The Littlest Marine & The Oldest Living Married Virgin Read online

  “Well, then,” the colonel said softly. “If you won’t, you won’t. But I am disappointed, Donna.”

  Three

  “I do,” Donna said, and extended her left ring finger toward her new husband. The thin gold band felt surprisingly heavy on her hand.

  Shortest wedding ceremony on record, she thought numbly. Assembly line marriages, no waiting. The preacher kept talking, though to Donna, his words sounded like little more than a low hum of sound. She couldn’t believe she was actually doing this. Maybe she wasn’t, she thought desperately. Maybe this was all just a really bad dream.

  “I do,” Jack said from beside her. His voice rumbled along her spine, letting her know that this was no dream.

  The Reverend Thistle, a man whose frowsy white hair and long, sticklike body made him strangely resemble the weed he was named for, quietly closed his worn, leather Bible and said, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.” He beamed benevolently at First Sergeant Harris. “You may kiss the bride.”

  Donna looked up into his cold, expressionless eyes and wasn’t the slightest bit surprised to hear him say, “Thanks, I’ll pass.”

  Forcing a smile for the perplexed reverend, Donna made her way back up the aisle toward the puddle of sunshine outside. Go toward the light, she thought grimly. Except for her, when she reached that bright light, there would be no salvation. Just a short car ride back to the hotel in Laughlin, where her father waited.

  She glanced down at the ring on her finger again. There hadn’t been time to locate a jewelry store. The simple gold band had come straight from the Reverend Thistle’s collection of wedding rings for unprepared couples.

  Twenty-five dollars’ worth of gold plating, a silk flower bouquet, and the only witnesses to her wedding, the next couple in line.

  Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back determinedly. Her own father hadn’t given her away. Her bottom lip quivered and she bit down on it hard. He had already scheduled a golf game with the general. If he’d broken the date, he would have needed to explain. And explanations were one of the things they were trying to avoid.

  Donna stepped into the bright Vegas sun and immediately shielded her eyes with her hand. Even in November, the desert produced sunshine like nowhere else.

  Rummaging one-handed in her purse, she looked for her sunglasses while waiting for Jack to come out of the chapel. When she found them, she slipped them on, grateful for the dark lenses. Turning around, she glanced at the front of the Chapel of the Desert. Palm trees, fake brick and a do-it-yourself stained-glass window above the front doors.

  Well, this was a far cry from the wedding she had planned so meticulously four years ago. Then, she had reserved the church months ahead of time. She’d had six bridesmaids, two flower girls and a ring bearer. Not to mention a groom who had actually professed to love her.

  She scowled slightly at that last thought. All right, so it hadn’t been perfect.

  “Are you okay?” Jack asked as he stepped out of the chapel to join her on the walk.

  “Peachy,” she muttered darkly.

  “Yeah,” he said, shifting his gaze to stare at the crowds of gamblers already clogging the city sidewalks in their hot pursuit of instant riches. “It’s been a helluva day so far, huh?”

  He was still wearing the pale green polo shirt and faded jeans he’d put on a couple of hours ago. Hardly formal wear. But then, her simple blue cotton skirt and matching, short-sleeved sweater was hardly a cover picture for a bridal magazine.

  He pulled sunglasses out of his shirt pocket and stared at her from behind the safety of darkness. “You ready to head back?”

  “What?” she asked, and couldn’t seem to stop the sarcasm dripping off her tongue. “No reception?”

  One corner of his mouth lifted, then fell again. “Oh, we’ll get a reception,” he told her. “I’m just not sure what kind.”

  Ah, the perfect end to the perfect wedding, she thought, and grimly started after him as he headed for the car.

  Under the shade of an umbrella table on the deck overlooking the Colorado River, Jack took a good long look at his new wife.

  Wife.

  He just managed to hide a shudder.

  Even though this had been his idea, he still had a hard time dealing with the fact that he was actually married. To the colonel’s daughter, no less.

