His right arm encircled her shoulders and he turned his head to breathe in the flowery scent of her hair. His heartbeat slowed and though the ache in his groin didn’t ease one iota, the rest of his body relaxed and for the first time in his marriage, he slipped into a deep, dream-filled sleep.
“’What’s married life like?’” Donna repeated her ex-roommate’s question to stall for time. Her fingers tightened around the phone receiver. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she said brightly, “It’s great. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“You tell me,” Kathy said, apparently unconvinced by Donna’s answer.
Idly, Donna picked at the layers of paint covering the kitchen windowsill. There were dozens of tiny bumps, as if the wood had gotten cold and gooseflesh had hardened on the surface. Scraping her fingernail across one of the hard nubs, she was surprised when the eggshell-white paint peeled up.
“Donna,” Kathy said, “something’s going on and you’re not talking. Unusual, at best. At worst, frightening.”
She grimaced and tugged at the loose piece of paint, hoping to flatten it out somewhat. Instead she peeled up a long strip of rubbery substance. Her eyes widened as she stared at the bare wood where paint used to be.
“There’s just nothing to tell, Kat,” she assured her friend, while trying to tear off the uneven edges of the multilayered paint strip. Another section tore off in her hand. She smothered a groan and tried again.
“You get married to a guy I’ve never heard of, want me to send you all of your things and quit your job for you, and you say there’s nothing to talk about?”
“Uh-huh,” Donna muttered, hiding a gasp as another, larger section of paint pulled away from the sill.
“What’s he like?”
“Gorgeous,” came the immediate response that surprised Donna as much as it did her old roommate.
“Well, well…” Kathy practically purred. “The plot thickens.”
“What plot?”
“The one in this little mystery.”
“Mystery?” Donna countered. “It’s more like a romantic farce.”
“Okay,” Kathy demanded, impatience simmering over the wire. “Give.”
“There’s nothing to give. I got married. I’m living on base in a reconstituted Quonset hut, I’m unemployed, and the only married virgin in the free world.” Oops. She hadn’t meant for that part to slip out.
“What?” Kathy’s voice hit an all-time high. “Explain.”
“What’s to explain?” Donna asked, tearing off yet another strip of paint and adding it to the growing pile in front of her on the table. “My gorgeous husband has no interest in me.”
“Bull.”
“Thank you,” Donna said, touched by the vote of confidence.
“Is he crazy?”
“No, just temporary.”
“You’re losing me here, Don…”
Donna sighed. She hadn’t meant to tell anyone about the bizarre marriage she found herself in, but darn it, she had to talk to somebody. While she explained the entire situation, she peeled another strip of paint off the window, this time trying for length.
“That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Kathy said when she’d finished.
“I’ve always been an overachiever,” Donna conceded, and grinned when the paint strip went all the way to the top of the window casement before snapping off like an old rubber band.
“What are you going to do?”
“What I’ve been doing,” she said, tossing the strip of paint onto the table.
“Which is?”
“Pretend to be a happy little wife.”
“What do you want to do?”
There’s an easy question. She’d known the answer most of her life. She wanted to have a family. Kids. A nice little house somewhere. Two dogs, maybe a cat. But mostly she wanted a husband who loved her. Who wanted to make love with her.
But right now, all of the above boiled down to a single, overwhelming want. “I want to make love with my husband.”
“Ahhh…”
“I mean, I’ll never have a better opportunity to lose my virginity crown, will I?”
“True,” Kathy agreed. “But if you’ve waited this long, why not wait until the big moment would be special?”
“It would be,” Donna admitted, standing to get a better grip on the next strip of paint.
“Uh-oh,” her friend said. “Sounds like love.”
“Or a close facsimile.” She smiled as the paint tore off in a lovely, straight line.
“I don’t buy that,” Kathy told her. “You’ve been in lust before and not given in to temptation. What makes him different?”
Donna stopped, dropped the paint strip to hang like a flag on a windless day and stared silently out the window for a long moment. What made Jack different?
Only everything, she thought.
Gray eyes. Strong face. Gentle hands. That look in his eyes that said he didn’t expect her to care for him.
So many little things that she wasn’t even sure she could list them all.
“Don—”
His laugh, she thought. That was special. Arguing with him. My, she did enjoy their arguments. And just being in the same room with him was enough to raise her temperature by at least ten degrees. She smiled to herself, remembering how straight and proud he’d stood in front of the Reverend Thistle. How he’d promised to love, honor and cherish her.
A chill swept up her spine and Donna’s smile faded as she slowly came to a stunningly undeniable conclusion. “Ohmigod,” she whispered.
“What is it?” Kathy demanded.
Donna sat as her knees weakened and her head began to spin. The answer was so obvious. And so terrifying. How had this happened? she wondered frantically.
“I’m falling in love with him,” she said softly.
“You’re kidding!” her friend shouted loud enough to be heard from Maryland without benefit of the phone.
“No, I’m not,” Donna whined. “I’m in love with the one man I shouldn’t be. My husband.”
Nine
After making that alarming discovery, Donna kept herself so busy over the next several days that she didn’t have time to think about it.
