Between Duty and Desire (8 page)

Brock was starting to think that the cure to his survivor guilt just might put him over the edge. She was so soft and feminine in his arms. He inhaled her scent as if it were a drug. After feeling dead for so long,
she made his every cell feel alive. He spent an inordinate amount of energy trying to ignore just how alive she made him feel. He had a mission. There were steps to take, goals to be accomplished.

“You need to make some friends,” he said, as they went for their run on the beach one cloudy morning.

“I probably should, but I’m not sure how. It’s not really one of those things you can do through a classified ad.”

“You could volunteer or join a club,” he suggested.

Callie made a face and slowed to a walk. “I already told you I’m not much of a joiner.”

He struggled with a ripple of frustration. “You may need to change that.”

“I don’t know. I don’t fit in with groups real well. I didn’t fit in with the military wives. They thought I was weird.” She shrugged and looked at him. “And I guess I am a little weird, but isn’t everyone?”

“Some are more weird than others,” he said dryly.

“Oh, thanks!” She swatted him playfully. “Just the encouragement I needed to go out among the rest of humanity.”

Brock laughed at her indignation then felt a few drops of rain on his shoulders. He looked up at the sky. “Oops. I think we’re gonna get caught.”

“And I’m not running the rest of the way back to my cottage,” she said.

Glancing around, he spotted a stand of trees. “C’mon, that looks like it will be better than nothing.”

The rain suddenly burst through the clouds and he
tugged her toward the trees. Water dampened her hair and face. She pulled at her T-shirt as it clung to her, then glanced at him. “This is your fault. If you hadn’t dragged me out here—”

“You’d be inside moping,” he finished for her.

She opened her mouth then closed it. “Maybe not. Maybe I would be working. I’ve been productive lately.”

“Good for you.”

“Probably thanks to you,” she said reluctantly.

“You’re welcome,” he said with mock sweetness.

She stuck out her tongue at him.

Pleased to see some fire in her exchanges with him, he shook his finger at her playfully. “Don’t stick out your tongue unless you plan to use it.”

“How should I use it?” she asked, with a sensual curiosity in her eyes that made him regret teasing her.

“That’s for you to figure out,” he muttered, irritated at how quickly she made his temperature rise.

He barely saw her coming when she lifted her mouth to his mouth and kissed him quickly. She drew back, looking as surprised at her action as he was.

He stared at her in disbelief. “Why’d you do that?”

“Because you dared me to do it,” she said defensively.

“I did not.”

“Yes, you did,” she argued, her cheeks heating. “You dared me to kiss you when you said something about using my tongue. If you didn’t like it, you’ll just have to get over it because you asked for it.”

The combination of her indignation, embarrassment and impulsive kiss set off a chain reaction inside him of gut-clenching want. The sensations inside him were a mixture of arousal and excruciating tenderness.

Instinctively reaching for her, he pulled her against him. “I didn’t ask for that kind of kiss, Callie,” he told her in a voice that sounded rough to his own ears.

“What kind of kiss did you ask for?”

He lowered his mouth and showed her. He rubbed his lips over hers, relishing the shape and texture of her mouth. Gently squeezing the nape of her neck, he coaxed her lips to a more accessible position.

He had the sensation of danger as he took her mouth. It should have made him more careful, but there was too much that had been pent up inside him for too long. He slid his tongue over her lips, then inside her mouth to taste her. Surprising the hell out of him, she pressed the front of her body flush against him as if she couldn’t get close enough. With each stroke of his tongue, he felt as if he were standing at the edge of a volcano ready to erupt.

She made a sound of need that affected him like an intimate touch, and went wild in his arms. Matching him caress for caress, she drew his tongue deep into her mouth the same way she would draw his hardness into her body. The knowledge made him sweat.

She squeezed his forearms with a sexy kind of desperation, then slipped her hands up under his tank top to touch his chest.

Brock felt his heart hammer in his chest. Swollen with need, he slid one of his hands down to her bottom, guiding her pelvis against the place where he ached. Feeling the tight tips of her breasts against his chest, he was filled with the need to touch her all over at once. He skimmed his hand over the edge of her breast and she turned toward him, clearly begging for more.

