Marry Me, Major

by Merline Lovelace

  Ben wore his blue service dress uniform, his wings shiny and his ribbons marching all the way up to his shoulder. Alex had gone with the most conservative outfit she owned: black slacks topped by a short-sleeved, dove-gray jacket with tiny seed pearls trimming the pocket flaps and lapels. Maria was in her favorite pink shoes, dress and big, pouffy bow on her ponytail.

  With its packed schedule of cases involving divorce, parentage, custody and visitation, child support, domestic violence, adult adoption and kinship guardianship, the Family Court Division kept four judges, five hearing officers and three domestic violence special commissioners busy full-time. The hearing officer assigned to Maria’s adoption was already present in the courtroom, as were Paul Montoya and Eddie Musgrove’s court-appointed attorney. Dinah’s mom was there, too, to lend moral support. So were most of Alex’s crew from the shop.

  And filling at least five rows of seats were members of 58th, all in dress uniform! Colonel Rochambeaux led the pack, sitting front and center in the first row. Ben took their appearance in stride but Alex was so nervous she almost burst into tears of gratitude.

  It was her former roommate’s unexpected appearance, however, that started the waterworks. “Chelsea! I can’t believe you’re here!”

  “Ben called,” she said, as weepy as Alex. “He had a ticket waiting for me at the airport and said I’d be on his sh—Er...” she zinged a glance at the beaming Maria and made a quick course correction “...on his blacklist if I didn’t fly in at least for the hearing and the celebration afterward.”

  Maria wormed her way in and made it a three-way hug. “I’m so glad you came, Aunt Chelsea.”

  “Me, too, brat.”

  They didn’t have time for more. A warning from the clerk sent them to their table and they were barely seated before he issued a sonorous, “All rise!”

  Alex’s nemesis strode in and took his seat behind the bench. She knew from previous sessions that he was short and frail, with a faint tremor in his veined hands. But the power of the court imbued him with an intimidating authority as he nodded and the clerk kicked off the proceedings.

  “Special Family Court, Second Judicial District Court, Judge Samuel Hendricks presiding, is now in session. Take your seats, please.”

  Alex sank into her chair and surreptitiously swiped away the last of her tears before she locked her trembling hands in her lap. Without saying a word, Ben covered her fists with a warm, reassuring palm.

  Hendricks slid his glasses down his nose and observed the solid phalanx of blue in his courtroom. Then his glance slid to Alex. “I’ll admit I’ve had you jumping through a few hoops, Ms. Scott.”

  A few?

  “It’s Ms. Kincaid, your honor. This is my husband, Major Ben Kincaid.”

  The judge harrumphed and tipped his nose lower to peer over his glasses at Ben. For a frightened moment, Alex feared he would question their oh-so-convenient marriage. Just as quickly, she relaxed. He could question all he wanted. It was real. It was forever.

  Instead, the judge pinned her with a stern stare. “I hope you appreciate that I had only Maria’s best interests at heart.”

  She understood that, but sure didn’t appreciate it. She choked back the retort that she pitied the next single working woman who came before him and offered a properly respectful answer instead. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Hendricks’s glance shifted again, this time to Maria. His expression softened, making him appear almost human.

  “Looks like you’ve found a fine new mommy and daddy, missy. Are you ready for me to make it official?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Her answer rang out with such military precision that it raised chuckles from the attendees and a smile from the judge.

  “All right, then.”

  He signed the final decree with a flourish and handed it to the clerk. Then to Alex’s surprise, he reached under the bench and produced a stuffed pony with a glittering pink mane. Abandoning his seat, he came around the bench and presented it personally.

  “This is for you, missy. Now let’s get a picture of you and me with your mom and dad.”

  The court reporter took a couple of shots with them and the judge, then several more that included the hearing officer and Paul Montoya. After that, Ben wanted one with the rest of the attendees. The seats emptied and everyone crowded into a semicircle with the judge, Maria, Alex and Ben at the epicenter.

  “Wait!”

  With that imperious command, Maria darted back to the table and pawed through Alex’s purse. She returned a moment later with a green-framed collage.

  “This is for you, Daddy. I made it myself. With some help from Mommy and Caroline,” she amended with a quick smile for the chalk-faced, shadow-eyed young Goth.

  Alex wasn’t the only one sniffling when Ben went down on one knee to accept the jeweled montage and a kiss from his daughter.

  The celebration that followed at Chuck E. Cheese’s was raucous, joyous and the most viscerally satisfying three hours of Ben’s life. He’d thought he’d found a home in the air force. He knew he’d found brothers and sisters in Special Ops. Yet these two... This laughing, cinnamon-eyed beauty... This happy, squealing bundle of joy... They filled holes in his heart he’d never realized were there.

  * * *

  When he told Alex that—some hours later, after they’d dropped Chelsea off at the airport and tucked their exhausted but still hyperexcited daughter into bed—she went up on tiptoe and hooked her arms around his neck.

