Marry Me, Major

by Merline Lovelace

  Thoroughly disgusted, Ben turned to the doc in the flight suit. “Sounds like I’ll be DNIF for a while.”

  “Sounds like. I’ll put you on bed rest for forty-eight hours, limited duty after that.”

  Alex was still trying to figure out what DNIF and limited duty meant when the surgeon addressed her again. “A nurse will provide you with post-op instructions, Ms. Kincaid, then we’ll send someone in to help your husband get dressed.”

  Taken by surprise, she blinked. “You’re letting him go home?”

  Which would’ve been a good thing, she thought with a gulp, except he didn’t have a home to go to. He’d moved out of his apartment. Put his things in storage. Hadn’t expected to return to New Mexico.

  “He’ll be fine,” the surgeon assured her, “as long as you make sure he follows the instructions.”

  “Good luck with that,” the flight doc added drily.

  When the curtain swished shut behind them, Ben apologized. “Sorry they pulled you out of bed for this.”

  “It’s okay. Although I have to admit the call shook me up. All the recording said was that there’d been an accident.” She couldn’t restrain a little shiver. “I didn’t know if you were alive or dead.”

  “Here’s your first lesson in military protocol. If I punch out, you won’t get a call. You’ll get an officer in dress uniform ringing your doorbell, usually accompanied by a chaplain.”

  “Thanks for the tip. If you don’t mind, though, that’s one visit I’d just as soon not experience.”

  Especially after the awful fears that had raced through her during the drive to the hospital. Not least of which was the grim possibility that she might be a widow before she’d really been a wife. That still churned a sick feeling in her stomach.

  A nurse in surgical scrubs rattled the curtain back at that point. “I hear you’re ready to hit the road, Major. I’ll run through the discharge instructions, then we’ll get you on your way.”

  Alex wasn’t sure when she decided to take care of Ben during his post-op period. Probably halfway between the “no driving or consumption of alcohol or nonprescription meds for twenty-four hours” and “no making important decisions or signing any legal papers for the next thirty-six.”

  Whenever it hit, the idea was set in stone by the time the nurse finished reading the instructions and handed them to Alex to sign as the “responsible party.” She signed where indicated and didn’t realize she’d scrawled her unmarried name until she was almost done. Hiding a grimace, she was prepared to explain that she’d decided to keep her maiden name for business reasons, but the nurse merely tore off a copy of the form and passed it to her with the prescription for pain meds that the surgeon had ordered.

  “And since you can’t get your flight suit on over that cast,” she told Ben, “we’re chasing down a set of scrubs that will fit you. Hang loose a few more moments.”

  When she left, Ben sent Alex a wry look. “This turned out to be a helluva wedding night. Mind giving me a lift to Transient Lodging Facility?”

  “You’re not going to the TLF. You’re coming home with me.”

  “Thanks, but I’m fine, Alex. I’ll just rack out at—”

  “You heard the instructions. No making important decisions for thirty-six hours. So I’m making this one for you.”

  “You’ve got enough on your plate taking care of Maria. You don’t need to play nursemaid to me.”

  “I helped take care of my sister, remember? She said I didn’t totally suck at playing nurse. So be a good major and follow orders.”

  “What about Maria? I thought we agreed to minimize the contact between her and me?”

  She was still fumbling for an answer to that when a med tech almost as tall as Ben and every bit as muscular rolled in a wheelchair. A set of blue scrubs were folded neatly on the seat.

  “Here you go, Major. I cut the pants off at the knees so they’ll go over the cast. Let’s get you into them and outta here.”

  “I can manage,” the patient protested.

  The tech ignored him, bent at the waist and held out the pants. “Right leg first. Now the left. Okay, ease off the bed. But don’t put any weight on that left foot, sir! Lean on your wife.”

  The hospital gown parted just enough to give Alex a bird’s-eye view of two really primo buns before she moved in and tucked a shoulder under Ben’s arm. He accepted her help and balanced on his good foot while the tech eased the cutoff pants up over his hips. Once the drawstring was tied, Ben shrugged out of the hospital gown and reached for the V-necked top the tech handed him.

  Alex’s view this time was of a hard, flat stomach and tanned skin stretched taut over ribs. She kept a steadying arm around his waist as he thrust his arms through the sleeves and pulled the top on over his head. His waist seemed leaner than she remembered from their weekend together but the muscles on his arms and upper chest looked just as strong and sleek. It took some effort but she banished the memory of those arms locked around her and helped Ben pivot on his good foot so he could drop into the wheelchair the tech had ready for him.

  “Hospital Supply will issue a set of crutches, Major. We can pick ’em up on the way out, then fill your prescription at the pharmacy. Ms. Kincaid, you want to drive your car around to the ER entrance? We’ll meet you there in about fifteen minutes.”

  * * *

  The morning rush hour was on its second round by the time they left the hospital and headed up San Pedro. The twenty thousand or so military and civilians who worked at Kirtland had pretty much flooded through the base’s multiple gates. Now it was mostly office workers and retailers preparing to open shops who crowded the city streets.

