She dropped her face into her hands. She should’ve known she couldn’t handle any kind of normal existence, especially one entwined in the intricacies of military custom. She should’ve stayed in Kansas City, tending bar and shopping at midnight and leaving poor Chance McKinley well enough alone.
“Look, can you just give me a referral slip? It’s a medical thing that needs to be seen by a doctor, I promise.”
Chance leaned back in his chair, trying to keep a straight face as he regarded the nervous private across the table. “And what reason should I put on the slip?”
“Personal problem.”
“I need more detail than that, Greene. How do I know whether to send you to a shrink or a proctologist?”
The young man shifted in his chair. “I need a doctor. This can’t be handled by the unit.”
“As much as I admire your confidence in your self-diagnosis, I think you should probably tell me exactly what medical issue we’re dealing with.”
Private Greene looked down at the floor, up at the fluorescent lamp, and finally at a point halfway across the table. “It’s my dick, sir. It burns when I piss, and there’s this discharge—”
“Okay, you don’t need a doctor.” Chance swiveled to retrieve a sterile cup from the cabinet at his back, removed the plastic packaging and handed it over. “It’s probably an STD, but I’ll need a urine sample to be sure.”
The private stared at the proffered cup like it was alien technology. Chance rolled his eyes.
“Pee in this and bring it back. Bathroom’s down the hall.”
Wordlessly the private accepted the cup and scurried out of the room, not bothering to shut the door behind him. Chance sighed heavily as he started filling out the notes on the visit, then glanced at the clock. Fifteen more minutes and his shift was over. Thank God. He hated working sick call.
“Hey, Sergeant?” The E-4 on duty with him leaned into the room. “There’s a weird call from the commissary for you. Something about your wife?”
“My wife?”
“Apparently they need you to head on over there. I told ’em I didn’t think you were married, but the guy said you need to come over in person to verify—”
“Can you do me a favor and finish up with Private Greene? He’s got the clap. I’ll relieve you fifteen minutes early when we serve range duty tomorrow.”
“Don’t even worry about that, just let me know you’ve got everything sorted out. Are you really married?”
“Yeah. It’s kind of a recent thing.”
The younger man’s brow creased. “Does this mean we can’t play pool at Rock’s on ladies’ night anymore?”
“I’ll call you later.” He patted his distraught colleague on the back, edged past a bewildered Private Greene toting a full cup and jogged down the corridor to the parking lot.
It was only a five-minute drive from the clinic to the commissary, but that gave him plenty of time for worst-case speculation about what might have happened.
Tara must’ve lost her temper and made a scene—what else could it be? Someone cut ahead of her in line, or took the last loaf of bread while she was reaching for it and she went berserk. He exhaled ruefully. She’d been so much calmer since Saturday, he thought she was settling in and allowing herself to relax. Like an abandoned kitten that has to be coaxed and convinced and hand-fed until it finally relents and keeps its claws retracted while you scratch its ears.
They were still a long way from purring, but he thought Tara was slowly lowering her mile-high defenses.
Apparently not.
He spotted her Malibu in the lot and parked next to it, grateful that she hadn’t furiously rammed it into the back of someone she thought was stealing her space.
The image of short-statured Tara gunning that rust box into some oblivious soccer mom’s high-end SUV made him smile more than it should, and a chunk of his irritation dissolved as he entered the store. She was so desperate to act the good little domestic goddess, and he shouldn’t encourage her hellcat tendencies, but damn if they didn’t light his fire every time.
He saw her as soon as he stepped through the door, perched on a plastic chair way down past the last checkout lane. Whatever het-up scenario he’d imagined himself walking into vanished along with the last shreds of his exasperation the instant he saw Tara’s face. Stiff-shouldered, lower lip caught between her teeth, dinner-plate eyes shining with unshed tears—she looked terrified.
Suddenly Chance didn’t care what she’d done, who or what she’d done it to, or whether she deserved the conversation that’d cowed her so severely. He’d promised to keep her safe, and he meant it. No one had the right to put that much fear in her, and like hell would he stand by while they did.
Tara leapt up from the chair, wringing her hands, but before she could speak a man whose paunch tested the capacity of his shirt buttons swept in front of her and extended his hand.
“Thanks so much for coming—”
“What in the fiery flames of fuck is going on here?” Chance demanded, channeling the drill sergeant who’d spent ten weeks verbally abusing every last ounce of weakness out of his eighteen-year-old self.
Every head in earshot turned. He couldn’t care less.
The man—Wade, according to his nametag—visibly wavered. “We have ourselves a little situation, is all. This lady here is claiming to be your wife.”
“She is my wife.”
“Well, that solves it then.” He smiled weakly.
“It solves nothing, Wade. Now explain why you’ve called me away from my critical medical duties as a sixty-eight goddamn whiskey to haul ass down to this store and personally verify that my wife is my wife.”
“She didn’t have ID, sir.”
“I think I left it in the car,” Tara offered, then added with growing courage, “He wouldn’t let me go look for it.”
Chance didn’t even try to fight the white-hot rage that poured through his veins. He made none of his usual temper-mitigating efforts to remind himself to look at things from all angles, to be rational, to keep his cool. He didn’t care if every customer went away whispering about psycho Sergeant McKinley flipping out in the commissary, and he didn’t care if after this he couldn’t find the moral high ground with a map and a state-of-the-art GPS.
This asshole had upset his wife. That carried a high price.
