Surrendering To Her Sergeant (25 page)

“So, errrmm…what else is new in the
city of sin these days? You still seeing that cop who gets mistaken
for Chris Hemsworth every time you go out?”

Zoe laughed. “Yeah. Sorta.”

“Sorta?”

A discomfited whine trickled over the
line. “He’s a little weird.”

“Weird?”

“Yeah.” Zo sighed. “I don’t know. He
looks at me strange sometimes. Like he’s appraising me for an
estate sale or something.”

She put Ethan on the back burner for a
second and straightened in alarm. “That doesn’t sound
right.”

“Meh. It’s probably just a cop thing.
I probably need to end it. We’re just not on the same page. It’s
great to have a guy who understands my working hours but other than
that, we’re not…”

“Not what?” Ava prompted after Zo’s
trail-off became a long pause.

“In sync,” she supplied. “You know
what I mean?” Her frustrated groan filled the line. “Agghh. Maybe
it’s asking for too much, to have a guy who just…reads you right,
you know?”

Ava couldn’t help it. She smiled. It
flowed up from her soul and into her reply. “It’s not asking too
much.”

One long moment passed. Another. “Wait
a minute.” All three of the words were drawn out with Zo’s older
sister knowingness. “I know that tone.”

“What tone?”

“You’ve met someone.” When
Ava feebly attempted a scoff, Zoe persisted, “You
have
!”

Discomfort set in. Was
Ethan now a “someone”? In the roughly two hundred and one days
since their forest encounter, she’d kept him firmly in the
Man Moments Best Forgotten
file. In the space of
one
day, he’d not only jumped out of the folder but
was tempting her to torch the damn thing.

That left the question of what file he
went into next.

“I don’t know if I’d call it that,”
she muttered.

“What, so you didn’t ‘meet’ him? Does
he work on the set? Or was it one of those cute things, like you
slammed grocery carts and his bread got mashed against your Ding
Dongs?”

“My
Ding Dongs
?” She giggled.

“Don’t diss the Ding Dongs. They’re
one of the main food groups.”

She took advantage of Zoe’s
aren’t-I-hilarious moment to slip in her revelation. “I met him
when I went back home to visit Rayna before the holidays. At Sage
Weston’s wedding. Well, almost-wedding.”

“The day that crazy convict held
everyone hostage and nearly killed Garrett’s friend?”

She purposely kept her voice light.
“It was a memorable day, for sure.”

“Wait.” Zoe’s tone took a fast turn
into apprehension. “Weren’t a lot of the guys at that thing from
the base? Garrett’s friends?”

Ava took a long breath and let her
sister hear it. “I can tell where this conversation is
headed.”

The line went loud with
Zo’s huff. “
Estás loca
? Have you not learned anything after the shit that flew after
Colin and Flynn?”

She punched a pillow.
“
Mierda
. You don’t
even know his name.”

“I don’t need to. I
don’t
want
to.
Dios
,
Ava! Soldiers are to your soul what bees are to your body. They
suck you dry and you happily let them!”

“This isn’t like that. Ethan
is—”

“Different?” her sister
shot back. “Really? How? He doesn’t have the body that’s hard in
all the right places? He doesn’t have the stare that makes you all
gooey, ready to throw away every scrap of dignity you have just to
feel that way again? He hasn’t growled all the right things in your
ear, kissed you until you can’t think beyond wanting to be with him
all the time, until you can’t think
at
all
? Am I wrong about any of that,
cariña
?” She stopped to
let out a girl growl. “Am I wrong about telling you, as the person
who helped scrape up what was left of your heart after Flynn’s
bullshit, that you’re a jewel who doesn’t deserve to be crapped on
by these animals?”

“Stop it.” She spat the words. “These
‘animals’ sacrifice their lives for us! Ethan’s team has spent the
last seven months on a mission that was so dangerous, he can’t even
talk about it.”