  “Who could’ve imagined one wild weekend in Vegas would lead to this?”

  “Colonel Dolan would be proud.”

  When she went blank, he laughed.

  “The Badger, sweetheart. The Badger.”

  He brushed her lips with his. Once. Twice.

  “Rumor is next year’s Bash will be in Phoenix. We should go...and get Chelsea to meet us. Dingo, too.” His hands slid from her hips to her waist to her breasts. “Who knows? Ole Dingo might get as lucky as I have.”

  * * * * *

  Look out for Merline Lovelace’s next book,

  THE CAPTAIN’S BABY BARGAIN,

  in July 2018!

  And for more great military love stories,

  try these other books in the

  AMERICAN HEROES miniseries:

  THE LIEUTENANTS’ ONLINE LOVE

  By Caro Carson

  SOLDIER, HANDYMAN, FAMILY MAN

  By Lynne Marshall

  A PROPOSAL FOR THE OFFICER

  By Christy Jefferies

  Available now wherever

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  HERONS LANDING,

  the first in an exciting new series from

  New York Times bestselling author

  JoAnn Ross and HQN Books!

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  Herons Landing

  by JoAnn Ross

  CHAPTER ONE

  SETH HARPER WAS spending a Sunday spring afternoon detailing his wife’s Rallye Red Honda Civic when he learned that she’d been killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan.

  Despite the Pacific Northwest’s reputation for unrelenting rain, the sun was shining so brightly that the Army notification officers—a man and a woman in dark blue uniforms and black shoes spit-shined to a mirror gloss—had been wearing shades. Or maybe, Seth considered, as they’d approached the driveway in what appeared to be slow motion, they would’ve worn them anyway. Like armor, providing emotional distance from the poor bastard whose life they were about to blow to smithereens.

  At the one survivor grief meeting he’d later attended (only to get his fretting mother off his back), he’d heard stories from other spouses who’d experienced a sudden, painful jolt of loss before their official notice. Seth hadn’t received any advance warning. Which was why, at first, the officers’ words had been an incomprehensible buzz in his ears. Like distant radio static.

  Zoe couldn’t be dead. His wife wasn’t a combat soldier. She was an Army surgical nurse, working in a heavily protected military base hospital, who’d be returning to civilian life in two weeks. Seth still had a bunch of stuff on his homecoming punch list to do. After buffing the wax off the Civic’s hood and shining up the chrome wheels, his next project was to paint the walls white in the nursery he’d added on to their Folk Victorian cottage for the baby they’d be making.

  She’d begun talking a lot about baby stuff early in her deployment. Although Seth was as clueless as the average guy about a woman’s mind, it didn’t take Dr. Phil to realize that she was using the plan to start a family as a touchstone. Something to hang on to during their separation.

  In hours of Skype calls between Honeymoon Harbor and Kabul, they’d discussed the pros and cons of the various names on a list that had grown longer each time they’d talked. While the names remained up in the air, she had decided that whatever their baby’s gender, the nursery should be a bright white to counter the Olympic Peninsula’s gray skies.

  She’d also sent him links that he’d dutifully followed to Pinterest pages showing bright crib bedding, mobiles and wooden name letters in primary crayon shades of blue, green, yellow and red. Even as Seth had lobbied for Seattle Seahawk navy and action green, he’d known that he’d end up giving his wife whatever she wanted.

  The same as he’d been doing since the day he fell head over heels in love with her back in middle school.

  Meanwhile, planning to get started on that baby making as soon as she got back to Honeymoon Harbor, he’d built the nursery as a welcome-home surprise.

  Then Zoe had arrived at Sea-Tac airport in a flag-draped casket.

  And two years after the worst day of his life, the room remained unpainted behind a closed door Seth had never opened since.

  Mannion’s Pub & Brewery was located on the street floor of a faded redbrick building next to Honeymoon Harbor’s ferry landing. The former salmon cannery had been one of many buildings constructed after the devastating 1893 fire that had swept along the waterfront, burning down the original wood buildings. One of Seth’s ancestors, Jacob Harper, had built the replacement in 1894 for the town’s mayor and pub owner, Finn Mannion. Despite the inability of Washington authorities to keep Canadian alcohol from flooding into the state, the pub had been shuttered during Prohibition in the 1930s, effectively putting the Mannions out of the pub business until Quinn Mannion had returned home from Seattle and hired Harper Construction to reclaim the abandoned space.

  Although the old Victorian seaport town wouldn’t swing into full tourist mode until Memorial Day, nearly every table was filled when Seth dropped in at the end of the day. He’d no sooner slid onto a stool at the end of the long wooden bar when Quinn, who’d been washing glasses in a sink, stuck a bottle of Shipwreck CDA in front of him.

  “Double cheddar bacon or stuffed blue cheese?” he asked.

