by Caro Carson
What a nightmare of a day. Except for the morning, up against the wall. The fact that he’d just killed all possibility of ever having another morning like that made a drink sound all the more necessary. Helen had beaten him to it, though, leaving for the pub and leaving him high and dry at home without a vehicle.
She won’t be drinking cranberry juice this time.
He wouldn’t, either, if he were in her place. He shoveled in another forkful of spaghetti, then he nearly choked on it. Helen. Drinking. She had no drink tolerance. She could black out again, and he’d made a vow. Every single week that I’m with you, I’m going to make sure that someone I cherish doesn’t black out anywhere unsafe or with anyone who might be unsafe.
It wasn’t February yet. He was with her this week.
He pulled out his phone and called the station. Colonel Reed was going to have a field day with him tomorrow, but Tom was going to take care of Helen tonight.
* * *
“Oops. Sorry. That seat is taken. My boyfriend’s going to be here in just a few minutes.”
Tom shook his head as he spied on Helen. She was sitting alone at a little table for two. She’d used that line twice already in the five minutes he’d been here, and the place was half-empty. It was Friday night, but Christmas was on Tuesday, so half the men of Fort Hood were out of town on leave. The other half...
“Oops. Sorry. My boyfriend is using that chair.”
The bored-looking cocktail waitress brought Helen a highball glass of something golden brown over ice. That wasn’t a single shot of cola on the rocks. His bride was drinking scotch—and every man in the place was keeping one eye on the woman in the low-cut pink top as she did.
Tom walked over and pulled out the empty chair.
“Oops. Sorry. My boyfriend...”
“Has arrived.”
“Tom.”
“Yes.”
“You are not my boyfriend.” She toasted him with her glass. “You’re my husband. You were never my boyfriend.”
“I was for about fourteen hours.”
She wagged one finger at him. “Nope. I don’t remember that. I just woke up with a husband. Bam. That’s kind of a lot to deal with first thing in the morning, don’t you think?”
It was. He hadn’t thought of it that way. He’d been so hurt she hadn’t stayed and listened to him, hadn’t stayed and tried to be a wife to a total stranger...damn. The last of that resentment he’d harbored against her for not even trying fizzled out.
“But you are indeed my husband, aren’t you? All the way until Valentine’s Day.” She tilted her head back and downed her drink. She used the glass to point at him. “Through Valentine’s Day. What are you going to get your wife for Valentine’s Day? I deserve chocolate before you divorce me. It better be a giant box of chocolate.”
“How many drinks have we had tonight?”
“We? I don’t know. How many have you had?”
“Zero.”
“Excellent.” She dug in her jacket pocket for her keys and slapped them on the table. “Here you go. Let’s see. Zero plus three makes three. We have had three drinks.”
“Impressive.” She hadn’t been here more than an hour. Three scotches in an hour? She hadn’t had that much in the fourteen hours before they’d married. They’d only had one drink after the wedding, on the house in the high roller room as they’d waited for the honeymoon suite to be ready. They’d waited impatiently, unimpressed by the gamblers who’d been betting ten thousand minimums per hand at the blackjack table. They’d had more exciting things to look at: each other.
But she didn’t remember that. At triple that drink rate, she wasn’t going to remember a thing tonight, either. With any luck, she’d forget meeting her miserable new in-laws this afternoon, too. It was a sure thing, however, that she had to be standing with him at Colonel Reed’s desk tomorrow morning.
He stood and offered her his hand. “Come on, Cinderella. Let me get you home before midnight.”
* * *
“Have a seat, both of you.”
Helen sat next to Tom. She only felt slightly green around the gills. A glass of water would be nice, though. Scotch always made her thirsty the morning after.
Tom kept giving her the strangest looks. He’d asked her how she felt at least three times. He’d asked her what time she’d left for the pub, how she’d gotten home—questions he knew the answers to. You drove me home, and don’t ask me that again. It’s getting annoying.
Colonel Reed looked between the two of them. “I don’t have to tell you why I’ve called you two in, do I?”
Tom was silent.
Helen took a stab at it. “Sir, it could be any of a variety of things. It’s been quite the month.”
“Wise guy, are you?”
“No, sir.” But she was being one. She had a terrible feeling in her chest and sitting next to Tom was only making it worse. She had lost him. He didn’t want to continue working on their emotional intimacy, and he’d stone-cold turned her down for any sexual intimacy. He’d sworn he would never take off her ring, that he would never divorce her, and he’d changed his mind about both.
She’d warned him. From the first morning in Vegas, she’d warned him that he’d be better off without her as a wife. There was something about her that made men unhappy to live with her, as he was proving once again.
She could do nothing about it. She couldn’t make her brain produce the memories Tom so desperately wanted, and he didn’t want her without them. Oh, yeah—and today, Russell’s damned furniture was going to arrive.
Tiptoeing close to that line of insubordination with Colonel Reed on a Saturday morning hardly seemed to matter. It should—her career was all she’d have left shortly—but it didn’t.