“His team?” Zoe practically
stammered it. “A mission?
No me
digas
, is he Special Forces, too? Ava, are
you out of—”

“Time,” she snapped. “I’m out of time,
Zo. We have a long day on the set and I need to get going. So save
your breath.”

She listened to her sister
swallow back a lump of emotion. “I love you, Ava. That’s all. It’s
only you, me, and
Papí
now. We need to take care of each other.”

“I know.” She sighed. “I know. But I’m
twenty-four years old. I need a sister now, not a
mother.”

Zoe’s thick silence told
her all about the raw nerve she’d just struck. Feeling like crap,
Ava picked at a thread on the pillow. Zo hadn’t asked for the
burden on her eleven-year-old shoulders when Mom came home from
seeing
Giagia
in
Greece and was dead from tuberculosis a week later, but she’d
accepted her new role with grace and generosity, and she’d always
been there to show Ava the way. But now it was time for her to let
go a little. Now it was time for her to see that her
cariña
was full-grown and
capable of learning from her mistakes—and qualified to make better
decisions because of them.

Ethan was a better decision. She felt
it in every thought he filled, in every window he’d smashed inside
her lonely heart.

“Have a good day.” Zo said it with as
much cheer as Eeyore.

“You too, Ms. Dance Lead.”

Her sister’s comeback had a renewed
smile in it. “Go make some people beautiful, wench.”

“Got it, baby.”

She laughed as she disconnected the
line, then looked at her phone for another long moment. Biting her
lip nervously, she scrolled to her text-messaging screen…and
tentatively typed in the beginning of Ethan’s name. Though she’d
been diligent about deleting every message he’d ever sent to her,
the device recognized his name and automatically filled it into the
Recipient field. The blinking cursor waited for her to fill in the
message part.

With a chastising grumble, she closed
the window.

“Do this the right way,”
she ordered herself. “He told you he’d call and he will.” She
nodded with determination. “Show Zoe she’s wrong. He’ll prove he’s
the different one. You know that. You
know
that.”

Maybe he’d even prove he was the right
one.

With a smile she felt down to her
toes, she hurried to take a shower, taking care to keep the phone
nearby.

* * * * *

A text came in on her way to the
studio. She heard it ding when she was three stoplights away from
the studio gate but dutifully left her cell in her purse until
she’d parked. That officially turned those blocks into the longest
she’d ever driven.

Her heart sank when she picked up her
phone. The message was from Bella.

Exciting cast + crew mtng
this am. Meet me on main set.

After the disappointment ebbed, the
curiosity set in. Bella never went to the set without makeup. But
her message distinctly said “exciting.” It was a dichotomy worth
witnessing, at least.

When she arrived at the soundstage,
the air buzzed with activity like it was nine a.m. and everyone was
ready for the first take of the day. Ava checked her watch. It was
barely seven thirty. She gravitated toward the area they all
referred to as main set, though it was actually a composite of four
smaller areas that represented the main characters’ homes and
domestic base workplaces. The show had a couple of other permanent
sets, including a huge “Middle Eastern forward operating camp,”
affectionately nicknamed Camp Cameron, and a scale representation
of a Chinook helicopter with part of its side carved away for
camera accessibility. Though the crew called that one “the
shithook,” openly borrowing the real Army’s slang, Ava had heard
rumors it had a more secret pet name, as well: Bella’s Bodacious
Bird.

The real Bella wasn’t
looking terribly bodacious yet today, though Ava admitted the woman
was more put together than she’d anticipated. Since the studio sent
a car each morning out to the villa, Bella’s usual MO was to roll
out of bed and into the car, relying on Ava to tame everything into
place for the day’s shooting schedule. Right now, Bella had
actually changed out of the sweats and T-shirt in which she
normally showed up, favoring a soft caramel-colored sweater that
was belted so as to show off her bust to its fullest. Her skinny
jeans were tucked into suede ankle boots. Her hair was piled on top
of her head in a purposeful mess, with tendrils framing a simple,
self-applied makeup job. The only exception to the
Bella au naturel
look
were her lips, perfectly adorned in the red she’d made so famous,
MAC Cosmetics had renamed it “Bella’s Kiss.”

