Читать книгу Soldier And The Society Girl - Vivian Leiber - Страница 10

Chapter Two

“We’ll start with the uniform,” Chessey said, leafing through the schedule folder as she led him down the linoleum-tiled hall. Her sensible but stylish heels clicked smartly. “I know a tailor three blocks away who can have your dress uniform ready in one day. After your fitting, we’ll compose a five-minute speech that you can use for your first three appearances. That speech will be your new best friend. It will become as familiar to you as the pledge of allegiance, and you won’t need to use note cards. You’re going to want to keep eye contact with your audience.”

She could barely contain her delight—any job in the State Department! Offers from Congress! The top general of the country guaranteeing her future! She might end up with an office above ground and, maybe-just-maybe-oh-maybe, a window! She had no doubt that this was the kind of moment that came just once in a career. It certainly had never happened before.

The excitement of the assignment accounted for her skittering heartbeat and quickened breath.

She was so thrilled with her good fortune and so touched by his plight that she had nearly—but not quite—forgiven him for his boorish behavior. Probably had gotten flustered at the sight of a female—although his kiss had all the confidence of a conqueror taking his due.

Flustered, that’s it, she thought.

The darker prospect, that he was a natural-born jerk, she did her best to ignore.

Still, if they were going to spend the next thirty days together and if she was going to make a career move on her success transforming him into a gentleman, she’d have to let go of her indignation.

She wouldn’t even tell him that she could have done without the Girl Scout comment, that she had enjoyed being a Girl Scout and she didn’t see what was wrong with them.

“We’ll sit you down with a table arrangement,” she continued, balancing the schedule folder, calendar and her briefcase as she walked. “Even if you ordinarily are the sort of man who requires a seven-piece place setting with every meal, I’m sure you could use a refresher on manners. Conditions at the Baghdad prison were primitive, I’ve heard. By the way, I wanted to tell you that I saw you on television as you were taken to the Wiesbaden military hospital and, literally, I felt tears of pride welling up in my eyes. You really prove that Americans can overcome any...hey, where’d you go?”

She whirled around to see...nothing.

Nothing but an empty hallway that stretched the length of two city blocks. The State Department was big, with a total of twelve acres of office space spread out over eight floors.

If he had taken a wrong turn, it could take her hours to find him!

“Lieutenant McKenna?” she asked. “This way. I’m over here! Lieutenant? Lieutenant?”

Master of escape.

That’s what the news had called him, noting that after months of planning and several failed attempts, McKenna had slipped all thirty-two of his men out of the jail without a trace and had even gotten a day’s lead on the manhunt that followed.

He hadn’t taken a wrong turn—he had given her the slip.

But the corridors of Washington office buildings were Chessey’s home turf, and she had an advantage. She stilled. And listened. And shook her head.

The telltale echo of cowboy boots treading on stone-cold government-issue linoleum.

“Lieutenant McKenna, you get back here right now!” she exclaimed, trotting down the hall at the fullest speed possible in her heels. She ignored the shocked stare of a secretary coming from the opposite direction. She knew, she knew...as a Banks Bailey she was ordinarily so dignified.

But dignity shmignity, that man was her future! Without him, she’d be stuck in a basement closet of an office until she reached the age of retirement! Without him, Winston Fairchild III would never look at her again and he’d certainly never bring his suitable self to the Banks Bailey compound for holidays. She’d still be the black sheep of the Banks Baileys, without the approval and respect of her family. This job, this lieutenant, this assignment meant a lot.

“Lieutenant McKenna, you’re not leaving! We have work to do.”

She ran down the stairwell at top speed. With a half-dozen frantic excuse me’s, she pushed her way through a crowd of schoolchildren and their chaperones gathered in the Diplomatic Lobby. Out on Twenty-third Street, she looked left and right.

And then she saw him.

“Lieutenant McKenna, I said we have work to do!”

She trotted after him, regretting her heels, desperate not to lose him as a Japanese tourist group clogged the sidewalk. He walked away with no more regard for her frantic shouts than he did for any other street distraction. The cabdriver leaning on his horn and bellowing at the driver in front of him. The jackhammer grinding cement on the next corner. The youth with a boom box playing heavy metal.

Still, he was not the type she could lose in a crowd. He stood out—taller than anyone on the street He wore a pair of worn-out jeans that fit low on his hips and a button-down shirt that showed the wrinkles of a twelve-hour transatlantic flight. It was white—the kind of white that reflects that dazzling sun. He had a muscular build, surprising given his time in prison, but Chessey remembered reading somewhere that he had required all his men to maintain absolutely peak physical conditioning. And had required nothing less from himself. His hair was cut a little longer than regulation. His skin was ruddy and sunburned, which only accentuated his blue eyes.

He garnered his share of second looks from women in his path, but not a flicker of recognition since, courtesy of an Army shave and a haircut, he bore little resemblance to the ragged hero who had led his men to the Turkish border.

“Derek McKenna, you stop right there!” Chessey shrieked, grabbing his elbow as he came to a stop at the crosswalk.

He glanced at her with a sorrowful expression that made her back off. Made her think, right then, right there, that maybe it was cruel to take a man like this and parade him around the country for a month. But then he followed his haunted-eye look with something approaching a leer and then pridesmashing dismissal.

“I’m not going with you,” he said. “Save your animal-training tricks for some other sucker.”

“They’ll call the President.”

He tilted his chin thoughtfully. For a scant second, as the sun played across his face, Chessey thought she saw warmth and longing in his eyes. On the other hand, it could have simply been glare.

