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ON CADET FIRST Class Alexandria Hughes’s first day at the Academy, her main goal was to make sure she didn’t walk inside the halls with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open. She couldn’t believe she’d actually been accepted. To a small-town girl from the Texas Panhandle, attending the Academy was amazing, a dream come true and scary as hell. But she would rather have had all her nails pulled out one by one than show it.
After the swearing-in ceremony she stood on the field and watched all the other cadets saying goodbye to their parents up in the stands. Her parents couldn’t afford the plane tickets or the time away from the ranch, so she headed inside. She understood why they didn’t come, but it still gave her a pang to watch everyone else.
As she turned in to an empty hallway, she was grabbed from behind, one hand clamped over her mouth while another guy pulled her hands behind her back and duct-taped them, then took her feet and carried her farther away, down another empty corridor.
She fought them, struggling against them, kicking, bucking, trying to bite the hand over her mouth. Her hat fell off, and her neatly pinned bun came undone. She knew what was coming if she didn’t get away. But she wasn’t getting anywhere fighting like this.
As hard as it was, she tamped down panic and quit fighting. Best to save her energy for an opportunity. They had to put her down at some point. But her heart was pounding triple time.
“Back in Memphis we call boys who pick on girls punk-ass cowards,” a deep voice called from behind them. His smooth Southern drawl made it seem as if he were just having a nice conversation.
The upperclassmen holding her halted and switched their attention to the young cadet, and so did Alex.
With his arms folded across his chest, he leaned against the lockers with a nonchalance that bordered on cocky.
“What’d you say, boy?” one of her captors asked.
The Memphis madman pushed off the lockers and unfolded his arms. “I believe I called you punk-ass cowards.” He raised a cocky brow to match his grin.
“Boy, you get the hell out of here and mind your own business,” warned one, but his hold on her feet loosened as he spoke. This was her chance.
She kicked backward with her steel-toed boot and heard the satisfying crack of one captor’s knee, and his howl of pain. As he let go of her mouth, she turned and head-butted his nose as hard as she could. Yes! He was down.
She turned to see Memphis man had the upperclassman on the ground, beating his face to a pulp.
“Okay, that’s enough. Hey!”
Finally Memphis looked at her, his dogged expression dissolving into a blank look of confusion. He glanced back down at the bloodied face he’d almost pulverized and then back at her. “You okay?”
Alex blinked at the pure beauty of the man. Even in his desert camo fatigues and a buzz cut, he was all golden hair and light blue eyes.
“Can you untape my hands?” She hated that her voice shook. It was just adrenaline kicking in, but she despised sounding weak in front of a classmate.
“Sure thing, darlin’.” He flashed a smile that included dimples and Alex’s insides kind of flipped. Pulling a Swiss Army knife from his boot, he cut the tape open.
Great. She hadn’t even been here a week and her hopes of being treated equally were fading fast. How could she win the respect of her classmates if she couldn’t fight her own battles? She had to be independent. She didn’t want some guy with a savior complex running interference for her just because she was female.
As soon as the tape was cut she ripped off the rest of it, and started marching back toward the main building’s foyer.
“Hey, wait up.” He jogged to catch up to her.
“Don’t ever do that again.”
“Do what? Rescue you?”
She stopped and faced him. “First, you didn’t ‘rescue’ me. Second, I don’t need you to meddle in my problems. I can handle myself.”
He glanced behind them. “Don’t get me wrong, you did great, but I don’t know about you handling two of them.”
Despite herself, she shivered. “You may be right.” She tightened her lips and folded her arms. “Thanks.” Taking a deep breath, she lifted her chin. “But I need to take care of myself.”
His brows rose. “Okay.”
“Just remember that and we’ll get along fine.”
He nodded and held out his right hand. “Mitch McCabe.” He was still smiling, still flashing white teeth and dimples. Despite the danger of what had just happened, his grin snuck past her carefully built defenses.
After a moment’s hesitation, she shook it. “Alex Hughes.”
