Stranded With The Sergeant

“Camp Lejeune has a self-guided tour with twenty-five points of interest,” Sinatra stated.

“Self-guided, huh?” Joe repeated.

“Yes, sir. There’s even a tour book that coordinates with the signs for each numbered point of interest.”

“Self-guided. Well, that’s great. Then you definitely don’t need me,” Joe stated with a hearty laugh.

“You’re here to answer any questions,” Prudence reminded him.

He wanted to tell her that to do that he’d have to have access to the tour book, which the kid with the glasses and strange name seemed to have printed off the Internet. He wanted to tell her that he’d only been at the base a few weeks, he wanted to tell her he wasn’t as dumb as he sounded. But most of all he wanted to get the heck out of here. Which meant starting the tour, whether he knew what he was talking about or not.

“This building houses base headquarters,” Joe said as he opened the door and headed down the hallway. If the kids wanted to follow him, fine. No way was he staying in that tiny claustrophobic room with twenty-five kids a second longer. Flirting with her had distracted him for a while, but now that he knew the sexy teacher was off-limits, he didn’t have anything to keep his mind off of the panic.

“The outside of the building looks like my church, only bigger,” Rosa said as she followed him into the hallway, as did all the other kids and along with their rebellious teacher. “Redbrick with that fancy white thing on top.”

“A cupola.” At least that was one answer he could supply.

Rosa frowned up at Joe. “I thought he was the director of the movie The Godfather.”

“That’s Francis Ford Coppola,” Pete said, rolling his eyes at her.

“An easy mistake to make,” Joe said, wanting to keep moving. “As I said, you’re inside Base Headquarters. From here the Commanding General oversees the daily workings of the entire base.”

“And how many Marines would that include?” Prudence asked.

The teacher had it out for him. Joe could tell by the questions she asked and by the way her lush mouth turned up in what he was coming to believe was a diabolical, if sexy, smile each time she asked them.

Fine, honey. Two can play at that game.

“Sinatra, how many Marines would that be?” Joe said.

Consulting his printout first, Sinatra said, “Approximately fifty thousand Marines, Navy personnel, civilian employees and military families, sir.”

Joe liked this kid. As they passed the front lobby with its small display of historical swords, Sinatra discreetly passed him a copy of the self-guided tour book.

“Thanks,” Joe murmured.

“I know what’s it’s like to be picked on,” Sinatra told him with a reassuring smile.

Jeez, he’d come to this. A middle school teacher was picking on him. Him. Joe Wilder. An experienced United States Marine. Being picked on, not picked up as was often the case, by a woman. A sexy woman. A woman who was completely off-limits to him, seeing as how she was his commanding officer’s “little princess.”

He had to find a way to get out of this assignment.

The tour went more smoothly once he had the guidebook in his possession. He was able to tell the class about the massive live oak tree that was estimated to be over 350 years old. When one cocky kid asked him for the Latin name of the tree, he was even able to give that—Quercus virginiana.

Things got a little trickier in the barracks. There was something unexpectedly provocative about being with Prudence in a room filled with so many mattresses. Maybe he wasn’t as bad off as he thought if he could think of sex at a time like this.

Of course, another way of looking at things was that he was truly certifiable to be entertaining the thought of his commanding officer’s daughter and the word sex in the same sentence.

And then there were all the kids, swarming around in masses and sucking all the oxygen from the room.

“These beds are so little,” Pete noted in surprise. “And they’re bunk beds.”

“Here in the Marine Corps, your bed is your rack,” Joe automatically corrected him.

“A rack, huh? It looks like something you’d get tortured on,” Pete agreed.

Torture was being in such close confines with so many kids. Even his first day of boot camp hadn’t made him this jumpy.

“These beds…er, racks,” Pete quickly corrected himself, “are really clean.”

“That’s because Marines have to learn how to make perfectly folded forty-five-degree corners on the sheets when they make their racks,” Prudence said.

“No way!” Pete’s brown eyebrows shot up. “Marines have to make beds…er…racks?”

“Affirmative,” Joe said. “They have to learn the Marine way of making their racks.”

