The Lieutenants' Online Love - Caro Carson American Heroes

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else around here.

      Thane took the last few stairs two at a time. He wanted to get home. He had twelve hours ahead to sleep—but not alone. There was someone waiting to talk to him, after all.

      He unlocked the door and walked into his apartment, tossing his patrol cap onto the coffee table with one hand as he jerked down the zipper of his uniform jacket with the other. He tossed that over a chair, impatient to pull out his phone from his pocket the moment his hand was free. A real friend, real feelings, conversation, communion—

      Today, I was desperate for tater tots.

      He stared at the sentence for a long moment. What the hell...?

      And then, all of a sudden, life wasn’t so heavy. He didn’t have to take himself so seriously. Thane read the hot-pink silliness, and he started to laugh.

      The rest of his clothes came off easily. Off with the tan T-shirt that clung after a day of Texas heat. Thane had to sit to unlace the combat boots, but he typed a quick line to let Ballerina know he was online. You crack me up.

      And thank God for that.

      He brushed his teeth. He pulled back the sheets and fell into bed, phone in one hand. He bunched his pillow up under his neck, and he realized he was smiling at his phone fondly as he typed, I’d miss you. It was crazy, but it was true.

      The little cursor on his phone screen blinked. He waited, eyes drifting idly over the blue and pink words they’d already exchanged. You killed them? he’d written, followed by words like murder. Jail.

      He was going to scare her away. She’d think he was a freak the way his mind went immediately to crime and punishment. Did normal guys—civilian guys—zing their conversations right to felony death?

      She must think he was a civilian. His screen name was Different Drummer, after all, nothing that implied he was either military or in law enforcement. They weren’t supposed to reveal what Ballerina called their “real, boring surface facts,” things like name, address, job. During one of those marathon chat sessions where they’d spilled their guts out, they’d agreed that anonymity was part of the reason they could write to each other so freely.

      He hoped the way he used so many law enforcement references didn’t give away his real profession. It wasn’t like he was dropping clues subconsciously. Really.

      He read her words. She made him smile with ketchup, mustard and salt. He wondered if she’d kept a straight face when she wrote that, or had she giggled at her own silliness? Did she have a shy smile or a wide-open laugh?

      Then she told him she had to go. He had to act like that was perfectly okay. They’d talk some other time. But before closing the app he remembered the couple downstairs—Hi, baby, how was your day?

      Ballerina Baby was the woman who’d greeted him after a long day of work.

      Looking forward to it, Baby.

      A subconscious slip? He’d never called Ballerina Baby just Baby before.

      She didn’t reply. All his exhaustion returned with a vengeance. If Ballerina couldn’t talk, what good would it do to go out to exchange nods and grunts with everyone else?

      He tossed his phone onto his nightstand and rolled onto his side, ready for the sleep that would overtake him in moments. But just before it did, he thought what he could never type: You mean more to me than you should, Baby.

       Chapter Two

      “Friday night. Almost quitting time, Boss.”

      At his platoon sergeant’s booming voice, Thane tossed his cell phone onto his desk, facedown. He should have known that if he decided to check his personal messages for the first time in twelve hours, someone would walk in.

      Thane could have stayed on his phone, of course. This was his office, and he didn’t have to stop what he was doing and stand when a noncommissioned officer, an NCO, walked in. But he didn’t want his platoon sergeant to see any hot-pink words that would encourage him to start giving Thane hell about women. As a commissioned officer, Thane outranked sergeants and other noncommissioned officers, but Sergeant First Class Lloyd had been in the army more than twice as many years as Thane. A platoon sergeant was a platoon leader’s right arm. The platoon didn’t run well without either one of them—and no NCO let his lieutenant forget it, either.

      Sergeant First Class Lloyd was older, more experienced—and married, too. In other words, he’d enjoy razzing his bachelor platoon leader about his love life. Thane wasn’t going to give him a pink-fonted excuse to do it.

      Thane kicked back in his government-issued desk chair and put his booted feet up on the gray desk that had probably served all the platoon leaders who’d come before him since Vietnam. Maybe even further back. The battleship-gray metal desk was old but indestructible. He liked it.

      “I take it you didn’t come here to tell me the CO went home.” Retreat had sounded, the flag had been lowered, all the enlisted soldiers dismissed, but the lieutenants were still here because the company commander—the CO—was still here. It wasn’t a written rule, but Thane was old enough to know that it wasn’t wise for platoon leaders to leave before the company commander did.

      “It’s Friday, sir. I wouldn’t still be here if the CO had left.” Just as the platoon leaders didn’t leave before the company commander, the platoon sergeants didn’t leave before the first sergeant did. Since the first sergeant didn’t leave before the company commander did, here they all were, waiting for Friday night to begin.

      Thane watched his platoon sergeant head for the empty desk next to his own. Was the man going to take a seat and settle in for a chat? It wasn’t like him. Sergeant First Class Lloyd was a man of few words.

      “Do you have any big plans for the weekend, sir?” asked the noncommissioned officer of few words.

      “Just the usual.”

      “Kicking ass and taking names?”

      “Not tonight. Lieutenant Salvatore has duty.”

      The man started pulling out desk drawers, then slamming them shut. “Whiskey and women then, sir?”

      “Also not happening tonight.” Thane leaned back a little more in his chair and tucked his hands behind his head. “Sleep. Nothing but sweet sleep.”

      His platoon sergeant spared him a quick glance. “You pulled another thirty-six hours, sir?”

      An affirmative grunt was enough of an answer.

      Without further comment, Sergeant First Class Lloyd sat in the desk chair and started testing its tilt and the height of its armrests.

      “What are you doing?” Thane finally asked. “You planning on buying that chair after this test ride?”

      “No, sir. Just seeing if I should permanently borrow it before the new platoon leader arrives.”

      Thane sat up, boots hitting the floor. “Don’t get my hopes up, Sergeant First Class. Is there a new platoon leader coming in?”

      “Yes, sir. In-processing on post.”

      “About damn time.” Thane didn’t like the look on the sergeant’s face, though. “Let’s hear it. I can tell you got more intel.”

      “Brand-new second lieutenant, fresh out of Leonard Wood.”

      Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, was the home of the Military Police Corps. All new second lieutenants had to go through the four months of BOLC, Basic Officer Leadership Course, there. If that was all his platoon sergeant had on the new guy, it hardly counted as intel.

      Thane leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head once more. “It’s that time of year. The college boys all graduate in May and complete BOLC in the fall. It would be too much to hope for to get someone

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