Stranded With The Sergeant

“Self-guided, huh?” Joe repeated.

“Yes, sir. There’s even a tour book that coordinates with the signs for each numbered point of interest.”

“Self-guided. Well, that’s great. Then you definitely don’t need me,” Joe stated with a hearty laugh.

“You’re here to answer any questions,” Prudence reminded him.

He wanted to tell her that to do that he’d have to have access to the tour book, which the kid with the glasses and strange name seemed to have printed off the Internet. He wanted to tell her that he’d only been at the base a few weeks, he wanted to tell her he wasn’t as dumb as he sounded. But most of all he wanted to get the heck out of here. Which meant starting the tour, whether he knew what he was talking about or not.

“This building houses base headquarters,” Joe said as he opened the door and headed down the hallway. If the kids wanted to follow him, fine. No way was he staying in that tiny claustrophobic room with twenty-five kids a second longer. Flirting with her had distracted him for a while, but now that he knew the sexy teacher was off-limits, he didn’t have anything to keep his mind off of the panic.

“The outside of the building looks like my church, only bigger,” Rosa said as she followed him into the hallway, as did all the other kids and along with their rebellious teacher. “Redbrick with that fancy white thing on top.”

“A cupola.” At least that was one answer he could supply.

Rosa frowned up at Joe. “I thought he was the director of the movie The Godfather.”

“That’s Francis Ford Coppola,” Pete said, rolling his eyes at her.

“An easy mistake to make,” Joe said, wanting to keep moving. “As I said, you’re inside Base Headquarters. From here the Commanding General oversees the daily workings of the entire base.”

“And how many Marines would that include?” Prudence asked.

The teacher had it out for him. Joe could tell by the questions she asked and by the way her lush mouth turned up in what he was coming to believe was a diabolical, if sexy, smile each time she asked them.

Fine, honey. Two can play at that game.

“Sinatra, how many Marines would that be?” Joe said.

Consulting his printout first, Sinatra said, “Approximately fifty thousand Marines, Navy personnel, civilian employees and military families, sir.”

Joe liked this kid. As they passed the front lobby with its small display of historical swords, Sinatra discreetly passed him a copy of the self-guided tour book.

“Thanks,” Joe murmured.

“I know what’s it’s like to be picked on,” Sinatra told him with a reassuring smile.

Jeez, he’d come to this. A middle school teacher was picking on him. Him. Joe Wilder. An experienced United States Marine. Being picked on, not picked up as was often the case, by a woman. A sexy woman. A woman who was completely off-limits to him, seeing as how she was his commanding officer’s “little princess.”

He had to find a way to get out of this assignment.

The tour went more smoothly once he had the guidebook in his possession. He was able to tell the class about the massive live oak tree that was estimated to be over 350 years old. When one cocky kid asked him for the Latin name of the tree, he was even able to give that—Quercus virginiana.

Things got a little trickier in the barracks. There was something unexpectedly provocative about being with Prudence in a room filled with so many mattresses. Maybe he wasn’t as bad off as he thought if he could think of sex at a time like this.

Of course, another way of looking at things was that he was truly certifiable to be entertaining the thought of his commanding officer’s daughter and the word sex in the same sentence.

And then there were all the kids, swarming around in masses and sucking all the oxygen from the room.

“These beds are so little,” Pete noted in surprise. “And they’re bunk beds.”

“Here in the Marine Corps, your bed is your rack,” Joe automatically corrected him.

“A rack, huh? It looks like something you’d get tortured on,” Pete agreed.

Torture was being in such close confines with so many kids. Even his first day of boot camp hadn’t made him this jumpy.

“These beds…er, racks,” Pete quickly corrected himself, “are really clean.”

“That’s because Marines have to learn how to make perfectly folded forty-five-degree corners on the sheets when they make their racks,” Prudence said.

“No way!” Pete’s brown eyebrows shot up. “Marines have to make beds…er…racks?”

“Affirmative,” Joe said. “They have to learn the Marine way of making their racks.”

“You see, in the Marine Corps there’s only one right way of doing things and that’s the Marine way,” Prudence said in a mocking voice. Turning to Joe she said, “Tell the kids about the rest of Marine terminology. The floor is called…”

She was the daughter of a Marine, she knew what it was called. She simply wanted to wipe the deck with him. Daddy’s little princess, indeed. Spoiled rotten needed to be added to that description. How dare she mock his beloved Marine Corps? He and the men she mocked put their lives on the line to protect her little fanny. But did she care? Clearly not.

Narrowing his eyes at her, Joe straightened his already ramrod straight shoulders. “The floor is a deck,” he barked, startling her. Good. “To your right and left are bulkheads, not walls. Windows are ports. Above is an overhead, not a ceiling. Upstairs and downstairs do not exist. Instead we use topside and down below. You are facing forward. To your left is port and to your right is starboard. Behind you is aft.”

“My dad has a boat and he uses those words,” Pete said, hurriedly adding, “sir.”

“The terms are a result of the Marine Corps early origins as a sea service,” Joe said.

The tour ended at the Beirut Memorial, commemorating those who died in the 1983 bombing of Battalion Landing Team 1/8’s Headquarters in Lebanon. Joe found it impossible to speak. For once, Prudence was quiet.

By the time the class returned to base headquarters, Joe had regained his self-control. He fielded the kids’ questions as best he could on everything from the possibility of a top secret Marine Corps group that trained to protect earth from extraterrestrial life-forms to why his uniform was green.

During that time, Prudence kept her distance. He could tell she didn’t like him. Which was fine by him. Maybe it would get him off this assignment.

Baby-sitting a bunch of sixth-graders was hardly up his alley. He’d been trained in hand-to-hand combat, in Marine battle tactics and camouflage and survival techniques. Not kid stuff.

Especially not now.

A few years ago Joe might have laughed off this chore. But since the accident, his life had turned upside down. And he was the only one who knew it. Which is the way he planned on keeping things.

“Daddy, this isn’t going to work,” Prudence stated as she perched herself on the corner of his desk.

“Hey, princess, how did the tour go?”

“The man you sent didn’t know much about the base.”

“Well, he’s only been here a few weeks. Give the guy a chance.”

She shook her head, sliding a strand of her dark hair behind one ear before saying, “I think it would be better if you found someone else for the job.”

“Did Sergeant Wilder tell you to come talk to me on his behalf?” her father asked suspiciously.