“You see, in the Marine Corps there’s only one right way of doing things and that’s the Marine way,” Prudence said in a mocking voice. Turning to Joe she said, “Tell the kids about the rest of Marine terminology. The floor is called…”

She was the daughter of a Marine, she knew what it was called. She simply wanted to wipe the deck with him. Daddy’s little princess, indeed. Spoiled rotten needed to be added to that description. How dare she mock his beloved Marine Corps? He and the men she mocked put their lives on the line to protect her little fanny. But did she care? Clearly not.

Narrowing his eyes at her, Joe straightened his already ramrod straight shoulders. “The floor is a deck,” he barked, startling her. Good. “To your right and left are bulkheads, not walls. Windows are ports. Above is an overhead, not a ceiling. Upstairs and downstairs do not exist. Instead we use topside and down below. You are facing forward. To your left is port and to your right is starboard. Behind you is aft.”

“My dad has a boat and he uses those words,” Pete said, hurriedly adding, “sir.”

“The terms are a result of the Marine Corps early origins as a sea service,” Joe said.

The tour ended at the Beirut Memorial, commemorating those who died in the 1983 bombing of Battalion Landing Team 1/8’s Headquarters in Lebanon. Joe found it impossible to speak. For once, Prudence was quiet.

By the time the class returned to base headquarters, Joe had regained his self-control. He fielded the kids’ questions as best he could on everything from the possibility of a top secret Marine Corps group that trained to protect earth from extraterrestrial life-forms to why his uniform was green.

During that time, Prudence kept her distance. He could tell she didn’t like him. Which was fine by him. Maybe it would get him off this assignment.

Baby-sitting a bunch of sixth-graders was hardly up his alley. He’d been trained in hand-to-hand combat, in Marine battle tactics and camouflage and survival techniques. Not kid stuff.

Especially not now.

A few years ago Joe might have laughed off this chore. But since the accident, his life had turned upside down. And he was the only one who knew it. Which is the way he planned on keeping things.

“Daddy, this isn’t going to work,” Prudence stated as she perched herself on the corner of his desk.

“Hey, princess, how did the tour go?”

“The man you sent didn’t know much about the base.”

“Well, he’s only been here a few weeks. Give the guy a chance.”

She shook her head, sliding a strand of her dark hair behind one ear before saying, “I think it would be better if you found someone else for the job.”

“Did Sergeant Wilder tell you to come talk to me on his behalf?” her father asked suspiciously.

“No.” The question surprised her. “What makes you say that?”

“The fact that he’s no more pleased about being given this assignment than you are about having him along.”

“There you go then,” Prudence said. “All the more reason to get someone else. You’ve got thousands of Marines here.”

“I’m not the base commander here, princess. I was lucky to get Sergeant Wilder for this assignment on such short notice. I’m afraid you’ll have to cancel the field trip if you don’t take him.” Pausing, he looked over her shoulder to the open doorway. “Ah, here he is now. Come on in, Sergeant.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, sir,” Joe said, noting the cozy father-daughter setup.

“You’re not interrupting. My daughter was just talking about you. She’s not happy at having you assigned to accompany her.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.” What a lie! The truth was that Joe was filled with relief. “I’m sure you’ll find someone else.…”

“Nonsense,” his commanding officer said. “As I was just telling my daughter, it’s you or no one.”

Joe’s heart fell.

Prudence looked equally disappointed with the news. “We’re not canceling this trip,” she said. “These kids have been looking forward to this for weeks.”

“Twenty-five kids in the Blue Ridge mountains is a bit much for two adults to supervise, don’t you think?” Joe said, still holding out a slim chance of escaping.

“Absolutely,” Prudence agreed, the first time she’d agreed with anything he’d said all day. “Which is why there will only be five students coming on the field trip. The entire class got to come on the tour of the base, but participation in the field trip to the mountains was limited to the top five finalists in our Class Knowledge Fair.” Hopping off her father’s desk, she kissed her dad on the cheek before turning to face Joe. “I guess it looks like we’re stuck with each other.”

Chapter Three

“I can’t believe you’re actually calling me for help,” Curt Blackwell noted, his amusement apparent over the phone line.

A year ago Joe had stood up at Curt’s wedding as his best man. Funny how things changed. In the past, Curt had always been the loner and Joe the life of the party. Now Curt was happily married and had a young daughter named Blue. And it was Joe who was struggling.

