Temporary Duty Read online

  I wasn’t certain, but I thought he growled.

  After that, Eric ignored me for a while. A couple of the other guys who were taking the strategic mobility course with us stopped by to say hello, all of us catching up from the last time we’d seen each other, comparing our current jobs and different assignments. I watched my roommate out of the corner of my eye; I could tell that each time another person opened the door and yelled hello, he tensed up more.

  Finally, when our room was crowded, with everyone talking at once, Eric stood up.

  “That’s it. Get out, all of you. It’s late, and I need peace and quiet.” He glared my way. “If you want to socialize, go do it somewhere else.”

  Jake, who was sitting on the end of my bed, shot me a meaningful look as he stood up. “Okay, then. Hey, why don’t we go down to my room? I’ve got a six pack, and we can turn on the game.”

  Everyone filtered out, the voices echoing in the hall. I sat down on my bed and reached for my laptop.

  “Hey, Braggs, you coming with?” Jake lingered in the doorway.

  I shook my head. “Nah. I’m just going to kick back and catch up on iZombie eps. You all have a good time.”

  He rolled his eyes toward Eric’s stiff back, which was facing us. “Yeah, you, too. See you at PT tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be there.” I glanced at the clock. It wasn’t quite seven yet, and here I was on my bed like an old man. I stifled a groan.

  “I hope you have headphones for the computer.” Eric’s words were clipped, and he didn’t look my way. “I’m turning off the light in an hour. I had a long trip today to get here from Texas, and I don’t feel like being up half the night.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Yeah, I have headphones.”

  “And you’ll need to turn it so that the light from the screen can’t be seen from my bed. I like to sleep on my right side, and the room must be completely dark.” He sounded so prim that I wanted to slug him in the face.

  “You know what?” I slammed the computer shut, tossing it to the other side of my mattress. “You can have the whole fucking room pitch black. I’m going out so I don’t interfere with your beauty sleep.”

  Grabbing a jacket, I shoved my feet back into my sneakers, yanking the laces tight. Across the room, Eric sniffed.

  “Make sure you have your key, because I’m not getting up to let you in once I’m asleep. And just what do you think you’re going to do, anyway? It’s Sunday night. Everything’s closed.”

  I picked up my keys, wallet and cell phone. “I’ll find something. But thanks for your concern. I really appreciate it.” When the spirit moved me, I could speak fluent sarcasm.

  I managed to make it down the steps and out into the parking lot without running into anyone, which was a good thing since I was now in a pissy mood. Climbing into the driver’s seat of my truck, I headed for the post exit, not really sure about where I was going.

  At the guard hut, where I had to slow down anyway, I leaned out my window and called to the corporal on duty. “Hey, is there a mall somewhere around here?”

  He nodded. “Yes, sir. If you make a right here, follow this highway for a couple of miles, and then take a left at the first traffic light. The mall is on that same road, about five miles on the right.”

  I nodded with a brief smile. “Thanks.”

  “Have a good night, sir.”

  The roads were dark, and I took them slow. I had nothing but time to kill. Rubbing the back of my neck, I let out a long breath. I’d been looking forward to this course for a while. Fort Davis was only about two hours northeast of Fort Lee, but it was closer to the ocean . . . and thus closer to the beach. It was true what people said: you could take the boy out of the ocean, but you couldn’t take the ocean out of the boy. After growing up on the sands of California beaches, I still had that need to at least see the water every once in a while.

  I’d driven up this afternoon, anticipating a little unofficial vacation. I knew I could handle the work involved with the strategic mobility training course, and during the off-hours, I’d have nothing but free, unstructured time. It was why most of us enjoyed TDY: a temporary duty station meant a break from the routine and the stress that came from commanding a company.

  Having Eric Muller as a roommate was going to put a crimp in that plan, but I was damned if I would let him ruin my time away, even if it meant I had to stay out of our room as much as possible. I had options, after all. There was this mall that I was turning the truck into now. True, it was on the small side, and the parking lot was pretty barren. The stores I could see weren’t familiar to me. But it probably had to have a food court, didn’t it? And of course, there was the tattoo place Jake had mentioned. Not that I wanted ink, but I could check it out to waste some time.