On fire, he wanted nothing more than to strip off her clothes and plunge inside her.

After one kiss.

She pulled away to gasp for air. “Oh, wow,” she whispered.

Oh, wow
was an understatement. A minuscule amount of oxygen seeped into his brain. He saw the dark arousal in her eyes, her lips were already swollen from their kiss.
He could take her now if he wanted,
the devil inside him said.
He could have Rob’s woman.

Marine Lingo Translation
Soup Sandwich: A mess. Not squared away.

H
e needed a beer. He needed to watch a ball game on a giant screen. He needed to get laid. Two out of three wasn’t bad, he thought, as he chugged his second cold one and sat on a stool at Smiley’s Bar. His Braves were having a tough time.

Hearing a chorus of feminine laughter, he glanced over his shoulder and saw the cute brunette giving him the eye again. He glanced away, thinking he could probably get something going with her if he was so inclined. He’d been walking around with a hard-on for the last two weeks. He should be inclined but, for some reason, he didn’t have the stom
ach for anonymous sex anymore. Brock wondered if his change in attitude was due to the explosion. More than his body had been affected by it.

Sighing, he took another swig and focused on the game.

“The Braves aren’t doing very well tonight, are they?” a feminine voice beside him said.

He glanced up to see the brunette who had been watching him all evening. “Yep. They can’t seem to pull it together tonight. Happens to most everyone once in a while.”

“I’m Candace McDonald,” she said, and extended her hand. “You looked lonely over here, so I thought I would come say hello.”

“Hi. I’m Brock,” he said, and glanced at the screen again.

“Are you new here?” she asked, sitting next to him.

“Kinda. I’m just here for a few weeks. What about you?”

She smiled. “Darn, I should have known. All the good ones are temporary. I live here full-time and trust me, there’s not much going on in the winter.”

He nodded. “I can see how that would happen. It gets cold and all the visitors go away.”

“And there’s my job. I teach kindergarten and most of my colleagues are female. Makes it tough for a girl to meet a guy.”

He looked at her again, this time from a different perspective. Maybe she could become a friend of Callie’s. “You haven’t been here long?”

“This is my first job out of college. I’m working this summer with an enrichment program.”

“Enrichment?” he echoed.

“We do art projects and introduction to foreign languages, elementary science experiments. That sort of thing.”

“Art,” he said, thinking of that old saying,
if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain.
“I know a woman, a local woman who draws art for children’s books.”

Her eyes widened with interest. “Really? I bet my kids would love for her to visit. You think she would be interested?”

“I think you should ask her,” he said. “She’s a little shy, but I bet she would say yes.” He thought for a moment. “You know, you might even invite her out to lunch sometime. Here’s her name and phone number,” he said, and wrote down Callie’s information on a paper napkin.

The young woman took the napkin and gave him a considering glance. “I wouldn’t mind having lunch with you, but I get the impression you’re otherwise engaged, or at least otherwise distracted.” She tapped her fingernail against the napkin and lifted her eye brow in a questioning way.

He almost denied it. He definitely wasn’t engaged, however he couldn’t honestly say he wasn’t distracted by Callie. “Give her a call. You’ll be glad you did.”

“Okay,” she said, taking another napkin and writing her name and phone number on it. “You give me a call if you change your mind.”

“Okay,” he said, accepting the napkin. But he knew he wouldn’t call her.

Brock came to the conclusion that the only way he was going to be able to keep his hands off of Callie was by helping her get a life and by helping her get a man. Although part of him vehemently rebelled at the notion of Callie being with another man, he knew that was what she needed. Sure, no man would ever be able to replace Rob, but another man could hold her, kiss her and cherish her. Another man could make love to her. The very thought of it made his blood pressure spike, but he believed it was necessary for her reentry into the land of the living.

Callie was an affectionate woman and she needed someone, besides a cat, on whom to pour all her affection.

After getting a look at her wardrobe of T-shirts, jeans and sweats, he faced another hard truth—Callie needed to go shopping for clothes, and he was going to have to accompany her.