  Ben didn’t say much during the short drive. His foot was hurting like hell, for one thing. For another, he hated that he’d miss the deployment. Special Operations Command would have to tap another pilot on short notice to fill his slot, and it was just that kind of sudden disruption of plans and home life that wreaked havoc on so many military marriages.

  Then there was the matter of camping out at Alex’s place for a few days. Disrupting her plans and home life. That hadn’t been part of their bargain.

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” he said as she turned off San Pedro onto Lomas.

  “What isn’t a good idea? You having someone to check on you for the next forty-eight hours or me doing the checking?”

  “Both of the above. Maria has to be nervous about our quickie marriage.”

  “She is,” Alex admitted.

  “I was supposed to be gone. Not part of her life long enough for her to form any sort of attachment.”

  “So we just have to make sure she doesn’t form an attachment. I’ll tell her you’re sick. That she needs to stay out of your way and let you rest.”

  “I broke some bones, Alex. I didn’t contract typhus or yellow fever.”

  “She doesn’t have to know the details.”

  It was what he’d agreed to. Minimal contact. In and right out of their lives again. Yet the continuing deception was starting to rub Ben the wrong way. Bad enough that he and Alex had based their marriage on a lie. Now they had to add another layer of deceit. His jaw set, he finished the short ride in silence.

  The awkward transfer from her car to her bedroom didn’t improve his mood. He’d broken bones before. An arm as a kid, when he fell out of a tree. Two ribs during high altitude egress refresher training a couple years ago. He’d also compressed some disks at the base of his spine during a hard landing and narrowly missed losing an eye when the cockpit of his aircraft took rounds during a low, slow approach. You didn’t spend twelve years in Special Ops without sustaining the occasional bodily injury. This was his first time on crutches, though.

  He understood the physics. They were simple enough. Each of the two struts supported half his weight. When angled forward at least twenty-five to thirty
degrees, they distributed that weight and exerted enough friction force to keep the tips from slipping. Understanding the physics didn’t necessarily equate to putting them smoothly into practice.

  Navigating the terra-cotta tiled walkway from the drive to the front door required fierce concentration. The small step up to the front stoop almost landed him flat on his face. As a consequence, he was somewhat less than grateful when Alex guided him into the entry hall.

  “You should probably lie down.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You sure? You were up most of the night. And you still have anesthesia swimming in your system.”

  “I don’t need to lie down.”

  “Ben, be reasonable,” she said in the overly patient tone she probably employed with Maria. “The discharge instructions say you need to rest today.”

  “All right! I’ll stretch out on the sofa.”

  She steered him into the living room and settled him on the couch with cushions under his head and his injured leg. The crutches she propped close at hand. A few adjustments tilted the wooden shutters at the right angle to block the bright morning light.

  “I’ll get some water so you can take the pills the doc prescribed.”

  “I don’t need the pills.”

  Planting both fists on her hips, she studied him with an air of exaggerated patience. “Something tells me you don’t like being laid up.”

  “You’re right, I don’t.”

  “Tough. Get used to it, Major. For the next few days, anyway.”

  Ben’s scowl followed her as she disappeared into the kitchen. Yeah, okay. He could handle a few days. The nights were another story. What was he supposed to do? Just zone out here on the sofa while his bride curled up in bed just a few yards away?

  “Hell,” he muttered. “Just the way every man wants to spend his honeymoon.”

  That was his last cogent thought for a solid six hours.

  * * *

  The sun was slanting through the shutters at a sharp angle when he blinked awake and focused his blurry vision on a small round face. He recognized the dark hair and eyes but it took a moment to connect the patch on her white blouse with a school uniform.

  “Hi, Maria. You just get home?”

  “Uh-huh. Alex says you’re sick ’n’ I’m not supposed to bother you.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Outside talking to Dinah’s mom. Are you going to stay at our house now?”

  “For a couple days.”

  “On the couch?”

  “Maybe.”

  Her scowl clued him in to the idea that wasn’t the right answer. Her next words confirmed it.

  “Alex always lets me watch PBS after school. There’s a program on today about whales. I want to watch it.”

  “Okay, no problem.”

  He reached for the crutches propped against the arm of the sofa. The truth was he needed to hit the head in the worst way. The hacked-off legs of his scrub pants required some careful maneuvering but he managed to lever himself up without exposing any moving parts.

  “The TV’s all yours, kid.”

  Ben was no stranger to high stress environments. Employing his MC-130’s terrain-following and terrain-avoidance radars to infiltrate a hostile area of operations at 250 feet in adverse weather conditions required a cool head and a firm hand on the throttles. But damned if keeping his injured foot off the floor while thumping down the hall to the bathroom didn’t require almost as much concentration.

  His inability to master the crutches frustrated him. That, and the distinct possibility his injury would keep him off flying status for as long as three or four months. Still, he shouldn’t take his frustration out on Alex. Not when all she did was follow him into the bedroom and remind him that the discharge instructions didn’t include a shower.

  “You can’t risk getting the cast wet. And I should check the foot for redness or swelling now that you’re up.”

