disgusted, he told her, “Honey, this hotel is crawling with marines. If you leave my room wearing last night’s dress, somebody’s going to notice and talk. Now, tell me who to call, so they can bring you something to wear.”
She fumbled with the tiny seed-pearl buttons lining her dress from the low-cut bodice to mid-thigh. He closed his eyes, not really wanting to look again at the high, wide slit in the front of her gown that exposed slim, shapely thighs. No reason why he should torture himself.
Man, this was the last time he’d be a Good Samaritan. Next time some gorgeous brunette was trying to embarrass herself, he’d let her.
Impatiently, Jack waited for her to answer him. Just before she finished her task, someone knocked on the door.
She looked up at him, her eyes wide.
“Damn it,” he whispered. He had wanted to get this woman settled and out of his room before anyone else had a chance to see her. Quickly, Jack checked his watch—0930 hours. After last night, who in the heck would be up this early pounding on his door?
“Who is it?” she asked in a hush.
“How the hell should I know?” he snapped, then frowned. He felt like a cheating husband in an old movie. Well, that was nuts. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He was the good guy here. All he’d tried to do was help a lady in distress.
But then, what was that old saying? No good deed goes unpunished?
The knocking sounded out again. Louder this time. Insistent.
Jack started for the door, but stopped dead when he heard the angry voice on the other side of it.
“First Sergeant Harris?”
“Colonel Candello?” Jack asked.
“Daddy?” Donna groaned.
“Daddy?” Jack repeated, horrified.
Two
Tearing his gaze from the woman in front of him, he shot a quick glance at the door before turning a malevolent glare on her again. “Colonel Candello is your father?”
“Yes,” she whispered, frantically finger-combing her tousled hair. “How do I look?”
“Like hell,” he muttered, and thought it appropriate since they were both standing in the middle of an inferno.
Damn it, why was the colonel here this early? Did the man already know about his daughter spending the night? And if he did, how? Jack hadn’t thought even the marine wives could manage to spread gossip at light speed.
“First Sergeant Harris,” the colonel said in a tightly controlled voice, “are you going to keep me standing in the hall?”
Jack ran one hand across the top of his high and tight haircut and tried to think. His room was on the eleventh floor, so there was no sneaking her out the French doors that opened onto the balcony. And the room was too damned small to hide her for long. No choice here, he told himself.
Turning a hard stare on the colonel’s daughter, he asked, “You ready to face the music?”
No.
Even without a mirror, Donna knew what she must look like. Standing there in her stocking feet, her dress wrinkled, smudged mascara shadowing her eyes… She groaned inwardly. No doubt she looked as if she’d spent a hot, passionate night with a wildly attentive lover.
How ironic.
She was about to be caught, tried, and convicted for something she hadn’t done.
Had never done.
Good God, she hadn’t seen her father in four years because she’d been too embarrassed to face him. After today, she’d have to move to Outer Mongolia.
Grimly, she nodded, threw her shoulders back and tried to look nonchalant.
Jack moved to the door, unlocked it, and opened it wide, silently inviting the colonel inside. “Good morning, Sir,” he said as the man walked into the room.
“Is it?” the colonel asked.
Dressed in civilian clothes, Thomas Candello was still an imposing figure. In gray slacks and a pale blue, short-sleeved sport shirt, he looked younger than he did when in full uniform. But he was every inch as intimidating as usual.
Her father’s gaze seemed to bore into Donna’s and she flinched slightly at the disappointment she saw glittering in those brown eyes so like her own.
“Sir—” Jack started.
The colonel interrupted him. “Would you mind leaving my daughter and me alone for a few minutes, First Sergeant?”
Donna flicked a glance at her erstwhile host. She saw the hesitation on his features and knew that he desperately wanted to stay in the room to take his share of whatever the colonel had come to deliver. She also knew that he wouldn’t think of disobeying even a nicely phrased “request” from her father.
“Aye, Sir,” he said brusquely, and stepped into the hall, pulling the door closed behind him.
Donna wanted to run. But then, she’d run away four years ago and it hadn’t done her any good. This time she’d stick it out. Amazing, she thought. Today, she had courage.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming, Donna?”
She pushed her hair out of her eyes and wished to high heaven for three pots of hot, black coffee. How did everyone expect her to think when she had a hangover strong enough to kill a moose?
