Tori Carrington - A Few Good Men

Husband-and-wife duo Lori and Tony Karayianni are the power behind the pen name Tori Carrington. Their more than thirty-five titles include numerous Blaze ®mini-series, as well as the ongoing Sofie Metropolis comedic mystery series with another publisher. Visit www.toricarrington.net for more information on the couple and their titles.

by

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

We dedicate this book to Brenda Chin, who never fails to inspire us with her vision and eye for a great book.

And to the men and women of armed forces everywhere, we offer our eternal thanks for your dedication and sacrifices. OOH RAY!

Nicosia, Cyprus 07:00

THE WHOOP-WHOOP OF THE CHOPPER’S blades forbade normal conversation so the five men were silent, each staring out the open doors at the Mediterranean island, but none of them seeing it as anything but the first stop in what would be a long journey stateside and home.

Matt Guerrero squinted against the sun rising in the east, a winter sun that held little warmth, shedding cool January light on the landscape and the situation that awaited him in Columbus, Ohio.

“Hey, Lieutenant, what say we jump out and swim the rest of the way?” Lance Corporal Eddie Cash shouted.

Matt grinned. “You start, I’ll follow.”

All five men chuckled and relaxed from the tense stance they’d taken upon embarkation from the USS Stennis anchored a mile offshore.

Matt took each of them in. They looked too serious for men who were returning home from the front lines, either on break or for good. Usually the prospect of some fine sex and time off was enough to leave them all smiling like stupid fools.

Then again, this was no ordinary trip for any of them, was it? Not given what each of them faced at home.

Not given what had gone down a month and a half ago that had left one of them facing court-martial.

Matt tried to push aside the somber thought.

Eddie Cash was always the first to break the ice. A good kid who was quick with the wit and even quicker with his M-16. Although at twenty-five he wasn’t much of a kid anymore.

Not that there really were any kids in the marines. Whether they were twenty or thirty-eight, like he was, the classification of kid was further away than even home.

Eddie Cash was returning to North Carolina to a woman he barely knew…and the kid—Eddie’s kid—she would bear in a couple of months, a result of a shore leave romance that had ended when he’d shipped back out. Eddie believed with all the gusto of a tried-and-true marine that he loved her. She insisted she didn’t love him and wasn’t interested in marriage, but had been de-termined to have the child.

Matt pushed back his helmet. He supposed there were worse things. In fact, he knew there were.

He watched Lance Corporal Eric Armstrong slide his M-16 from his shoulder and hold it upright between his large, beefy hands. Hands that had seen more combat in the past fifteen months than Guerrero had seen in his entire first tour of duty almost twenty years ago. While he wouldn’t admit it, he knew Eric was thinking about the woman he’d forged an online relationship with, only to have her disappear when he told her he would be on leave and wanted to see her.

Cybersex. Matt shook his head and looked at his own weapon, freshly oiled and ready to go. He supposed it wasn’t much different from what he and his then new wife Ana had done years ago with racy handwritten letters to each other. But back then there had been no risk of their missives landing in the wrong e-mail box. And he certainly had known what she looked like and where to find her.

Thoughts of his wife erased the grin from Matt’s face. She hadn’t responded to the message he’d left on the answering machine when he’d called to say when he expected to be home. He wondered if she somehow hadn’t gotten the message, if the line had gone dead while he was leaving it.

But he was afraid it was his entire marriage that was suffering a long, slow death.

He looked over at Lance Corporal Chris Conrad, the one man he’d met in his years of service that didn’t deserve to be called a man much less a marine. He was responsible for the professional pall that hung over them like an impending desert storm. And if Matt had had his way, he wouldn’t be on this transport with them.

Matt’s hands tightened on his weapon and he ordered himself to stand down.

He forced his thoughts away from Conrad and shifted his attention to Captain Brian Justice. All Matt’s personal concerns instantly paled in comparison to what he faced.

Justice was by far the toughest out of the group and their supervising officer. Matt recalled one of his lighter moments, when one morning Eddie had filled Justice’s cereal bowl with shrapnel. Matt had nearly busted a gut laughing when Justice had actually spooned the metal into his mouth and commenced chewing.

But there was nothing funny about what Justice faced stateside. With a court-martial and dishonorable dis-charge hanging over his head, his eight-year career in the marines could very well be brought to a screeching halt.

Eddie came to take the seat next to Matt and elbowed him, pointing through the open door. They were descending onto the landing strip.

Matt’s gut constricted. In concern over what each of them faced professionally and personally. In fear that a wrong would never be made right. In dread for what waited for him at home. And with desire for a woman he would never stop wanting, but he was afraid no longer wanted him…

ERIC ARMSTRONG HAD come home on leave to surprise his online dream woman…instead, she was the one who’d surprised him.

He sat on his cot in the base barracks, staring at the name scribbled on a slip of paper he held in his hands. Much as he had in the days since he’d accepted the real name of “Samantha” from Tommy “The Tech” Onassis. After she’d pulled a cyber disappearing act about a month ago, he’d suspected Samantha had been an alias. But there was no way he could have known he was already familiar with the real woman.

“Are you sure this is it?” he’d asked the stocky Greek-American, whose finesse with a computer equaled that which most men put to use seducing a woman. Not that Tech seemed to have any trouble in that area. He used that overloaded, giga-pumped laptop of his to make sure he had women waiting for him—and whichever fellow marine won the lottery he held to go out on a double date—at each port of call.

Tech had stared at him. “You so didn’t just ask me that.”

And they’d left it at that.

Eric had walked around the base in a daze ever since, trying to decide what to do. If he were running on all cylinders, he’d walk away, go home to spend his leave in Texas, and forget all about “Samantha” and the deep impression she’d left on him.

But he was having trouble wrapping his brain around the truth.

His cell phone rang, earning him looks from a couple of his bunkmates. He picked up.

“Hey, where are you? We were expecting you home two days ago.”

Eric stuffed the piece of paper into his pocket and smiled at the sound of his younger brother’s voice.

“Hey, yourself, Trace.”

“Are you going to answer my question, or just leave me hanging on the vine like an overripe tomato?”

Eric drew in a breath and exhaled. “I have some things I need to clean up here in Virginia first,” he lied.

“The guys had a whole welcome-home barbecue planned. Killed the cow and everything. They’re going to be awfully disappointed.”