  The mall, like its parking lot, was almost empty, with only a few shoppers wandering past stores, window shopping or munching on crap from the food court. None of it looked good to me until I spotted a kid with a foot-long hot dog, and then that hot dog was all I could think about.

  Following my nose, I made my way past the card store, the sunglass cart and the lingerie shop—though I’ll admit my eyes did sneak a few peeks at the stuff on the mannequins in that window. The shit that chicks wore to be sexy was an endless source of fascination for me. Bras, for instance. They were a mystery I hadn’t yet solved. Racer back, push-up, strapless, T-shirt, enhanced, full-figure support—what did it all mean? Sometimes—scratch that; all of the time—I was grateful to be a guy. All I had to worry about was stepping into my boxer briefs each morning and kicking them off every night.

  Two teenagers were working at the Weiner Hut when I stopped to order my food. The one manning the register looked bored to death, and who could blame him? The place was dead. He barely acknowledged my existence beyond mumbling the total I owed for my dog, fries and drink. The other employee was a girl with a high ponytail and a quick smile. I caught her staring at me with open admiration, and I shot her a little wink before I strolled away with my food. She was jail bait, for sure, and I didn’t want any part of that, but it never hurt to be friendly.

  Once at the small table, I made short work of the hotdog and fries. Usually, I’d have sat back and people-watched for a little while, but there just weren’t enough folks to do that tonight. So, after I piled all the trash on my tray and deposited it in the bin, I began to head back toward the exit, retracing my steps. The evening was a bust. There wasn’t anything for me to do but to drive my bored ass back to post and maybe watch something on my laptop, under the blanket, while wearing my earphones, if that didn’t bother his majesty my roommate.

  And then I realized that I was walking by a bookstore. Score! Somehow, I’d missed it on the way in, but there it was: a little piece of nirvana, just waiting for me to wander in and find something to read. I knew at least two of my favorite authors had new releases this month, and I hadn’t had time to pick them up yet. This was the perfect opportunity to catch up on those books and amuse myself, since I didn’t always have a lot of time to read.

  Like the rest of the mall, the place was deserted. I strolled down the aisle until I hit the mystery area, where I got lost in checking out a bunch of different possibilities for tonight. Looking for the right book was kind of like searching for the perfect chick, I mused. Sometimes the covers were all pretty and promising, but then you opened it up and realized it was a dud.

  I was chuckling at my own humor when I caught movement from the corner of my eye. A woman was standing with her back to me, facing the personal growth section. She was tall and thin, with blonde hair that reached nearly to her very fine ass. As I watched, she reached back to lift the strands away from her neck, and a very clear memory screamed across my mind. I saw that same hand brushing that same hair over that same shoulder as she straddled me. Her small, perfect tits bounced slightly and her neck arched, her mouth forming an O as she ground her pussy against me, and my cock was buried deep into her sweet heat—

  Holy shit. Fo
r a minute I couldn’t breathe, and I wasn’t sure if it was the arousal from that memory flash—‘cause yeah, there was arousal in spades, baby—or surprise as I realized that I knew this girl. I’d met her a while back, when I’d driven up from Fort Lee to Richmond to see my friend Cassie. Cassie had been in town visiting from California, and the woman who now tilted her head as she continued to peruse the shelves had been her . . . roommate from college. That was it, wasn’t it? We’d all met up in a bar, but after I’d dragged my ass the whole way up to see my old friend, Cassie had blown me off to hang out with her sorority sisters from college. So instead of talking old times with Cass, I’d gone home with her former roommate, whose name was . . . God. What was it? I should’ve remembered it, because I sure as hell remembered what had happened once we’d gotten to where she lived.

