Book of the Month: TAKE ME HOME: Chaper 10 & 11
Chapter Ten
“Want a cookie?”
“Do I look like someone who enjoys cookies?” Sorren asked.
“What? Cookies make everything better. Not as better as, say, vodka, but hey, it’s a
start.”
“You sound like a woman who needs chocolate,” Sorren said.
Ben felt his chest and his groin, making sure all his man parts were still intact. He needed something to take his mind off that mind-blowing kiss with Olivia earlier.
“Nope, still a guy. And that’s a pretty sexist thing to say. Seriously? I offer you cookies and you insult my manhood. Fine. Go to the legal meeting pissed off and cranky.”
“Sir, I’m really not in the mood.”
“You’re never in the mood.”
“You should be a little more somber after getting your soldier out of jail this morning.”
“Just because I’m burying my feelings in cookies doesn’t mean it’s not bothering me.” Ben chewed on that for a moment, along with a chocolate chip cookie that practically melted in his mouth. “Foster’s out of jail, it’s fine.” The cookie dried out in his mouth.
“It’s stupid shit like this that’s going to take away from training our boys for war,” Sorren said quietly.
Ben’s temper snapped, shoving aside the lighter mood he’d been bullshitting anyway. “Foster is a damn good soldier. So what if he’s blowing off steam on the weekends?”
“That kind of thing is contagious-first you have a guy getting arrested for partying, then it gets worse and worse until you’ve got a goddamn gang running your company.”
Ben pointed the sleeve of cookies at him. “Already took care of the gang. They’re already being court-martialed or separated from the military. Next problem?”
“You think this is a joke?”
“It’s not a goddamned joke, Firs’ Sarn’t, but I can’t condemn Foster when I’ve done the same damn thing more than once.”
Neither he nor Sorren moved for a long time. Ben continued to eat his sleeve of cookies.
Sorren scrubbed his hands over his face, breaking the silence. “This place is a goddamned disaster.”
Ben chewed on his cookie. “Yeah, well, get ready because we’re about to go into the happy fun times of the legal sync.” Sorren looked mildly horrified and Ben pushed away from the table, dropping the cookies on his desk and picking up his headgear and the rest of his folders.
Ben had made light of it but, silently, he was worried. Olivia had said she wasn’t going to dime him out about Zittoro’s packet and he trusted that. Still.
But he’d take the ass-chewing for not having Zittoro’s packet done.
Someone shouted at the back of the orderly room. Ben glanced at Sorren and they both sprinted to the back of the company where the platoon offices were.
LT Gillis and Sergeant First Class Lazarus were squared off toe to toe, screaming at each other.
Ben didn’t know whether to be pissed or impressed. Gillis was a hundred pounds soaking wet and Lazarus was built like a pit bull. Ben grabbed his lieutenant, yanking him backward before Lazarus put him in intensive care. Now wouldn’t that be fun to explain to the battalion commander?
“What the hell is going on back here?” Ben demanded. Sorren shoved Lazarus back.
“The goddamned lieutenant doesn’t listen,” Lazarus shouted.
Sorren stuck his finger in Lazarus’ face. “Watch it,” he said quietly.
Lazarus swore. “Firs’ Sarn’t, I told him I’d take care of the range planning. He went and did it himself without me checking it and now we don’t have the right range for next week.”
Ben looked at Gillis. “He’s never at work,” Gillis said, his face flushed. “I can’t get him to answer his damn phone. So yeah, I did the damn paperwork myself.”
“What range do we have next week?” Ben asked.
“Mark nineteen range,” Sorren said.
“Not anymore,” Lazarus said. “Now we’ve got a nine mil range.”
Ben sighed. “Then we go shoot a nine mil range. Get with the company ops and try to find another mark nineteen range to piggyback off.” He patted Gillis’s shoulders. “See? Problem solved. Another happy day in Bandit Company.”
Sorren looked at Lazarus. “Answer your damn phone when your lieutenant calls you,” he said. Ben wondered if he ever shouted.
“You two have to stay together for the kids,” Ben said. All three men looked at him like he was crazy. “You’ve never heard of the relationship between a platoon sergeant and platoon leader or commander and first sergeant as an arranged marriage?”
“I’m positive I have never heard of that,” Sorren said as he followed Ben out of the company. “I think you need to get a handle on your LTs quickly. Their old commander probably rubbed off on them and not in a good way, more in a need-a-shower-with-bleach kind of way.”
Ben cleared his throat. “Did you just make a joke?”
Sorren grunted. “Maybe you’re rubbing off on me.”
“But not in a need-a-shower kind of way?”
