by Debra Webb
She had to be a mistake.
In one smooth, seemingly effortless move, the woman pulled the heavy duffel bag onto her back and marched across the dirt road, up the steps, onto the porch and straight up to Tom and Reg.
“Mr. Caldwell?” she asked of Reg.
“Oh, no, sweetie,” Reg said knowingly. “It’s him you want.” He gestured in Tom’s direction.
After turning to Tom, the little soldier announced, “Sergeant Passerella reporting for duty, sir.”
Any fleeting hope Tom had left withered and died on the spot. “There must be some mistake,” he blurted before he could stop himself.
“Oops, time for me to go,” Reg volunteered. “Don’t forget to talk to the new arrivals, sir,” he added before scurrying away.
Tom clenched his jaw against the directions he wanted to give Reg on just where he could go. He would settle with him later. Right now, Tom turned back to the half-pint soldier in front of him. He had to deal with her.
“Is there a problem, sir?”
“You’re the drill sergeant General Suddath assigned to act as Camp Serenity’s PT coach?” Tom asked lamely, and for lack of anything else to say.
“Yes, sir,” she answered quickly. “I’ll be organizing the physical training program for your youth camp, sir. With your approval, of course,” she added efficiently. Too efficiently.
She was an absolute featherweight, Tom noted again, his gaze sweeping her petite frame. He was surprised that she even met the minimum weight requirements for military duty. And those deep brown eyes. He found himself staring into those wide, expressive depths. How could this beauty be a drill sergeant?
“Is there something wrong, sir?”
Her question snapped Tom back to reality. This would never work. The boys, and some of the girls required to attend the program at Camp Serenity would outweigh this little soldier by seventy or eighty pounds. Not to mention that many would tower over her by several inches, if not a full foot.
Tom searched for the right words. Nothing came. “I’m sorry, Sergeant Passerella, you’re just not what I expected in the way of help.”
Her expression remained neutral. “If you’re concerned about my being able to handle myself, put your mind at ease, sir. I haven’t met a woman or a man yet that I couldn’t hold my own with,” she explained, a subtle challenge in her tone. “I’m quite certain this assignment won’t change my record.”
“Some of these kids look like linebackers for the Tennessee Titans,” Tom said just as pointedly. “In the last group we even had a couple who were more than a little violent. They had to be dragged away in handcuffs.”
She didn’t flinch. “I understand, sir.” Her impatience showed through her considerable self-control. “I can assure you that I’m more than capable of handling myself in a tactical situation.”
Tom frowned. “I’m not sure you do understand.” He knew for sure he didn’t. “What would you do, Sergeant Passerella, if six feet and nearly two hundred pounds of raging hormones were towering over you right now, threatening to do you bodily harm?”
Three seconds later Tom was lying flat on his back on the wooden floor with no air in his lungs. Her movements like lightning and seeming effortless, Sergeant Passerella had knocked his feet right out from under him before he batted an eye.
“Good answer,” Tom croaked.
Passerella extended a hand and helped him to his feet. “Thank you, sir. I hope I didn’t hurt you. I tried to go as easy on you as possible.”
Easy? Tom tunneled his fingers through his mussed hair and manufactured a smile. “I’m fine,” he managed to say past the humiliation clogging his throat.
“Good.” Sergeant Passerella gave him a quick, but sincere professional smile. “When do I meet my troops, sir?” She shrugged lightly and color stained her cute little cheeks. “Trainees,” she amended.
Still admiring the smile that did strange things to his insides, Tom forced himself to focus on her question. “The next group of kids won’t arrive for two weeks,” he told her distractedly. She had a hell of a smile for such a tiny thing.
A line of annoyance formed between those lovely eyes. “Two weeks?” she echoed.
“But we have a special session planned for the downtime,” he explained. “We’re conducting a trial weight loss and exercise program for Mrs. Suddath and eleven of her friends. It’s a special favor for the general. I couldn’t exactly turn him down,” Tom added when her expression fell.