Arming himself with the
Atlanta Constitution,
he picked her up on Wednesday afternoon and drove to a shopping mall about thirty miles away. He had told her he was taking her for a drive, not out to get a new wardrobe.

When he pulled into a parking space, she looked at him in confusion. “Why are we stopping?”

“We’re going shopping.”

“What do you need?”

His lips twitched. “I don’t need anything. You need some new clothes.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. You’re going to start participating in more activities than walking on the beach, feeding the cat and painting. You need a couple of dresses and some shirts that fit you instead of hanging off you.”

She frowned at him. “Are you criticizing my style?”

“Yes,” he said flatly, and opened the car door and got out.

“I didn’t bring any money,” she protested.

“That’s okay. You can use my credit card. If you dent it too much, then you can pay me back.” He opened her car door. “Your adventure awaits.”

With narrowed eyes, she glanced at the newspaper he’d tucked under his arm. “You think you’re just going to cruise through this with a newspaper while I do all the work?”

“They’ll be your clothes. You should do the work,” he told her.

She stood up and got in his face. “Uh-uh. You, Mr. Smarty-Pants, are going to have to shop, too. Yes, that four-letter word that men hate so much. You’re going to have to make suggestions and offer opinions. If I have to suffer through this, then you do, too.”

Brock quickly realized he’d unleashed a shopping she-devil. She dragged him with her to every women’s clothing store. Not content to let him find a seat in the food court so he could read the sports section, she consulted him on colors and styles, hem length, pants versus dresses.

“You’re an artist. You know a lot more about color and stuff like that than I do.”

“Well, you must have an opinion,” the shopping she-devil said. “Since you’re convinced I need a new wardrobe. Lingerie is next,” she said with an evil smile.

He groaned as he followed her into a shop filled with satin, silk and lace.

“What do you think of this?” she asked him, pointing to a black bra. “It’s supposed to do miraculous things for your breasts without surgery. I’m so small,” she complained.

“Small isn’t all bad,” he murmured, running his fingers over the satin cup, imagining taking the bra off of her and teasing her nipples into tight buds, wrapping his tongue around them and…His internal body temperature shot up several degrees.

“Which color do you like best?” she asked, holding up a black thong in one hand and a red thong in the other.

His throat tightened up when his mind easily produced the image of her tight little bottom in either of those scraps of satin. “Either,” he said hoarsely. “Both.”

“Okay. I’ll go try some of these on. You’re in luck,” she said, scooping up another couple of bras.

“How?” he asked, unable to see any vestige of good luck for him in this situation.

“You can read your newspaper now. I’m way too shy to model this stuff for you.”

He watched her leave and tried to decide if that meant he was lucky or not. He went outside the store and found a bench. Sitting down, he took out his paper and turned to the sports section. Was he really lucky because he wasn’t actually seeing her in the satin bras and thongs? His mind conjured an image of Callie wearing the black thong and black satin bra, her fiery hair in disarray and her lips painted red, but smudged from his kisses.

He could feel the silk of her skin beneath his fingertips, the taste of her tongue as he took her mouth again. He loved the way her hands felt on his bare skin, the feminine wanting she expressed with every little movement she made. The way she drew his tongue into her mouth made him think about how she would draw him deep into her body.

He wanted more. He wanted to caress her nipples. He wanted to taste them until she was wet and swollen with wanting between her thighs. He wanted to touch her in her secret places and make her bloom with so much need she trembled from it.

In some corner of his perception, Brock noticed the newspaper twitching. He glanced down at his hands clenched around the edges of the paper, crum
pling it. He was hard. He was sweating. Swearing under his breath, he shook his head to clear it. He hadn’t even seen her try on that lingerie, but he knew he would be tormented with his own images for a long, long time.

Two days later, he knew he was going to have to be firm with her. He decided to try yet another strategy to get past his strange feelings toward Callie. He’d decided to pretend she was his sister. “It’s Friday night,” Brock told her, expecting protests, excuses and reasons to procrastinate. “We’re going to a bar.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t really feel like going out tonight. Besides, I’m going to have to be social in another way. I got a call from some teacher at a local elementary school today and she asked me to come and help with a special program for her kindergarten class. I can’t figure out how she got my name.”