“Fuck you, sir.”
They walked in silence for a little bit. Ben was a pragmatist but that didn’t mean he wanted to spend the next year chasing down the bad seeds. He agreed with Sorren. They needed to find the bad actors and get them gone.
Meanwhile, they had a war to prepare to fight. A fact conveniently forgotten by the staff, who kept having meeting after meeting.
Meetings like the impending legal sync. He wondered if he could get the commander to change this to once a month. It would clear up some time on their Friday afternoons. But that would only give the sergeant major an excuse to hold a longer formation and Ben…Ben hated formations with a loathing that he usually reserved for spiders, snakes, and hamsters.
He shuddered. He had no idea why people liked hamsters. Evil-looking little bastards. Now that was a holdover from childhood trauma. He’d have to remember to break that one out the next time Sorren got sand in his panties. The big first sergeant didn’t seem like he’d be afraid of anything.
Ben would have to be on the lookout. It was the big guys who were terrified of the strangest things. He’d found out Iaconelli was afraid of geese on their last tour. Geese? Who the hell was afraid of geese?
He scrubbed his hand across his jaw as they walked into the headquarters and down the hall to the conference room.
Chapter Eleven
The silence in the battalion conference room was thick and awkward. The kind of awkward that came from being the only female and the only non-combat veteran in a room full of combat veterans, and from being the person to tell them they had another soldier in jail.
The new command teams sat around the table. It was a toss-up who looked more uncomfortable: the commanders or the first sergeants. Legal meetings were painful for all parties involved.
“Teague, how many soldiers are you sending to trial defense tomorrow?” Gilliad asked.
Olivia glanced over at Ben, doing her best to keep a neutral expression. It was hard, so damn hard when the memory of his kiss still tingled on her lips.
Ben met her gaze briefly then looked down at his notes. “Five, sir.”
“Which ones?”
Ben rattled off the names and his battalion commander flipped his glasses to the top of his head. Gilliad read over paperwork silently.
“Where’s Zittoro’s packet?” He tapped the sheet with the tip of his pen. “It’s on the list that you received it on Monday.”
Ben glanced up at her quickly. Just a glance but it was filled with questions. Damn it, she hadn’t updated the slides.
Ben opened his mouth to speak. “Sir, Zittoro-“
Olivia cut him off. “Sir, Zittoro’s packet had errors on it. I found them this morning and didn’t have time to update the slides before the meeting.”
Gilliad nodded but Major Denis leaned forward, his shoulders bunched, his expression hostile. “Next time, make sure you all have accurate statuses before you brief the battalion commander,” he said with a pointed look at Olivia.
She ran her tongue over her teeth. She didn’t answer to Major Denis but she opted not to pick the fight just then.
Not here and not now. But there was nothing she could say because he had her on the slides not being updated. She knew he was looking for an opening, any opening, to skewer her in front of the battalion commander and she wasn’t going to give him one.
She said nothing, daring him to push for an acknowledgment. Everyone stood and saluted sharply when the battalion commander left, then started filtering out of the room when he’d gone. Ben said something to his first sergeant but Olivia didn’t stick around to chat.
She slipped out of the conference room and down the hall to her office at the back of the adjutant’s area. It was private and she had her own space where she could secure the more sensitive files.
She had less than an hour to clear up everything for the day before she had to head out to Stable Call. She had no idea what to expect at this event. She glanced at her new Stetson. At least she’d have an excuse to wear it.
A quiet knock on her door broke her stride. She turned from where she’d been putting files in a drawer.
Ben stood in the doorway.
***
“Hey,” she said quietly. The memory of that kiss made him crave another taste of her. He’d thought she was fire and passion and so damned determined before. Now he knew that quiet energy she directed toward work was merely a hint of the passion concealed beneath that cool exterior.
It was a passion he wanted to feel beneath his fingertips. That he wanted to slide against. “Hey.” He swallowed, about to cross a line from professional to…something else.
And damned if he wasn’t afraid to cross that line. That kiss earlier was nothing compared to what she’d just given him.
She’d lied for him today. Ben had been about to make something up that would get his battalion commander off his back and Olivia had stepped in with a smooth story that had deflected Gilliad’s attention with no one the wiser.
She’d agreed not to tell the boss. He hadn’t expected her to all-out lie for him. And now that she had? He didn’t quite know how to broach the subject with her. Not at all.
She straightened and leaned against her desk. The broken scale tray swayed as she bumped it with her hip. He grasped at it for a distraction from his racing thoughts. “You know one of these is broken?”
She nodded. “It’s supposed to be.”
