Vivian Leiber - Soldier And The Society Girl

Vivian Leiber

www.millsandboon.co.uk

VIVIAN LEIBER’s

writing talent runs in the family. Her great-grandmother wrote a popular collection of Civil War-era poetry, her grandfather Fritz was an award-winning science fiction writer and her father still writes science fiction and fantasy today. Vivian hopes that her two sons follow the family tradition, but so far the older boy’s ambition is to be a construction worker and own a toy store, while the other wants to be a truck driver.

Dear Reader,

Even with magazine and moisturizer labels exhorting me to defy my age or at least turn back the clock, I’ve always felt four hundred years too young. I’m meant for the days when a lady could turn to a knightly hero for protection, poetry...and passion.

But although I haven’t seen any armored knights traipsing through my neighborhood or dragon slayers in my local supermarket, I’m starting to wonder if I’m just the right age for heroes. After all, there are heroes all around us. Like the paramedic who popped the quarter out of my son’s throat, saving his life. Or the fireman who coaxed my elderly neighbor out of her house as its top floor burned. Or even the crossing guard who, day after day, makes sure that every child gets to school safely.

Silhouette is proudly honoring our modern-day American heroes, and I’m thrilled to be part of the celebration! My contribution to HE’S MY HERO! is Lieutenant Derek McKenna, a very traditional hero—he brought back his men alive from a dangerous mission overseas. But he’s not very traditional when he’s taking a gander at Chessey Banks Bailey’s slim showgirl legs or when he’s kissing her within an inch of her life in a Kentucky airfield, a State Department office or the White House!

Maybe I’m not so young. Maybe I could use a little of that moisturizer to defy my age. Maybe I was born at just the right time, the time of heroes in our own neighborhoods, heroes in our hometowns, Silhouette heroes. Open this book and meet Lieutenant Derek McKenna, a real hero. When you’ve finished the final Chapter, walk down the street where you live—you might just meet another!

Best,

Prologue

The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shrugged a thank-you to the secretary who placed his coffee on the low table in front of him even as he remained transfixed by the flickering images on the television screen set inside a bookshelf panel across the eighth-floor office of the State Department.

“I’ve watched this tape a hundred times over the weekend and I still get goose bumps,” he said, leaning over a low-slung mahogany coffee table to get sugar for his coffee. “A hero. A real hero. Don’t get too many of his type these days.”

He dropped three cubes into his cup, affecting irritation when his aide reminded him that sugar had already been added. The general didn’t like to admit that he really wanted six sugar cubes, more if possible. A sweet tooth was a weakness—he didn’t have many.

“We’ve seen enough, I think,” the congressman from New York said, flipping off the television set with the remote. An aide closed the armoire doors.

The congressman sat on a comfortable armchair by the window.

“I want this guy in Manhattan for the Fourth of July,” he said.

“We get him in Washington,” corrected the general. “Can’t have a hero in New York on the Fourth of July—he’s got to be in his nation’s capital.”

The New York congressman narrowed his eyes.

Winston Fairchild III pulled a sheaf of papers from a manila envelope and cleared his throat to get the meeting started. The group was ordinarily of a type not given to listening. In addition to the general and his aide, an assistant undersecretary to the Defense secretary had been sent over by the White House, and three congressmen who held key chairmanships of committees affecting the military had asked to attend. His office facing Twenty-third Street had been transformed into a gentleman’s tea party, with real china instead of foam cups and dainty pastries instead of the stale bagels sold at the basement cafeteria.

But while it all looked very cozy, this was a serious meeting about a serious opportunity and everyone was paying close attention to the soft-spoken Fairchild because he had something that everyone wanted—a real-life honest-to-God true blue American hero.

Winston was descended from a long line of behind-the-scenes advisers—his great-great-great-grandfather had served as George Washington’s aide-de-camp, his great-grandfather had advised Lincoln to shave his mustache, and his father had told Franklin Delano Roosevelt that cigars were bad for his health. Fairchilds had seen generals and presidents come and go. Winston had some perspective on the men gathered in his office—any one of them could be retired, disgraced, dishonored or just plain tired of Washington within the year.

But a hero! A little of the stardust of heroism could rub off on any or all of these men and a career could be made.

“McKenna could reinvigorate the military’s image,” murmured the honorable congressman from Arizona. “We sure need that.”

“Absolutely,” the general snorted.

“Let’s begin, shall we? Lieutenant Derek McKenna is thirty-three years old,” Winston said, nodding to the summer intern to pass out copies of the fact sheet he had prepared over the weekend. He pulled his wire-rimmed glasses from a small tortoise case. “He was born and raised in Kentucky on a farm in the mountains between Elizabethtown and Bowling Green.”

“E’town,” corrected the general.

“Pardon?”

“Kentucky folks call it E’town,” the general said. “You don’t pronounce the L, the I, the Z, the A, the B, the E, the T as the H.”

“I see,” Winston said, and dutifully crossed out the unnecessary letters on his copy of his report. “Thank you, General. Now, continuing, he received good grades in school, but dropped out of his first year in college at Bowling Green University in order to help his father on the farm. Two years later, the farm back in order, he joined the Army. He is a career soldier with a distinguished record. A list of his medals is Appendix B on page seven of your handout.”

Everyone except the general turned to page seven.

“And then there was Iraq,” Winston said.

An uncomfortable silence. Everyone knew about Iraq and the terrible fate that had befallen McKenna and his men. Part of the team sent in to help with humanitarian relief for Kurdish rebels on the border with Turkey, he and his men had been presumed killed in a firefight with Iraqi Republican guards. A United Nations resolution condemning the killings, the President expressing outrage in his weekly radio address, a Congressional team of negotiators failing to get the bodies back, a darkly foreboding article in the New York Times and then...nothing.

Lieutenant McKenna’s story faded from public consciousness, replaced with the Los Angeles celebrity trial of the week and new scandals at the upper reaches of government.

Until last week, when Derek McKenna—sporting a chest-grazing beard, a tobacco-colored tan, native chuprah dress and a haircut as crude as a caveman’s—stepped across the Turkish border. He led his men, having not lost a single one, on an impossible journey to freedom from a Baghdad prison. By the time the Wiesbaden military hospital in Germany gave him a haircut, lent him a razor and issued him a new uniform, America remembered it had a hero. The television news conference from Wiesbaden where Derek McKenna announced that all he wanted was to go home and live a quiet life had put a lump in the throat of the most cynical of Americans.

And the men gathered in the well-appointed State Department offices knew they had a solid gold, all-American, apple-pie opportunity.