Ripped! (10 page)

“T
HE CALENDAR PROOFS
are ready for approval,” Val said, standing in the door of Eden’s office. “I’m overnighting them today. That gives the base commander a month to review them.”

Eden made a snap decision. “Cancel the FedEx. I’ll deliver them.” Enough was enough. She’d waited and waited and waited…and been absolutely miserable. If Mitch really didn’t want her, didn’t want to find a way to make them work, then let him say so. She’d replayed that last night in her head a thousand times. He hadn’t told her he loved her, but he hadn’t told her he didn’t, either. And what made her so good at her craft was her ability to read people. It wasn’t desperation or some crazy infatuation on her part—Mitch Dugan loved her. It was in his eyes, in his kiss, in the tender way he’d made love to her in her courtyard.

She’d sought solace in her work, her home, her life and all she’d found was that whatever she’d had before, whatever used to be enough for her, wasn’t near enough now. Not without him.

Val’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “You’re going to deliver them to the FedEx office? Why do that when they pick up here at the door?”

Feeling better than she had since Mitch Dugan had walked out of her life, Eden smiled at her confused assistant. “No. I’m delivering them to Fort Bragg. Can you book me a flight for tomorrow morning?”

A sly, knowing smile spread over Val’s face. “Ah. I see. Rental car? Return flight?”

“Rental car and just go with an open-ended ticket. What do I have scheduled for next week?”

“You’re in Boston Thursday and Friday but it could be rescheduled without a lot of hassle.”

“I’ll let you know.”

Eden felt a surge of panic and excitement. If she was going to Fort Bragg tomorrow, she had a lot to do today. She needed a haircut. Her nails. A wax job. If she was laying siege to Lieutenant Colonel Mitch Dugan, she was going in armed to the teeth.

M
ITCH GOT IN HIS
B
RONCO
. Suitcase? Check. Cell phone? Check. Airline ticket? Che—Dammit to hell. He’d left it on his desk.

He climbed out of the truck and headed back into the building, pronto. He’d been ready to leave when Hardwick had requested some last-minute bullshit paperwork and then he’d been in such a damn hurry, he’d left the ticket on the corner of his desk. Just the kind of thing he never did, but he was coming to realize that
when it came to matters involving Eden, his norm went out the window.

Traffic would be a bitch on a Friday afternoon and if he missed his flight…He rounded the corner and collided with another moving object. In a moment of extreme déjà vu, he found Eden sprawled at his feet in that pencil skirt and those sexy red heels. Or maybe he’d just slipped over the edge. He shook his head to clear it, but she was still there. He realized he was grinning like an idiot.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said, saying the only thing he could think of. Damn. Now he not only looked like an idiot, he sounded like an idiot.

“I don’t know, soldier, I’m pretty okay with meeting like this. You know what’s going to happen when you help me up, don’t you, Lieutenant Colonel?”

Not just no, but hell no. No more public kisses in the hallway.

“We’ll take that up in my office, Ms. Walters.”

Mercifully his office was the second door on the left. Before she could blink properly he had her on her feet, in his office and against the closed door. Then his mouth was on her—her lips, her neck, her shoulder. His fingers were in her hair and he wanted to absorb her into himself. It was that same rush he felt when he jumped, ripped the chord and engaged his chute, only better. A thousand times better.

“I was an idiot,” he said, in between kisses.

“You won’t get any argument from me.”

“A token protest would’ve been nice.”

“Sorry.” Ha! She was totally unrepentant. That was, however, one of the very things he loved about her. And speaking of…. “I love you.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Of course. But it’s nice to hear you say it. It’s about time you manned up.”

“Manned up?” He laughed. She’d never let him get the upper hand, at least not for long. And she was exactly what he wanted, what he needed. He sobered. “I love you, baby, but how are we going to make this work? I’ve turned this over a million times in my head. I can’t ask you to move here and I can’t give up the military. How do we make it work?”

He was turning it over to her. He was used to being in charge, calling the shots, but in this…he needed her insight, her unique way of viewing the world. His world. Her world. Hopefully,
their
world.

“It’s unorthodox. It’s different. And it’ll mean compromise.”

“I’m listening.”

“We split our time between New Orleans and wherever you’re stationed. We won’t always be together.”

