Prince Charming in Dress Blues Read online

  “That’s what I always thought,” John said, shifting his gaze until he was looking right at her. “But lately I’ve been thinking that one of us owes it to the old man to do what he wants.”

  “Meaning you,” she said, instinctively knowing that John had already decided that he would be the brother to give up his dream for their father’s sake.

  He shrugged, but his eyes couldn’t quite carry off the nonchalant attitude. There were shadows there. Deep, dark shadows, and she knew he wasn’t at all pleased with the decision he was going to make. “Sam and Nick are married now. Starting families.”

  “Then wouldn’t one of them make the more logical choice to leave the Marines and settle down?”

  He laughed to himself at the notion of either one of his brothers as civilians. Not a chance. “No. They’ve already worked out the logistics of married life in the Corps. Their wives are with them on it. No sense in disrupting lots of lives when I’m by myself.”

  “Even if you’re miserable?” she asked, seeing the truth in his face, his eyes.

  “Hell, misery doesn’t last forever. Maybe once I figure out how to work the damn computer, it won’t be so bad running the show.”

  “Amazing,” she said, thoughts whirling through her mind. Her own family couldn’t be bothered to call and check on her. The last time she’d spoken to them, she’d been four months pregnant. Their disapproval of their unmarried, pregnant daughter had been palpable even on the phone lines, and they’d underlined that disapproval by not bothering to call her since.

  Yet here John was, with a family that wanted him. Needed him. And he was doing everything he could to avoid being involved.

  “I suppose you’d jump at the chance to run P3.”

  “You bet,” she said instantly. Then a moment later she asked, “I’ve always wondered. Why P3? How’d your father come up with that name?”

  “P for Paretti and the 3 for his sons.”

  “Ahh…”

  He nodded. “Masters at guilt, we Italians. Even when he was starting out, I guess he figured that naming the computer after us would bring us all in on it.”

  “And he was wrong.”

  “Up until now.”

  “So you’ve already made up your mind,” she said, watching his face. “You’re going to leave the Marine Corps.”

  “I haven’t decided yet for sure, but yeah.” His gaze shifted away from her, and he stared off into nothingness as if trying to imagine his life outside the Corps. “I just don’t see any other way around it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly, watching his face as he slowly turned back to look at her.

  He shrugged and gave her a smile that tugged at the edges of her heart, and Annie knew that this was a man who could easily shatter the best-laid defenses around a woman’s soul.

  “Hey,” he said, “we do what we have to do. You’ll work your butt off for Jordan.”

  “And you’ll sign your life away out of duty to your parents.”

  “It’s not like I’m going to be sent to the gulag,” he told her on a short laugh. “The company’s in Florida.”

  That’s not how it looked from where she was standing, but she didn’t have the right to say so, did she? They weren’t lovers. Heck, they weren’t even friends. Fate had thrown them together for a brief period of time, and that time was almost over.

  He lifted one hand, reached out to briefly cup her cheek. The shock of warmth splintered throughout her body, and Annie damn near sizzled with it. When his hand dropped to his side again, she drew in a long, ragged breath. Good heavens, what was she doing here? Why was she allowing her hormones to turn her into a drooling pool of want?

  She wasn’t looking for a man.

  She didn’t want a man.

  And maybe if she kept repeating that over and over again for the next ten years, her body might believe her.

  Seven

  “You don’t have to do this,” Annie said for the third time in the past fifteen minutes.

  “It’s no problem,” John told her. Head inside her car, busily strapping the new child seat into place, his voice came muffled, since he didn’t bother to turn toward her.

  “But you driving us home will leave your car here,” she pointed out, beginning to feel just a bit like a broken record. She’d already told him all of this and it didn’t seem to matter. He’d set his course and she had the distinct impression it would take a full battalion to make him change his mind.

