The Captains' Vegas Vows Read online

  They gambled on a long shot

  Will the bet pay off?

  They have ninety days before the state of Texas will grant these strangers a divorce from their impetuous Vegas wedding. Captain Helen Pallas is certain she’s not cut out for marriage. And Captain Tom Cross doesn’t believe in love. Yet working in the same unit—and assigned to married quarters—Helen and Tom know the attraction is real. It’s a long shot, but we’re betting on happily-ever-after.

  Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author Caro Carson

  Winner of a RITA® Award for A Texas Rescue Christmas

  “[Caro] Carson’s romance is a humorous and heartfelt page-turner from the get-go. Her funny, genuinely touching and vibrant narrative sets the perfect pace with just a touch of Texas twang.”

  —RT Book Reviews on The Bachelor Doctor’s Bride

  “This romance is a real trauma twister, dealing with delicate social and political issues. The narrative flows and the characters shine.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Doctor, Soldier, Daddy

  “This is a Christmastime hit and will be a great read for anyone who needs a little bit of Christmas magic, a good ol’ Texas cowboy and a princess who decides she wants to be real.”

  —HarlequinJunkie.com on A Texas Rescue Christmas

  “One-liners rule in this sensational Texas Rescue tale where playful banter is foreplay to a tender love story.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Following Doctor’s Orders

  Dear Reader,

  Love at first sight is one of the most romantic phrases. Do you believe in it? The hero of this book swears it happened to him and his new bride. Captain Tom Cross meets and marries Captain Helen Pallas the same day. The wedding-crazy city of Las Vegas makes that possible.

  But...

  What if one person forgets that day ever happened? Then you have The Captains’ Vegas Vows, and a marriage that faces the hardest of tests before the ink is dry on the marriage license.

  This book was inspired by a true event. While I was in the army, a friend fell in love on a summer assignment. After just a few wonderful weeks, her new boyfriend fell seriously ill. When he woke in the hospital, he couldn’t remember the last few weeks of his life—which meant he didn’t remember falling in love with my friend. In real life, they went their separate ways when the assignment ended. My friend moved on to meet and marry her husband, have lovely children and a successful career—a happily-ever-after she is enjoying to this day.

  But...

  That story has always stayed with me. My imagination has run wild with the possibilities over the years, until I just had to write The Captains’ Vegas Vows. I hope you enjoy it!

  I love to hear what you think. You can email me privately through my website at www.carocarson.com, or post a comment on Facebook. I’m at www.Facebook.com/authorcarocarson.

  Cheers,

  Caro Carson

  The Captains’ Vegas Vows

  Caro Carson

  Despite a no-nonsense background as a West Point graduate, army officer and Fortune 100 sales executive, Caro Carson has always treasured the happily-ever-after of a good romance novel. As a RITA® Award–winning Harlequin author, Caro is delighted to be living her own happily-ever-after with her husband and two children in Florida, a location that has saved the coaster-loving theme-park fanatic a fortune on plane tickets.

  Books by Caro Carson

  Harlequin Special Edition

  American Heroes

  The Lieutenants’ Online Love

  Texas Rescue

  How to Train a Cowboy

  A Cowboy’s Wish Upon a Star

  Her Texas Rescue Doctor

  Following Doctor’s Orders

  A Texas Rescue Christmas

  Not Just a Cowboy

  Montana Mavericks:

  What Happened at the Wedding?

  The Maverick’s Holiday Masquerade

  The Doctors MacDowell

  The Bachelor Doctor’s Bride

  The Doctor’s Former Fiancée

  Doctor, Soldier, Daddy

  Visit the Author Profile page at www.Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  This book is dedicated to the men and women of the real 720th Military Police Battalion at Fort Hood, Texas, and the 89th Military Police Brigade, in which I was privileged to serve, once upon a time. Thank you for continuing to assist, protect and defend the soldiers of the United States Army.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Season of Wonder by RaeAnne Thayne

  Excerpt from Unmasking the Maverick by Teresa Southwick

  Chapter One

  The first time she woke up, she was surrounded by diamonds and gold.

  It was magical. It was right.

  She smiled because she wasn’t awake enough to laugh, then she slipped back into sleep.

  The second time she woke up, she blinked in the night, awake enough this time to be aware of the sounds of a city beyond the room. Beside the bed, diamonds and gold reflected the lights that filtered in, color after color, as if there were a party outside, turning the diamonds into a kaleidoscope. Since her pillow was very soft under her cheek, and since her whole body felt wonderfully soft and relaxed, too, she fell back asleep.

  The third time she woke up, the diamonds and gold were brilliantly lit by the steady, white light of the sun.

  She stared at the bedside table, an entire piece of furniture made of gold. The clear base of the lamp upon it was filled with diamonds. Why would anyone fill a lamp with diamonds?

  Her brain began to grind into gear. The table had to be brass. The diamonds had to be crystals. That was only logical; no one had the money to fill a lamp with diamonds.