As soon as she got back to her room, she sank down against the door with her arms around her knees and shook for half an hour.
SHE THOUGHT SHE’D made herself clear to Sir Lancelot then. She didn’t need anyone. And despite her efforts to ignore the guy, it seemed like every time she fell behind on the obstacle course, or had to take an extra minute to get back up from falling down, he was there. Not offering a hand, but…just waiting with her.
She told him not to. To go on, leave her alone. She was fine. Finally, he seemed to get the message. Twelve weeks in, between the rigorous military training, the academic curriculum and the killer athletics program, she was exhausted and almost ready to quit. Though she’d die rather than admit it, the strain was getting to her.
After a worse than grueling day, when she’d failed at everything, she spent longer than usual in the shower, letting the hot water pound her sore muscles. When she got out, she wrapped up in a towel and padded out to the dressing room. She opened her locker and folded neatly in place of her panties was a pair of clean and pressed white men’s boxer shorts.
She scanned the area, but she was alone. Someone had come in while she was showering and left again. Instead of creeping her out, the realization made her feel safe. Whoever it was, if he was going to harm her, he would’ve.
Rumor had it if a female cadet found a pair of men’s underwear in their stuff she’d been officially accepted as one of the guys.
As she unfolded the shorts a playing card fell out. It was the king of spades. But the back was a picture of Elvis. The card was from a Graceland souvenir pack.
Alex smiled and shook her head. The king? Elvis? Memphis?
McCabe.
He was telling her she could do this. She was as tough as any man. And he had her back.
If she hadn’t already, in that moment, Alex Hughes fell hard for Cadet First Class Mitch McCabe.
United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO May 2000
ALEX STOPPED AT McCabe’s door. Good, there was light underneath. She gave a brief knock and then let herself in. “Hey, Memphis?”
“Hughes! Thank God.”
A warm glow filled her chest at the delight in McCabe’s voice and face. To see her.
He sat with his ankle crossed over his knee, banging a pencil on a spiral notebook like a stick on a drum. “Is that pizza?”
“Our favorite, Mexican fajita with extra jalapeños.”
McCabe tossed the spiral onto his desk, shot out of his chair and grabbed some barely used paper plates off the floor. “Let’s eat.” He set the pizza box on top of the spiral and seized the largest slice.
The man was too distracting in a plain white T-shirt just tight enough to hug the contours of his chiseled chest. And was she crazy to find camo pants sexy? She had to stop thinking about him like this. He had a girlfriend.
“You’re studying?” She hopped onto his desk, set the box down and snatched a slice for herself.
He nodded. “Trying to memorize all those dates.” He gestured at the notebook under the pizza. “God, I hate all this history stuff. Who cares about some Roman emperor who ruled a thousand years ago?”
She leaned forward to pull the notebook out from under the box. Trying to read the chicken scrawl on coffee-stained notepaper was a challenge. “Is this Western Civ? I like that class. The stuff about the Hapsburgs…? Totally revealing.”
He frowned. “Hapsburgs?”
“Yeah, women were just a means to gain power to them, the pigs.”
“I must’ve slept through that part.”
From the other side of the wall behind his desk came loud moaning and a rhythmic banging.
McCabe groaned. “My neighbor obviously has no anxiety about getting kicked out.”
She scoffed. “And you do?”
“I have to get at least a ninety on the final exam or I’ll flunk this class. If that happens, I’m out.”
“That won’t happen. We’ll associate each date with something interesting to you.”
He studied the pizza on his lap. “Hughes. If I can’t hack it here, I can’t ask Luanne to marry me.”
She stopped chewing, horrified. “Marry you? You can’t get married while you’re in the Academy.”
“No, but I can the day after we graduate. Why do you think they have that chapel here?” He grinned and excitement sparked in his gorgeous baby blues.
“McCabe. Seriously. You don’t want to tie yourself down at twenty-two. Don’t you want to go off and see the world first?”