  The roads were clear, and Annie was anxious to get home. Not so much because she missed her small, two-bedroom apartment. But because she really needed to get as far away as possible from a certain Marine. And his volunteering to drive her and the baby home wasn’t going to make that easy.

  “I’m perfectly fine,” she said, meaning every word, despite the twinge of discomfort that resulted from any too-quick movements. But she was doing nicely. All she needed was a few more weeks to get back into shape—and a little distance from John Paretti to get her hormones back under control.

  This time he did turn around. Those pale-blue eyes glittered and sent a shower of sparks dancing through her body. For heaven’s sake.

  Letting his gaze slide up and down her body in a slow, appreciative stare, he waited until he was looking directly into her eyes before saying, “I will admit you look good. Still, the baby’s not even a week old. I don’t want you driving down the mountain all alone. There may be spots in the road that haven’t been cleared yet.”

  “And your car?” she asked, surrendering to the inevitable. John wasn’t about to give in on this. She could see it in his eyes.

  “I’ll get Pete to drive me back up here to collect it.” He climbed out of her car, waved one hand at the new car seat he’d gone into town that morning to buy and said, “There. We’re all set.”

  All set. Now she had two car seats and one car. Ah, well, she couldn’t very well drive all the way home with the baby cradled in her arms.

  John reached out, laid one hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. And blast if she didn’t feel the imprint of each of his fingers—right through the fabric of her jacket, her shirt, her skin, all the way down to her bones. She wasn’t quite sure what to do about it, either. It felt so…good to feel good again.

  But the danger in that was all too clear to her. The last time she’d been led by her hormones and a heart that was too easily fooled, she’d been left alone and pregnant. Though she wouldn’t trade Jordan for anything in the world, she also didn’t want to make the same mistakes she had in the past. Oh, everyone made mistakes, she knew that. But at the very least she could make some new ones.

  No, it didn’t matter what she felt for John Paretti. And it didn’t matter that he’d treated her with more tenderness, more gentleness than she’d ever experienced before. These feelings weren’t real. None of them. They were based entirely on the unusual circumstance that had drawn John and her together in the first place. If he hadn’t been here, if he hadn’t delivered her baby, if they hadn’t been so much like a…family in the last few days, none of this would be happening.

  Family. The word shimmered in her mind like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. And for one brief moment she entertained the notion of how different her life might have been if only John had been her baby’s father. A heartbeat later, though, she let that thought go. Pointless to wonder. To speculate. The simple truth was, John Paretti wasn’t a part of her life. He was a part of a dream world that was now ending.

  The best thing for her to do was get back to reality and put this little idyll where it belonged: in a dark corner of her mind and heart where dreams were kept once you woke up.

  Her expression must have given her away because John bent his head and asked, “Hey, are you okay?”

  “Sure,” she said, much too quickly. He didn’t believe her. His eyes told her that. But then why should he, when she didn’t believe her, either? Still, she slipped out from beneath his hand and tried not to mourn the loss of his t
ouch. “I’m fine,” Annie said firmly, willing herself to be convincing. “Uh, why don’t I just go in and finish packing so we can get going?”

  Escaping, John thought. She might as well have had a neon sign hanging over her head flashing out the words, Back Off. So fine. He’d back off. For now. But damned if it was easy.

  “Yeah,” he said tightly, “go ahead.” His gaze followed her as she scuttled for the house, and the sound of the closing door seemed overly loud in the still air.

  Standing right beside her, he’d felt her withdraw. She was already pulling away from him. There was a sense of goodbye hanging in the air between them despite the fact that no one had actually said the word aloud.

  His chest tightened as he turned around and leaned against the car. Folding his arms over his chest, he crossed his feet at the ankles and stared at the cabin with enough intensity he should have been able to see through the log walls to the woman beyond. She was ignoring him. Getting ready to treat this past week as if it were nothing more than a temporary blip on her radar screen. Hell, she hadn’t even bothered to come up with a good lie. She hadn’t had to finish packing. She’d packed everything the night before. She was ready to leave and had been for hours. Apparently, he told himself, she was way more eager for their time together to be over than he was.