“I’ve been giving the President some thought. I don’t think he will reinstate me. He can’t afford the bad publicity. So I’m going to do what I’ve wanted to do since the moment I got captured by the Iraqis. I’m going home.”

The light changed. He stepped forward. She held her ground in front of him. He took another step, invading her space with the natural scent of bay leaf and musk. She tilted her chin up, balanced on her toes, rued the fact that even with her heels he was a good six inches taller than she was. It was hard to look like an authority figure when she could hardly keep her balance and she still had to look up at him.

His mouth was scant inches from her, his sweet minty breath a whisper at her forehead. She wondered if he was going to kiss her again.

She wondered what she would do if he did.

“You have a problem with me going home?”

“I do. What about the enlisted men?” she asked, remembering how he had been thrown off balance by the general with just the same concern.

His eyes narrowed.

“What about ’em?”

“Their morale.”

“If the men don’t know that their officers will stick by them, then the military’s got a bigger problem on its hands than I could ever solve in a month of stump speeches.”

“You can’t go!”

She didn’t realize until he looked at his chest that her fingers, perfectly manicured in ballet slipper pink, were splayed along the rock-hard definition of his chest muscles.

“Darlin’, I didn’t know my kiss could affect you like this,” he drawled.

She jerked as if he were a hot stove. He reached to the sidewalk and handed her the schedule she had dropped. He lingered a nanosecond at her long legs.

“I’m just trying to do my job,” she said stiffly. “It’s nothing personal.”

He stood up.

“Then you’ll understand that it’s nothing personal, but I’m going home.”

He stepped around her and walked across the street.

“But you’re a hero!” she cried, scrambling to keep up with him.

“I’m done with this hero business. Want nothing more to do with it.”

He held his hand straight in the air. A cab screeched to a halt in front of him.

“Where are you going?” Chessey demanded.

“The airport. It’s faster than walking to Kentucky.”

“I’m going with you.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” he said, getting into the cab. “My pappy told me a long time ago that any woman I brought home with me had better be bride material.”

In a split second pondering the gray, sunless office she called her own and the sense of personal failure that was her constant companion, Chessey decided she didn’t care what a man named Pappy said.

She opened the cab door, took advantage of the lieutenant’s reflexive good manners by nudging him over to give her room and told the cabdriver to take them both to Dulles Airport.

“Here you are, sir,” the ticket agent said, handing McKenna a ticket envelope. She tilted her face to the side and smiled winningly. “One-way to Louisville, Kentucky, connecting with the commuter flight to the Elizabethtown airfield. Have a nice trip, sir.”

“Thanks,” McKenna said, fingering the envelope reverently. Home. He was finally going home. He grinned, knowing the ticket agent misinterpreted his expression as interest in her but being powerless to stop himself. “Thanks, ma’am.”

She blushed.

And then the protocol specialist shoved her way past him, throwing her briefcase on the counter.

“I’ll have what he’s having,” Chessey said.

“Oh,” said the ticket agent “Are you two together?”

“No,” Derek said.

“Yes,” Chessey said.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“This is a free country!”

“We’ve already discussed freedom in the cab,” Derek said impatiently. “I’m going home. You’re not going with me. A free country means I don’t have to be with you.”

“A free country means I can go anywhere I want,” Chessey corrected. “Miss, I’ll be going with him. Wherever he’s going.”

The ticket agent’s magenta nails poised above her computer keys.

“Sir?”

“Don’t give her a ticket. I don’t want her going with me.”

“You can’t tell her what to do.”

“Ma’am?” He pleaded.

“I want to go with him!” Chessey wailed.

Derek shook his head. Considering this woman was a maximum of five-five and had less than half his weight on her frame, she wasn’t intimidated and certainly didn’t back down.

The third man in the line waiting to buy tickets harrumphed.

“If she loves you and is willing to make a go of it, you should give it another chance, young man,” he offered. “Too many young people think that they can just walk out on marriages without—”

“I’m not married to her!” Derek roared. “She’s a protocol specialist at the State Department who’s aching to make a promotion on baby-sitting me for a month. She followed me in a cab and talked my ear off all the way here about duty to my country and freedom meaning that she could go anywhere I went.”

For emphasis, he jabbed his fingers in Chessey’s direction and wasn’t comforted by her smile.

On any other woman it would have been a come-on, but on this protocol specialist he figured it was pure trouble.

“Why, Lieutenant Derek McKenna,” she said, slowly and carefully enunciating every syllable of his name. And she added for the benefit of the few people in the line who didn’t immediately do a double take, “Derek McKenna. It must be the stress of being a hero that’s making you act so erratically. You need rest. And some reassurance that America loves you. Oh, Lieutenant Derek McKenna, we all think you’re wonderful!”

“Derek McKenna?” The woman behind Chessey repeated.

“Derek McKenna,” Chessey confirmed.

The woman stared. Derek felt a queasy feeling in his stomach as he watched her dawning recognition.

“Derek McKenna!” she shrieked. “I’m so delighted to meet you. Could I get your autograph?”

As the woman yanked apart her carry-on luggage to find something to write with, the man who had given him a lecture on marital behavior pumped his hand.

“Just shaking hands with you is a privilege,” he said.

The rope-cordoned line surged toward Derek, with requests for autographs, kisses, pictures and handshakes running pretty much even. Derek craned to catch Chessey’s eye, to give her some indication that he held her directly responsible for this calamity or at least to make her feel miserable about herself—as she should! But Chessey coolly turned her back on him and pulled out her employee ID card.

“State Department, official business,” she said briskly, holding her ID out to the ticket agent. “I need a spot on the plane next to him.”

“One way or round trip?”

“Actually, let’s start talking flights from Elizabethtown to New York three days from now.”