  We’d gone back to her tiny apartment, and she’d made me dinner . . . we talked non-stop, sharing stories and experiences, and then I’d fucked her so many times, we’d both lost count. Against her bedroom door the minute it was closed behind us. In her bed. Next to her bed. I’d gone down on her while she had writhed on her kitchen counter when we’d paused for a snack. She’d ridden me until I’d gone hoarse, calling out her name. Which was . . .

  “Leah.”

  I didn’t realize I’d spoken it out loud until she turned her head. Those bewitching green eyes I remembered so well went round, and I wasn’t sure if she was more startled that someone was standing behind her at all, or that the someone was me, in particular. Shit, maybe she didn’t recognize me. Maybe I was just one of her many conquests, which would explain why she was looking at me with such a weird expression on her face just now. She probably didn’t remember my name at all—

  “Kade.”

  The relief that flooded through me was only because I was glad that I didn’t look like a loser for remembering someone who’d long forgotten me. Nothing else. Only that.

  “Yeah.” I took a step toward her, stopping when her face filled with panic. “Uh, good to see you again. I can’t believe I ran into you here. How’ve you been?”

  She still didn’t turn around, which I thought was kind of odd. And when she spoke, her voice was guarded. “What are you doing here?”

  I slid my free hand into the front pocket of my jeans. “I’m here at Fort Davis on TDY—uh, temporary duty. I’m taking a six-week-long class. And I’m here in this mall because I was bored, and my roommate in the barracks is a little bit of an asshole. And I’m here in this bookstore because I needed something to read before I have to go back and deal with the asshole.” I spread out my hands. “So that’s my story.”

  Leah nodded, and her shoulders seemed to slump a little. “Okay, well . . . sorry about your roommate. I hope it works out. Good to see you.” She faced the shelves again, her back stiff. I got the sense that she was willing me to walk away.

  “Hey, do you want to grab some coffee or something with me? I’ve got nothing but time right now, and if you have, say, half an hour free, we could catch up.” I shifted the three books I was holding to my other arm. “There’s got to be someplace around here that’s open, right? It’s not that late. I just have to pay for my books.”

  She glanced back at me over her shoulder again, checking out the paperbacks I held. “You’re buying those?”

  I nodded. “Yup. I was planning on it. The Army frowns on me just taking stuff out of stores, you know. Paying for it seems like the best option.”

  Leah mumbled something under her breath that sounded like either a prayer or a curse. “Okay. Well, I’ll meet you at the register. I’m the only one working tonight, so I’ll ring you up.”

  “You work here?” Surprise tinged my voice. “You didn’t used to work in a bookstore, did you? I thought you were in law school and had a job at some big firm. What happened?”

  She dropped her head, sighing. “A lot has happened since I met you, Kade. A lot has changed.” Squaring her shoulders, she pivoted around to face me.

  Shock rendered me speechless and frozen, because I realized now why she’d kept her back to me. While Leah’s frame was still slender, the small tits I’d enjoyed that night had grown much larger. But I couldn’t even look at them, because something else had my attention.

  And that would be the high, round baby bump swelling the belly of this woman I’d slept with six months before.

  Chapter Two

  Leah

  I’d pictured Kade Braggs’ reaction to seeing a pregnant me so many times that it had become an almost-daily pastime. It had started back when all the sticks I’d peed on had popped up with the dreaded double lines, and the fantasies had escalated when the severe morning sickness had struck two weeks later.

  Morning sickness. Ha! Talk about a huge misnomer. First of all, it didn’t stick to the mornings. That shit started before my eyes opened and didn’t end until I finally collapsed from exhaustion every night. And second, sickness didn’t begin to cover it. Try living death. Try I’m-pretty-sure-my-stomach-just-turned-itself-completely-inside-out. Try shoot-me-now-and-put-me-out-of-my-misery.

  Still, during the lulls in the heaving and the shaking, I’d all too often find a moment to imagine what Kade might say or do if he knew I was pregnant. I didn’t have a ton of reference material to use to come up with his pseudo-reactions, as we’d only known each other for a grand total of fifteen hours, and the majority of those hours had been spent doing stuff that didn’t require conversation.

