Man Of Few Words (7 page)

“You shouldn’t.” He didn’t have to exaggerate that statement. “None of them ever lasted very long. I am, apparently, a difficult guy to deal with in the long term.”

“Since I’m thirty-one and not married, you could say the same thing about me.”

“Seems the perfect match to me.”

“Or the worst.” The scowl had returned.

Again, her lack of confidence surprised him. He scowled back at her before changing the subject. “Would you have gone with me? To California, I mean.”

“Yes. A thousand times, yes.” She breathed deeply. “My turn to pour it all out.” She covered her face with one hand. With a sigh she continued, “I had the transfer all lined up. I only had three semesters left to graduate. I could’ve done that in the time you were still training.”

He wanted to cry for the lost opportunity, the lost life of discovering each other and growing up with each other. Yet, his heart swelled to know that she’d wanted him back then as much as he’d wanted her. He gulped before asking the question that could make or break his day. “Will you give me a chance now?”

“I don’t know.”

His heart deflated. Why couldn’t she let the past go like he was trying to do? “Kirsten, this is a gift. We have a chance to try again. People don’t get that normally.”

“I know,” she huffed. “Without getting into it too much, because it’s all crazy thoughts and associations in my head, I’m pretty down on the whole moving around thing that you have to do in the military. I had to stop one career to move back here due to my dad’s cancer, and in one part, my father was totally correct. How can both of us do well in what we do? Mine means staying in one place to build a lab, and yours means going here and there. It doesn’t fit.”

“I’m staying put for three years. With the wars winding down, I’m not headed out on deployment any time soon. Hell, I may be downsized. Lots of changes are happening.” He grabbed her hand and stood in front of her, refusing to give up like he once did. “We were amazing once. Let’s try again.”

She looked at him and then her feet. When she lifted her head, a new determination filled her eyes. “Okay, but there’s a test.”

He’d do whatever it took to keep her in his life. As corny as it sounded to him when he said it to her earlier, he did consider this a gift. He had a chance to rectify a mistake. No test was too difficult for him to handle. “Bring it on. I can do it.”

“Oh, Duff, I’m not so sure. I come with some heavy baggage.”

He wouldn’t let her negative attitude deter him. No matter what Kirsten thought of him, he knew he could handle anything. Eleven years might have made her forget what made him special, but he’d show her. After that, she’d understand why he was worth a second chance.

Chapter Six

Kirsten took a deep breath before she got out of Duff’s car that he’d pulled into the driveway of her house. He’d eagerly accepted her challenge without knowing exactly what she proposed. All she’d said was that it required hands-on work and construction skills. What she didn’t tell him was the other person who would be involved.

Duff commented on the raised house her parents had bought five years before when her father decided to retire. “This is a nice house. All yours?”

“Yeah. Dad left it to me in the will he wrote after my mom died. Of course, he also left directions on how to sell it so that I could move to wherever I needed. You know my dad, career specialist.” Sarcasm seeped out.

“I guess he didn’t think you should stay here and be a professor.”

“I’ve never seen my father so spitting angry when I showed up with all my luggage to help him with the cancer treatments. He yelled at me off and on for an entire day.”

“Holy hell. Really?”

She dug her keys out of her purse and went around the back of the house since she the front steps were in bad shape. Duff needed to know he’d be helping install a new staircase, but she didn’t interrupt the story. “No exaggeration. He calmed down when I told him that I had a part time job and wouldn’t be losing any skills or knowledge. He remained an ungrateful sonofabitch until the last month of his life.”

“He didn’t like you seeing him weak.”

“Probably not. We didn’t discuss it.” She took the last few steps and frowned. The blinds were lowered, which meant that none of the sunshine had warmed the house. Boomer wouldn’t like that. “You sure about helping out with construction today? I shouldn’t have called it a test. It’s not. It’s just that I have to get things done on the weekends with so much of my time during the week being dedicated to the job.”

“Yeah. Did I mention that I work for food?”

“No, but I do have that in the house.” Before she pushed open the door, she said, “Let me call out in case Suzy isn’t dressed. She rents a room from me.” With her head poked inside, she yelled. “No answer. We’re safe.” As soon as she was inside, she raised the blinds and thanked her parents for installing the kind that were sandwiched between panes of glass. “Welcome to my home.”

