The Majors' Holiday Hideaway. Caro Carson
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It began with the note taped to her door.
Or rather, the note was the end.
Major India Woods, US Army, stood in the hallway outside her apartment in Belgium and read the note. Her feet were killing her after a ten-hour day in black, high-heeled pumps, but the note was taped right at eye level, so she read it on the spot.
Her boyfriend, Gerard-Pierre, had very neat handwriting. His words, lovely loops of black ink that formed perfectly parallel lines across the white paper, spelled the end of their relationship.
He just didn’t know it.
He’d written in French, of course, although his English was nearly as good as hers. Ostensibly, he preferred to use French when communicating with her because she’d once said it was her weakest language and he was, therefore, helping her. Considering her English, German, Dutch, Flemish and Danish were better than his, she believed he preferred to use the one language that made him superior—but she’d known that for almost as long as she’d known Gerard-Pierre. It wasn’t the language in which he’d written that signaled the end of their relationship.
They needed to talk tonight, Gerard-Pierre had written. He had to work late, but he’d be home after dinner. This was Europe; after dinner could mean ten or eleven at night. India was an American and an army officer to boot; her workday started as early as six in the morning, something Gerard-Pierre had always considered uncivilized. His schedule as a university teaching assistant might be more sophisticated than hers, but expecting her to wait up for him tonight was a thoughtless way to treat a woman who had to get up before dawn to run three miles with her military unit.
But that wasn’t why she was going to have to bring things to an end, either.
It wasn’t her boyfriend’s insistence upon communicating in French, and it wasn’t the fact that his hours conflicted with hers far too often. It wasn’t the fact that they hadn’t found the time to take any of the weekend excursions around Europe that they’d once planned. Heck, they hadn’t found the time to take an excursion to the bedroom for months.
Months? India frowned, trying to remember the last time they’d had sex. Yep. Months.
Still, India wouldn’t have called off the relationship. Maybe things had cooled down between them, but they got along just fine. At long last, they were going to take one of those excursions and catch a train to Paris over Christmas. If that didn’t revive any passion, India knew she would have let their relationship drift along into the new year, maybe indefinitely—after all, sex wasn’t the be-all and end-all of a relationship—but now...
She jerked the note off the door. Now, she had to take action.
India used her hundred-year-old, oversize brass key to turn the old lock in the door. The moment she was in her apartment, the first action she took was to kick off her pumps. Since her current duty assignment required her to work in an office in NATO headquarters, she wore the army’s service uniform every day, a blue suit with epaulettes on the shoulders and military insignia on the lapels. In a straight skirt that was tailored precisely to midknee, India worked in her dream position, using her linguistic skills while living in a European capital, but sometimes she longed to be stationed back in the States, where nearly every soldier wore the roomy camouflage uniform and comfy combat boots, even in an office setting.
Still wearing her sheer pantyhose, India scrunched her toes into the Turkish carpet she’d lugged from, well, Turkey, which had been her last duty station. She’d worn her blue service uniform daily in the embassy there, as well. She missed combat boots. She missed...
She looked at the French writing on the page and felt something like homesickness. How irrational of her. This apartment, created out of a few rooms in a building that had existed for a hundred years longer than the United States itself had existed, was her home. There was no childhood home back in the States to miss. Her mother was a nomad, a happy nomad who had circumnavigated the globe by sea and rail and camel caravan twice in the eleven years India had been serving in the military. Her mother was on round three, somewhere in Australia at the moment.
It was tomorrow in Australia, around four in the morning. India plunked her messenger bag onto her little high-top table, which served as her dining room and work desk in one corner of the apartment. She took out her cell phone, opened an app that enabled international video chats for free and pinged her best friend in the United States. It was before noon in Fort Hood, Texas. Maybe Helen was on her lunch break.
Captain Helen Pallas answered, all smiles at her desk in the brigade headquarters of the 89th Military Police Brigade. The camouflage collar of her uniform was visible. And, as she waved into the camera, so was the diamond band on her finger.
That vague feeling of missing something turned into a sharp longing, a sudden stab of pain that took away India’s breath. It couldn’t be homesickness, but it couldn’t be jealousy, either—India wasn’t in the market for a husband. She must be feeling envious of that comfy camouflage.
But gosh, Helen sure had looked happy for the past year as a newlywed.
“What’s up, roomie?” Helen asked. They’d been roommates as young lieutenants. India had been a first lieutenant who’d already completed two years of service when Helen had been commissioned as a new second lieutenant. They’d split the rent on a two-bedroom house outside of Fort Bragg for a while, until promotions and assignments had sent them off to different corners of the world. Now India was a major and Helen was a captain, just a couple of years away from being a major herself. They hadn’t been roommates in the past seven years, but the roomie nickname still stuck.
“What time is it in Brussels? After dinner?”
“I wish. Hang on for a second—I’ve got to set the phone down. Enjoy the ceiling.” India put the phone faceup on her table and shrugged out of her suit jacket. Her rows of hard-won medals and badges clinked in a muted, metallic way as she hung the jacket over the back of the bar stool. She picked up the phone. “Okay, I’m back.”
“I love your ceiling. Those beams look like they belong in a medieval castle.”
“This was a medieval stable, I think, before they divided it into apartments.”
“Still cool. There’s nothing like that in Texas. There’s nothing like that on this continent. So, what’s up? You said you wished it was after dinner. Is your man taking you out on a hot date? Do you wish the meal was over and it was time for a little somethin’-somethin’ else?”
Her man. That sounded kind of sexy, to have a man. India pictured someone strong, someone tall, dark and handsome—even devilish. Devoted. Maybe even protective. While she was at it, someone her age, early thirties; maybe an American, for a change. Someone financially independent, with a career. Someone...not Gerard-Pierre.
“No hot date. My, uh, boyfriend—” India winced. She couldn’t bring herself to call him her man, but boyfriend sounded so crushingly juvenile. “My boyfriend wants to have a big talk after dinner tonight.”
“A big talk? Like, the big talk? This is so exciting. You’re finally in love, and I’m finally going to see Europe because I will not miss your wedding. You’d better invite me.”
“Actually, I need to break up with him, ASAP.” India kept her expression pleasantly matter-of-fact during the pause as the phone app sent her words from Belgium up to a satellite in outer space and back down to Texas.
She heard Helen’s voice a second before the video showed her friend wrinkling her nose in disappointment. “Oh, India. What’s wrong with Jerry-Perry?”
“Gerard-Pierre. But close.”
“It sounds better when you say it. I can’t keep up with your exotic European men. But seriously, hasn’t he been your only exotic European man for forever?”
It was India’s turn to wrinkle her nose. “Only a year. Just about as long as you’ve been married. Happy anniversary, by the way.” She knew