Night Maneuvers - By Jillian Burns Page 0,11
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