  She wasn’t in her own bed—also logical. Of course she wasn’t in her own bed, because she’d moved out of her lonely house in Seattle and was driving 2,500 miles to Texas, staying in a different hotel in a different state each night.

  The trip wasn’t exciting, just routine, because she was an officer in the US Army, and she had no choice but to move when the army told her to move—which, so far, had been five times in the past eight years. Each move had been predictable, from her initial training course in Missouri to her first assignment at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, from there to a deployment overseas, then back to Bragg. Her promotion to captain had been followed by another training course in Missouri, followed by two years as a company commander at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, just south of Seattle.

  Everything occurred in the proper order on the proper timeline. Every time she was moved, she filled her car with suitcases, duffel bags and a reliable little toaster oven. The army stored her furniture, delivering it when they left her in one place for more than half a year. When it was time for the next move, the army sent workers to box it all up and store it again.

  Because her life was full of duty, predictable duty, and because every mile she traveled was the short
est distance between two army-ordered points, and perhaps because it was nearly her thirtieth birthday (although thirty wasn’t any more significant than any other age—really, it wasn’t), she had decided to add some excitement, taken a detour and stopped for the night in Las Vegas.

  Vegas, baby.

  Oh, my God, I’m in Vegas.

  Captain Helen Pallas bolted upright in the bed and realized immediately that not only was she in Vegas, she was nude, and she had a horrific headache. She pressed one hand to the side of her head and yanked the white sheet up to her neck to cover her breasts, which caused a little avalanche of rose petals to cascade down the sheet to her lap.

  She was sitting in a bed—a gold bed—full of rose petals, a thousand of them under her legs, even between her toes. She stopped pressing her palm into the side of her pain-filled head and instead ruffled her newly bobbed hair, dislodging more petals. They fluttered over her shoulders and down her spine to land with a soft tickle behind her bare backside.

  Roses are always going to make me think of sex now.

  Helen clutched the sheet more tightly. Was that a real memory or had it been a dream?

  “Roses are always going to make me think of sex now.”

  “Is that a bad thing?” he murmured in her ear, laughter always underlying that deep bass. They’d just been laughing; they were going to laugh again.

  She snuggled into him a little more deeply, loving the way they fit together, spooning on their sides with her bare back against his warm chest, loving the strength in his arm as he kept her securely against his body.

  “Red roses are supposed to represent true love,” she said. “Romance. Not the hottest, wildest night of sex in your life.”

  “True love and romance.” He scooped up a handful of rose petals and pressed them to her breast, cupping them to her skin. When he slid his thumb slowly over the curve of her breast, the velvet of a petal created a fragrant friction. “Like this?”

  She shifted in response, sliding her legs together, feeling the pleasant abrasion of his masculine legs against her smooth ones, enjoying the casual intimacy of their bare feet touching. “No, I mean a wholesome, pure kind of love. You’re using roses to make me think of hot sex again. Right this second—yes, just like that. That’s sexy.”

  He slid the handful of rose petals down her body, their softness exquisite, her skin more sensitive than she’d known it could be. Everything with him was better than she’d known it could be. She smiled even as she shivered when his hand stopped just below her belly button.

  He kissed her shoulder, scraped his teeth along it gently, then a little lick, another kiss. “But the roses came after I pledged myself to you. So did the sex.”

  He slid the petals lower still, down to the most sensitive part of her body, and gently pressed them in a firm circle, or two, or three. She tried to breathe deeply, but anticipation had her panting. He let go of the petals to slip his hand under her thigh, to lift her leg and position her a little differently. A little better. “First, we promised true love.”

  She ached with desire as she listened to his voice.

  “They showered us with rose petals after.” He held her in place with a strong hand on her hip, and stroked into her, joining their bodies. They sucked in their breaths, in unison, at the sensation. “Love first, then roses.” Another smooth stroke, his velvet friction inside her, the velvet roses all around her. “So rose-scented sex, hot sex, all the wild nights in our future—” his body inside hers, his hands on her skin, his words in her heart “—started with pure, wholesome, true love. Wouldn’t you agree—”

  Stroke.

  “—Mrs.—”

  Stroke.

  “—Cross?”

  “Oh, my God.” Helen whispered the words in a panic. Her head throbbed. Her mouth was dry. She was married.

  Was she?

  She grabbed a fistful of her hair and tugged gently, but she couldn’t remember anything else. The night wasn’t even a blur in her memory; it just wasn’t there at all. Yet here she was, naked in a bed, panicking on a pile of petals.

  Mrs. Cross?

  No. Please no. I would never—

  She wasn’t Mrs. Anyone. She was Captain Helen Pallas, and she was never going to change that for a man, never again, no way, no how. Her divorce had been final just two days ago. She’d gotten the court papers, gotten her army orders, gotten on the highway.

