Sergeant Darling

“I give up.” Patsy couldn’t believe she was really going to do this. “I can’t let you have wasted all that money. I’ll go, but under duress,” she added emphatically. And I won’t enjoy it, she didn’t say out loud.

“Of course, dear,” Aunt Myrtle said knowingly as she started the engine. “Perhaps, you ought to get in,” she shouted over the engine noise.

Heaven help her! Patsy did.

RAY WONDERED WHY Miss Carter had selected such an out-of-the-way place as he drove his new Honda CRV east along Highway 98 through the darkening countryside of the Florida Panhandle. The stunted shrubby trees and the tall, gangly pines of this part of the country looked strange to him after growing up among the majestic firs of the Pacific Northwest. But the soil here was sandy and poor and couldn’t support the same sort of vegetation as his verdant and green home state of Washington.

What was so wrong with the niece that the aunt had to spend a thousand dollars for a date for her and keep her hidden from civilization? Miss Carter was strange enough. God help him if the acorn had fallen too close to the tree.

He drew in a deep breath and tried to look at the positive side of this. It would give him a chance to practice dating and not ruin his chances with someone who might actually matter. An image of Nurse Pritchard flashed through his mind. Now, that was a challenge worth taking. Sort of like scaling Mount Ranier.

He chuckled and shook the notion out of his head.

Finally, after miles of driving through nowhere, with only occasional glimpses of the Gulf of Mexico through the trees, he came upon civilization. At least, what passed for it around here. There was a cluster of condominiums and shops on one side of the road, and on the other was the regular complement of seaside villas, motels and restaurants. Finally, he spotted the Blue Heron and pulled into the crushed-oyster-shell parking lot. After parking, he checked his appearance in the rearview mirror. Satisfied, he stepped outside, then drew in a deep breath. “Well, here goes nothing,” he muttered to himself, striding toward the building.

Inside, he talked to the hostess and was shown to the Carter table. Miss Carter waved as she saw him coming and he waved back, but Ray was more interested in the niece—his date.

Her back was to him, but so far, the woman didn’t look too bad. She had long, wavy blond hair, worn down so that it cascaded over her shoulders, and she was wearing something in light blue. He could see that she’d caught her hair with a barrette on one side to keep it away from her face, but he still couldn’t see it.

Then the woman, alerted by her aunt’s cheerful waving, turned his way, and Ray froze in his tracks.

No, it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be possible for two women to look so much alike, and yet so different. Could this lovely vision in front of him really be…

Chapter Two

Patsy turned around and almost choked on the wine she’d just sipped. No, it couldn’t be. She looked again. Dressed in charcoal-gray Dockers, a white turtleneck and a navy sport jacket to ward off the chill of a late March cold front, stood the last person she ever expected to see here. Sergeant Raymond Darling in attractive designer glasses—she didn’t know why she noticed them, but she did—dominated the space between their table and the next one, seeming to suck the very oxygen out of the air.

He, bless him, seemed as shocked to see her as she was to see him.

They looked at each other, unable to draw their gazes away, until Ray swallowed. Patsy watched, fascinated as his Adam’s apple bobbed.

“Sort of feels like being trapped in the headlights of a speeding train,” he finally said under his breath. He hadn’t really directed his comment to Patsy, but she understood that it was intended for her, and she doubted that Aunt Myrtle had heard him.

“Good evening, Miss Carter,” he said to Aunt Myrtle, then he nodded toward Patsy, and she forced a tentative smile, welcoming smile.

“Good evening, Raymond. I’ve always appreciated promptness in a man,” Myrtle Carter returned. She offered him a bejeweled hand, and Ray wasn’t sure whether to kiss it or shake it. He opted for the latter.

“Yes, ma’am,” Ray said, shrugging out of his jacket and draping it over the fourth chair. “I strive to be on time. The air force pretty well requires it,” he added. On the way over he had told himself that the sooner he got there, the sooner this fiasco would be over and done with. Now, he wasn’t so sure he wanted the evening to end quickly. The aromas emanating from the restaurant’s kitchen were delectable, and Patsy Pritchard wasn’t bad to look at, even if she seemed to be wound as tight as a spring.

“Patsy, you must meet my guest,” Myrtle Carter said in a tone that reminded Radar of a queen—maybe the silly ruffled collar had something to do with it. “Patsy, this is my new young friend, Sergeant Raymond Darling.”

She looked up at him and forced a smile. This was so awkward. She’d seen this man in his skivvies; his well-honed physique had been bared to her, the memory of which made if difficult for Patsy to breathe, much less speak. And he looked military through and through tonight, even dressed casually. That turtleneck stretched tight over a chest that was at least a yard across….