“This has got to be a first,” Curt was saying. “Usually it’s the other way around, me calling you.”

“Yeah, well, enjoy it while you can, buddy, because it’s not going to happen very often. Not if you gloat like this every time I call you looking for some help.”

“I won’t gloat every time,” Curt replied. “Just this time.”

“There’s no time for gloating. Just think of some way I can get out of this stupid mess.”

“A Marine never avoids an assignment.”

“He does if it involves escorting his commanding officer’s daughter into the mountains of North Carolina for the weekend.”

“How old is she?” Curt asked.

“I don’t know. Late twenties, I’d guess.”

“Sounds like a plum assignment for a ladies’ man like you. What’s the problem?”

“She’s bringing some of her sixth-grade class with her. She’s a teacher. And we didn’t exactly hit it off.”

“What?” Curt sounded mockingly incredulous. “Another first! A woman who doesn’t fall at your feet? Wait till I tell Jessie.”

“This is privileged material,” Joe said emphatically. “So don’t go blabbing anything to that cute wife of yours.”

“Since when are the details of your sex life a matter of national security?” Curt retorted.

“Since they involved the daughter of my C.O.” Joe used the abbreviation for commanding officer.

“I guess you do have a point there. Okay, this will remain between the two of us.”

“Fine. Now give me an idea of how to get out of this.”

“If the order is an illegal one…”

“Don’t I wish,” Joe muttered. “But last time I checked there was no law against getting stuck with a spoiled, sexy teacher who has it in for me. Nor is it illegal to be called on to fill-in for a public affairs officer who needed emergency surgery and couldn’t lead this weekend excursion himself. The order isn’t illegal, just a pain in the butt.”

“Did you mention that you haven’t been posted down there in North Carolina very long—”

“Affirmative,” Joe interrupted him to confirm. “Tried that approach. Unsuccessful.”

“You said the daughter wasn’t fond of you. Did you—?”

“Point that out? Affirmative,” Joe again interrupted. “Deemed irrelevant by the C.O.”

“Then I guess you’re stuck.”

“Gee, thanks, that was real helpful, Blackwell,” Joe said sarcastically. “I’m so glad I called you.”

Curt laughed. “Hey, anytime I can help, I’m just a phone call away.”

Joe’s growl didn’t need translating.

“You’re stuck, Wilder,” Curt said. “Make the most of it is my advice to you. Semper Gumby, buddy. Be flexible.”

“Yeah, right.” Frustrated, Joe flipped the cover on his cellular phone and stared at the bag he had packed while talking to Curt. A Marine was always ready to leave, never knowing when some situation might require him to defend his country.

What about defending his sanity? Joe wondered caustically, furious with himself for feeling the way he did. What was the procedure for that?

He was a Marine, by God. There were no foxholes in the Marines. Foxholes are for those who want to hide. In the Marines they had fighting holes. There was no hiding in the Marines. He’d been trained to fight.

His father and his grandfather had been Marines. He was part of a proud tradition—the few, the proud, the Marines.

Joe glanced down at his watch. His allotted hour was almost up. Falling back on years of conditioning and training, he willed his misgivings away and completed packing with ruthless efficiency. The sooner he got started on this idiotic assignment, the sooner it would be over with.

Joe Wilder was late. Prudence couldn’t believe it. Marines were rarely late. Commissioned officers or enlisted men—it didn’t matter. They tended to work with military precision. Especially those in her father’s command.

Maybe Joe had chickened out? Yeah, right.

Or maybe he’d come up with someone else to take his place? Yeah, right. As if he’d disobey an order.

Or maybe that was him over there talking to Sinatra…

Yes, it most certainly was.

So why hadn’t Joe alerted her to his presence instead of letting her stand around like a doofus waiting for him? There was just something about him that set her teeth on edge.

From the moment he’d walked into that conference room and flashed his confident smile at her, she’d known that this was a man used to getting his own way where women were concerned. She’d seen the type before.

Yes, he was better looking than most men. And, yes, he had incredible blue eyes. But there was no way she was going to be swayed by a man in uniform. She’d been down that path before.

