Carnal Innocence. Julie Miller

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      She added the last out of polite courtesy, just in case the disorder of dishes, dust bunnies and dirty clothes strewn from room to room wasn’t anything more sinister than a testament to her roommate’s housekeeping skills.

      “Maybe aliens snatched her up.” Just to be on the safe side, Caitlin quickly verified that all the rooms were empty. Leave it to Cassie to have a close encounter of the third kind while Caitlin was away. Her roomie could be off exploring brand-new worlds while she got stuck on the home planet doing housework.

      Just like in one of Caitlin’s Star Trek books, it would be Cassie’s luck to get beamed aboard a starship to hang with the hunky captain while she got left on the surface to deal with a villainous Klingon.

      “Hmm.” Caitlin raised her eyebrows and considered the possibilities. There was a definite appeal to the idea of saving the day. “I could just tame that bad boy and take over the planet myself.” She growled in her throat, imitating the imagined villain who would be at her mercy. “He’d be my consort. A warrior to serve my every need.” She closed her eyes and licked her lips, savoring an imaginary kiss as the rough-edged warrior took her to his bed.

      The cool air that brushed across her wet, wanting mouth brought her back to reality. Her eyes popped open. No warrior. No lover.

      No roommate, either.

      But a very real mess to clean up.

      “You shouldn’t have.” She waved off the imaginary audience that was cheering her dumb luck. “I’m so thrilled you’ve given me something meaningful to do with my life.” She’d learned to weed sarcasm out of her teaching, but the rest of her life was fair game for a loaded remark.

      She shrugged out of her light-blue jacket and hung it in the closet. The reality of her life was that she had work to do. And as much as she wished she could ignore her responsibilities and just take off to indulge her latest whim the way Cassie did, someone had to clean up before ants found their way into their apartment.

      Caitlin had spent the last week of May reconnecting with her father on Chesapeake Bay. She’d wanted to get away once the school year had finished, and she always enjoyed spending time with her dad. It had been relaxing—digging up crabs, sailing, chatting about the warm spring weather.

      But after a couple of days of kicking back and relaxing, she’d found it boring. Not the time spent with her father. Her. She was boring. She’d had nothing more exciting to discuss than that she’d finally found a stylist who knew how to cut her curly hair without making it frizz like steel wool.

      No wonder Retired Brigadier General Hal McCormick kept dozing off. She was reliable, sensible, boring old Caitlin. The only daughter in a long, tough tradition of rugged military men. She had no rank of distinction in front of her name like her brother Ethan’s “Major.” No notorious tag line to follow her name like her brother Travis’s “Action Man.”

      She answered to the inauspicious title of Ms. McCormick. And her tag line went something like “Dull As Dishwater.” “Same Old, Same Old.” “Good Girl.”

      Her father probably never dozed when one of her brothers was recounting a military mission or listing the names of dignitaries he’d hobnobbed with at a diplomatic function.

      Caitlin carried her suitcase into her bedroom and set it down with a heavy sigh. While she unpacked, she pulled her cellphone from her purse and punched in her father’s number. She did share her brothers’ dutiful habits. Being responsible meant checking in as per her father’s request.

      He picked up on the second ring. “McCormick.” Her father’s gruff voice held less bark than it had in years past, but Caitlin still found herself subconsciously anxious to please him.

      “It’s me.”

      The general’s tone never softened, but she knew there’d be a smile on his face. “How’s my best girl?”

      Caitlin smiled at their secret code. “A-okay, Daddy.”

      “Was your trip uneventful?”

      Caitlin’s breath seeped out in a humiliated sigh. Uneventful. Was there any other way to describe her life?

      But her father didn’t need to hear her complain. “I got home just fine.” Looking around her apartment, she despaired at how much work it needed, but he didn’t need to hear that, either. “I really enjoyed our visit.”

      “Me, too.” He cleared his throat. Uh-oh. Prelude to fatherly lecture. “Be sure you call the doctor tomorrow. I’m sorry the chemicals we used to clean the boat got to you.”

      “It was just an allergic reaction. A mild attack. I have an ample supply of all my meds,” she assured him. “My asthma is just fine. I’m fine.”

      “Your mother used to take care of all that stuff when she was alive.”

      “That was when I was a little girl. I’m twenty-seven years old now, Dad. I can take care of myself.”

      Though straight talk and some TLC usually brought her father around to her point of view, some days—like this one—he made her feel as if she was stuck in a time warp. As if she was still that toddler who’d run out across the tarmac to welcome her daddy home from overseas, instead of an adult who still loved her daddy but who wanted the chance to make her own mistakes and earn her own triumphs without her omnipresent family waiting to oversee every choice she made.

      After several more reassurances that her Memorial Day asthma attack had not been life threatening, Caitlin gave her father her love and promised to call again over the weekend.

      “Unless you have a hot date…”

      Caitlin laughed. She hadn’t realized hot date was in her father’s vocabulary. Without a division of troops to worry about any longer, the general focused all of his concerns on his three children. “Don’t worry, Dad. When I get serious about a guy, I’ll be sure you get to meet him.”

      “Damn straight. I don’t want some sweet-talker like your brother Travis turning your head and gettin’ you into trouble.”

      “Me? Trouble?” She wished. “I’m the most down-to-earth of all your children.” Not counting her rich fantasy life—that would remain her own little secret. “Don’t you trust me?”

      “Of course I do. But you’re my youngest.” It was a needless reminder of how well her two older brothers and her father overprotected her. “You’re also the one I rushed to the hospital when Travis brought home that cat and you stopped breathing.”

      He still thought she was that ten-year-old girl whose allergies and asthma hadn’t yet been diagnosed. Caitlin tried to remember this was love, not control, talking. “Don’t worry, Dad. I won’t let any man tell me what to do. I won’t let any man give me a cat, either.”

      Her father laughed as she’d intended. “Good girl.”

      Good girl. Responsible. Levelheaded. In other words…? Boring.

      She needed to get a life. Maybe she just needed to live the one she had. She knew the one she wanted—one filled with adventure. One in which her father didn’t worry about her health. One in which her brothers didn’t request personal leave so they could check out her latest boyfriend to make СКАЧАТЬ