  She let go of her hair and slowly held out her left hand. Diamonds and gold surrounded her ring finger, glittering in the morning light as she trembled.

  She’d gotten married.

  A doorbell rang. Helen snatched her hand back to clutch the sheet more tightly around her neck. This bedroom was part of a suite, because the door was open a few inches and she could see a little bit of a Liberace-worthy candelabra and a shiny satin sofa in the next room. It sounded like a door in that living room opened, then men’s voices murmured. She looked frantically around the floor, but not one piece of clothing cluttered the carpet. She kept the sheet clutched to her neck with one hand as she stood and started jerking the rest of the sheet off the bed with her other hand, petals fluttering in the air like startled butterflies.

  “Will that be all, sir?” asked one male voice.

  “Yes.”

  Helen stopped moving. That one syllable, yes, was spoken in a voice so deep, she knew it was the man who had said other syllables, words like sex and love, words that had made her melt.

  Dark hair—he’d had dark hair. And he was big, not just tall but broad shouldered, hard muscled and—and tan skin, and—

  And—

  She could only hiss at herself for not knowing who had put a ring on her finger. She yanked the giant California-king-size sheet free and started wrapping it around herself. The sheet was white, but the red petals had left pink splotches everywhere. She’d heard of sprinkling rose petals on a bed, of course, but she’d never heard that the luxurious, romantic gesture caused stains. No one mentioned that part.

  Of course it ruined the sheets. What romantic gesture didn’t turn into a disaster?

  “Thank you, sir.” The more-talkative man sounded so cheerful, Helen could only assume he’d gotten a generous tip. “Congratulations again to you both. Just call us if you need anything else, anything else at all.”

  Helen held her breath, but the deep voice she listened for didn’t make any answer. The outer door opened and shut again. With the sheet wrapped around her chest and securely tucked under her arms, she braced herself for the coming confrontation. She stood still, practically at attention, and waited for the man who’d said yes to come into the bedroom to talk to her, his new bride.

  A bride. Good God, Helen, what is wrong with you?

  She’d been through this once already, and once had been one time too many. If this Mr. Cross was any kind of decent human being, he’d know—he must know—that she’d been drunk last night, and he wouldn’t dream of holding her to any drunken promises she might have made.

  She didn’t want to rehash a night she could barely recall with a man she could barely recall. She was thirsty. Her stomach was unsettled. She needed breakfast. If this Mr. Cross would let her eat and then let her go and pretend nothing had ever happened, that would make him Mr. Right.

  She heard some rustling about in the next room and swallowed down her sense of...anticipation? Surely not. Panic? She didn’t like to think of herself as someone who panicked. She was an army officer. She could handle whoever came through that bedroom door.

  Nobody did. Instead, a shower started running. The hotel suite must be very big, with more than one bathroom, because the bathroom attached to this bedroom was empty. Somewhere beyond this bedroom, her groom was taking a shower, something apparently more important than checking on his new wife.

  Stop expecting anything else. Ever. From anyone.

  The fake g
old and fake diamonds in the bedroom furniture were ridiculous. The rose petals were impractical and staining, and the gold-and-diamond band on her finger was—well, it was returnable, surely. She just needed to go tell her supposed groom that he could return it, and if any kind of legal document existed, they’d have to undo that, too. Yes, she’d just tell...what was his name?

  “Mrs.—”

  Stroke.

  “—Cross.”

  Stroke.

  Cross. Tom Cross. Not Thomas, but Tom. It was coming back to her.

  Helen kept facing the bedroom door, but as she looked at the opulent bed out of the corner of her eye, something else in her brain stirred. Something significant had happened on that bed. Sex, the wildest sex of her life, had taken place there, and it had been... She held her breath again, willing her brain to work.

  Fragments, just little bits and pieces of memory, ran through her mind, but they were enough. It wasn’t that the sex had been wild. It hadn’t been a Kama Sutra reenactment or anything, but it had been...unrestrained. She’d been unrestrained, fearlessly surrendering to him, letting him set the pace, letting him have his fill of her. She’d felt so safe, so relaxed, she could do anything, say anything, have anything from him she wanted. Over and over again, she’d responded to his touch, to that deep voice in her ear—oh, what exactly had he said?

  Her skin felt warm. Her heart was beating hard. She’d loved whatever he said, she knew that much, because her body was responding—please yes more—to her fractured, incomplete memories.

  Arousal was useless right now. Helen couldn’t crawl back in that bed and wait for the man to get out of the shower, even if she wanted to. Which she didn’t. She couldn’t—she needed to extricate herself from this situation and get back on the road to Fort Hood. She had to report to her new unit by noon tomorrow. There were no clocks in this room, but judging by the sun, it was full morning, and she still had at least eighteen hours to drive. She was not going to report late to her new post because of a one-night stand. That wasn’t acceptable to the army. It wasn’t acceptable to her. Captain Pallas would never be so unreliable. Never so unprofessional.