  And that fact didn’t come easy. John had spent most of his adult life avoiding any woman who looked as though she might be the “happily ever after” kind. Not that he had anything against marriage. It just had never felt right for him.

  Until recently, that is.

  Which only gave him one more thing to think about.

  How had one small woman, in the space of less than a week, slipped under his guard to wrap herself around his heart?

  Maybe she was doing the right thing, here, he told himself. Maybe it would be best for both of them—all three of them—if he and Annie slipped back into their old lives and forgot about what had happened up here. But how could they? he wondered an instant later. There was Jordan. A beautiful, tiny scrap of a miracle, as living proof that they’d shared something amazing here. That they’d connected in a way few people ever did.

  But it wasn’t just about that, he admitted silently, despite the cold ripple of caution that slid along his spine. It was much more. Even his dreams had been affected. When he closed his eyes now, he saw her eyes. Her smile. He heard her voice, her laugh. He saw her clumsy attempts at diapering. He felt the closeness that had sprung up between them.

  And he always woke up hungry.

  For her.

  Scowling to himself, he muttered a curse and pushed away from the car. Hell, he’d come up here hoping to come to a decision about his future. Instead he was more confused than ever. Only one thing was absolutely clear to him now: whether he remained a Marine or not, he wanted Annie in his life. Annie and her baby.

  And it was painfully clear to him that she didn’t feel the same way.

  A week later John stood on base, squinting into the morning sun and letting his gaze slide across the assembled MPs waiting for his orders. His mind wandered as he stared at those impassive faces, and he found himself not thinking about the current problem, but about Annie. He wondered what she was doing.

  If she was all right.

  If she missed him as much as he did her.

  God, he’d never lived through such a long week.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Paretti?”

  John blinked, looked to his left and saw Peter staring at him as if his head was on fire. “What?”

  Peter flicked his gaze toward the still-waiting men, then gave a half shrug. Lowering his voice, he reminded, “You wanted to tell the men about—”

  “Yeah!” John said, shaking his head in a futile attempt to dislodge thoughts of Annie and the baby. Good thing he wasn’t working with hand grenades today. “All right, listen up,” he said, his voice naturally falling into the everyday roar he reserved for shouting to the troops. “Colonel Castellana called.”

  Someone in the back groaned.

  “Shut up back there,” John shouted, then continued. “She’s at it again. She’s got the Colonel’s car, and he wants her stopped before she reaches the main gate.”

  “Can we shoot her?” someone else asked.

  One corner of his mouth twitched, but John didn’t let the smile take hold. Hell, he couldn’t blame the big mouth for asking. The Colonel’s oldest daughter was a trial. At sixteen, she had long red hair, big green eyes, a wild streak and a smile that could drop a man at fifty paces. She was forever snatching her father’s prized T-bird and taking it for a high-speed spin around base. Then it was left to the MPs to catch her, corner her and escort her back home.

  Teenage girls. It was enough to make a man seriously consider a vasectomy.

  But back to the subject at hand. “Only if she shoots first,” he said, then let his gaze shift across the young faces watching him. Hell, were corporals getting younger every year? Most of this bunch looked as though they should be playing football on a high school field.

  A car horn beeped, and every man assembled turned his head to the right in time to see Amy Castellana, in her daddy’s T-bird, lift one hand in a wave as she sped past, red hair flying like a bullfighter’s cape.

  “There she goes,” John yelled. “Catch her!”

  Ten men scrambled for their cars, and in seconds John and Peter were left standing in a cloud of dust kicked up by dozens of spinning tires.

  “That girl’s going to cost her father his next star if she isn’t careful.”

