Sgt. Billy's Bride. Bonnie Gardner

her parents were out of the country because of Daddy’s posting at NATO Headquarters in Belgium, Mom had transferred much of the mother-of-the-bride wedding planning duties to Aunt Marianne. However, even from long distance and via e-mail, Mom had ruled with an iron hand.

      Mom had enumerated a list of reasons for marrying Dick Harris and joining the Harris family. The Stantons had had a long history of military service. Though Darcy was their only child—and not a son, much to Daddy’s dismay—her parents believed that the Stanton military tradition, if not the name, would live on if their daughter married into another long-standing military family.

      But Darcy wasn’t ready for offspring to carry on the family tradition. The thought of bearing any man’s child, much less Dick’s, set her into a panic.

      Her mother, just in from Europe, took Darcy by the hands and turned her away from the mirror. She brushed a flyaway strand of hair away from Darcy’s face and looked into her eyes. “It’s normal to have jitters, Tracy. I felt that way before my wedding. Once it’s over, you’ll be fine.”

      Darcy just looked at her and tried to blink the tears of frustration and panic out of her eyes. How could she explain that the wedding wasn’t making her nervous? It was the prospect of marriage…that was scaring the bejesus out of her.

      Swallowing, Darcy forced herself to sit still in front of the makeup mirror. She had to do something before she made the biggest mistake of her life. She moistened her lips gone suddenly dry as the Sahara and looked at her mom. “May I have a few minutes to compose myself?”

      Her mother nodded and shooed the bridesmaids out, then stepped out of the small room.

      No sooner had the door closed behind them than Darcy leapt to action. She shot to her feet and locked the door. She knew what she had to do.

      And it wasn’t marry Dick.

      Darcy rummaged through the drawers of the makeup table for paper and a pen or pencil. Finding none, she grabbed an eyebrow pencil from the new makeup case her mother had insisted she use and scrawled a note on the mirror.

      She hated that she’d let it go this far, but it wasn’t too late. There would be no wedding. She removed the engagement ring that had always weighed too heavy on her hand and left it on the dressing table.

      Then, leaving her mother’s bridal veil hanging on a hook on the wall beside the mirror, she grabbed the backpack that contained her wallet and her other important papers and stuffed her jeans and T-shirt inside. Then she pushed open the window.

      Taking a deep breath, Darcy unhooked the screen, hiked up her long skirt and perched on the windowsill. Then she swung her legs up over the edge. It wasn’t that far to the ground, and the bride’s room was on the blind side of the chapel so nobody would see. She could be in her car, still in the parking lot from the rehearsal the night before, and on the road before anyone missed her. A quick change at an out-of-the-way gas station would remove any evidence of the wedding that wasn’t to be.

      Breathing a silent prayer, Darcy lowered herself to the ground and made her getaway.

      Chapter One

      In the sinking afternoon sunlight, Technical Sergeant Bill Hays pulled out of the parking lot of his apartment complex. As he drove onto Highway 98, he glanced at the clock on the new dashboard and frowned. Eight o’clock.

      Surely the clock hadn’t been properly set before he’d taken possession of his new Jeep. He glanced at the government-issue dive watch on his wrist and muttered a curse. He was running even later than he’d thought.

      It was bad enough that the two-week field exercise with his Special Tactics Squadron’s Silver Team had made him miss his regular trip to his family home in Alabama, but a maintenance problem on the C-130 transport plane bringing him back yesterday had delayed his departure for a week’s leave by yet another day. And the long debriefing had made him even later.

      Hurlburt Air Force Base might have been the closest Special Tactics Base to his home in Mattison, Alabama, but he might as well have been at his last assignment in California, as difficult as it had been to get home lately. Since he’d been in Florida, it seemed as if circumstances had contrived to keep him away from home.

      His late start would keep him from arriving before his mother went to bed. And the fifty miles or so of country road he had to traverse before he crossed the state line would make it impossible to save time. The roads wound and twisted enough in the daylight, but in the dark they were treacherous. He’d traveled these roads plenty of times, but as night had fallen, a thick, clinging fog had formed, making visibility next to nothing.

      Hoping that each curve in the road would reveal a break in the fog and clearer conditions, he inched along.

      Just after Bill drove into Alabama, he rounded a curve in the road and had to swerve sharply to avoid hitting something barely visible through the mist.

      Muttering a curse, Bill slammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt some twenty or thirty feet beyond the apparition. He blinked and looked back over his shoulder to see what he had missed. A girl materialized and loped toward him with a duffel bag in one hand and a backpack slung over her shoulder.

      “What the hell do you think you’re doing out here in the middle of the road in the dead of the night?” Bill yelled as she reached the car. “I could have hit you.”

      She yanked open the passenger door without waiting for an invitation and tossed her bags over the seat to the back. “My old Volkswagen Beetle got me all the way through high school and nursing school, but it finally gave up a mile or so back. I was beginning to think that another car would never come along,” she said breathlessly.

      “You can’t—” Billy stopped himself. It was late, and they were in the middle of nowhere. “Get in,” he muttered.

      “Hi, I’m Darcy,” she said, sticking out her hand as she slid onto the seat. “You aren’t a serial killer, are you?”

      “Bill Hays,” he said, then laughed. “Hell, no,” he finally managed between chuckles. “I’m one of the good guys according to Uncle Sam.”

      “Your uncle’s recommendation works for me,” Darcy said as she buckled herself in. “Where’re you heading?”

      Bill didn’t know what to make of this unexpected passenger, and he wondered what had made her throw caution aside and hop into his car in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. “Mattison, Alabama,” he said. “About three hours up the road.”

      “You came from Florida, then? Me, too.”

      He nodded, then glanced sideways at her. Darcy might have said she’d been through college, but she didn’t look much older than fourteen in that T-shirt and jeans.

      Her hair was short, wispy, and flew around her face as she spoke using animated gestures and expressions. She was clean-scrubbed and fresh-looking, with a delicate mouth that seemed very kissable.

      Now, where the hell had that thought come from?

      Hadn’t he just assured her that she could trust him? It might have been a long time since he’d been out with a woman, but he wasn’t that hard up that he’d get the hots for the first one he came upon. The first one close enough to allow him to smell her perfume.

      He had a hard-and-fast rule about remaining free of complications while he was in Special Ops, and this girl—woman—looked like a keeper. He had no room for a woman in his life. Hadn’t he seen enough families torn apart because of the demands of the job? Not to mention families broken apart when the service member didn’t come home. He would never leave a woman in the same desperate situation his mother had found herself in when his father had died too young and too poor. Or in the same dire straits his sister Lougenia was in when that skunk of a husband had left her.

      Women were to be loved, protected, cherished. A man couldn’t do a decent job of that if he was off attending to hot spots on the other side of the world.