  “Double cheddar bacon.” As he answered the question, it crossed Seth’s mind that his life—what little he had outside his work of restoring the town’s Victorian buildings constructed by an earlier generation of Harpers—had possibly slid downhill beyond routine to boringly predictable. “And don’t bother boxing it up. I’ll be eating it here,” he added.

  Quinn lifted a dark brow. “I didn’t see that coming.”

  Meaning that, by having dinner here at the pub six nights a week, the seventh being with Zoe’s parents—where they’d recount old memories, and look through scrapbooks of photos that continued to cause an ache deep in his heart—he’d undoubtedly landed in the predictable zone. So, what was wrong with that? Predictability was an underrated concept. By definition, it meant a lack of out-of-the-blue surprises that might destroy life as you knew it. Some people might like change. Seth was not one of them. Which was why he always ordered takeout with his first beer of the night.

  The second beer he drank at home with his burger and fries. While other guys in his position might have escaped reality by hitting the bottle, Seth always stuck to a limit of two bottles, beginning with that long, lonely dark night after burying his wife. Because, although he’d never had a problem with alcohol, he harbored a secret fear that if he gave in to the temptation to begin seriously drinking, he might never stop.

  The same way if he ever gave in to the anger, the unfairness of what the hell had happened, he’d have to patch a lot more walls in his house than he had those first few months after the notification officers’ arrival.

  There’d been times when he’d decided that someone in the Army had made a mistake. That Zoe hadn’t died at all. Maybe she’d been captured during a melee and no one knew enough to go out searching for her. Or perhaps she was lying in some other hospital bed, her face all bandaged, maybe with amnesia, or even in a coma, and some lab tech had mixed up blood samples with another soldier who’d died. That could happen, right?

  But as days slid into weeks, then weeks into months, he’d come to accept that his wife really was gone. Most of the time. Except when he’d see her, from behind, strolling down the street, window-shopping or walking onto the ferry, her dark curls blowing into a frothy tangle. He’d embarrassed himself a couple times by calling out her name. Now he never saw her at all. And worse yet, less and less in his memory. Zoe was fading away. Like that ghost who reputedly haunted Herons Landing, the old Victorian mansion up on the bluff overlooking the harbor.

  “I’m having dinner with Mom tonight.” And had been dreading it all the damn day. Fortunately, his dad hadn’t heard about it yet. But since news traveled at the speed of sound in Honeymoon Harbor, he undoubtedly soon would.

  “You sure you don’t want to wait to order until she gets here?”

  “She’s not eating here. It’s a command-performance dinner,” he said. “To have dinner with her and the guy who may be her new boyfriend. Instead of eating at her new apartment, she decided that it’d be better to meet on neutral ground.”

  “Meaning somewhere other than a brewpub owned and operated by a Mannion,” Quinn said. “Especially given the rumors that said new boyfriend just happens to be my uncle Mike.”

  “That does make the situation stickier.” Seth took a long pull on the Cascadian Dark Ale and wished it was something stronger.

  The feud between the Harpers and Mannions dated back to the early 1900s. After having experienced a boom during the end of the end of the nineteenth century, the once-bustling seaport town had fallen on hard times during a national financial
depression.

  Although the population declined drastically, those dreamers who’d remained were handed a stroke of luck in 1910 when the newlywed king and queen of Montacroix added the town to their honeymoon tour of America. The couple had learned of this lush green region from the king’s friend Theodore Roosevelt, who’d set aside national land for the Mount Olympus Monument.

  As a way of honoring the royals, and hoping that the national and European press following them across the country might bring more attention to the town, residents had voted nearly unanimously to change the name to Honeymoon Harbor. Seth’s ancestor Nathaniel Harper had been the lone holdout, creating acrimony on both sides that continued to linger among some but not all of the citizens. Quinn’s father, after all, was a Mannion, his mother a Harper. But Ben Harper, Seth’s father, tended to nurse his grudges. Even century-old ones that had nothing to do with him. Or at least hadn’t. Until lately.

  “And it gets worse,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  One of the things that made Quinn such a good bartender was that he listened a lot more than he talked. Which made Seth wonder how he’d managed to spend all those years as a big-bucks corporate lawyer in Seattle before returning home to open this pub and microbrewery.

  “The neutral location she chose is Leaf.”

  Quinn’s quick laugh caused two women who were drinking wine at a table looking out over the water to glance up with interest. Which wasn’t surprising. Quinn’s brother Wall Street wizard Gabe Mannion might be richer, New York City pro quarterback Burke Mannion flashier, and, last time he’d seen him, which had admittedly been a while, Marine-turned-LA-cop Aiden Mannion had still carried that bad-boy vibe that had gotten him in trouble a lot while they’d been growing up together. But Quinn’s superpower had always been the ability to draw the attention of females—from bald babies in strollers to blue-haired elderly women in walkers—without seeming to do a thing.