  John stared off after the convoy of white sedans chasing the T-bird and half chuckled to himself. “If the Colonel was interested in being a General, he’d find a way to lock her down.” He half turned to look at his friend. “I think he enjoys the girl’s spirit.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.” Peter shook his head. “Still, makes me want to rethink the whole ‘having a kid’ thing.”

  “At least they’re not born teenagers,” John said, remembering Jordan’s sweet face and tiny hands. How much had she changed? he wondered. A week was a long time to a baby.

  “You’ve got that look in your eye again.”

  Yanked out of his thoughts, John shot Pete a quick glare and muttered, “What look?”

  “The look you’ve had ever since you came back from the mountain.”

  Okay, he wasn’t going there. Not with Pete. Not now. “You’re nuts.”

  He turned and headed back toward his office, and Pete was just a step or two behind him.

  “I’m nuts, huh?” he said. “Then how come when you walk around base these last few days, you’re noticing all the babies in strollers?”

  John scowled to himself. “It’s my job to make sure people are safe on base.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He stopped dead, whirled around and gave Peter a glare that should have fried him. His friend didn’t look impressed. “Butt out, Pete. Leave it alone.”

  “Wish I could.”

  “Why the hell can’t you?”

  “Because Lisa’s driving me crazy.”

  “About what?” he shouted, throwing both hands high.

  “She wants to know what went on between you two when you were at the cabin.”

  John sighed, then reached up to tug the brim of his cover down lower over his eyes. “She knows what happened. I delivered Annie’s baby.”

  “She says there’s more.”

  “She’s wrong.” Of course, she wasn’t. But he couldn’t admit to that. He wasn’t about to give Lisa any more ammunition for speculation until he’d had time to start working on Annie. The plan had been to give her a couple of weeks to settle in with the baby. To miss him. But the plan was about to change. Mainly because he was missing her.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, and maybe it’s none of my business.” Peter gave him a long, level look. “But Annie’s a friend, John. And she’s had a rough time.”

  All right, this he understood. Lisa’s intui
tion and Annie’s wariness left him perplexed. Peter’s concern was something else, though. But it went against the grain that someone besides him was protecting Annie. Worse yet was that his friend wanted to protect Annie from John.

  “I know,” he said, trying to remember that Pete was only trying to look out for someone he cared about. “And I’m not interested in giving her any more grief.”

  “What are you interested in exactly?” Pete asked, studying him.

  “That’s between me and Annie,” John said tightly.

  And silently he told himself it was high time he threw his “plan” out the window and convinced Annie that he was the man for her.

  “She won’t stop crying,” Annie said, clutching the phone in an iron grip.

  “Maybe she’s hungry?” Lisa’s voice sounded as hesitant as Annie felt.

  Oh, this just wasn’t going well at all. She’d wanted to be a perfect mother, and she couldn’t even figure out how to stop her baby from crying.

  It had all seemed so easy that first week in the cabin with John. He’d helped in a quiet, unassuming way, and she’d hardly noticed her own shortcomings. But now that she was on her own, she had to face the facts. She just wasn’t cut out for this, she told herself. As much as she loved Jordan, she was just a lousy mommy.

  And her baby deserved better.

  “She’s not hungry,” she all but whined into the receiver as her gaze locked on the screaming infant lying in her little jumpy cradle. “She just ate a half hour ago.”

  “Gas?” Lisa asked.

  “I don’t know,” Annie said, and reached out with one hand to stroke Jordan’s tummy. The baby squirmed against her touch as if she sensed that Mommy was lost and there wouldn’t be any help coming from that quarter.

  “Well, maybe she just wants to cry,” her friend suggested.

  The blind leading the blind, Annie thought grimly. Lisa knew even less about children than she did. And for the first time in years Annie wished that she had normal parents. People she could turn to for answers. For comfort. For help, for Pete’s sake.

  Tucking the receiver between her ear and her shoulder, she picked Jordan up and cuddled her close. Maybe she’d get lucky, she thought. Maybe she’d stumble onto the answer to Jordan’s distress.