Then he looked down at her and grinned, and Patsy couldn’t help grinning back.

Oh Lord, if she hadn’t been sitting down, that smile might have melted the hinges in her knees. “Sergeant Darling,” she murmured, hoping that her agitation wasn’t evident in her voice.

“Please, call me Ray,” he said and offered his hand.

Patsy accepted it. “Ray,” she said, a slight catch in her voice. Now she’d be given away for sure. Her heart was beating like a tom tom, and she was certain that Sergeant Darling would be able to feel her pulse racing when they shook hands. Or maybe he wouldn’t. His grip was so tight that Patsy was sure she wouldn’t be able to move her fingers for at least an hour once he let it go.

Patsy jerked her hand away and shook it to get the circulation going again. “At work they call me Pat.”

“Sorry,” Ray said. “It’s easy to forget one’s own strength.”

“I may not be able to move my hand for days,” Patsy said, flexing her fingers.

“Silly,” Aunt Myrtle said. “No harm done. Your fingers are working just fine.” She turned to Ray and patted the empty chair between Patsy and herself. “Please, sit down. We’ve been waiting to order.”

Ray sat, then picked up his menu and perused it. “What’s good here?” he asked, looking over the top of the menu. Just seeing his raised eyebrows set Patsy’s heart fluttering.

“Anything and everything,” Patsy answered, still slightly breathless. The reason she knew about the menu was that Aunt Myrt often brought her here.

“Then I think I’ll try the amberjack,” Ray said, closing the menu.

Like the grande dame of the manor, Myrtle signaled for the waiter who scurried right over and took their orders. Then they settled back to wait.

“Why don’t the two of you get acquainted while I go powder my nose?” Aunt Myrtle suggested.

That was the last thing she needed, Patsy thought. To be left alone with superhero-in-disguise Sergeant Darling. Even in the middle of this crowded restaurant.

“Sure. But, your lovely niece and I are already old friends,” Ray said.

“Oh?” Myrtle, a frown of consternation on her face, stood poised halfway in and out of her chair.

“Yes. I have had occasion to partake of her professional services at the clinic from time to time,” Radar said.

At least, he hadn’t mentioned the most recent event, Patsy was relieved to hear. How she had hated jabbing that needle into that firm, perfect butt, though looking at it hadn’t been a chore at all. She felt her face grow warm. “Yes,” she said, nodding vigorously, hoping that the motion would erase the flush. It didn’t. “I’ve seen him in the clinic.” Boy, had she seen him!

“Well, that’s even better than I’d hoped. You’re already friends,” Myrtle said, more to herself than them, as she hurried away. She paused to speak to the waiter, then hurried out of the main dining room.

Friends? Patsy thought. I hardly think so. Enemies. Not hardly. Boyfriend/girlfriend? No, she shouldn’t be thinking about that. After all, she had a firm policy about dating men she saw at the clinic. Any men, really, but maybe her aunt was right. Maybe it was time for that to change.

“So, your aunt calls you Patsy,” Ray said, placing his napkin in his lap and leaving his hands braced against his muscled thighs.

“Yes,” she said primly, happy to have been afforded the change in her direction of thinking. She put her hands in her lap as well. “She’s the only one I let get away with it.”

“Why is that? I like it. It suits you,” Ray said.

She’d liked it, too, when her parents had called her that, or her late husband. But it seemed as though everyone who’d ever cared about her had died and left her alone, so she didn’t encourage that particular intimacy anymore. It evoked too many memories. “I don’t!” she lied, her voice sharp.

“What do you want me to call you, then?”

Patsy knew well what the men in the clinic called her behind her back, so she had to give Ray an alternative. “Pat will be fine.”

“All right, Pat,” Ray said. “Pleased to meet you.” He paused. “Do you come here often?”

Patsy had to smile. It almost sounded like a pickup line. “Yes, it’s one of Aunt Myrtle’s favorite restaurants. Our family had a summer home on this stretch of beach years ago. I’m afraid Hurricane Opal took care of it, and Aunt Myrtle didn’t bother to rebuild.” She glanced around the familiar restaurant. “The hurricane took the Blue Heron out, too, but they rose from the rubble.” She smiled. “I must admit, I liked the old version better.”

Ray glanced around the room, decorated in the traditional trappings of Gulf Coast seafood establishments: old fishing nets, shells, starfish, stuffed fish, or maybe they were fakes, he didn’t know. It looked like any or all of at least a hundred other restaurants on the Gulf of Mexico. “Has it changed much?”

Patsy shrugged.

As Ray inspected the room, he paused and glanced out the window that overlooked the parking lot. A moving car caught his eye. “Look, it’s a vintage Cadillac, complete with fins. You don’t see many of those around anymore.”