Inhaling sharply, she finally said, “I wanted to surprise you.” Shrugging, she added helplessly, “Surprise!”
He didn’t smile.
But she hadn’t expected him to.
“Look, Daddy, this is all a big mistake,” she said, moving away from the bed and all of its implications. “It’s perfectly innocent, actually.”
“’Innocent’?” He shook his head and she noticed absently that there were a few streaks of gray at his temples. “You spend the night with my First Sergeant, a man you’ve never met before, and you call it innocent?”
Why did she suddenly feel as though she were seventeen and late coming home from a date? She was twenty-eight years old. She’d been living on her own for years. She had a master’s degree. As a sign language interpreter, her expertise was in demand everywhere from colleges to corporate battlegrounds.
Yet one look from her father had her dipping her head and mumbling answers.
“It’s not what you think,” she told him on a tired sigh. “The sergeant—”
“First sergeant,” he cut in.
“Whatever.” She waved one hand dismissively. “Jack was just trying to be helpful.” Great. Now she’d been reduced to defending the man she’d wanted to kick only a few minutes ago.
But what choice did she have? The colonel was her father. The man wasn’t going to stop loving her no matter how disappointed he was in her. He was also Jack Harris’s commanding officer, and Jack didn’t need to take career heat for her mistake.
The colonel walked over to the only chair in the room and sat. Leaning forward, his forearms on his thighs, he looked at her solemnly. “Do you know that at least four different people have already felt it was their ‘duty’ to come and tell me where my daughter spent the night?”
“Oh, Lord,” she said on a sigh.
“Why, Donna?” he asked.
She walked to the French doors and opened them, bravely facing the sunshine just to breathe in the fresh, morning air. She stepped onto the narrow balcony and curled her fingers around the railing. “I had a couple of drinks at the airport when I landed.”
“So, you were drunk, too.”
She glanced at him and noted that a well-remembered muscle in his cheek was twitching. When she was a kid, that had always been her signal that she’d pushed him too far. Oh, not that he’d ever raised a hand to her. But Tom Candello’s silence was as bad as any other man’s rage.
“I guess the alcohol affected me more than usual because I forgot to eat,” she said.
“And that makes it all right?”
“No, but that’s what happened.”
“And what’s your reason for wanting a drink before seeing me?”
“Because I couldn’t face you,” she admitted, coming back into the room.
Planting both hands on his knees, he pushed himself to his feet. Towering over her by a good six or seven inches, he met her gaze and held it. “Because I was right about Kyle? That’s why you didn’t want to face me?”
“Kyle’s only a part of it and you know it,” she said quickly, not wanting to get into a discussion about her ex-fiancé—or what had happened the last time she’d seen her father. “As long as we’re on the subject, it’s not easy having a father who’s always right.”
“Not always,” he corrected, his mouth still a grim line of disapproval.
“Often enough to make me think my judgment stinks.” And, to be honest, in the case of her ex-fiancé, it had stunk. Big time.
The colonel raised one dark eyebrow. “Apparently, it still does.”
She mentally flinched at that one.
“We’re straying from the point here, Donna.”
“What is the point, Dad?” She was tired. And her head hurt. And her stomach felt as if there was an 8.1 earthquake rattling around inside it.
She needed a bath, some coffee and maybe, if it wouldn’t kill her, a little food.
“The point is that half the battalion is already talking about you and First Sergeant Harris.” He paused and frowned. “The other half will be as soon as they hear about it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to create such a mess.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it, Donna,” he told her sternly.
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” she said, and pushed past him to sit in the chair he had vacated.
A quiet knock on the door interrupted whatever he would have said.
“Come in, First Sergeant,” the colonel said. When the door opened, he added, “I’m sorry to have kept you out of your room so long.”
“Not a problem, Sir,” Jack said, closing the door quietly behind him. “But if you’ll pardon me for saying so, Sir, there is a problem you should know about.”
The colonel rubbed the back of his neck tiredly. “What is it?”
“Well, Sir…” Jack went on, clearly uncomfortable. “Major Collins’s wife spoke to me in the hall just now.”
“Great,” the colonel muttered, and Donna flicked a quick, worried glance at him. “What’d she say?”
