Sgt. Billy's Bride. Bonnie Gardner

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.

      He shook his head. If he continued to think about kissing her, he might not be able to trust himself. He drew a deep breath and cleared his throat, if not his thoughts. “Where were you going?” he finally managed after he realized that she hadn’t said. She hadn’t told him much other than that her car had broken down.

      “Don’t really know,” she told him after what seemed to be a long, pregnant silence. “I just graduated nursing school, and I haven’t quite figured out what to do with my life. I just knew I had to get away from my family and be on my own for a while.”

      Bill thought about that for a minute. Maybe her reluctance to talk about herself told him volumes more than if she’d prattled on. He shrugged. “I can take you to the next town,” he allowed. “You can get a motel and somebody to tow and fix your car.”

      He wondered about this small woman who had apparently climbed into a stranger’s car without a second thought. She was either desperate or stupid.

      He glanced at her and decided that desperate was more the thing. He’d bet she was escaping an abusive family, and climbing into a car with a man she didn’t know was probably preferable to going back to a situation she did.

      “You sure you want to ride with me?” he wondered out loud before he put the car into gear.

      She did what almost seemed to be a double take, then flashed a grin that seemed impossibly large from that small mouth. “I’m game,” she said. “It beats walking.”

      Darcy settled against the seat and breathed in the wonderful, new-car scent. She had worried that she’d be picked up by some Friday-night liquored-up weirdo, and that she’d have to fight for her virtue, if not her life. But the minute she’d seen the clean-cut man in the driver’s seat, she’d known she’d be fine. As soon as her gaze had settled on his face, her doubts had vanished.

      One look and she knew she’d be safe in his arms.

      In his arms?

      What had made her think that? The last thing she needed was to be thinking about another man, considering the close call she’d just had. No, as soon as they reached civilization, she was going to thank Bill Hays sweetly for picking her up, then she’d get out of his car and do her best to get on with the rest of her life.

      Darcy risked a glance at the man driving, his eyes trained steadfastly on the dark road ahead. It was hard to tell much in the dim glow of the dashboard lights, but what she could see was pleasing to the eye.

      He was young, maybe a few years older than she. His clothes were clean, and he smelled like he’d just come from a shower. Was he hurrying to meet a sweetheart?

      If he was, Darcy thought, she was one lucky girl.

      Though he’d made that remark about Uncle Sam, he didn’t look much like a soldier. He looked like the college boys she’d known in school, a little bigger, maybe, and rougher around the edges. He wore jeans, faded but not too worn. His pullover shirt stretched tight across a broad chest, not too muscled, but lean and taut. Physical activities were obviously a regular part of his life.

      “Say, Darcy,” Bill said, interrupting Darcy’s thoughts. “I took off without eating. I could sure use a burger or something. What say we stop in Brewton for some eats?”

      Why was he asking her? Darcy wondered as they rolled into the marginally congested area of a small, country town. He was the one doing her the favor. She spotted the brightly lit sign of a familiar fast-food chain looming above the trees. Though she’d recognized the fast-food logo, she had yet to see a chain motel she was familiar with. After all, he was just supposed to take her to a motel so she could arrange to have her car towed.

      There was no harm in stopping for a bite, though. Sure, she wanted to get as far away from Hurlburt and Dick as she could, but a ten-minute delay to grab a burger wouldn’t make that much difference in the scheme of things.

      “Thank you. I’d like that,” she finally said. “I skipped dinner, too.” And breakfast and lunch, thanks to pre-wedding jitters, she didn’t say. Darcy pressed her hand against her stomach to silence the rumbling that Bill surely must have heard. Maybe that’s why he’d decided to stop.

      She felt her face grow hot, and Darcy thanked the powers that be that the car was dark, and Bill wouldn’t see her red face. Maybe he wasn’t hungry at all, and he’d only decided to stop because of her noisy stomach.

      “Let me buy your meal,” Darcy suggested. “My way of thanking you for rescuing me. It’s the least I can do.”

      She glanced over at him as they pulled into the parking lot. Hoo boy. His expression looked like a thundercloud on a sultry summer afternoon. She must have wounded his sense of macho. She shrugged. Tough. If he wanted to pay for his dinner, she couldn’t stop him. But she wouldn’t let him pay for hers.

      Truthfully, she was too hungry to argue. She just wanted to eat. Anything to quell that empty feeling in her belly, not to mention her heart.

      BILL WATCHED Darcy from over the rim of his cup. Now that he could see her in the bright light of the restaurant, he could see that she was old enough to have graduated from nursing school. She carried a certain degree of confidence that the girls he’d known in Mattison didn’t.

      He could see, however, how he could have mistaken her for a teenaged runaway in the dark. She was small and slight and wore a short-cropped do that seemed more pixie-like than sophisticated. He’d thought she was blond when he’d first seen her, but in the brightness inside, he could see that her hair was light brown.

      Though she wore the uniform common to teenagers and college students—one that he favored, too—the figure that lay beneath the worn T-shirt appeared mature and well-developed. Darcy was tiny, but she wasn’t skinny. She must be closer to his age than he’d originally thought.

      Not that it mattered that much. He would never see her again after tonight.

      In spite of his fatigue, he felt a stirring in his lower regions, but shrugged it away. He’d just met the woman, it was late, and he had promised that she had nothing to fear from him. He raised his cup to his mouth.

      He wondered, though, if he should be careful of her. She seemed safe enough on the outside, but it was what you couldn’t see that was the problem.

      “Penny for your thoughts.”

      Bill looked up, startled by the intrusion into his mental meanderings. “What?”

      Darcy grinned, the expression making her look as young as he’d judged her to be. “Just wondering what you were thinking about.” She nodded toward his drink. “You emptied your cup and didn’t even seem to notice.”

      He put the cup down. Well, he damn sure couldn’t tell her what he’d really been thinking about. “Nothing, I guess. And everything.”

      “Everything?” She arched an eyebrow. “That’s heavy. Have you solved the problems of the world?”

      Bill shrugged. “Hell. I don’t even have a solution for my own,” he said, grimacing. “I’d settle for that.”

      Darcy leaned