  Not that marrying into an officer’s family would get him anywhere careerwise. The U.S. Marine Corps was probably the last bastion of antinepotism in the free world. If anything, he’d probably be the butt of all kinds of jokes from his friends.

  Still, the deed was done now, and they’d just have to live with it. At least for a while. And that was what he wanted to talk to the “little woman” about.

  “This doesn’t have to be hard,” he said firmly, noticing that she winced at the tone of his voice.

  Rubbing her forehead with her fingertips, she said, “Do you have to speak so loudly?”

  “Still feeling the effects of that hangover?” he asked unnecessarily. Lord, he’d never seen a woman less suited to drinking. He’d be willing to bet that there were people on their deathbeds feeling better than she was right at the moment.

  “Yes,” she muttered. “Is there any more coffee?”

  He picked up the beige carafe from the center of the table and shook it. Nothing. “You drank it all.”

  “Get more,” she said desperately. “Please.”

  “No problem.” He looked up, caught the waitress’s eye and hefted the carafe. She nodded. Turning back to his blushing bride, he said, “It’s coming.”

  “Thank God.” She pushed her uneaten lunch away from her, set her elbows on the glass-topped table and cupped her face in her hands.

  Jack shook his head, leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankle. “You’re a lousy drunk,” he commented dryly.

  She lifted her head long enough to glare at him. “I probably just need practice.”

  “Don’t do this often?” he asked. Maybe it was a personal question. But they were married now, and he wanted to know if he’d saddled himself with a lush.

  Her voice muffled by her palms, she asked, “Why would anyone want to do this often?”

  That had always been his point of view, too. But there were plenty of folks more than willing to suffer the pain for the few hours of a pleasant buzz.

  “I can’t figure out that one myself,” he said, keeping his voice low enough to not be painful to her. “But lots of people do. What I want to know is, are you one of them?”

  Their waitress arrived, picked up the empty carafe and set a replenished one in its place. Donna sat up, reached for it, and poured herself what had to be her tenth cup of coffee.

  Cupping the mug between her palms, she looked at her new husband over the rim, inhaled the rich steam and said plainly, “No, First Sergeant. I don’t drink.” She took a sip, shuddered and qualified that statement by adding, “Usually.”

  “Glad to hear it,” he told her. “You don’t seem to have a talent for it.”

  “Now there’s an understatement.”

  He caught himself before he could actually smile. Damn it, he didn’t want to like her. He didn’t want to feel anything for her.

  “I think we should get a few things straight,” he said.

  “Shoot,” she muttered. “Please.”

  Jack swallowed another reluctant smile. “See, I didn’t plan on marrying you.”

  She snorted. “Well, duh.”

  He studied her for a long minute. “Are you always this sarcastic?”

  “Always,” she said after another sip. “But it’s a lot pithier when I’m in pain.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Probably safer.”

  Jack helplessly shook his head in admiration. Damn, he was going to have an uphill battle not getting real fond of her. Her chin-length black hair twisted in the breeze off the river. She wasn’t wearing her sunglasses, so h
e got a good look at those brown eyes he’d noticed right away last night. Even blurred by the glassy haze of alcohol, they’d been remarkable. Now, offset as they were by the bloodshot whites of her eyes, the liquid chocolate brown seemed to shimmer with depths he didn’t even want to consider. Delicate, black brows arched high on her forehead and her full lips were tight with the pain throbbing in her head.

  Damn, she looked good.

  “How old are you?” he asked suddenly.

  One of those delicate brows lifted high over her right eye. “Awfully personal for our first date, don’t you think?”

  “Since our first date was also our wedding, no, I don’t think so.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Point taken. All right, I’m twenty-eight.”

  His brain raced for a minute. “But the colonel’s only forty-five.”

  She smiled and gave him a wink that quickly became a wince. “That’s right. He really prefers it if people don’t do the math.”