There was no mistaking the parade of emotions that marched across Sergeant Passerella’s face. The metamorphosis ran the gamut: disbelief, outrage.
“Are you saying, sir, that I’ve been pulled from my regular military duty—official duty—to assist you in the operation of a fat farm?”
Tom thought about that for a moment. Surely there was a more politically correct way of putting it. No, he supposed there wasn’t. A smile teased his lips then. So, Sergeant Jane Passerella was just as surprised by her temporary assignment as he was by her tiny size.
He allowed himself a full grin. This was rich. The general had hoodwinked them both. “Consider it a service to your country, Sergeant Passerella,” he suggested in a purposefully patronizing tone. She looked daggers at him. “Of course, if you don’t feel like you can handle the assignment, I’m sure General Suddath can find a suitable replacement in no time at all.”
Their gazes locked, and something distinctly adversarial but vaguely sexual passed between them. Tom felt a completely unprofessional stir.
“I can handle anything you throw my way, Mr. Caldwell,” she countered evenly.
“In that case,” he surrendered, “welcome aboard, sergeant.”
He stuck out his hand. Slowly, warily, she accepted the offer. His fingers wrapped around her much smaller ones. He shook her hand once, then quickly released it, but not before a surge of electricity jolted him. This was not a good sign.
He shook off the feeling and nodded toward the group of cabins across the quadrangle. “You’ll find Reg in cabin one orienting our new guests. He’ll give you your cabin assignment and our official camp attire.”
“Camp attire?”
“We’re pretty relaxed around here, sergeant, your camouflage uniform would be a distraction,” he told her, complimenting himself for the quick thinking.
After a “yes, sir” and a snappy salute, one irate little sergeant strode out the door. Tom smiled. He couldn’t wait to see if Miss Jane Passerella was as cocky without her battle fatigues, sergeant’s stripes, and kick-ass combat boots. He had a feeling she would be.
Well, he considered, at least he had some help. He just hadn’t expected it to come in such a tiny, feminine form.
Time would tell if dynamite really did come in small packages.
He already knew first-hand that she packed as undeniable charge.
Chapter Two
“Miss…oh, sergeant…Yoohoo, Jane!” a breathless, feminine voice trilled.
Exasperated, Jane stopped and turned to face the group of retreat guests she’d been assigned to whip into shape for the next two weeks. Impossible. She groaned inwardly. No. She would not consider this an impossibility—it was merely a challenge. She was a highly trained soldier. She could forego food and sleep, walk for days without stopping and hit a silhouette’s upper mass three hundred meters away with a military-issue weapon. Jane had the bolo badge to prove it. And a drill sergeant’s patch to boot.
She could do this.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jane acknowledged as Mrs. Suddath, the general’s beloved—however hefty—wife, stumbled toward her. Think of it as a challenge, Jane reminded that part of her that wanted to doubt her ability to succeed in this mission. A Passerella never backed away from a challenge.
Mrs. Suddath fanned a tendril of salon-produced blond hair from her plump cheek with one crimson-nailed hand, then blew out a heavy breath. “Did you say we were going to walk two whole miles?” The southern belle smile on her ruby-red lips slipped a bit.
“That’s affirmative, ma’am.” Jane positioned her arms behind her back and assumed an at-ease position. As far as she could see, the only thing Mrs. Suddath had done regarding weight loss and physical training programs was avoid them like the plague.
Mrs. Suddath patted at the sweat dampening her flushed, cosmetic-embellished face. “Well, I’m just certain that we’ve walked that far already,” she suggested in a honeyed tone that no doubt garnered her anything she wanted from the general. “Why, I’ve never broken a sweat like this in my entire life. I’m not sure it’s healthy for a woman of my fragile nature.”
Jane wondered how it was possible to bat false lashes quite so rapidly. She manufactured a smile for the general’s wife. Mrs. Suddath was no doubt accustomed to acquiescence to her position as post commander’s wife, if not her practiced charm. Jane had no intention of bowing to either. “We’re almost halfway, ma’am.”