Tom took a stab at it, a better stab than she had. “Sir, I assume our names appeared on the police blotter this morning. Captain Pallas could not have done anything differently. It would have been foolish of her not to call 911 in the circumstances. She has no experience with General Cross and his ambushes. It’s on me. I should have predicted he was due for a little check-in with his son.”
“Tom. You aren’t responsible for your father’s behavior. You never were.”
Helen frowned. There it was again, that implication that Colonel Reed and the Cross family went way back. “May I ask a question, sir?”
“Shoot.”
Tom says that, too. He behaved more like Colonel Reed than his father.
She turned to Tom. “I should ask you this question. On the day I arrived, you had already told the brigade commander about Vegas, but you are a company commander. You report to the battalion commander. Why didn’t you tell your battalion commander? Why did you skip to my commander?”
“I’ve known Colonel Reed since I was nine. I didn’t know you were going to be in the brigade. I’d come in to talk to him because I...trust his advice. Usually. Until he forced you to live in my house.”
She wasn’t prepared for the insult. She gasped.
Tom lunged forward in his chair and put his hand on her thigh. “I didn’t mean it like that. That’s not an insult to you. I meant he had no right to make your life difficult and to deny you the right to live where you liked.”
She couldn’t doubt the sincerity on his face. She nodded, but she didn’t trust her voice.
Tom looked at Colonel Reed. “And it’s unfortunate that her name got dragged onto the police blotter today, because that will also make her life difficult, and it is also not her fault.”
Colonel Reed raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at Tom’s hand on her thigh. She hadn’t really noticed it until then. Tom touched her a lot, especially when they were seated close like this at the counselor’s office.
Colonel Reed waited until Tom removed his hand before speaking again. “I’m letting your insult to my judgment about hou
sing arrangements slide for the moment. Neither one of you are on the police blotter today. Between you, me and the watch commander, this meeting is a behind-chewing of epic proportions and a punishment far worse than having your names on a blotter, stoking the rumor mill. When you leave, try to look duly chastened and abject.”
Helen almost laughed in relief. “Yes, sir.”
“Go. Leave. And Merry Christmas.”
“Yes, sir.” She got up with alacrity. There was a water fountain in the hallway, and those scotches had not been kind.
“Before we go, sir, there’s something I need to discuss with you and Captain Pallas.”
Helen slowly sat down again. Couldn’t Tom save it for another day?
“On the day that she arrived, I told you she’d drunk to excess and blacked out. I didn’t say it that bluntly, but it is what I said. It was what I believed to be true, despite her claims to the contrary. I gave you cause to doubt her character before she’d had a chance to make a first impression, sir. Helen, I’m sorry.”
“What prompted this little moment of awareness?” the colonel asked.
“We went to the pub last night. She drank more than she did in Vegas, and as you can see, she’s hardly worse for wear. She told us she’d never had a problem drinking before, and I should have believed her.”
“I gave her the benefit of the doubt, Tom. It was you that I worried about. What kind of man would stand by and watch his bride get so inebriated that it was dangerous? I thought I raised you better than that.”
Helen would have been charmed at this big-brother relationship if she weren’t so offended that it had taken Tom this long to believe her. She’d had to drink last night to prove she didn’t drink. Or something like that.
“Here’s the real question,” she said. “Alcohol didn’t make me black out. What did?”
“You asked the counselor about that. Poor sleep. High stress.”
Helen waved that away. “Please. I’ve been in the army how many years? If no sleep and high stress made me lose whole days of memory, I’d still think I was a new second lieutenant.”
Colonel Reed laughed at that one. She was glad someone was amused.
“I must have been drugged,” she said quietly. “Think about it. A drug like roofies would do it.”
Nobody was amused.
“Roofies.” The word exploded into the room. “The date rape drug. You think I would roofie my own bride? That I would roofie any woman, any woman on the planet?”
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“Even if I was that depraved, I wouldn’t have needed roofies with you.” Tom stood. “Think about it, Helen. God, just yesterday—Why would roofies ever be—Do you really think roofies would ever be necessary—”
“I didn’t mean you drugged me. But someone did.”
“We had a bed of roses. Why in the hell would I arrange a bed of roses if I was just going to drug you unconscious?”
“Tom. Stop.” She bit her lip and turned to the colonel. “I’m sorry, sir. TMI. You didn’t need to know that.”
The colonel waved it off. “I’m going to assume that came standard with a honeymoon suite. Tom, she has a valid point here.”
Tom had assumed the position at ease, feet apart, hands clasped behind his back, but there was nothing relaxed about it. He was keeping himself from pacing in fury in the commander’s office. “It wasn’t roofies. That would have knocked her out. We were...awake until dawn.”
“Ecstasy, then. Maybe cocaine.” The colonel looked at her sharply. “Were you given a urine test for drug screening as part of in-processing?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. Write a letter stating the date you suspect you were drugged and the symptoms. I want it on my desk the day after Christmas. I’ll witness it and date it, and I will keep it on file for the next thirty days. If you get pulled for a random drug screen in that time and it does come up positive for who-knows-what, you’ll need that documentation. If you aren’t tested, I’ll destroy the document.”