Jack came almost to attention. “Sir, she said she saw your daughter and me enter my room last night. She wanted to know when your daughter and I were getting married and why she wasn’t invited.”
“The old—” The colonel’s voice trailed off into nothingness.
“Great,” Donna muttered. “My sex life—” or lack of one, she added silently “—is the talk of the marines.” She shifted uneasily in the chair. If she had just stayed in Maryland, none of this would be happening. She would still have a perfectly good phone relationship with her father and she wouldn’t be sitting in the first sergeant’s room with him looking at her as if she were the Three Stooges and Mata Hari all in one.
“It’ll blow over, Dad,” she said tentatively, and was rewarded with a black look from her father.
“You know how gossip spreads,” he said simply. “It gets bigger, not smaller.”
All her fault, she thought, disgusted with herself.
“Sir.” Jack spoke up again, and Donna and her father turned to look at him. “If I might make a suggestion?”
“First Sergeant,” the colonel said wearily, “I could use a good one right about now.”
“The only way to stop gossip is to make it less interesting,” Jack said, still amazed that he was even considering saying what he was about to say. He glanced at the hungover woman mumbling to herself, then shifted his gaze back to her father.
The man he owed so much to.
“Your point, First Sergeant?”
“My point is this, Sir.” He sucked in a gulp of air and said the rest of it in a rush, before he could change his mind. “If you agree, your daughter and I can get married this afternoon. If we’re married, the gossips will have nothing to talk about.”
“Excuse me?” Donna jumped up from her chair, wobbled a bit, then grabbed her father’s arm for support. Jack only glanced at her before looking back at the colonel.
“We can tell people we got married last night. No one would have to know any different.”
The other man was silent for a long, thoughtful minute.
Jack looked at the officer across the room from him. He had admired and respected Colonel Candello for years. Standing out in the hall, with nothing to do but think, Jack had realized that because of his actions, the colonel’s reputation would be sullied.
It was then he’d come up with his plan. Sure, it was a sacrifice. But there was nothing Jack wouldn’t do for the colonel.
“That’s quite a suggestion, First Sergeant,” the officer said.
“It’s nuts, is what it is.” Donna spoke up, but neither man was listening at the moment.
“We can drive to Vegas,” Jack continued, ignoring her for the moment. “It’s only an hour away. We’ll find an out-of-the-way chapel, take care of business and be back here before most of the battalion is even awake.”
“It might work,” the colonel said.
“Maybe,”
Donna agreed, nodding her head at the two of them. “Except for one little detail.”
“Ma’am?” Jack asked, only to be polite.
“What detail is that, darling?” the colonel asked.
“The fact that I’m not going to go through with it,” Donna told them.
Her father’s features tightened a bit. Jack saw it from across the room. As the Candellos faced each other, he waited silently. He’d seen the colonel in action and he didn’t have a doubt as to who would win this silent competition.
“Daddy,” she said so softly Jack almost couldn’t hear her. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why not, honey?” he asked, reaching out and laying both hands on her shoulders.
“For one thing, I don’t even know him.”
“That didn’t stop you last night.”
Jack tensed.
“I told you, nothing happened,” Donna insisted.
“No one will believe that,” her father said.
True enough, Jack thought. No doubt the major’s wife was already spreading her story from one end of Laughlin to the other.
“But, Dad, this is practically medieval.”
“I can’t force you to do anything,” the colonel said, his hands still gripping his daughter’s shoulders.
“I can’t marry a stranger, for God’s sake,” she whined.
Jack hated whiny women.
“He’s not a stranger,” the colonel insisted. “I’ve known First Sergeant Harris over fifteen years.”
She shot Harris a glare through mascara-smudged eyes, then looked back at her father. “Then you marry him.”
“Donna…”
“No way.” She shook her head.
“What was it you were just saying about your judgment?” the colonel asked.
“That was different.”
“How?”
Jack frowned slightly. He didn’t have a clue what they were talking about now.
“Do you trust me?” the colonel asked quietly.
“Of course,” she answered. “This has nothing to do with trust, though.”
The colonel’s hands dropped from her shoulders. He stood for a long, quiet minute, staring into her eyes.
Jack had the distinct feeling that there was a silent message being passed from father to daughter. But he was in no position to know what it was.
The Littlest Marine & The Oldest Living Married Virgin Page 15