Now as she sat back on her heels in the winter sunshine of a November day in California, she paused briefly to admire the bed of impatiens she’d just planted between the two still straggly bushes beneath the living room window. Then she turned her head to take in the rest of the front yard.
Amazing what a lawnmower and regular watering could do for a place, she told herself. Not to mention the regimentally straight row of petunias aligning the front walk. Idly, she wondered what sorts of flowers the previous owners had planted. There was no way to be sure, since, true to marine tradition, once a family moved out of base housing, the neighbors came in and pillaged the flora—digging up whatever plants weren’t original to the house and replanting them in their own yards.
While her mind was busy elsewhere, she didn’t even notice Jack’s truck pull up in front of the house. He was halfway up the walk when he asked, “Daydreaming?”
Donna jumped, clutched at her chest as if trying to hold her heart in place, and looked up at him. “You scared me.”
He squatted beside her. “I have that effect on a lot of people.”
Yeah, but he probably didn’t affect many others the way he did her at this particular moment, Donna thought as a familiar, fluttering sensation started up in her stomach.
“Thought you’d be getting ready for your father’s party.”
She groaned inwardly. There was no way to avoid the small reception Tom Candello had arranged for his daughter and her new husband. When she’d tried to remind her dad that the whole marriage was a temporary situation, he’d insisted that they do everything they could to convince everyone that it was a real marriage in every sense.
Hard to argue with that. Though heaven knew, she’d wanted to try. She just didn’t want to have to spend hours at her f
ather’s house pretending to the world that she loved her husband—while at the same time, pretending to him that she didn’t.
“Looks nice,” Jack said suddenly, snapping her attention back to him. She looked at him in time to see his gaze sweep across the yard.
“Thanks.”
“Why are you doing it?” He turned his head to look at her, his gaze colliding with hers.
“Doing what, exactly?”
“This.” He waved one hand at the greenery and the splashes of color.
“I like flowers?” she asked.
“No, I mean…” He shook his head. “I guess I mean that I never figured you for the Mother Earth type.”
Intriguing. “And what type did you figure me for?”
“I don’t know. Luncheons. Fundraisers. That sort of thing.”
Dusting her grubby hands together, Donna folded them in her denim-clad lap, tilted her head to one side and very patiently asked, “What gave you that idea?”
He smiled and Donna’s stomach turned completely over. At least, she thought it was her stomach. It might have been her heart. “I don’t know, really. But planting flowers, stripping the wood in the house and refinishing it yourself…”
She cleared her throat uneasily and pushed herself to her feet. Well, she’d had to tell him something to explain why she’d peeled layer after layer of perfectly good paint off a windowsill.
“Since I remain unemployed,” she said, following him with her gaze as he stood beside her, “I prefer to keep busy.”
“That reminds me.” Jack reached into the pocket of his camouflage uniform, pulled out a small piece of paper, and handed it to her.
Donna glanced at it. Marie Talbot, 555-8776. Lifting her gaze to his again, she asked, “What’s this for?”
“She’s a teacher at the base school.” He smiled at her. “When she found out that you’re a sign language interpreter, she asked me to give you her number. Said she could really use someone like you.”
He’d found her a job? “And how did she hear about me in the first place?”
He rubbed the back of his neck and let his gaze slide from hers to focus on the new bed of impatiens. “I might have mentioned you to her.”
A warm, curl of pleasure snaked through her. He’d been talking about her to other people. Thinking about her. He’d found her a job. Giving in to an undeniable impulse, Donna threw herself at him, wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed, hard. Gazing up at him, she grinned. “You, First Sergeant, are one terrific husband.”
His arms closed around her slowly, hesitantly. The restrained strength of his hug took her breath away as he pulled her tightly to him. Her hardened nipples tingled and a like sensation began to burn in the very core of her.
His gaze moved over her features lovingly, as if committing everything about her to memory. When he spoke again, his voice sounded strangled and so soft, she had to strain to hear him at all. “Am I?”
Something in his eyes, a glint of vulnerability, a hint of uncertainty, tore at her. She swallowed the knot of emotion in her throat and rose up onto her toes. Giving in to yet another impulse and unsure of his reaction, she very carefully, very deliberately, kissed him. Beneath her lips, she felt his mouth tighten, then slowly relax.
Nervous and so very hungry for the feel of him, Donna pulled in closer to him, giving herself over to the rightness of kissing Jack Harris.
When he groaned from deep in his chest and squeezed her so hard she thought her ribs might crack, she knew she’d reached him. Then he took control of their kiss.
He parted her lips with his tongue, taking her soft exhale of breath into his own lungs. He tasted her, stroked her, caressed her warmth until Donna’s knees buckled and only the strength of his arms kept her upright.
Bright splashes of color flashed in front of her closed eyes. She felt as though sparklers were going off in her bloodstream. Though technically still a virgin, she hadn’t exactly lived in a closet for twenty-eight years. She’d been kissed before. By men she would have classified as experts.
But nothing in her life had prepared her for this.