Patsy jerked her head around so fast to look that she almost dislocated her neck. “Oh, no! That’s Aunt Myrtle’s car!”

“She must be moving it to a better parking spot.”

“I wish,” Patsy muttered. No such luck, she thought as the waiter arrived with only two salads.

Ray looked up. “You forgot one.”

“One what, sir?”

“One of the salads. There are three of us.”

“Oh, no, sir. The lady cancelled her order. Said she had a headache. But she told me to tell you to please stay,” the waiter assured them. “Miss Carter said there was no reason to ruin your evening.”

None, indeed, Patsy thought. “She probably planned this,” Patsy muttered, placing her napkin on her plate and pushing herself up. “I should have known.” She blew out a frustrated puff of breath as she hurried to the window, her eyes flashing with anger.

Then Ray realized what Miss Carter was up to. She had left him alone—if you could call being left in a crowded restaurant on a Saturday night being alone—with Prickly Pritchard, the ice princess. And he wasn’t sure he minded one bit. If Nurse Pat Pritchard was something to see in her starched white uniform at the clinic, she looked even better dressed in casual clothes. The blue eyes that had always appeared so icy and cold seemed warmer now, brighter, almost turquoise. Who would have thought that Prickly Pritchard could ever look that soft and inviting? Even in khakis and a sweater. Ray felt his trousers grow tight, and wishing circumstances were different, he willed himself to behave.

If she looked this good in casual clothes, dressed up, she’d be magnificent.

Patsy scanned the room, looking for someone, anyone, she could ask to take her home.

Ray joined her at the window, and Patsy felt even more trapped than she had before. But pleasantly so, she realized.

“You might as well calm down,” he said. “You’ll just end up with indigestion.”

“That’ll be my problem, then, won’t it?” Patsy snapped as she peered out the window. She all but pressed her face against the glass, hoping against hope that Aunt Myrt really had just moved the car. No such luck. As if she hadn’t known already. The only kind of luck she seemed to have was bad.

Patsy drew in a deep breath and turned, pasting on an artificial smile. No sense in letting gorgeous Ray Darling see her lose her cool. That was certainly not the image she had worked so hard to project at the clinic. “She’s gone,” Patsy said with forced calm as she hurried back to her seat and primly placed her napkin on her lap.

“I do have my own transportation,” Ray said as he seated himself again. “I didn’t hitchhike to get here. I know that we special ops guys are known to be rough and tough, but we do draw the line.”

“What?” Prickly Patsy shook her head. “What does that have to do with me being stranded here, miles from home?”

“I didn’t walk,” Radar replied with the type of patience one reserved for five-year-olds—or idiots. “I do have a car.”

“A car?” Sheesh, she sounded like a moron. “Of course. Well, I’ll just eat my salad and we’ll go.”

“I think not,” Ray said firmly, sounding nothing like the darling sergeant she had begun to think of him as. “Your aunt paid for a full meal. We will eat the entire meal. And we’ll enjoy it.” He sounded just like a drill instructor.

“Yes, sir,” Patsy snapped, then approximated a salute.

Ray chuckled. “At least, you used the right hand.” Then he dug in to his salad, and Patsy was glad he was occupied for the time being.

She made a face, and turned her attention to her own salad. “This is a little nicer than staying home with my dog, my VCR and black-and-white movies,” she murmured, her mouth full. Now why had she volunteered that particular morsel of information?

“You like old movies?” Ray asked, his eyes brightening with interest.

Patsy blushed. Ray had picked right up on her comment. Were they actually trying to make conversation? She swallowed. “Yes. And I hate it when they’ve been colorized. It makes them look too bright. Too artificial.”

“And seeing things in shades of gray isn’t?”

Did he want to argue, or was he merely making conversation? Patsy swallowed another bite of salad. “You know what I mean. The colors are often wrong.”

“Yes, I understand. Do you just enjoy the classics, or anything not in color?” Ray forked another bit of salad.

“My favorites are Casablanca, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Maltese Falcon.”

“A Humphrey Bogart fan, then,” Ray concluded. “What about the Three Stooges or the Marx Brothers?”

“Too silly. No woman likes them. What’s funny about three grown men poking each other in the eye and bonking each other on the head?”

“Harold Lloyd?”

“Better. At least, he’s not mean-spirited. But I prefer stuff that pretends to have a plot.” Patsy swallowed. Had she really said that?

Ray chuckled. He had such a nice smile, Patsy couldn’t help noticing. “I have to confess that I like old science fiction movies.”

“Attack of the Killer Centipedes, and The Blob that ate Albuquerque? Those kinds?” Patsy suggested, making up names.