“Luanne and I’ve been going together since our sophomore year. She agreed to wait for me, so I can make something of myself. But I don’t know if she’ll wait any longer than graduation.”
“Make something of yourself? What are you now, chopped liver?”
“Come on. You know what I mean.”
Hughes’s lips flattened. “All I’m saying is you’re a great guy. Your girlfriend should love you for who you are.”
McCabe gave her his cockiest grin. The dimples appeared out of nowhere and hit their target with deadly force. “I’m a great guy, huh?”
She lifted her foot to his shoulder and shoved. “Don’t get your head all swelled up.”
“Nah, that’s the guy next door.” He jerked his thumb toward the wall.
“Ugh.” She tossed the rest of her pizza back on her plate. “Could’ve done without that image.”
He chuckled and there was a comfortable silence while he finished his slice and she hopped off the desk and grabbed a soda from his roommate’s minifridge. “Hey, Hughes?”
“Yeah?” She popped the top off the can.
“How come you’re not out having a good time tonight?”
“A good time? You mean, like, stand around waiting to see if there’s a guy desperate enough by closing time to ask me back to his place so he can get his rocks off, and if I’m lucky he might be good enough to make sure I get my rocks off, too? That kind of good time?”
“Geez, when you put it that way…” He grabbed the soda from her hand and took a swig while he narrowed his gaze on her. “You’d be kind of cute if you’d fix yourself up a little.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Gee, thanks.”
“I’m serious. Fix your hair, wear something nice and put on some makeup.”
Alex bristled. “Why would I ever want to do that? So I can get groped by hormonal cretins?” She was comfortable in her old T-shirts and jeans. Her hair was cut so short there wasn’t much she could do with it, even if she wanted to. The backward baseball cap hid it most of the time anyway. “I have to work twice as hard to get respect around here as it is. And besides, did it ever occur to you I don’t want or need a man in my life? My mother slaves away cooking and cleaning for my dad and brothers 365 and you think they appreciate or respect her? Hell, no. A husband and kids is nothing but an anchor weighing down a woman, keeping her from becoming who she was meant to be.”
McCabe held his palms up in surrender. “Okay, okay. I get it.”
Alex inhaled a calming breath. Wow, that diatribe had been building inside her a long time. And poor McCabe didn’t deserve all her built-up resentment. She let out her breath, feeling the anger leave with it. “Sorry for the rant.”
“Forget it.” He waved a hand. “So…you don’t ever want to get married and have kids?”
She shrugged and took a sip of her drink. “Married maybe. When I’m old. Not kids. How could I be a fighter pilot and be pregnant? Or go into combat?” She shook her head.
His lower lip pushed out as he nodded. “Gotta admit, never thought of that.”
Oh, those lips. Luanne, you lucky girl.
“What about you?” she asked. “I guess you and what’s-her-name want a bunch of rug rats?”
He leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head, “I’d like four. She says two and then we’ll see. I just want my kids to have everything I didn’t have growing up.”
“Four? Geez. I’ve got three brothers. You know how much laundry that’ll take?”
He shrugged. “I can help with that when I’m home.” He spread his hands out to his sides. “Besides, the world deserves to have these genes passed on.”
Alex couldn’t agree more. But she rolled her eyes. “You’re so full of it.”
He reached up and punched her arm. “That’s what you love about me, though, right?” He grinned.
Love about him? What was not to love? Her heart hurt, but she made herself smile. “Damn straight.”
“So, you gonna help me learn all these dates or what?” He grabbed another slice of pizza.
“Absolutely, Memphis. I got your back.”
United States Air Force Academy Chapel, July 2003
IF THERE WAS a place in the ceremony where the minister asked the congregation if anyone knew of any reason why the bride and groom shouldn’t get married, Alex decided she’d raise her hand.
Okay, so she probably wouldn’t.
But she wanted to.
Don’t do it, Mitch! She wanted to yell at him as she helped him straighten his tie. She finished and he turned to look in the mirror.
