The Captains' Vegas Vows. Caro Carson
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He was made of stone.
“Welcome back,” Colonel Reed said. “How was Utah? Friend’s wedding, wasn’t it? How’d it go?”
“Yes, sir. He’s married now.”
“Well, yeah, that happens on wedding weekends.” The colonel started to chuckle. When Tom didn’t join him, he sat back and kept his too-sharp gaze on Tom. “You’re standing there pretty formally. I take it you’re here on official business.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why didn’t I hear from Colonel Stephens that you’d be coming?”
Lieutenant Colonel Stephens was the battalion commander. Lieutenant colonels wore a silver oak leaf as their rank, but they were commonly addressed as colonel, not lieutenant colonel. Higher-ranking colonels like Oscar Reed wore a black-embroidered eagle as their rank. The eagle was the bird in the phrase full-bird colonel.
The chain of command was like a ladder. Tom was the company commander of the 584th Military Police Company. He was responsible for every aspect of one hundred and twenty soldiers’ lives. The next rung higher was the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Stephens, responsible for four MP companies, including Tom’s. The next rung higher was Colonel Reed, commander of the 89th MP Brigade, comprised of five battalions located at five different army bases across four different states. Tom had skipped a rung, a very big rung, to speak to Colonel Reed directly.
Officers did not skip the chain of command.
Tom had. “I haven’t spoken with Colonel Stephens yet, sir. I wanted you to hear this first.”
“So this isn’t official business. Or is this something personal that’s about to become official business?”
“This weekend...” Tom stood with his gaze straight ahead, finding it easier to focus on the wall than the man seated at the desk. Colonel Reed wasn’t just the brigade commander. He was also Oscar Reed, the man who’d lived next door when Tom was just nine years old. As a junior officer in his early twenties, Oscar and two other new lieutenants had combined their housing allowances to afford a big house with a swimming pool, right next door to Tom’s father. Dad had been a fighter pilot and a major in the air force at the time, several ranks higher and at least a decade older than Oscar and the guys. He had not been pleased with the new neighbors.
Tom had been thrilled. Oscar had taken pity on the nine-year-old boy who’d shadowed him, desperate for a role model. For a hero. For a man who paid attention to him.
Oscar hadn’t been able to change the oil in his car without Tom wriggling under the car, too. For the three years he’d lived next door, Oscar had patiently looked at every frog and spider Tom had caught. When Tom had decided to serve in the military, he hadn’t followed his father into the air force. He’d followed Oscar into the army. Hell, Tom was military police because the young Lieutenant Oscar Reed had been an MP.
To be serving now as a company commander in Colonel Reed’s brigade was an honor. And now, Tom had to tell Oscar Reed what a fool he’d been. Damn it, Helen. Damn you.
“This weekend...? This weekend what?” Colonel Reed stood suddenly, but he lowered his voice. “Son of a biscuit, Tom, tell me you didn’t spend the weekend in jail.”
“No, sir.”
“You didn’t break any laws?”
“No, sir.”
“Thank God. That would kill your career. Even I couldn’t get that off your record.” He nodded toward his office door, always open, part of his personal leadership style. “Go close the door, then put your fourth point of contact in a chair, dagnabbit. You’re making me nervous.”
Tom almost smiled at that. Oscar was the one and only man in the military who never swore. Tom had assumed he didn’t swear around him because he’d been a child, but now, coming back into his life as an adult, he realized that Oscar didn’t swear around anyone, of any age.
As Tom sat in the chair just to the left of the desk, the colonel slid his laptop off to the side and folded his hands on top of his desk blotter. “Out with it. What happened in Utah this weekend, besides skiing?”
“There was no skiing. The snow wasn’t great. I expected better for the first week of December, but it’s been too warm. It rained.”
Oscar just raised one brow at him. With a pang, Tom realized that was why he raised one brow as a silent question, too.
“I was stuck indoors with the wedding crowd around the clock. The wedding was Friday night. By Saturday morning, I couldn’t stand any more love and romance and couples talking baby talk to each other everywhere I turned. While I was stuck in the hotel lobby bar, I watched not one, but two, men propose in front of the lobby’s goddamned Christmas tree.” He glanced at the insignia for a colonel on Oscar’s camouflage uniform. “Sir.”
“Horrifying. What did you do?”
“I left Utah. I drove two hours to Vegas and got married myself.”
The colonel was utterly still for one second. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I was.”
“You got married to whom?”
An image of Helen was burned into his mind. A woman with cool elegance. A woman with warm energy. A woman who made him laugh, who listened to him, who opened her heart to him and told him all her hopes and dreams. She could giggle like a child. She could speak with wisdom. And she was sexy, the sexiest, the single most sensual woman he’d ever known. His dream girl.
“Some woman I met in a casino.” Tom closed his eyes; he didn’t need to see the colonel’s expression. He rubbed his forehead; he didn’t want to remember the moment he’d believed there really was such a thing as love at first sight.
“This was a legal marriage? Not some kind of dress-up photo op at the casino? A bartender didn’t officiate? You got a license?”
A license, so easy to get, so ridiculously cheap. A ring—he’d dropped a few thousand there, then a thousand more on the best suite in the hotel for their wedding night. Helen had insisted on paying for her own dress.
“Yes, sir, all legal. She wants a divorce. Already.” Saying that sentence caused him pain. He should be feeling no pain; his heart was walled shut. You don’t want me? Then I don’t want you.
The colonel shook his head. “There has to be some easier way out of this. It’s been less than a day, hasn’t it?”
Tom did the math. “I’ve been married for thirty-four hours, sir. The Happiest Wedding Chapel did its due diligence in making sure we understood this was a legally binding ceremony.”
No backsies, Helen had said with a wink, because it was absurd to even imagine they’d want to change their minds.
Colonel Reed kept shaking his head and pulled his laptop closer. “Where did this wedding take place?”
“The Happiest Wedding Chapel. That’s the name of the place. You didn’t think I was actually using the word happiest to describe any of this stupidity, did you?”
The colonel rolled his eyes and chuckled as he hit a few keys. “No, but let’s keep this in perspective. You didn’t commit a crime. It’s not like you’re in here confessing that you’re a drug addict or something. A divorce is a pain in the rear, that’s all. This will become a story you can tell when you’re an old man like me, to prove you once had a wild youth.”
Wild youth? Tom was twenty-seven, a company commander with one hundred and twenty lives in his keeping. There was nothing either wild or youthful about military responsibilities. Colonel Reed was forty-two, a man in his prime, not old. The colonel was exaggerating, cracking a joke, trying to lighten the moment.
Tom tried to laugh, but thirty-four hours ago, he actually had been the happiest he’d ever been,