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.