“I’m embarrassed to live how I do. This is swanky.”

She grinned. The place was filled with leather furniture and decorated with art and items from all the places her father had been in his years in the service. On one wall, a large sculpture of a helicopter hung—a retirement gift. She knew she’d never move it, along with her father’s sword and flight helmet. It was as close to a shrine as anyone could get. “I can’t take credit for it.”

“Still. You didn’t dismantle it. Now, what did you need help doing?”

“Um, building all new steps out front. My dad’s b…”

Kirsten turned her head as a naked man backed into the room as he yelled down the hallway, “Just a quick snack, and I’ll be back to have more of you.” When he turned, she couldn’t keep her eyes from his aroused penis.

Duff wasn’t going to have any of this. He snarled and wished he had a voice like the drill sergeant that woke them every day during basic training. This student was a fucking lazy screw up, and he needed to show his woman some respect. He would not let him prance around his woman’s house buck-naked. He ignored that fact that Kirsten hadn’t exactly agreed to be his, but that wasn’t the point at the moment.

First things first. He grabbed her shoulders and tried to turn Kristen around. She didn’t comply. Knowing he had little to no control over her, he barked out orders. “Put clothes on right now, Marine, and report back here.”

The startled man saluted with a terse, “Yes, sir.” His penis flopped as he executed a perfect about face toward the guest bedrooms.

Kirsten giggled. “That was unexpected.”

His blood boiled, and even though he knew it was a slight bit of misplaced jealousy, he couldn’t control it. The man had disrupted his morning with Kirsten, and the day had seemed to be improving. “He’s going to get some shit for that. Yelling at your friend like he was in a barn.”

From the bewildered look on Kirsten’s face, she didn’t get his annoyance. In fact, she completely rejected it. “Relax. He could have been getting her one, too.”

Duff snarled. “Can we discuss this outside?”

“Now you don’t want to see him?” She planted her hands on her hips with fists. Not a good sign. “You told him to report back here.”

A snort escaped from his nose. He had to try better to control his anger. This had taken him offline, like he’d lost his hydraulics. Last time that happened, he ended up knocked out from a crash landing in Iraqi territory. That helped him focus, knowing he wasn’t in mortal danger. He didn’t need to worry about enemies. He was with friends. “It’s why I don’t want to talk about this in here.”

“Fine.” She rolled her eyes and headed out the back door.

The whoosh of the waves against the white, sandy shore soothed him a little. He’d just been thinking that she was the one waffling between choices, and here he was having misplaced anger. “I don’t like him. He’s the kind that causes fuck ups. Big ones.”

She shook her head. Her face screwed up into confusion. “What? So, this isn’t about him prancing naked around my house?”

“Yes and no.” He strode away from her, did an about face, and tried to explain without the jealousy part. “I know this one. He’s getting lazy in flight training. Thinks he can play around. He’ll be on a fast track to flunking out if he keeps it up, or if I find out he’s treating women like crap.”

“Johnathan Quinn Duffy, you sound like my father. You can’t tell this man what to do outside of his duties.”

Duff squared his shoulders. He had every right to tell the man to stay away from Kirsten’s house, and if that meant staying away from her roommate, so be it. A superior officer could give a lower rank shit whenever he wanted. He just usually didn’t, but this guy was intruding on his territory. “The hell I can’t. If he’s acting in a manner unbecoming of an officer, I can, and I will. How else will he learn?”

“You
didn’t
just say that. Tell me you didn’t say that.” She puffed out her chest and advanced on him. “You’d have no idea what he was doing in my house unless I asked you into it. So, unless you’d like to turn your ass right around, quit with the superiority thing.”

“I don’t want that punk near you. You’re mine.”

“Oh, no, you fucking don’t.” If he wanted her to pull out her tough side, she would damn well give it to him. “My house. My rules. I may still toss him out on his bare ass, but that’s my decision.”

“He’s my student.”

“Then teach him somewhere else.” Kirsten wanted to poke his chest, but she remembered her father motivating people to move with just his presence and words. She squared her shoulders and snarled. “I am not yours. You need to back off or go away.”