The title seemed appropriate this
morning—in a way that made Ava’s stomach turn over.

She entered just in time to watch the
woman transfer at least an inch of that lipstick onto a defined,
noble jaw…on the face that had filled her dreams last night.
“Ethan?” she queried beneath her breath. “What the…?”

It trailed into nothing as her lungs
clutched. Even in his dress uniform, he let the lipstick just stay
there. Revision. He broke into a dazzling grin as Bella wiped it
off for him. He murmured something, making her laugh louder as he
tugged at the curls near both her cheeks. When she leaned her face
into his palm, his smile vanished…as he tunneled his long
fingertips deeper into her hair. They looked like a pair of
teenagers dancing around the are-we-gonna-do-it-or-not
elephant.

“Oh my God.” She had a weird urge to
laugh. Though she hid the burst behind a hand, it was the comfort
she needed to push down her nausea and apply some common sense to
this alternate universe into which she’d clearly
stumbled.

That logic returned some
indisputable facts. Ethan had been at Bella’s last night but chosen
to go home with her. He’d done those magical, carnal things
with
her
. He’d
commanded
her
to
call him Sir and assured she’d never look at a peppermint without
smiling again. And he’d helped her to start putting Colin and Flynn
where they truly belonged. Far in her past. She was ready for the
future—and his parting kiss from seven hours ago had told her he
wanted at least an immediate part of that. Oh hell, that
kiss.

He hasn’t…kissed you until
you can’t think beyond wanting to be with him all the time…until
you can’t think
at all
?

“Basta
,” She spat it at a nonexistent Zoe, jamming her hands into
her jeans pockets so she didn’t have to watch them shake. There was
a sensible reason why Ethan was back here today. And letting Bella
paw him like they were rehearsing a sexy tango for one of those
celebrity dance shows. And continuing to smile like he enjoyed
every second of it.

Cameron to the rescue.

She let herself breathe as their
director and unspoken leader entered. Cameron Stock was big as a
UFC champion but gentle as a high school guidance counselor, a
combination that served him well during the show’s production. By
the gleam in his eyes and the eager grin on his square face, Ava
judged he was working on his fifth or sixth cup of coffee for the
day. Despite that, the man lifted his voice in its normal blend of
statesman and quarterback.

“Good morning, everyone. Thank you for
prying yourselves out of your normal nooks and crannies for the
early call time.”

As everyone chuckled, he turned to
give a nod to one more person who arrived on the set. Though
Cameron’s motion was small, the effect was significant. The person
he greeted was Mr. Lemare himself, dressed in his usual open-necked
shirt, casual but custom suit, and luxurious Italian boots that
were worth three months of Ava’s salary. Everyone bolstered their
posture and silenced their phones as Cam continued.

“As you can surmise, we’ve got a
significant piece of news to relay today. Several, in fact. First,
we have decided not to renew Mr. Lake’s contract with the show. I
know this part doesn’t come as a surprise, considering how avidly
Trent’s been pursuing a film career. We wish him the best with his
endeavors.”

The bitterness in the man’s eyes
betrayed the opposite sentiment, but that wasn’t a shock to anyone.
His smile became a savoring smirk as he continued, “On that note,
I’m ecstatic to say that we’ll be killing off Mr. Lake’s character
in a big two-hour special taking place on our normal broadcast date
in ten days.” After the excited ripple from the declaration abated,
he went on, “When I say big, people, I mean it. Mr. Lemare has
gotten the studio’s green light to contribute his own backing into
this endeavor. We’re buying up our own advertising slots so as to
present the episode commercial-free. We’ll be able to write it as a
two-hour movie instead of a ten-part television episode, with the
last half hour to be a live broadcast of our scripted
content.