  In some of my daydreams, Kade took me into his arms and whispered that he knew this pregnancy was fate’s way of bringing us together . . . that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking of me in the two months since we’d had our night together. He kissed my lips softly before he lifted me into his arms, cradling my poor ravaged body against his muscled chest, and began to walk . . . somewhere. It didn’t really matter where. There was a soft mist swirling around our feet, and I think I probably fell asleep before he got me too far away.

  When I was less pukey and more pissed, Kade heard my news and freaked out, complete with bugged eyes and hands pulling at his hair in panic. He yelled at me about being irresponsible and told me that under no circumstance was he going to be involved in this circus. And then he stalked away, disappearing this time into a black hallway that sucked him into nothingness.

  There were variations on these themes, of course. Sometimes Kade asked me how the hell this could’ve happened, since we’d most definitely used protection that night. (True. And the answer was that I had no freaking idea. The doctor, when I’d asked her the same thing, had shrugged and said that I should remember the only birth control that was effective one hundred percent of the time was abstinence. I’d wanted to kick her.) At other times, he asked me how I could be certain he was the father. (Well, since my last sexual experience before him had predated our meeting by over a year and I’d had no intercourse of any kind since Kade, it didn’t take much to determine those odds.)

  For the first four months of my pregnancy, I’d lived in a state of chronic anticipation, no pun intended; I’d half-expected to run into Kade around every corner. It was ridiculous; I knew that he was stationed an hour south of Richmond, at Fort Lee, and he’d admitted that he rarely ventured into the city. But still, stranger things had happened, right? I’d pictured rounding a corner at the grocery store and seeing him there, or running into him at the small coffee shop on the ground floor of the building where I worked. Each time, in my head, I was dressed impeccably, with my hair perfect and my makeup flawless.

  Of course, I never did run into him. And once I’d moved further east, I figured that ship had sailed. The likelihood of a chance meeting had dwindled to practically nothing. Yes, I was quite aware that there was an Army post about ten minutes from the mall where I worked now, but it was a tiny little training post. I couldn’t imagine any scenario that would bring Kade Braggs to Fort Davis.

  Apparently, my imagination was not as accurate as I might have thought, though, because here he was, in my boo
kstore, in all his sexy glory.

  It had been a slow night, even for us. The sad fact of the matter was that bookstores overall weren’t doing well since the advent of ready access to online ordering, overnight shipping and the popularity of ebooks. I’d made some suggestions to the owners of the store to help us grow the market and capitalize on the current trends, but I knew that even with us implementing those changes, our location worked against us. The Ocean Square Mall had been popular and busy back in the day, but the day was long past. The anchor stores had gone out of business, and what was left at this point was the food court and a few of the shopping mall standards.

  Sunday nights, though, were my favorite shifts. As a manager, I had my choice of when I’d pick up hours, and I chose this night each week, making sure to schedule only myself. It was quiet enough that I could catch up on paperwork and maybe even some homework, if I were really lucky. This night had been perfect in that regard; I’d finished my reports for the store, eaten the dinner of leftovers that I’d brought from home, and I’d even had time to outline the paper that was due in my Wills, Trusts and Future Interests course next week.

  I’d decided that I’d earned a reward, and that came in the form of a walk through the stacks. I’d meandered through romances, touching the spines of some of my old favorites, and then lingered in mystery, where I’d read a few pages of the newest novel from one of my favorite authors. I couldn’t afford the book yet, nor could I justify buying it when I wouldn’t have time to read it. And if I played my cards right, I’d be able to read it by bits on these Sunday nights.

  I’d wound through non-fiction, making a face at all the LSAT books that brought back unpleasant memories of studying for that test. When I reached personal growth, I’d paused and checked out the titles. I wasn’t really sure what I’d hoped to find; perhaps Single Motherhood for Dummies? Or maybe How to Give Your Child a Life Without Losing Yours? Or even Help! I Decided to Keep my Unplanned Baby. What Now?