Blogger Bundle Volume VIII: SBTB's Harlequins That Hooked You Read online

  Dare saw the look on Nickerson’s face and gave Andrea high marks for redirecting his attention.

  Andrea returned with a heaping plateful of home fries and scrambled eggs. Dare’s lips quirked in amusement, and he wondered how she stayed so lean if she ate like a football player.

  “Do you always eat like this?” he asked her.

  “Like what, sir?” She didn’t even look up, occupied with peppering her potatoes.

  “Never mind,” Dare said. “Just finish so I can get you safely dumped off at the BOQ with orders to stay in bed today.”

  “That’s really not necessary, sir,” she said coolly. Of course, she couldn’t see the purple rings under her eyes.

  “I don’t recall asking for your opinion on the subject, Captain.” Dare’s voice had suddenly taken on a note of command. It startled her; she’d never heard him use quite that tone before. He generally seemed to manage men with an easy style and didn’t have to bring authority to bear.

  “Sorry, sir,” she said promptly.

  Dare might have relented if Nickerson hadn’t been there. As it was, he left the colonel and the captain once again firmly in their places. There was one advantage to being Andrea’s CO, he thought ruefully. He could shut her up when he had a mind to.

  The morning of Christmas Eve, Andrea arrived at her desk to find a summons from the CBPO, the personnel office. Her heart quickened at once. That kind of summons usually meant only one thing: a new assignment. She indulged a few moments of speculation, thinking that there could be worse Christmas presents. It would get her away from Dare, who continued to have the most devastating affect on her tranquillity in spite of the fact that they had kept strictly to business since the night they had gone off the road. In fact, they hadn’t even discussed spending Christmas together, as he had once suggested, and she gathered he planned to spend the holiday in solitude, just as she did.

  She was grateful to him for letting the matter drop. Grateful and annoyed. On the one hand, a relationship with him was impossible, given the circumstances, and she was honest enough to admit to herself that if he’d pushed the matter, she would have given in eventually. On the other hand, she wished he had pushed it. In all honesty, while she might have hated herself for it afterward, she would have loved to be swept off her feet, pushed past the decisions and problems, and brought to a fulfillment she still could only imagine. He had begun to invade her dreams, had Alisdair MacLendon, and she was getting tired of waking in the morning with an ache in her heart and soul that made her want to weep.

  Dare. Even his name was a challenge, and she felt like a coward for not daring to meet it.

  Sighing, she grabbed her parka and headed for personnel. With her luck, they’d probably be sending her to Alaska. She hadn’t had a single warm assignment since joining this damn outfit.

  It was an assignment. The sergeant she spoke with handed her a stack of rosters with a laconic, “Merry Christmas, Captain. You’ve won an all-expense paid trip to Minot, North Dakota.”

  Andrea looked down at the inch-thick stack of orders. “Somebody must love me.”

  The sergeant grinned. “If it’s any consolation, ma’am, while the climate won’t improve, you’ll be in command of a larger squadron.”

  Andrea hardly knew whether to laugh or swear. She would be moving to the other end of the state to command the larger security squadron at Minot, but she’d have the same North Dakota winters to contend with, the same missile fields, the same problems. It hardly seemed worth the effort of moving her. Shrugging, she headed back to the Squadron HQ, telling herself that this was a big step up in her career. The climate didn’t matter.

  She walked back into the building and lifted the stack of papers as she passed the front desk. “I got orders,” she said. The cops at the desk grinned.

  “Where to, ma’am?” one of them asked.

  “You’ll never believe it.”

  “Hawaii?”

  She shook her head. “Minot.”

  Their roars of laughter followed her all the way down the corridor.

  Back in the privacy of her own office, however, she didn’t feel like laughing, and a step up in her career suddenly seemed relatively unimportant. In five weeks she would be leaving. In five weeks Dare MacLendon would be gone from her life. She’d told herself that nothing could ever have come of it, but that didn’t stop her from feeling cheated.

  Resting her elbows on the desk and steepling her hands, she pressed her fingers against her lips and closed her eyes. She felt—and no amount of internal argument dispelled the feeling—that she was about to lose an opportunity that came only once in a lifetime. But what could she do? Orders were orders.

  Twenty minutes later, Dare was on the phone. “You got orders?” he asked, hoping it wasn’t true.

  It never failed to amaze Andrea how fast gossip traveled. “Yes, sir. I’m leaving January thirtieth for Minot.”

  “Minot, huh.” Dare forced a laugh into his voice. “Luck of the draw, Captain. Just one of the wonders of GI life. You could say you’re so good at what you do that they just don’t want to waste you.”

  “I could also say somebody doesn’t like me.”

  “You could.” He could say the same about her departure, but he figured she was in no mood to hear it. He doubted very much that Minot was on anyone’s Dream Sheet of preferred assignments. He opted instead to tease her. “Next Christmas, I’ll send you a set of red long johns. Just don’t get caught in any ditches with any colonels.”

  A gleam came to Andrea’s hazy green eyes. “I don’t repeat my mistakes, Colonel.”

  The ensuing silence was so long that Andrea realized Dare hadn’t liked her teasing remark. Good Lord, did he think she was saying he was a mistake? That the little bit of human warmth they’d shared was a mistake? Her mind began to scramble for a way to explain herself while a mocking little voice said, What’s the matter, Burke? Isn’t that what you’ve been saying all along? That it’s one big mistake?

  It was Dare, however, who broke the silence. “I’ve got this problem,” he said. Quietly. Gravely.

  Andrea’s heart nearly stopped as she waited tensely. “Oh?”

  “I’ve got a Christmas tree to decorate tonight. Funny how I haven’t gotten around to it yet. And I have a bottle of B&B, but I hate to drink alone.” He sighed. “That’s the problem with giving twenty years of your life to your career. You wind up drinking alone.” With that, he hung up.

  And left Andrea to wonder if she had just been given an invitation.

  She struggled with that possibility for the rest of the day and right through dinner. Along about seven o’clock, it occurred to her that her orders had just set her free from a whole boatload of problems. Some of the other bachelors stopped by to invite her to come along to the Officers’ Club, but she turned them down, saying she had been invited to a friend’s home for the evening.

  Suddenly excited, she dug a seldom-worn royal blue jersey dress out of the closet, along with a pair of stiletto-heeled pumps. She even managed to find a little eyeshadow and mascara and a pale lipstick, left over from so long ago that she wasn’t sure they were still safe to use. It was only when she stood at the door, parka in hand, that she questioned the wisdom of what she was about to do.

  If she parked her car at Dare’s place, the entire squadron would know it. The patrolling cops would recognize it. She might as well take an ad out in the base newspaper. And it was too cold to walk over there dressed like this, with nothing between her legs and frostbite but a layer of nylon mesh.

  Sighing, she turned back, ready to relinquish the whole idea. And then she saw the telephone. Why not? said the daring voice that had carried her through the academy and into a career that was unusual for a woman. Why the heck not?

  She dialed Dare’s number and didn’t begin to get nervous until she heard his voice.

  “Hello?” he repeated when she didn’t immediately answer.

  She found her voice at last. “It’s Andrea,