  “But that would have made him only—”

  “Seventeen when I was born.”

  Jack whistled, low and long.

  “Before you ask,” she went on, her voice tight, “Mom was sixteen. Though the older I got, the younger my mother used to get, so it’s hard to be sure.”

  “Must have been hard on them,” he said more to himself than to her.

  “I’m sure it was,” she told him. “But selfishly speaking, I can’t really be sorry, can I?”

  “Suppose not.”

  “So,” she said, pulling in a deep breath. “You said you wanted to talk about something. I’m guessing it’s not about my parents and their rather embarrassing history.”

  “No, it’s not.” He cocked his head to look at her carefully. “You sure you’re up to this right now?”

  “Probably not,” she admitted. “But this is as good as it’s going to get for several hours.”

  “Okay…” He hesitated, suddenly unsure of just how to put this. “We got married for your father’s reputation’s sake, right?”

  “Do we have to go there again?”

  “No. What I want to talk about is the future, not what already happened.”

  “What future?”

  “Ours,” he said. “This marriage.”

  “Well,” she said as she leaned back cautiously in her chair, “I think you pretty much covered that back at the chapel.”

  “What?” Maybe she wasn’t feeling up to this conversation.

  “’You may kiss the bride,’” she intoned in a pretty good imitation of Reverend Thistle. “’Thanks,’” she mocked pointedly. “’I’ll pass.’”

  Now it was his turn to wince. Hell, he hadn’t meant anything by that. But what would have been the point of kissing her to seal a marriage they both knew was a fraud?

  “What’d you expect?” he asked.

  “Orange blossoms, organ music, crowds of people, my father,” she said with a sniff.

  Jack tensed. Here he’d been ready to like her and now she was going to cry on him.

  “Let’s not make this something it isn’t,” he said quickly, relieved when he saw her blink away the moisture in her eyes.

  “Don’t worry, Sergeant—”

  “First Ser—”

  “I know.” She cut him off. “Look, I didn’t want this any more than you did, okay? You’re safe. I’m not going to become the little wifey and follow you around the base like a lost puppy.”

  “That’s what I want to talk about,” he said. “Just exactly what we both expect from this marriage.”

  She lifted one hand to rub her temple. When she didn’t speak, Jack continued.

  “We’re married,” he said, sitting up and leaning toward her. “But it doesn’t have to stay that way.”

  Her hand dropped to her lap. She looked at him thoughtfully. “Go on,” she prompted.

  “If we play the part of a married couple for a few months, then quietly have a trial separation, no one will think anything of it.”

  “’Trial separation’?” she repeated.

  “Sure. Then after a couple more months, we get a divorce. We’re both free to do what we want to do.”

  “A divorce.” She managed to keep from shuddering. He made it all sound so cut and dried. But it wasn’t. At least not to her. Donna had always thought that once she was married, she’d stay married. But then, she’d always dreamed that she’d marry for love, too.

  “You have a problem with that?”

  “Call me dysfunctional,” she said with a shrug she hoped would hide the dismay rushing through her. “My parents’ divorce was a nightmare. I was only two years old, but I grew up listening to my mother complain about my father. I didn’t even really get to know him until I was almost thirteen.”

  “That’s different,” Jack said. He was sorry to hear about the colonel’s troubles, but that kind of thing wouldn’t affect Donna and him. If he was honest, he wasn’t a big supporter of easy divorces and broken marriages, either. But then, this wasn’t a real marriage, was it? “We won’t have kids to worry about upsetting.”

  “Not in three months,” she assured him. “I’m good, but even Super Woman would require at least nine.”

  He sighed heavily. “I meant that we wouldn’t be sleeping together, so there wouldn’t be any complications.”

  “Ah,” Donna said, carefully nodding as if her head was about to fall off. “A platonic marriage.”

  “Of course,” he said. Crossing his arms over his chest, he looked at her as if he was waiting for her to applaud.