Good, he thought. The woman he’d met the other night had followed up.

“We started talking and she asked me to meet her for a drink sometime. So, see, it’s not necessary for me to go to a bar tonight.”

“You need practice,” he said. “You need practice interacting with adults.”

She shot him a look of disapproval. “That’s not very nice. My social skills are fine.”

“I wasn’t talking about your social skills. I’m talk
ing about social experience. You need practice. Can you tell me that isn’t true?”

“Well, maybe, but—”

“Face it, Callie. Most of your social experience is with Rob. You need to start getting some of your own experience.”

She sighed. “I was hoping you wouldn’t push for this so soon, but I had a very bad feeling about that shopping spree. Like payback was going to be hell.”

“Fair is fair,” he said, remembering how she had relished putting him through his paces during the shopping trip, too.

“I don’t know where any bars are,” she protested. “And I really need to spend some more time in the studio tonight and—”

“Excuses,” he said, shaking his head. “Procrastination. Get your butt into one of those new dresses, brush your hair and put on some of that war paint I bought for you and we’ll head out.”

Fifteen minutes later, Callie tottered into the room on a pair of stiletto heels and wearing a blue dress that faithfully followed her every curve. She bit her lush painted lips and Brock thought of a thousand reasons
not
to take her to a bar tonight. His goal was to get Callie out among adults and find a guy or two she could spend some time with. He was trying to help her find a man to dance with, maybe kiss, maybe more…

Regret burned in his gut. He didn’t want some other man pawing her. Clenching his jaw and suck
ing in a mind-clearing breath, he reminded himself that this wasn’t about what he wanted. It was about what Callie needed.

“Good job,” he said, forcing himself to use the same tone he would use when a PFC performed well.

“I shouldn’t have gotten these shoes. I’m going to break my neck,” she said.

“You’ll be fine. I imagine there will be at least a half-dozen guys willing to catch you if you fall.”

“And if there aren’t?”

“Then I will,” he promised, but part of him wondered who was really doing the falling.

He escorted her out the door, to his car and toward a dance bar down the beach. Glancing at her, he noticed she was clasping her hands together so tightly he wondered if she would draw blood.

“Nobody’s going to bite you—unless you want them to,” he told her.

She shot him a hostile look. “Thanks for the reassurance. I feel so much better.”

He shrugged and turned on the radio to help calm her nerves. “Approach it from a military point of view. What’s the worst case scenario?”

“Just one worst case scenario?” she asked. “I thought there were at least a dozen. I could trip over these heels and fall down in front of everyone.”

“We covered that one. Several someones will help you up.”

“It would still be embarrassing.”

“But you would live. If it bothered you that much,
you could go to a different bar where no one had seen you fall.”

“What if someone makes a move on me?” she asked in a tense voice.

“Before I answer that question, I need to know if you would want them to make a move or not.”

She glared at him. “Not, of course.”

“No of course about it, Callie. You’re single now.”

“I don’t feel single.”

“That’s because you haven’t gotten out enough.”

She sighed. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“If some guy makes a move on you, you can turn him down, or I can help,” he said.

“Then there’s the opposite end of the spectrum. What if nobody talks to me and I sit there all alone feeling like a dud?”

“Is it better to sit alone feeling like a dud at home?”

She gave an exaggerated nod. “It’s much better to feel like a dud in the privacy of my home. That way, I’m just lonely, not lonely and humiliated.”

Brock pulled into the gravel parking lot of the bar and rubbed his hand over his face. This could be more challenging than he’d predicted. “Tell you what, I’ll buy you a drink and talk to you for a half hour, then give the other guys some room.”

She frowned, but nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay, scoot.”

She wrinkled her brow in confusion. “What do you mean, scoot?”

“I mean go make your entrance.”

“By myself?”

“Of course. If you walk in with me, everyone will assume we’re together and that will defeat the purpose of this exercise.”