“You mean six months on, six months off?”

“There you go with a schedule,” she said with a teasing smile. “No, not exactly. You can make up a schedule if you want to, but it isn’t necessary. Basically, you’ll spend part of your leave in New Orleans and I’ll
spend part of my non-travel time where you are. Like I said, we won’t always be together, but I’ll always be waiting for you, whether it’s here or there.”

Mitch took a minute to wrap his head around the notion. Military relationships…what the hell, who was he kidding, military marriages were unorthodox to begin with. There was a lot of time spent away from family. The only difference would be that she wouldn’t be cooling her heels in Fayetteville when he was away on assignment. “As long as you’re mine at the end of the day, I can’t see that anything else matters.”

Tears gathered in her eyes and clung to her lashes.

“Hey, that was supposed to be good news.”

She sniffled. “It is, you idiot.”

“I was coming for you,” he said.

“You were?”

“I was.” He moved away from her arms long enough to snag his airline ticket from his desk. “I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t have the answer, but I was coming for you, baby.”

“Oh, Mitch,” she said, melting against him, into him.

Once again, he felt that ripped sensation, only this time, he knew that a safe landing was only the beginning. He never, ever wanted to free-fall without her being there to catch him, to save him from the impact.

“I need you. I love you. Marry me.”

“Is that an order, Lieutenant Colonel?”

Her tone was playful but he sensed the deeper side
to her question. She needed to know their marriage wouldn’t be like the one her parents had, that he wouldn’t require her to subjugate her career—or herself—to him. “No, baby. There won’t be any orders issued between us.” Then remembering the games they played in the bedroom, he added, “Unless you want me to, of course.”

“Roger that, soldier.”

Wait!
Now that Mitch and Eden have finally decided to make a go of it, aren’t you wondering how Eli Murdoch and his wife, Tara, ended up so blissfully—and dare I say it, sickeningly—happy? Find out in our bonus read
, TRIPLE THREAT,
by Jennifer LaBrecque. Enjoy!

“W
HERE ARE YOU HEADED
?”
Captain Eli Murdoch asked, his duffel bag slung over his shoulder as he and another soldier crossed the parking lot at Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the U.S. Army’s paratrooper jump school.

“Anywhere but this hellhole,” Lieutenant Colonel Mitch Dugan said with a grin.

Mitch was full of shit. Eli and Mitch had met five years ago in basic training, fresh out of college, both ROTC guys, and struck up a friendship. After spending the last five years at different bases, they’d both made the decision to move into Special Forces and wound up at the same three-week jump school rotation.

Eli had embraced every minute of the challenge that was paratrooper training. Mitch hadn’t been one to shy away from the challenges, either.

“So, your folks already headed down to Florida?” Mitch said.

“Yeah, they drove down from Tennessee a couple of days ago so they could be here this morning, but they’re back on the road now. They’ll spend a week with my
sister and her triplets. Better them than me. Teresa’s kids are cute but they’re wild. Seriously, man, they could bring those hellions in for Special Ops training and they’d probably kick our asses.”

This morning, after three weeks of intense training, Eli and Mitch had earned their wings and become part of an elite fraternity, the Airborne. Eli’s folks had shown up at 0900 at the south end of Eubank Field on Airborne Walk to observe the final jumps, the graduation ceremony and the awarding of the coveted paratrooper wings. And then they’d promptly continued south.

His mother’s eyes had sparkled with unshed tears and a quiet pride when she’d hugged him. “Grandpa would be so proud of you. In fact, I think he’s watching and he’s proud right now,” she’d whispered.

Funny, but Eli had felt the same way—that the grandfather who’d regaled him with tales of serving on the European front in World War II and later in Korea and Vietnam was aware that today his grandson had taken one step closer to being a more effective soldier. A paratrooper. From the time he was a kid, Eli had known he was meant to serve and defend his country.

Not surprisingly, no one had shown up on Mitch’s behalf. From what Eli had seen over the years they’d been Regular Army together, Mitch’s family was a bunch of losers. Eli knew he was blessed with a close-knit, albeit small, family. No matter how far across the globe he was stationed, he always knew his folks and
his buddies who’d stayed in Jackson Flats, Tennessee, had his back. He’d always had a home base. Mitch, on the other hand, never elected to visit family on leave. Not once, ever. The guy was straight discipline, hardcore army all the way. Eli had invited Mitch to come home with him a couple of times for the holidays, but it soon became apparent that even though they were friends, Mitch wasn’t going to take him up on his offer.