Joe Wilder might not have been at the base very long, but already he had the reputation for being a heartbreaking daredevil. At one point his wild ways would have appealed to her, but she’d grown up since then and those days were long gone.

Being stuck out in the wilds on the North Carolina mountains with a sexy Marine was one of her worst nightmares. That and spiders. She’d always been a sissy about spiders. Snakes and other bugs didn’t bother her one little bit. But spiders gave her the willies.

Even a sexy Marine was better than getting stuck with spiders. Besides, the bottom line here was that she was immune to the charms of any man in a uniform. She’d been played for a fool once by Steven Banks, who had professed to love her but had really been looking to pay back her father. Steven, a commissioned Navy officer who’d gone to Annapolis, hadn’t appreciated the lukewarm performance evaluation her father, an enlisted man and a Marine to boot, had given him. So he’d gotten even by going after Prudence behind her father’s back.

Prudence didn’t intend to make the same mistake twice by getting involved with another military man. She was currently dating a very nice teacher named George Rimes. He was quiet and studious. A birdwatcher. He’d wanted to accompany her this weekend but had had to return home to Iowa for a family wedding.

And so she was stuck with Joe Wilder—who was as far off the high end of the masculinity spectrum as you could get from shy George.

“Sergeant Wilder, are you ready to go?” Her voice reflected her impatience.

“Yes, ma’am.”

His words didn’t sound too convincing to her, although they were delivered in a Marine’s clipped voice. “Good.”

She’d already run through the detailed checklist she had on her clipboard twice, covering everything from sleeping bags to sunblock, to make sure that none of her students had forgotten anything.

She also had signed parental approval forms from everyone. She’d wanted to include a parent for the outing, but none had volunteered or even been willing to be drafted. Which left her and Joe Wilder as the only adults accompanying the five students. Of course, Joe was a Marine so that meant he probably counted as two adults…as least as far as he was concerned. Marines were nothing if not confident. “Then let’s get in the van, everyone.”

Joe quickly stowed his gear in the back of the van, which was already packed tight, and then headed for the driver’s seat.

“I’m driving,” Prudence informed him.

“She’s a good driver,” Sinatra told Joe reassuringly. “For a teacher.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Sinatra,” Prudence said. “Sergeant, you no doubt remember Sinatra, Rosa and Pete from the tour we took a short while ago.”

Joe nodded. Sinatra was the one who’d taken pity on him, Pete was the whiz with facts and figures and Rosa was the one with the unusual questions. He didn’t recognize the other two kids, though. One was an Asian kid with a short buzz haircut and a silver earring in his left ear. The other was an African-American girl who was eyeing him with blatant skepticism while proudly wearing an I’m Mean And Green T-shirt. But then he hadn’t really been paying attention to the entire herd of kids. After the first minute or two their faces had blurred as he’d focused on maintaining his control.

“This is Keishon Williams,” Prudence said, putting her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “And this is Gem Wong,” she added, turning to the boy with the earring.

“Nice tattoo, sir,” Gem noted with a nod at the eagle on Joe’s upper arm.

“Nice earring,” Joe said in return.

The kid grinned, the flash of sunlight off his silver braces nearly blinding Joe. Time for more aspirin. His post-hangover headache was coming back. And the thought of being in the passenger seat while the sexy but infuriating teacher drove the van didn’t help improve his mood any.

“I can drive,” Joe said, hoping against hope that she’d give in.

“I’m sure you can,” she replied. “I heard about your motorcycle racing escapades.”

“You race motorcycles? Awesome,” Pete asked.

“You don’t trust me, ma’am?” Joe asked her.

She sidestepped answering that one. “It’s my van. I’ll drive. That way, while we’re en route, Sergeant Wilder can give you some wilderness tips for our weekend.”

“When they trained you in survival stuff in the Marines, did you have to eat live bugs like those guys on that TV show where they were stuck on an island?” Pete asked.

“Larva,” Sinatra corrected him.

“I read on the Internet that you shouldn’t eat mice because you could get some disease,” Pete said.

“I wouldn’t eat mice because I’m a vegetarian,” Keishon stated with a shudder.

Pete grinned. “You’d eat ’em if you were hungry enough.”

Infuriated by his attitude, Keishon yelled, “Would not!”