“Halfway?” another middle-aged matron wailed as she plopped down on a nearby tree stump. “I don’t think I can take another step.”
Murmuring rumbled through the ten remaining stragglers as they stalled, then dropped to the ground, the nearest tree stump or large rock. Jane stifled the sigh of defeat that rose in her throat. No way in hell would a group of big, beautiful members of the officers’ wives club cause her to fail in her assigned mission. She was a soldier. Failure was not an option.
“There’s a marker at the one-mile point. We’ll turn back there,” she explained.
Nobody moved.
Jane moistened her lips and swallowed back the first words that raced to the tip of her tongue. These women weren’t soldiers, and she had to tread lightly. She scanned the huffing, puffing clutch of couch potatoes and considered her options: Leave them, or motivate them into action.
Though the wayward thought was appealing, leaving them was out of the question.
Jane cleared her throat, and opted for another approach. “Well, I’m going to carry on. You ladies can catch up when you’ve rested suitably.” She turned to take a step, but paused as if belatedly remembering some significant point she’d forgotten to mention. “Just one thing, be sure to watch for lizards and snakes. They’re everywhere in these woods,” she warned before heading off down the trail.
If took about two seconds for the group to absorb the impact of her words. Jane smiled at the clamor of feminine shrieks and the shuffle of feet scrambling behind her. Nothing like a little extra motivation to shift goldbrickers into gear.
~*~
Tom had made a mistake.
One that he wouldn’t soon forget. The image of Jane Passerella wearing well-fitting gray sweatpants and a white camp T-shirt was permanently tattooed across his memory. All the adult sizes were too large and Reg’d had to give her a youth size. If Tom had left well enough alone, she would still be wearing her shapeless uniform.
But he’d had to go pushing the issue, and now he would pay the price. Tom had wanted the little sergeant to voluntarily go back to the post and have the general send him a big, burly male soldier for the position at Camp Serenity. Losing her official military uniform and combat boots hadn’t made her want to give up; nor had the dozen chattering ladies who were more interested in swapping recipes than listening to the PT coach’s instructions.
Nope. By all indications, Miss Jane Passerella was here to stay. The half-pint had a stubborn streak a mile wide. And, Tom admitted reluctantly, there was just something about all that determination that appealed to him on a very elemental level. Awareness spiraled inside him, making him restless.
She was so tiny. A smile lifted one corner of his mouth as he considered that petite, yet gorgeous body. And those eyes—Tom almost groaned—a man could get lost in those chocolaty depths. It wasn’t until he had seen her without her regulation cap that he noted her hair. Long, thick and shiny, neatly fashioned into a bun on her head. How he would love to see it tumbling over her proud shoulders. His imagination immediately conjured up the image of her naked with all that hair draping her slender body.
Whoa, boy! Tom yanked himself from his forbidden fantasy. No way was he going there. Sergeant—Miss Passerella was his coworker, not to mention U.S. Government property. He was lucky to have someone, even a slip of a female, taking part of the load off his shoulders. He couldn’t allow the adolescent impulses he was experiencing to screw this up. This was too important, way too important, for anything to get in the way.
Tom had to start thinking with his head, not his—
A loud call to attention interrupted his intense mental conversation with himself. He strode to the door of his office just in time to see a half-dozen or so ladies sprawled flat on their backs in the dirt. The other handful of retreat participants were holding each other up in a half-sitting-half-laying-down heap. The whole crew looked as if they were at death’s door.
“What the hell?” Tom bounded off the porch and across the quad. He paused a good distance from the group to see how Jane would handle what appeared to be an outright, exhausted mutiny. He didn’t envy her the challenge of getting the ladies back on their feet.
“We’ll need to do our cool-down exercise now, ladies,” Jane instructed in her firmest military tone.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Beulah Jackson, the largest of the group, replied listlessly. “If Elvis Presley himself stood right in front of me singing Love Me Tender, I couldn’t do it.”
“Cool-down is a crucial part of physical training,” Jane asserted. Her hands were on her slim hips, her feet wide apart. Irritation made her pretty face tense. “It’s not to be taken lightly.”