He studied her quietly. “What, like, broken justice?”
“Exactly.”
Ben paused, studying the soft bun at the nape of her neck. Her skin was exposed. Her neck was long and lean. He had the sudden image in his head of dragging his tongue down that tender flesh. Would she gasp? Would she tip her head and grant him access to more of her secret places?
He cleared his throat roughly. “You lied for me today.”
She stilled, guilt flashing over her face. “Yeah, about that…”
“Thank you,” he said quickly.
She lifted one brow. “For lying?”
“For giving me the benefit of the doubt. That doesn’t happen very often,” he said quietly.
“Really? But you’re such a charmer.”
Ben shifted until he stood a little too close. Until he could see her eyes darken the way they had in the car when he’d given in to the temptation to kiss her. “Are you teasing me? Because if you are, I think I need to make a note on my calendar that yes, you do officially have a sense of humor.”
A smile crossed her lips. It took everything he had not to slide his thumb over that soft skin. He wanted to see her lips close over the tip. To feel her warm mouth encircle him and…Jesus, he still had to go back to work.
“I do have a sense of humor. I just don’t get to break it out very often because the only thing I see at work is the seedy underbelly of the Army. There’s not much humor in what I do.”
“Maybe you need to relax a little more.” Ben shifted until he could nudge the door shut behind him. He didn’t want anyone to see. Didn’t want to give anyone a hint of something that was private and intimate and deeply compelling. Were they flirting? This felt like flirting. And with this woman, he had absolutely no basis to say either way what this really was.
“I don’t know what this ’91relax’ is that you speak of,” she said.
He felt a long-forgotten twinge deep in his belly. It was something so foreign, he’d forgotten it was something he was capable of. In all his casual encounters, he’d forgotten what real attraction felt like.
He swallowed the dryness in his mouth. He didn’t know what to do with this realization that Olivia Hale was someone he wanted to…someone he wanted. It was one thing to flirt with someone at a bar, to take them home for a few hours of mindless sex.
This? This was something entirely different.
Something more than wanting a few hours of sheets sliding over skin, of warm bodies slipping together. This was something darker. Something warmer.
Something infinitely more valuable.
“Maybe I’ll ply you with alcohol tonight at Stable Call. We’ll see if we can’t get you to unwind a little bit.” His voice was low, grating on his ears.
“Good luck with that. I only drink socially. There will be no drunken pictures of me immortalized on the Internet.” She stepped toward him then, closing the last distance between them. She reached up and slid her hand over his cheek. Ben went very still as her palm slid over his skin. Her palm was cool against his face. Gentle. It took everything he had to let her slip out of reach again.
He captured her palm before she could slip away. Held it there against his cheek. “Thank you,” he whispered. “For Zittoro.”
Her lips parted. He could feel the slight huff of breath on his skin. “Thank you for trusting me with the truth.” She slipped her fingers from his, her eyes sparkling. “Just don’t make me come after you for that packet.”
Ben caught her hand before he thought about it. His hand closed over hers, her index finger captured in a gentle loop between his thumb and forefinger. He had the sudden wild idea to put her finger to his lips. He pressed it gently to his mouth. Felt the pad of her finger on his bottom lip. A single bolt of electricity snapped over his skin.
A simple touch. Nothing more.
They were at work. It was the single stupidest thing he could have done.
He released her quickly, before anyone could see. Before he could do something stupid like pull her close and kiss her again. The want inside him was powerful. Raw and needy.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
A pink flush crept up her cheeks. Her bottom lip parted from her top and a tiny gap appeared. A tiny gap he wanted to slide his thumb into to feel her tongue run along the pad.
He needed to get the hell out of there. What the hell was wrong with him? Nothing said “sexy” like sexual harassment at the office.
“I have officially lost my fucking mind,” he said, reaching for the doorknob and angling his body toward the narrow hall. “I’m going to leave now before I do something else really dumb.”
Ben felt awkward. Tense. He didn’t know what had possessed him to do that. Hell, they weren’t even on friendly terms and he’d gone and done something…something he would have done with a date. Something he would have done to a woman he’d been flirting with.
At least he was when they weren’t sniping at each other over legal packets.
That was the only thing that could describe the moment of pure insanity that had him pressing his lips to her finger.
Still, Ben took a step into the hallway, unable to break the silence, unable to move. Olivia followed him and paused in her doorway, a breath of a distance between their bodies. Time froze, silent and heavy between them.
Her lips parted, her tongue darting over her bottom lip. “I’ll see you tonight, Ben,” she said quietly.
ONE CLICK TAKE ME HOME NOW!
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