“Fine.” He took two steps backward, did an about face, and took the first riser down.

“Get back over here. We are not starting out like this.”

“You’ve got that correct. We certainly won’t with that little shit running around.” He pointed down the hallway. “Kirsten, you need to understand that I will not share living space with any of my students. Ever.”

“Well,” her response died in her throat. “Oh. Well, that bites the big one. Suzy’s been with Eric for a while now. I’m not going to suggest that she end it with him because of us.”

His throat bobbed as he swallowed. It looked like what he was about to say made him sick if she could tell that from his sudden paleness. “I have to be impartial, distant. It’s my job to make them the best goddamn helicopter pilots on Earth. I can’t be the tough instructor on base and buddy off of it. Until he’s gone—and he’ll go, because he has the attention span of a gnat—we are done. Call me when he leaves. We’ll see what happens then.” He took a few steps down the stairs and turned back to her. “I’m going to miss you.”

“Well, goddamnit, Duff.” That’s all she managed to say as he took the last flight of stairs to the ground.

Kirsten stared at the empty deck, amazed at his action. She sort of understood why he couldn’t be seen as having probable favorites. The anger? That she didn’t get. Her feet took her through the door and into the living room. Just when she thought she’d give Duff a real chance, he left. “Fuck that.”

Another male voice sounded from the hallway. “Lieutenant Groveman reporting, sir.”

Her shoulders slumped. This really had been a roller coaster of a day. “At ease, lieutenant. The major left.”

“Ma’am. Yes, ma’am.”

“And get out of the good Marine mode. I’ve had it up to here with you guys.” She dropped her purse on the kitchen counter. A tiny sliver of sadness pierced the skin of annoyance she had wrapped around her. Hadn’t Duff been the one saying he wanted to begin again? Why had he chosen now to have a burr up his ass?

Suzy, wrapped in a pink robe, patted the frowning lieutenant on the butt. “Might as well leave now, buddy. Mood’s shot to hell.”

“Yeah, I got to study anyway. I’m sure the major will can my ass if I make less than perfect on this next eval.”

Kirsten agreed. “You better study. He’s got his eye on you.”

Suzy waited until her guy was out of the house. “Oh my lord, Kirsten, what have you done? Eric looked more scared than a wildebeest in a lion’s den.”

“I was a bad girl, just like you’ve always wanted me to be. I had sex all night.”

“With Major Duffy? You had revenge sex? Way to freakin’ go, girl.”

Her shoulders slumped. Somehow she’d gone from wanting revenge sex and learning a secret from the past, to wanting to try again with Duff. Her head spun with the one-eighty she’d accomplished in her relationship goals. “Oh, Suzy. I’m not cut out for this.”

Her roommate rushed over to her. “Why? And, don’t you dare give in because it’s a little hard.”

“I don’t have time to explain, except I probably should.” She wouldn’t say it if she thought that her roommate had any serious plans for the younger Marine. “I can’t sugar coat it. Because you are bonking Eric, Duff won’t come around here, which means around me.”

Suzy wrinkled her nose. “Then, I guess it’s good that I gave him the send off.”

“You did?”

“In a way. I told him to leave me alone for a bit with the new semester starting. A student texted me that she saw me last night at the bar. That’s the beginning of disaster.” Suzy walked to the refrigerator and pulled out a soda.

“For her or you?”

“Both, but let’s not get into that. What’s the deal with Duff? Something for real?”

“Not now.” Besides the fact that she couldn’t answer that question, she had other demands on her. “Boomer will be here soon to help with the steps. I need a shower to get the sex off of me, because I’m sure he’ll smell it.”

Suzy sniffed. “Had to have been great, then. You have to keep him around for more of that.”

“I shouldn’t say it was the best sex I’ve had recently, because it’s the only sex I’ve had lately. But, it was. We’re gonna have to share a glass of wine.”

“Or a whole bottle!”

“Or a whole bottle, so I can tell you everything.”

“As long as you include if Boomer hits on you.”

“What?” Her voice rose higher that she thought possible. She’d met Boomer through her father, and although he was one the younger of the former naval or marine officers, she knew he didn’t think of her that way.