“Planet Nine from Outer Space. Probably one of the best worst movies ever made.” Ray laughed. “And one of my favorites.”

Patsy couldn’t help smiling. Was Ray actually a fan? “You know Ed Wood?”

“Know him? I love him!” Ray broke into a wide grin. “I probably have every one of his movies memorized.”

You would, she couldn’t help thinking, but in a nice way. Ray had been reputed to be smarter than the average airman, but she’d never really had a conversation with him until now. What chitchat they’d had always seemed to lean toward the weather or the reason he was at the clinic. Now she was finding out that his interests were different than those of the typical airman, but she’d bet he was into computer games. If not computers themselves.

“I just ordered the complete Wood collection off the Internet,” she found herself confessing.

“Oh, man,” Ray said. “I think I’m falling in love.”

Then the waiter arrived with their food, and Patsy turned gratefully to her Deviled Crab. Saved by the dinner bell, she couldn’t help thinking as she chewed. Another minute and she might have found herself inviting Ray to her place for an Ed Wood Film Festival.

In spite of her reservations, Patsy was enjoying her “date” with Ray. Of course, she’d never let on to Aunt Myrtle. And deep down she knew that she wasn’t ready to invite this man, any man, into her home. She still had secrets she wanted—no needed—to keep.

RAY ORDERED the Pecan Praline Pie just to extend the evening—even if he would have to run a couple of extra miles next week to make up for it. He might be as hard and tough as an armadillo’s kneecap, but he had to work at it. His weakness had always been dessert.

At least, Prickly Patsy had ordered dessert as well. Did she always eat dessert or was she, too, looking for a way to keep the evening going?

“I am going to regret this,” Patsy said as the waiter placed the Death by Chocolate in front of her. She inhaled the rich aroma. She hadn’t even taken a bite, and Ray thought she might swoon. That was certainly a side of Prickly Pritchard he would never have imagined. The guys at the base often wondered if she survived on a diet of pickles and prunes.

“That good, huh?”

“Just the aroma seems sinful,” she said, slicing off a piece with the side of her fork. She raised it to her lips, but didn’t open her mouth. “Maybe if I just look at it, and only breathe it in, I won’t gain twenty pounds.” She looked at Ray and grinned. “No, I’ll gain it anyway just from being in the same room with it,” she said wryly. “I might as well go for the complete experience.”

Patsy popped the chocolate confection into her mouth and slowly withdrew the fork. She wore an expression of pure bliss as she chewed, and Ray wondered if that was what she looked like when she made love. What would it feel like to have her underneath him and to give her that much pleasure? Would she respond like…?

He gave himself a mental shake to rid himself of the image in his mind’s eye, but he almost exploded as he watched Patsy eat. To keep himself sane, he took a huge bite of his own dessert, and understood why Prickly Pritchard had had such a powerful reaction. The desserts here were too damned good to be legal.

“Oh, man. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” he muttered.

“Even if paying for it will be hell,” Patsy said. “I’ll have to take a couple of extra aerobics classes to pay for this.”

“Yeah,” Ray said with a groan. “I’ll probably have to run ten extra miles.”

Patsy laughed and Ray loved seeing it. Here, she seemed so different from the stern, prickly nurse he’d seen so often in the clinic.

“I should think you’d be used to it,” she said. “Don’t you run wearing forty pound rucksacks on a regular basis?” She leaned on her hand and watched him with an interested expression.

“Not if I can avoid it.” Ray patted his stomach. “And after all I’ve eaten tonight, it might feel like I’m carrying two rucksacks.”

“You can handle it,” Patsy said. “You have plenty of muscles, from what I’ve seen.” She looked quickly down at her plate, but not too quickly for Ray to notice the flush that colored her alabaster skin with an embarrassed stain.

Was she thinking about the other day in the clinic when she’d had a free look at his rump, or was she embarrassed about making such a personal statement? Ray pushed his plate away and decided to change the subject. “Well, I’ve had plenty. More than plenty.” He signaled for the waiter.

“Sir?”

“We’re ready for the check.”

“The other lady took care of it,” the waiter said. “The one who left.”

“I see,” Ray said, annoyed that Miss Carter had paid for his meal. He’d fully expected to pay for this evening.

And it didn’t make him happy that the evening was about to come to an end. Considering Prickly Pritchard’s reputation for turning down dates, this was probably his one and only chance.

The question was: For what?

And why? was another question. The answer to that one was clear: he really liked this Patsy Pritchard. From what he’d learned about her tonight, there was a whole lot more to her than her clinic demeanor suggested. But was his attraction due to the challenge her “at-work” attitude presented, or was it a genuine attraction to the woman he’d glimpsed tonight?

He looked at Patsy again.

All of the above, he decided.

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