Her Last Line Of Defence. Marie Donovan

and take that cute lieutenant with you after all.”

      Luc straightened in outrage. “You saying she’s not safe with me? That I need a chaperone to make sure I act as a gentleman and a soldier of the United States Army?”

      “At ease.” Olie waved a hand at him. “All I’m saying is that a ragin’ Cajun, war hero-type like yourself might appeal to a girl who’s finally away from her overprotective dad. Too much of that Frenchie accent and she may go crazy and throw herself at you.”

      “Right,” Luc scoffed. “Princess Cook probably has some weenie boyfriend named Preston Shelby Blueblood the Nineteenth waiting for her back in ol’ Virginia. He’ll spend the next year screwing around on her while she’s in San Lucas and ask her to marry him as soon as she gets off the plane. They’ll have a couple kids while he keeps screwing around on her and dumps her for his secretary in ten years.” He subsided into a funk, realizing he sounded like an idiot.

      “O-kay.” Olie raised his blond eyebrows. “Well, our immediate concern is not for her future marital happiness, so that’s one burden we don’t have to carry.”

      “Yes, sir,” Luc muttered. What the hell was wrong with him? Her personal life was none of his damn business anyway.

      Olie’s cell phone rang and he flipped it open, answering with several “yes, sirs.” He closed the phone and swiveled on the bar stool back to Luc. “Colonel Spencer says he made arrangements for you both with the marines at Parris Island. The swamp is about as close to jungle as you can get in the Southeast.”

      Luc wished he could take her back to Louisiana, but everything was still torn up from the hurricane last fall, and he didn’t think he could stand being so close to home and not see his family. And he wasn’t about to come home with a woman. His mother would never understand his unorthodox situation and would be calling Father Andre at the church to set a wedding date. He shuddered.

      Olie continued, “She’ll do her training during the day and sleep in the VIP quarters at night.”

      “Shit, they don’t even want her to know how to make shelter at night? That’s where you run in to trouble.”

      Olie grunted. “She probably gets her bed turned down and a mint on her pillow.” He dug around in the nut dish and chose a big brown Brazil nut.

      “Funny, I don’t remember mints on my pillow when I was in the jungle—the only brown things under my head were bugs. And at one point, that bug was my bedtime snack.” Luc ate a peanut. Pistaches de terre, they called them at home. Too salty—he liked plain boiled peanuts better.

      Olie shook his head. “Not doing her any favors by letting her off easy at night.”

      Luc thought for several seconds. Nuts to the jarheads at Parris Island and their VIP quarters. Survival training without night training meant no survival at all. “This thing with Claire Cook is still an unofficial thing—I’m on leave as of now, right?”

      “Yeah. Why?” Olie gave him a wary look, his fingers clamped around a cashew.

      “Just want to make sure I’m not going AWOL if I take her on a side trip.”

      Olie dropped the cashew. “AWOL? Side trip?” He covered his ears with his beefy hands and shook his head. “As far as I’m concerned, the only side trip I need to know about is to the Parris Island ice cream stand.”

      Luc set down his empty mug. He knew just the place he would take her. One of his old buddies had bought a huge chunk of land abutting a national wildlife refuge and had invited Luc and the guys to use it whenever he wanted. It was really out in the middle of nowhere. The animals couldn’t yet read the signs telling them they were leaving federal land, so plenty wound up at his friend’s place. No marines, no babysitters, no chaperones. Him, her and the swamp.

      People who weren’t used to the swamp freaked out pretty easily at all the weird noises, smells and bugs. Maybe if they were lucky, he’d even take her out at night when the gators roared. “We’ll be out in the swamp twenty-four, thirty-six hours tops before she starts crying to go home to Daddy.”

      “You think so, huh.” His CO shook his head. “We’ll see, Rage. We’ll see.”