“Thank you, sir.” Helen felt all her good fortune to be working for a man who took care of his personnel so well. She glanced at Tom. Or perhaps he was looking out for his younger brother’s bride.
As she looked at him, Tom’s color suddenly paled. “Absinthe.”
Helen felt a taste of remembered licorice, a green liqueur that swirled as it turned cloudy.
Tom sat down heavily. “Helen, you drank absinthe after the ceremony. Back at the hotel.”
The colonel shrugged. “Modern absinthe is just a liqueur. It’s illegal to sell the original absinthe, the kind that got everyone addicted and made them see green fairies. Since it’s been outlawed, I would bet real absinthe would cost hundreds of dollars a glass, like a designer street drug.”
“It did cost hundreds. We’re talking about Vegas. If someone pays a hundred dollars for an alcoholic beverage that’s supposed to give them a legendary kick, the bar probably adds a little boost to make sure they get their money’s worth.”
“Yes,” Colonel Reed said, “that sounds likely.”
Helen could feel the colonel looking at her, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Tom. She didn’t know what to say to him. His wife would know, but she did not. She could barely swallow, her mouth was so dry.
Tom scrubbed his face with his hands and broke the brief silence. “The high roller room. VIP. Those people were betting ten grand a hand. Cocaine, ecstasy. You think those were available for the right price?” He laughed without mirth. “Of course they were.”
He bent forward under the weight of it, forearms resting on his legs like he’d just carried a hundred-pound rucksack for a hundred miles. “I’m sorry, Helen. They put us in the high roller room and offered us a drink on the house while they were setting up the penthouse suite to my specifications. I had a century-old single malt. You had absinthe. You liked the crystal glass it came in. An antique, with gold accessories for the sugar cube and the water.”
Then he’d made sure his wife was given a crystal glass for her orange juice the next morning, because he knew she liked crystal.
Oh, Tom...you loved her.
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t swallow.
“They needed time to set up the rose petals.” Tom laughed again, a terrible sound. “If I hadn’t ordered rose petals, I would still have my wife.”
He missed her terribly. Grieved her absence. Helen wished that woman still existed, too.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, one more time. “I don’t remember.”
Chapter Fourteen
Fragile.
The word meant nothing. Every moving box she’d labeled Fragile had been haphazardly tossed off the moving van to form a sloppy pile in Tom’s garage. She and Tom had been in the spare bedroom, so they hadn’t seen it happening. Instead, they’d been disassembling the futon couch to make room for her queen-size bed. That bed. The one she’d shared with Russell, and he’d shared with other women.
It was just a bed, and she’d be glad to have a real mattress instead of a futon.
Tom kept looking at her with hungry eyes, because she looked like the woman he’d loved and lost. She felt the weight of it and escaped to the garage to turn the boxes right side up.
Then a car pulled up to the curb and parked behind the moving van, and her world turned sideways again. Russell Gannon got out of the car, and the smug look on his face sent her back in time. She was nothing, a poor excuse for a wife, lousy in bed, unwanted.
She turned around, ready to run into the house, but the door opened and Tom walked out. Now he would see the real her. She was not this paragon of a woman he’d married one night in Vegas. Russell would expose her for the mess she was, and he’d enjoy every minute of it.
She grabbed Tom by the arms. “I need you to be my husband. Please. That’s my ex, coming up the curb.
Don’t tell him we’re leaving the boxes packed until I move out. He’ll—he’ll laugh at me. I’ll give you what you want, Tom. I’ll wait until June, and I’ll do the filing. Please?”
Tom glanced over her head, but she wouldn’t turn around to watch Russell walking up Tom’s driveway. It just seemed so wrong for Russell to be here, like a bad dream where she had to take a test, but she had to write with a dead fish instead of a fountain pen.
She felt Tom’s biceps flex under her fingers as he raised his hands to cup her face. She clung to him, fingers digging in, although his kiss was gentle. Soothing. Then he licked her lower lip, and she opened her mouth, and the kiss went deep, fast and hard. They kissed like they were in the hallway—or like they were surrounded by gold and crystal and she couldn’t think of a reason to stop kissing him, because he was so sexy and she was safe with him, so she might as well pull him down with her to the hotel suite’s couch and push that towel out of the way.
Tom finished the kiss, but she needed to cling to him for balance for just another little moment. He looked over her head again, and this time, he smiled a kind of arrogant smile. She turned her head, and there was Russell, looking uncertain instead of smug as he stood just outside the open garage door. “H-Helen?”
She let go of Tom and turned all the way around, but Tom wrapped his arms around her from behind and kept her snug against his chest.
Russell recovered a bit. She recognized the set of his jaw. He was about to tell her what to do. “I just got here a couple of days ago and set up my new place. I went to the trouble of finding out where and when your household goods were being delivered, because I’m going to need a few things, after all.”
