Encounter with a Commanding Officer. Charlotte Hawkes

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      ‘Well, if half the single female contingent I’ve heard chatting about him get their way, I think he’s going to be too busy dealing with ambushes and bombardments of a more sexual nature to miss being on the front line in the middle of the action.’

      ‘You make it seem like they’re all highly sex-charged.’ Fliss frowned, aware she was being prudish but unable to help herself. ‘They are professional soldiers.’

      ‘And they’re also women,’ Elle pointed out airily, accustomed to Fliss’s more steadfast opinions. ‘Single women. Out here for six months at a time. They’re entitled to a bit of harmless flirtation in their downtime.’

      ‘Until it all goes wrong,’ Fliss shot back, but a hint of niggling doubt had already set in. Elle’s argument was all starting to sound a little too pointed.

      ‘For example, if two officers—let’s say like you and oh, I don’t know, a certain new colonel—were to... As long as you were discreet, what harm could it cause?’

      ‘I knew it,’ exclaimed Fliss, dropping her plastic cutlery on the paper plate. ‘Forget it, Elle. That’s just not my style.’

      ‘Why not? Because you’ve never done it before? So what? Maybe this is your one time to do something crazy. Especially now that idiot ex of yours is out of the picture.’

      A heaviness pressed on Fliss’s chest. Not sadness exactly, but a sense of...failure. She strived to ignore it.

      ‘Because he doesn’t sound like the kind of guy I’d go for. And please don’t mention Robert—you were always more than honest with me about your feelings about him.’

      ‘All right.’ Elle chuckled fondly. ‘But, from what I’ve heard, Man Candy is everyone’s type.’

      ‘He doesn’t sound like mine.’

      In fact, he sounded the complete opposite. Robert had been solid, steady, dependable. The pressure increased on her chest. She’d been attracted to the fact that, like her, he was dedicated to his career, driven to achieve. She’d thought they were a perfect match. A logical couple. A practical choice.

      Look where that had got her.

      ‘Well, if anyone would be immune to the Man Candy Effect it would be you,’ Elle teased, oblivious. ‘You’re probably the most highly principled person even I know.’

      ‘Yeah, yeah, Fusty Fliss.’ The old nickname slipped out before Fliss had time to think about it. ‘I remember.’

      ‘Where did that come from?’ Elle exclaimed, setting her plastic cutlery down in surprise. ‘I haven’t heard anyone call you that since first year of uni.’

      Colour heated Fliss’s cheeks. She hadn’t meant for Elle to realise she’d been feeling a little vulnerable lately. It was a weakness Fliss wasn’t proud of, and didn’t want to reveal. Even to her best friend.

      ‘Brody Gordon,’ Fliss mumbled. ‘And you’re right, the guy was an idiot. I don’t know why I even said it. Just forget it, okay?’

      Ducking her head, she resumed her breakfast but her appetite was waning. She might have known her friend wouldn’t let it drop.

      ‘Is this about Buttoned-Down Bob?’ Elle demanded. Too close to the bone for Fliss’s liking.

      ‘Don’t call him that.’ She kept her voice soft, trying to play the topic down. But Elle was like the proverbial dog once it had a juicy bone in its sights. ‘He’s a respected surgeon. A good man.’

      Elle wasn’t having any of it.

      ‘He’s also as boring as they come. Everything he did was so painfully predictable.’

      ‘Breaking up with me via a Dear John letter whilst I was stuck out here, at Camp Razorwire, in the middle of vast nothingness was hardly predictable,’ Fliss pointed out.

      ‘All right, but, that aside, he was so numbingly characterless. And, before you tell me I’m wrong, tell me that losing him has broken your heart.’

      A restlessness rolled around her chest, along with something else when she thought about Robert—something she didn’t want to identify.

      ‘Don’t be so melodramatic.’

      ‘You’re side-stepping,’ Elle said, not unkindly. ‘Tell me your heart broke when you read his words. Tell me you rushed to the phone to find some way to communicate with him and find out what went wrong.’

      ‘You know I didn’t,’ Fliss muttered, the restless rolling increasing like the rumble of thunder before a flash of lightning.

      ‘Then tell me you love him, you miss him, you don’t know how you’re going to get by without him.’

      She knew what Elle was trying to say but it wasn’t as simple as that.

      ‘Just because I’m not racked with despair doesn’t mean I didn’t love Robert in my own way. It doesn’t mean I wasn’t hurt.’

      Yet she couldn’t explain it to her friend. No, theirs hadn’t been a great romance like Elle had with her own fiancé and childhood sweetheart, but it had been comfortable. He hadn’t looked at her with shame like her grandparents had, and he’d never raged at her like her mother had. Life with him had been predictable, yes. But Fliss had appreciated that. She’d thought they both had.

      It had hurt to read his letter and find out that even Robert needed more from a relationship, to see in black and white that even he found her too emotionally distant. The worst of it was that she knew he was right. The heaviness in her chest felt like a rising reservoir of water, its swirling dark depths drawing her closer to the edge. She’d chosen Robert because she’d thought they had the same life goals, and because she’d thought she couldn’t be hurt. But his letter had felt like a painful echo of her childhood rejection.

      ‘I did care for Robert,’ she told her friend quietly. ‘But I was never in love with him. It isn’t his fault that I couldn’t give him more. It’s mine. I don’t have that capacity in me, Elle. I don’t do passion and emotion and intense love.’

      ‘Bull,’ Elle snorted. ‘You just haven’t met the right guy. Trust me, when you do, you’ll forget all these daft rules and fears of yours. When you find the one, you’ll know it.’

      ‘Like you and Stevie?’ Fliss said softly.

      A shadow skittered unexpectedly over her best friend’s face and Elle suddenly looked a million miles away—or, more likely, three thousand miles. Concern flooded through Fliss as she placed her hand on her friend’s to draw Elle’s focus.

      ‘Elle, is everything okay?’

      Elle blinked, the instantly over-bright smile not fooling Fliss at all.

      ‘Of course I am. I’m just trying to help you move on from Buttoned—Sorry, Robert. And maybe have a bit of fun in the process. And, since Man Candy is off-limits to me, I have to live vicariously through you.’

      Fliss bit back the questions tumbling around her СКАЧАТЬ