  Well, isn’t this a wonderful turn of events? she thought.

  The oldest living virgin in the world had just become the oldest living married virgin.

  Four

  She forced another swallow of coffee down her throat. Why did things like this keep happening to her? She wasn’t a bad person. She didn’t go out of her way to hurt people. Heck, she even hated calling an exterminator to wipe out bug civilizations.

  And still she managed to screw up her life on a regular basis.

  Risking a still-bleary-eyed glance at her new husband, she could almost see what he was thinking. And it wasn’t flattering.

  “Fine, First Sergeant Harris,” she said softly. “Platonic, it is. Your virtue is safe with me.”

  One corner of his mouth tilted up slightly, then flattened out again. He’d done that move several times already that morning. Either she amused him greatly or he had a serious facial tic. It must be the latter, she thought. What he could find entertaining about a sexless marriage between strangers was completely beyond her.

  Then that tic flickered again.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked, despite the fact that his half smile was now gone.

  “Trust me, Princess,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything funny in all this.”

  “Then why’d you do it?”

  “Do it?”

  “Marry me.”

  His long fingers curled through the handle of his coffee cup. “For your father.”

  “I figured that much out for myself,” she said, suddenly exhausted with the morning’s activities. Getting married could really take a toll on a person.

  He nodded. “Let’s just say I owe the man.”

  “Enough to marry his daughter?” One eyebrow lifted. “Must be quite a debt.”

  “I think so.”

  Intrigued, and more curious than she cared to admit, even to herself, she stared at him for a long moment before asking, “I don’t suppose you’d care to share that information with me?”

  Again that corner of his mouth tilted up briefly. “No, I wouldn’t.”

  She tried a shrug and was immensely grateful when her head didn’t roll off her shoulders.

  “How about you?” he asked.

  “What about me?”

  “Why’d you agree to the wedding?”

  Now there was a loaded question. One she wasn’t prepared to discuss with a man she hardly knew, even if he was her husband. Old
embarrassing memories rose up in her mind and she deliberately pushed them all to the back of her still-foggy brain.

  “Let’s just say I owed him, too.”

  “No sharing?”

  A distinct twinkle shone at her from his gray eyes. The first sergeant? Teasing? “I think I’ll pass,” she said, not even realizing that she was throwing his earlier words back at him. The twinkle dissolved in a heartbeat.

  “Look, Donna,” he said, “for better or worse, we’re married.”

  “For richer or poorer,” she intoned solemnly. “In sickness and in health—”

  “At least for now,” he interrupted. “We may as well try to get along.”

  A romantic speech designed to bring flutters of happiness to any girl’s heart, she muttered to herself as she rubbed at that spot between her eyes again, hoping to ease the throbbing ache. Nothing.

  Squinting at him, she felt her stomach drop, as it did every time she rode a roller coaster. Ridiculous for a man’s face to have that effect on her. Especially when it wasn’t even a classically handsome face. Jack Harris was far too rugged and honed-looking to be called handsome. Attractive, sure, she supposed, in a rough-and-tumble sort of way. Her stomach pitched again and this time she ignored it.

  He did have a point.

  For the next few months at least, they would be married. Living together. So they wouldn’t be sleeping together. Was that really so important?

  Once again, she was on the roller coaster. The hangover, she told herself. It was just the hangover.

  All right, they wouldn’t be lovers. They would be friends. Or if not friends, noncombative opponents.

  Good Lord, she sounded as marine-oriented as her new husband.

  Taking a deep, steadying breath in the hopes of jumping off that stomach-lurching ride, she said, “Okay, First Sergeant—”

  “Jack,” he interrupted. “Call me Jack.”

  She nodded slowly. “Jack it is.” Inhaling sharply, she sucked in the still cool air off the river before extending her hand in a gesture of peace. As he took her hand in his and shook it, she heard herself ask, “So, husband, do you snore?”