Colonel Daddy

“Then what’s the problem?” he asked.

“How much time do you have?”

He smiled, God help her, and that lone dimple in his right cheek made its first appearance. Damn it. Why was she such a sucker for that dimple?

“All the time you need, Kate. Talk.”

Talk. Easy enough for him to say. Hands locked tight behind her back, she paced again, feeling the need to burn off the excess energy that had her stomach roiling and her mind spinning. Back and forth, up and down, she looked at his office, the plain beige paint, the picture of the president, the dried-up splotches of the last rain on the windows and the halfdead ficus tree in the corner.

Talk. Where should she start? With ridiculous dreams or the painful reality?

She’d been hoping for so much more when she had put in a request for a transfer to Camp Pendleton.

For three years, Kate had loved Thomas Candello. And for those same three years, she’d kept quiet about it. She knew all too well his thoughts on marriage and love and happily-ever-after. He’d made no secret of the fact that his first marriage had been a disaster from the word go and that he had no intention of ever committing that particular mistake again.

So, wary of scaring him off, she’d patiently swallowed the three little words every time they threatened to roll off her tongue. She’d pretended to be as satisfied with their once-a-year tryst as he was. And she’d hoped that one day he would look into her eyes and see the love shining there and want to claim it.

So much for “hope springs eternal.”

“Kate?” he prompted from his place by the desk. “What’s going on?”

“Too much,” she said and came to a stop by his office door. Turning around, she braced her back against it and looked at him from across the room. Unfortunately, distance didn’t help. The liquid warmth in his eyes, that blasted dimple, his mouth, even several feet of empty space couldn’t dilute their power. “Thomas,” she said at last, “we can’t just up and get married.”

“Why not?” He pushed off the desk and started for her.

She held up one hand, stopping him in his tracks. If he expected her to think, then he needed to give her some breathing room.

“We’re both single adults. Unattached.”

“Exactly.”

He laughed shortly and shook his head. “Sorry, you lost me.”

She sighed heavily. “In the month I’ve been here, we’ve hardly spoken more than once or twice.”

“So?”

“So, don’t you think people will be just a little bit curious if we announce our imminent wedding?”

“And if we don’t get married, in a couple of months,” he snapped a look at her still flat abdomen, “they’ll be curious about a whole lot more than that.”

“I know.” She buried the flash of nerves that leaped into life in the pit of her stomach. “But still, we can’t go from supposed strangers to newlyweds overnight.”

He thought about it for a minute or two, then shrugged again. “Does it really matter? Is it anyone’s business?”

“Yes,” she said. “And no.”

“Huh?”

“Yes, it does matter and no, it’s not their business. But that won’t stop the gossip and you know it.”

“Military bases run on gossip. There’s no way to avoid it.”

“Maybe not, but we could slow it down a little.”

He smiled. “What have you got in mind?”

“Dating?” she suggested.

This time he laughed. “Kate, we’re a little beyond the dating stage, don’t you think?”

“Okay, sure.” She nodded and started pacing again, the sound of her heels against the linoleum tapping out a rhythm for her thoughts. “I suppose we could tell people that we’ve been seeing each other for three years.”

“A lot of each other,” he added.

“Yes, well, they don’t need to know that, now do they?”

“Kate,” Tom said, and crossed the room to her before she could stop him. “You’re making this more difficult—more complicated than it has to be.”

“I don’t see how.”

“We’ll date,” he said, and smiled down at her when she winced. “And after a whirlwind courtship, we’ll have a nice, quiet wedding a few weeks from now.”

“People will still talk.”

“It won’t matter. We’ll be married. The talk will die down.”

“Until I start showing.”

“You can’t prevent people from counting.”

“I suppose,” she said, and wished he would hold her again.

Tom reached for her, holding her tightly to him. He’d never seen Kate like this. Distracted. Worried—no, scared.

He pulled in a deep breath, enjoying the familiar, floral scent of her shampoo even as his mind told him she had a right to be scared, and if he had half a brain, he would be, too.

He’d done this before. He’d been married and made a damn mess of it. He’d had a child, too, and blown that, as well.

Oh, yeah, he was just the guy Kate needed—an already-proven failure as a husband and father.

His stomach turned over, and a fist tightened inside it.

There were two ways this could go, he told himself. One, it could all blow up in his face, hurting him, Kate and the poor unsuspecting baby stuck with him as a father—or, it could be his chance to make up for doing everything so badly the first time around.

Heaven or hell.

The lady or the tiger.