  “You ever hear of SERE?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “It stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. Fifteen days of unmitigated hell designed to give crews the skills to survive in any environment if their aircraft goes down. We learn everything from constructing shelters to surviving on grasshoppers to burrowing into snowbanks to basic surgical techniques.”

  “And your point is?”

  “I helped design the current curriculum, dammit. I know how to assess a wound for signs of infection.”

  “Well, excuse me.”

  Her indignation blunted some of his ire. “Sorry. I guess I’m just not used to feeling helpless.”

  “Could’ve fooled me.”

  “Again, I’m sorry. Look, why don’t I make it up to you by buying dinner? Delivery,” he amended quickly, thinking of their earlier conversation. “You order and I’ll eat here in the bedroom to refrain from contaminating Maria.”

  The sarcasm was unintended but raised a flush on her cheeks.

  “Just make my portion man-size,” Ben said to get past the awkward moment. “I’m starving.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Whatever. You decide while I hit the head.”

  She bit her lip, studying the bathroom door as it closed behind him, then let her glance drift to the wedding photo in its souvenir cardboard frame. She’d found a little artist’s easel to display it on and positioned it on the nightstand. Another prop, like the baseball bat in the corner, the ball cap and the underwear in the dresser drawer.

  Good Lord! Was it just yesterday morning that she’d cleared the drawer and some closet space for him? A day and a half since she’d zipped down to Vegas, married a man she knew only in the Biblical sense and introduced her fake husband into Maria’s orbit? Short hours ago she’d assumed the role of “responsible party” for said husband?

  A little stunned at how complicated her life had become in such a short, whirlwind stretch of hours, Alex retrieved an extra pillow and pillowcase from the linen closet in the hall. Ben would need it to prop his foot on tonight. Luckily, she’d changed the sheets on her bed while he was zoned out earlier that afternoon. Despite his tough, macho act, he was not spending the night on the sofa. It was okay for a nap but she wasn’t about to have him tossing and turning and possibly jamming his injured foot against the sofa arm as the last of the anesthesia wore off and pain kicked in.

  Speaking of which...

  She was waiting with his pain meds when he clumped awkwardly out of the bathroom. Not surprisingly, he nixed the meds again. She swallowed a sigh but knew better than to argue this time.

  He did, however, accept the offer of a thriller she’d finished a few days ago and had yet to return to the library. He also asked her to retrieve his cell phone from the bag with his belongings that they’d brought home from the hospital. A quick glance showed he had more than a dozen voice mails.

  “I need to return a few of these calls.” He nodded toward the alcove containing a pine plank workstation that served Alex as combination desk and artist’s table. “Mind if I use your desk?”

  “Of course not. Let me clear some space.”

  She shuffled together a half-dozen sketches and stacked several catalogs atop the files with invoices she hadn’t input into her computer yet. She left a pad out in case he needed to make notes and made sure the armadillo pencil holder Maria had given her for her birthday was close at hand.

  “I can boot up the computer if you need to access your email,” she offered as he clumped over to the desk.

  “I’ll check them on my phone. But you could give me the password for your network, if you don’t mind.”

  She waited until he was online. “Do you need anything else?”

  “No, this is good. Why don’t you go order supper? I’m—”

  “Starving. I know.” She did a quick mental rev
iew of the restaurants in the local area that offered delivery service. “How does Chinese sound?”

  “Great. Especially if they have Szechuan beef on the menu.”

  “If they don’t, what’s your backup?”

  “Lemon garlic shrimp.”

  The weirdness of their situation hit her yet again. She’d spent one wild weekend and one nowhere-near-as-wild day with this man. Yet here they were, talking Szechuan beef and garlic shrimp as if the choice of dinner entrées was the most important item on their agenda. Swallowing a small bubble of something that could’ve been either hysterical laughter or sheer disbelief, she left him sitting at her desk, checking his email.

  It was best this way, she reiterated to herself as she called in the order. Minimizing contact between Ben and Maria for the next few days would be difficult but necessary to ease the separation when it came. Still, she felt like a total fraud when she informed the girl that Ben was hurting and would take his dinner on a tray in the bedroom.

  Maria frowned but seemed to accept his absence from the dinner table. She even ate some of the green beans with cashews that Alex piled on her plate alongside the brown rice and pineapple pork. She dug in her heels, however, when Alex nixed her offer to let Ben share her fried ice cream.

  “He ordered a banana spring roll for dessert.”

  “They’re so small! And he’s so big.”

  Alex couldn’t argue with that.

  “Ben gave me an iPad,” Marie reminded her. “You always tell me that when someone gives me something, I should be polite ’n’ find a way to say thank you.”

  “That’s true. But...”

  The girl’s lower lip made an ominous appearance. “I want him to have my ice cream.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll take it to him.”

  “I’ll take it. That way he’ll know it comes from me.”

  “Maria...”

  Alex might as well have been talking to herself. The seven-year-old had already jumped out of her chair, grabbed her plate and scooted toward the hall.

  Chapter Five