Mitch laughed now at Eli’s assessment of his three nephews. “Mini-terrorists, eh?”

“You don’t even want to know,” Eli said.
Hellion
was a good term for them. His mother said they reminded her of him at that age. He grinned. “Are you taking leave?”

“Nope. I’m heading up to Bragg.” That didn’t surprise Eli, either. Special Forces training would continue at Fort Bragg, home of the 82nd Airborne and Special Operations Forces in North Carolina. There they’d become the crème de la crème—some of the most valuable soldiers in the military, Special Forces officers, experts in unilateral direct action operations and unconventional warfare. Eli had an affinity for languages. The weeks prior to jump school he’d completed an intense course in Farsi.

“Where are you heading?” Mitch asked.

“Back home for the weekend. Another one of my buddies is getting married. Poor bastard. I’ll stay at my folks’ place, even though they’re away right now.” His friends were dropping like flies now. This was number
four. And Eli had agreed to be a groomsman when said bastard, Greg Waddell, married Lisa Mosley. He and Greg had had a reputation in town for pulling some harmless but dumb-ass pranks when they were younger, like spray painting the town water tower one night. Eli had the leave time coming and it’d be cool to reconnect with some of the people from his severely misspent youth. It was kind of strange that while he’d spent the last several years traveling the globe, so many of the people he’d grown up with had stayed in Jackson Flats.

And
she
would be there. His gut clenched at the thought of Tara Swenson…her mouth, her hands, her soft, soft skin, her legs wrapped around his waist, her writhing beneath him, on top of him…This time he was definitely staying away. Twice had been two times too many. No more close encounters of the hot kind with her.

“You need a psych eval, man, if you’re spending your leave at some wedding.”

Eli shrugged, stopping at his pride and joy, his 2008 Shelby Mustang GT500KR, black with silver stripes and packing 500 horses in the engine. He popped the trunk. “They’re not bad and the parties afterward are usually kick-ass.”
That
was an understatement.

His first buddy had succumbed to matrimony five years ago. Eli had been fresh out of college and had just been handed down his commission. Yeah, he’d thought he was the man. The champagne had been endless and
the night had been hot. And what had started out as a casual romp had turned into something way, way more…so
not
what he wanted, needed or was looking for. He’d woken up the next morning, looked into Tara’s sea-green eyes and felt something inside him turn upside down.

And in keeping with his military strategic training, he’d taken the only viable course of action. Far better that a soldier retreat than surrender. So, he’d run like hell in the other direction.

And then, there was Christy and Matt’s wedding two years ago. Hell, they’d divorced before the ink was dry on the license. But Tara had been there. Neither one of them had planned to hook up, but dammit to hell he couldn’t keep his hands off her. Before the night was over, they were wearing out the sheets in a hotel thirty miles away.

His entire body tightened, quickened when he remembered the hottest sex he’d ever had. He’d almost called her after that night. Hell, he’d even put together an e-mail once and then deleted it. He was heading overseas and that didn’t make him much of a candidate for a relationship. It wasn’t fair to her. And besides, his career plans didn’t include any emotional commitments. He suspected Tara was the one woman who could derail those plans. So, they’d scorched the bed…and the carpet…and the shower…And, once again, he’d walked away.

He shook his head, trying to dislodge the memories.
Then he put his duffel bag in the trunk and slammed it closed.

Mitch frowned. “I tell you what. I’ll stick with the bar scene and leave the wedding deals to you.”

“How ’bout you recon the bars up at Bragg before I get there?”

Mitch strode over to his restored-to-mint-condition ’69 Ford Bronco. “Deal. Enjoy your wedding.”

“Will do.” He planned to have a helluva good time. And he was due a little R&R after busting his balls for his wings the last three weeks. After all, there were lots of fish in the sea. And this time, he’d make it a point to fish far, far away from where he might catch Tara.

Because come hell or high water, he was not sleeping with Tara Swenson again.