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“It looks like a nice town,” Colonel Kieran Hayes said politely to the junior Australian officer. He’d been assigned to orientate him in advance of the month-long joint military exercise on the coast of Queensland.

Kieran had to raise his voice to get heard over the climbing noise levels in the bar. On his own, he would have chosen to eat outside on that sweeping deck poised almost on top of the ocean, but the Australian had led the way to this corner table and Kieran hadn’t wanted to pull rank so soon in the relationship.

“Yeah, well, don’t let first impressions fool you,” Lieutenant Judd Mason replied.

“Apart from the beach, there’ll be nothing to do. We’ll do our best for you, but this is the only decent place in town, and - a word to the wise - if you want Chinese food, do not go to Happy’s. Your guts will not be happy the next day.”

He grinned. Kieran had already pegged him as cocky, lazy and not as smart as he thought he was. “You’ve been here before, Judd?”

“No, but coming from Sydney, I can tell you these Aussie hick-towns are all the same.”

Kieran asked Lieutenant Mason a few more questions because he never considered any information to be wasted, even when he didn’t fully trust its source. Mason answered with half an eye on every female that passed, including their waitress with her perky breasts and perky announcement, “Hi, my name’s Courtney.”

Actually, in Courtney’s case, more than half an eye, Kieran revised. There was a definite flash of mutual and shameless interest between the two. Oh, great, he thought, my supposed right-hand man is going to be thinking below his belt whenever I most need him. Why couldn’t we have gotten the waitress at the next table?

She was at least ten years older, a long-haired brunette, with a mature beauty that wouldn’t appeal to someone like Judd. Since Courtney and Judd were still flirting over the menu choices, Kieran idly listened to Ms. Brunette instead of Ms. Perky. She said her name was Alice, then outlined the day’s specials in a voice so musical and hypnotic that she could have gotten Kieran to order last week’s leftovers if she’d tried.

But he wasn’t Judd. He wasn’t in the market for a one-night stand. Before their divorce, Dana had accused him of serial sleeping around, but despite all the time he and Dana had spent apart, he’d never been unfaithful to her. He just wasn’t that kind of man.

If Dana had had any real competition, it came from his career. She’d realized this in the end. She just wasn’t military wife material. She had their two kids back in their Pennsylvania home town now, and he saw almost as much of them as he had when their family had still been intact.

So why did he miss them so much now? Why did he feel so unready to consider that he might one day marry again?

Lord, he didn’t want to think about any of this right now!

After gushing over the specials, Courtney was ready to take his order. Quickly, please, said her body language, so she could get on with her work, finish her shift and get physical with Judd on the night-darkened beach on her way home.

“I’ll just have the plain steak,” he said, the words coming out blunter than he’d meant them to.

He caught a quick smile in his direction from gray-eyed Alice, who was still waiting for a decision from her table but seemed quite interested in what was going on at this one. So we can’t sell you on our fancied-up specials and over-sauced seafood? the smile seemed to say. “You’re a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy?” she asked with a tease in her voice.

He smiled back. “Yep, that about sums me up.”

And for the first time since the divorce, he didn’t feel as if he had to apologize for it or try to be anything else.

To be continued…



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