Twenty minutes later, Rucker’s team won the match. The teams broke up and scattered to get showers or breakfast in the chow hall.
“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” the pretty blonde asked.
“Only if you tell me your name.” He twisted his lips into a wry grin. “I’d like to know who delivered those wicked spikes.”
She held out her hand. “Nora Michaels,” she said.
He gripped her hand in his, pleased to feel firm pressure. Women might be the weaker sex, but he didn’t like a dead fish handshake from males or females. Firm and confident was what he preferred. Like her ass in those shorts.
She cocked an eyebrow. “And you are?”
He’d been so intent thinking about her legs and ass, he’d forgotten to introduce himself. “Rucker Sloan. Just got in less than an hour ago.”
“Then you could probably use a tour guide to the nearest coffee.”
He nodded. “Running on fumes here. Good coffee will help.”
“I don’t know about good, but it’s coffee and it’s fresh.” She released his hand and fell in step beside him, heading in the direction of some of the others from their volleyball game.
“As long as it’s strong and black, I’ll be happy.”
She laughed. “And awake for the next twenty-four hours.”
“Spoken from experience?” he asked, casting a glance in her direction.
She nodded. “I work nights in the medical facility. It can be really boring and hard to stay awake when we don’t have any patients to look after.” She held up her hands. “Not that I want any of our boys injured and in need of our care.”
“But it does get boring,” he guessed.
“It makes for a long deployment.” She held out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Rucker. Is Rucker a call sign or your real name?”
He grinned. “Real name. That was the only thing my father gave me before he cut out and left my mother and me to make it on our own.”
“Your mother raised you, and you still joined the Army?” She raised an eyebrow. “Most mothers don’t want their boys to go off to war.”
“It was that or join a gang and end up dead in a gutter,” he said. “She couldn’t afford to send me to college. I was headed down the gang path when she gave me the ultimatum. Join and get the GI-Bill, or she would cut me off and I’d be out in the streets. To her, it was the only way to get me out of L.A. and to have the potential to go to college someday.”
She smiled “And you stayed in the military.”
He nodded. “I found a brotherhood that was better than any gang membership in LA. For now, I take college classes online. It was my mother’s dream for me to graduate college. She never went, and she wanted so much more for me than the streets of L.A.. When my gig is up with the Army, if I haven’t finished my degree, I’ll go to college fulltime.”
“And major in what?” Nora asked.
“Business management. I’m going to own my own security service. I want to put my combat skills to use helping people who need dedicated and specialized protection.”
Nora nodded. “Sounds like a good plan.”
“I know the protection side of things. I need to learn the business side and business law. Life will be different on the civilian side.”
“True.”
“How about you? What made you sign up?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I wanted to put my nursing degree to good use and help our men and women in uniform. This is my first assignment after training.”
“Drinking from the firehose?” Rucker stopped in front of the door to the mess hall.
She nodded. “Yes. But it’s the best baptism under fire medical personnel can get. I’ll be a better nurse for it when I return to the States.”
“How much longer do you have to go?” he asked, hoping that she’d say she’d be there as long as he was. In his case, he never knew how long their deployments would last. One week, one month, six months…
She gave him a lopsided smile. “I ship out in a week.”
“That’s too bad.” He opened the door for her. “I just got here. That doesn’t give us much time to get to know each other.”
“That’s just as well.” Nora stepped through the door. “I don’t want to be accused of fraternizing. I’m too close to going back to spoil my record.”
Rucker chuckled. “Playing volleyball and sharing a table while drinking coffee won’t get you written up. I like the way you play. I’m curious to know where you learned to spike like that.”
“I guess that’s reasonable. Coffee first.” She led him into the chow hall.
The smells of food and coffee made Rucker’s mouth water.
He grabbed a tray and loaded his plate with eggs, toast and pancakes drenched in syrup. Last, he stopped at the coffee urn and filled his cup with freshly brewed black coffee.
When he looked around, he found Nora seated at one of the tables, holding a mug in her hands, a small plate with cottage cheese and peaches on it.
He strode over to her. “Mind if I join you?”
“As long as you don’t hit on me,” she said with cocked eyebrows.
“You say that as if you’ve been hit on before.”
She nodded and sipped her steaming brew. “I lost count how many times in the first week I was here.”
“Shows they have good taste in women and, unfortunately, limited manners.”
“And you’re better?” she asked, a smile twitching the corners of her lips.
“I’m not hitting on you. You can tell me to leave, and I’ll be out of this chair so fast, you won’t have time to enunciate the V.”
She stared straight into his eyes, canted her head to one side and said, “Leave.”
In the middle of cutting into one of his pancakes, Rucker dropped his knife and fork on the tray, shot out of his chair and left with his tray, sloshing coffee as he