“You’re a harsh taskmaster, Sergeant Jane,” Crystal Winton, the youngest, stated matter-of-factly, as she struggled to her feet. She smoothed her brightly colored smock and surveyed her petered-out companions. “All right, suck it up, girls, we have to listen to Sergeant Jane. This is for our own good.”
Sandra Suddath was the next to get to her feet—by way of a redhead’s shoulders for support. If Tom remembered the names and faces correctly, the redhead was the wife of General Suddath’s aide-de-camp.
“Crystal’s right,” Sandra chided. “We’re here to get in shape.” She squared her sizeable shoulders and faced the inevitable. “Go easy on us, Sergeant Jane. We’re done-in after that grueling workout you put us through.”
Tom frowned. Grueling workout? The two-mile hike? He remembered clearly that the walk through the woods was the first item on the agenda. At the crack of dawn, Sergeant Efficient had provided him with a schedule of the day’s planned physical training. Tom didn’t know why, but he would prefer if Jane Passerella weren’t quite so good at her job.
While he watched, Jane led the women through a very simple cool-down routine. If she had been any easier on them, they would have been napping. Despite his earlier affirmation, Tom found himself watching the slow, supple movements of her body. Bend and stretch. From her slender neck to her defined ribcage, her body screamed femininity. Her delicate size only stirred his protective instincts. He could imagine gliding his hand over each perfect inch of her toned body. Her skin would feel like satin, her hair like spun silk. And those lips. Tom moistened his own. Her lips were full, lush, and looked dewy soft. How would they taste? Uniform or no, Jane was all woman and for the life of him, he couldn’t put her out of his mind.
A raucous round of catcalls and whistles jerked Tom from his second forbidden fantasy of the day—and it wasn’t even noon yet. Startled by his own reactions to Jane, he shook himself back to the here and now. The ladies called suggestive remarks and whistles as Reg strutted by. Tom couldn’t believe his eyes or his ears. With his chin jutting out and his shoulders thrown back, Reg ignored the group entirely. But Tom knew with a certainty that he would hear all about it later.
Boy, would he hear about it.
“Good morning, ladies,” Tom said, stepping forward and interrupting. He had promised Reg he would take care of this, and he would. Somehow.
Jane eyed Tom suspicious
ly as he approached, but the other ladies more than made up for her coldness. They gathered around him, patted his back and squeezed his arms, until they’d had their fill of a hands-on greeting.
“I see you all know Reg, our fashion consultant,” Tom announced the obvious.
The ladies whistled and cheered in answer. Jane still watched him warily, as if fearing he intended to invade her territory.
“Just so you know, ladies, Reg has a very lovely wife named Cynthia at home.”
A few jovial boos and hisses came from the now animated group who had apparently gotten their second wind. Maybe Reg should accompany them on their next scheduled physical activity.
“We’ll try and do better at behaving ourselves, won’t we, girls?” Sandra piped up, giving the vivacious group a conspiratorial wink. Sounds of agreement punctuated Mrs. Suddath’s words.
“Thank you, ladies. I know he’ll appreciate it.” Tom glanced at his watch. “In fact, your first image transformation class begins in less than one hour.” He smiled. “I’m sure you’re all looking forward to My True Colors with Reg.”
Their exhaustion totally forgotten, the lively ladies hurried, chattering and giggling, toward their respective cabins to prepare for their first session with Reg. Tom shook his head. What was it about guys like Reg that appealed so to the ladies? Was it his ability to bond so well with females or his extraordinary fashion sense? Tom looked down at his own not-in-vogue attire. Well, if that were the case, he was definitely a lost cause.
“I usually do my own dismissing.”
Tom looked up to find Jane striding toward him, irritation in every step. She halted, toe-to-toe and glared up at him. He opened his mouth to make a witty retort, but all rational thought evaporated when his gaze focused on the delicate freckles scattered across the bridge of her cute little nose. He had the sudden insane urge to kiss each and every one.