“Would so!” Pete shouted right back.

“Williams and Greene, cease and desist!” Joe barked.

The two kids looked at him in astonishment before Keishon loftily informed him, “It’s not nice to call someone by their last name.”

It wasn’t nice for them to argue when his head felt like it was going to detonate. But then the world wasn’t a nice place. The sooner they knew that the better.

How was he going to manage cooped up in this tin can of a van with five kids for hours?

He just had to stop thinking of them as kids and instead treat them as recruits. Really short recruits. Maybe that would help his stress level.

He’d dealt with raw recruits before.

“Isn’t this van equipped with a video player?” Pete asked.

“She won’t let us watch The Matrix,” Gem quietly complained.

“I’ve already seen it ten times,” Pete bragged.

“Then you don’t need to see it again,” Prudence said. “Instead I want you to notice how the trees change as we head away from the coast and head for the mountains.”

“That was some big bad kind of tree on the base,” Sinatra noted.

“It’s 350 years old,” Pete said.

“That was just an estimate,” Rosa reminded them.

“Now she’ll probably tell us how many inches the tree grows every year,” Pete said in exasperation. “She’s the class math whiz.”

“So why were you all chosen for this mission?” Joe had almost slipped up and called them kids. Mistake. Short recruits. Really short recruits, that’s what they were.

Not that the image was helping as much as it should.

“We are the five finalists in our class Knowledge Fair. Our projects were chosen by Principal Vann as the best,” Sinatra proudly stated. “We had to come up with a hypothesis and then try and prove it was true. Mine was that the Internet improves kids’ grades if they use it for researching science homework projects.”

“My hypothesis is that a vegetarian diet is healthier than a nonvegetarian one,” Keishon said.

“Mine was that the hole in the ozone layer is changing the climate,” Pete said. “Gem’s was about the life cycle of a frog and Rosa’s was about using rings in a tree to figure its age.”

“Do you do have to do a hypothesis to be in the Marines?” Rosa asked him. “Do you have to prove that something is true?”

Did he have something to prove? Constantly. Corps values—honor, courage, commitment—were the life-blood of a Marine. From the second a recruit stepped off the bus at Marine Corp Recruit Depot the Marine Corps created a change of mind, body and spirit meant to last a lifetime. They were constantly taking on challenges that proved a recruit was worthy of being called a United States Marine.

Did he have something to prove? You bet. Was he still worthy? Joe didn’t know…and that was one of the many things eating away at him.

“In the Marines, do you have tests like we have in school?” Rosa continued.

Focus on the facts and figures, he ordered himself. “Boot camp has five graduation requirements—rifle qualification, swim qualification, a physical fitness test, battalion-commander’s inspection and scoring eighty percent on academic tests.”

“Eighty percent isn’t that good,” Keishon pointed out. “That would only be a B in our class.”

“Depending on the scores of the rest of the class,” Rosa said. “Girls can be Marines, right?”

“Affirmative,” Joe replied. “I pointed out their training area and barracks area during the base tour.”

“Girls can be whatever they want to be,” Prudence added.

“Were you ever a Marine?” Rosa asked her.

“No,” Prudence replied. “I always wanted to be a teacher.”

“There aren’t any teachers in the Marines?” Rosa said.

Prudence shook her head. “Only drill instructors, and they aren’t the same thing.”

“I don’t know,” Joe drawled, giving her a wry look. “I can easily imagine you barking out orders in BWT, ma’am.”

“What’s BWT?” Pete asked, always eager to learn something new.

“Basic Warrior Training,” Joe replied.

“You think Ms. Martin is a warrior?” Pete said.

Joe nodded. “She was raised by a warrior.”

“That would be my mom,” Prudence told her students. “Not that my dad is any slouch, either,” she noted with a grin. “After all, he is a Marine.”

“I was referring to your father,” Joe said.

She gave him a mocking look. “No kidding.”

“Is kidding allowed in the Marines?” Pete asked.

Joe thought back to the numerous practical jokes he’d played on his brothers or his buddies over the years. “In very special circumstances and under certain conditions, then the answer is that sometimes kidding is allowed, yes.”

Pete frowned. “I didn’t think warriors were supposed to be kidding around.”