Explosions of desire rocketed through her. That indescribable ache she’d become accustomed to living with blossomed into a throbbing, demanding need. Her lungs strained for air but she was too busy to breathe. Her hands fisted on his shoulders, her fingers clutching at him.
This kiss was every romance novel she’d ever read, every late-night fantasy she’d ever entertained, and every dream she’d ever held in a safe, dark corner of her heart.
At last, when she was about to faint for lack of air and had ceased to care, he pulled his head back, breaking the almost magical connection that had bound them so completely to each other.
For a long moment their labored breathing was the only sounds she heard. The scent of a neighbor’s barbecue drifted toward them and a cool wind wrapped itself around them, tugging at their clothing.
“Donna,” Jack finally whispered, and his eyes shimmered with…regret.
Her mouth still tingling, her knees liquified permanently, she shook her head. She didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want what had been an earth-shattering moment for her splintered by the sounds of “I’m sorry.” Speaking up quickly, to stop him, she said, “So help me, if you apologize, I’ll have you killed.”
A slow, sexy smile curved his lips. The shadows left his gray eyes and they shone with amazing clarity. “You’re a colonel’s daughter. You could probably do it.”
One hand slid from his shoulder to cup his cheek. Her thumb traced the high, defined ridge of his cheekbone as she said, “And don’t you forget it, mister.”
Jack wandered around the colonel’s immaculately tended backyard, sticking to the edges of the crowd. His gaze moved over all of the familiar faces. Dozens of people had turned out to attend a spur of the moment barbecue in celebration of Donna’s and his marriage.
The sizzle of steaks on the grill whispered above the drone of conversation. A soft breeze lifted the scent of mesquite into the air.
Jack’s fingers tightened around the neck of the cold bottle of beer he held as he took a long drink. Elsewhere in the country, people were battening down the hatches, already fighting off winter’s cold grip. But in California, it was picnic weather.
As he walked past tight knots of people, his friends slapped him on the back and offered congratulations, while their wives sighed and smiled over the romance of it all.
Romance. He wondered what they’d all think if they knew the truth. Jack took another long pull at his beer. But it didn’t do any good. He could still taste Donna. His jaw clenched at the memory that had been dogging him all afternoon. She’d fit into the circle of his arms as if made to be there.
And ever since he had released her, he’d felt empty.
When a master sergeant grabbed his arm and dragged him into a conversation, he went along, although he didn’t hear a word any one was saying. Instead he looked for Donna. His wife.
Though there were no ranks visible—everyone was wearing civvies—invisible lines were drawn through the crowd anyway. It happened all the time. The noncommissioned officers and the enlisted men on one side—the officers on the other. And never the twain shall meet.
It was in the midst of the officers’ wives that Jack finally located Donna. Her chin-length black hair shining in the afternoon sunshine, she wore a dark red T-shirt tucked into faded blue jeans that hugged her legs as he had dreamed of doing.
“Where’s the bride, Harris?” someone close by asked.
Without taking his gaze off her, Jack nodded his head in her direction.
The man beside him grunted. “Well, she is a colonel’s daughter. Guess it’s only right that she hang with the officers.”
True. Jack understood. He told himself that it made sense for her to talk to the people she knew. But that did nothing to the twinge of regret that pierced him. This was just another symbol of the differences between them. He was one side of the yard
. She was the other.
Donna smiled at the captain’s wife and tried to listen to Lieutenant Jorgensen’s wife at the same time. But unerringly, her gaze kept drifting across the yard to Jack.
She’d tried, when they first arrived, to meet some of the enlisted men’s spouses. But it was hard. She was so used to playing the role of the colonel’s daughter and hostess at his parties, that she wasn’t quite sure how to negotiate new waters.
She spotted him then, surrounded by his friends, and felt her heartbeat stagger slightly. In his marine green T-shirt and well-worn Levi’s, he looked hard and strong and completely unignorable. But then she’d given up on ignoring him anyway. She figured it was pointless now, since she could still feel the kiss they’d shared.
“Donna?” someone asked. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she answered, keeping her gaze locked on Jack. “I’m fine.”
Or, she would be as soon as she made her stand, she told herself. Ever since arriving at the party, she’d been torn between the old Donna and the new—if temporary—one. Should she be the colonel’s daughter or the sergeant’s wife?
Now, suddenly, she knew the answer and was disgusted with herself that it had taken her so long to realize it.
Suiting actions to the thought, she muttered, “Excuse me,” to the ladies and started for her husband.
Jack had seen the indecision on her face. He’d been able to tell, even from across the yard that she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be doing. How to act. He knew his life would be a hell of a lot simpler if she simply stayed where she belonged. With the officers and their families. But, damn it, sometimes simpler wasn’t better.
As she left the group of women and started toward him, a determined smile on her face, he felt a bright flash of pride and…pleasure. Maybe it was just for show, he told himself. Maybe it was all part of the plan they’d agreed on, to look like the happily married couple. But maybe, he found himself hoping, it was something more.
“Hi, First Sergeant,” she said as she came up alongside him.
“Hi, yourself.”
The Littlest Marine & The Oldest Living Married Virgin Page 22
