Caro Carson - The Lieutenants' Online Love

What happens when your internet crush...

Shows up in real life?

First Lieutenant Thane Carter has experienced great success as the senior platoon leader of a military police company at Fort Hood. But tbh, his love life stinks. Thane wishes his maddening—and off-limits—new coworker, Lieutenant Chloe Michaels, could be more like his online friend “BallerinaBaby.” It’s complicated, all right—especially when Thane learns that his workplace nemesis and his internet crush are one and the same!

Despite a no-nonsense background as a West Point grad-uate, army officer and Fortune 100 sales executive, CARO CARSON has always treasured the happily-ever-after of a good romance novel. As a RITA® Award–winning Mills & Boon author, Caro is delighted to be living her own happily-ever-after with her husband and two children in Florida, a location that has saved the coaster-loving theme-park fanatic a fortune on plane tickets.

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Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

The Lieutenants’ Online Love

Caro Carson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07765-1

THE LIEUTENANTS’ ONLINE LOVE

© 2018 Caroline Phipps

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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This book is dedicated to the women of West Point,

the ones who came before me, especially the Class of ’80, who first proved we belonged,

the ones who lived it with me, especially Chriss, who dragged me off post to have fun in Alabama, Texas and Panama, and Gill, who can make me laugh even while we’re doing push-ups in a sawdust pit at Airborne School,

and the ones who continue the Long Gray Line after me, especially 1LT Bethany Leadbetter, who so patiently answered this Old Grad’s questions about today’s service—and who is proof that the US Army has the country’s best and brightest in its ranks.

Beat Navy.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Today, I was desperate for tater tots.

Chloe stared at her blinking cursor, her finger hovering over the enter key on her laptop. One second, not even that, was all it would take for that sentence to be sent to him, no way to take it back. Would he think she was dumb or would he think she was funny?

It shouldn’t matter. The man was no more than a series of words on a screen, a modern-day pen pal. She wrote to him with BallerinaBaby as her user name. He wrote back as DifferentDrummer. A freebie conversation app had matched them up months ago and they’d been writing back and forth ever since, but Chloe knew that wasn’t the same as being real friends in real life.

It shouldn’t matter, but it did. She wanted to make him laugh. Something about his notes lately made her think her anonymous correspondent had been having a hard week. He had talked to her through all the crazy months she’d been bouncing from one place to another. He’d listened to all her thoughts and worries and hopes. It was the least she could do to help him out if he was tired and overworked. Friends and lovers ought to take care of each other. Chloe believed emotional support was just as important as physical compatibility in a relationship, so—

Chloe snatched her finger away from the enter key. She was looking at nothing more than the basic white screen of an outdated app, yet she was worrying about emotional parity in a relationship. She needed to keep the proper perspective on this...this...whatever it was.

What should she call it when her digital pen pal felt like a better friend than the living human beings around her? Borderline insanity?

She didn’t know any of the human beings around her, that was the problem. She didn’t know anyone in the entire state of Texas. She was newly arrived in a new town for a new job. All her stuff was still in boxes. The only constant was her pen pal. She didn’t want him to think she was dumb, because if she lost him, too...well, she’d lose the most reliable presence in her life for these last five months.

Her cursor was still blinking. Tots.

Tater tots. Was that what she was going to talk about? She was going to talk about tots when what she was honestly feeling was lonely?

“Roger that,” she said out loud, and hit Enter.

The alarm on her wristwatch went off. Time to get ready for work.

Chloe carried her laptop with her and set it by her bathroom sink so she could keep an eye on the screen. If Different Drummer was online, he would answer immediately. It was one of the things she loved about him. She smoothed her hair back and twisted it into the low, tight bun that she was required to wear every day.