Read Online Greenshift by Heidi Ruby Miller - Free Book Online Page B

was
no real night. Soldiers and technicians and diplomats, adjusting to multiple
time zones on multiple planets, allowed for activity during the entire 25 hour
cycle. But he wasn’t captain of the Protector anymore, so he went to
work on freeing his mind from the brawl with the dock workers by recording the
events exactly as he remembered them. His mind drifted, though, to the real
reason he couldn’t shake his restlessness. He wanted to be with Mari right now.
    Was she still awake, thinking
about what happened tonight? He could tell she was putting on a brave front, so
he respected her need to show her courage and tried not to coddle her. Yet
every instinct inside him screamed for him to go to her, to hold her and kiss
her and whisper words of comfort.
    She had invited him to continue
their evening and he almost accepted. It was exactly what he wanted up until
the moment she made it a reality, then he….
    Then you ran away from her.
    The thought pissed him off. What
the hell was wrong with him? He’d led thousands of men into battle, broken
countless bones, endured hellacious conditions but was now afraid of one little
blonde? Ridiculous.
    Maybe he should call her room to
be sure she was okay. Then he could tell by her voice if she was still up for
company. And if she wasn’t, he would be right back where he started, only more
frustrated. He needed to stop this kind of thinking, tamp down his overactive
hormones and concentrate on this damn report.
    Yeah, right .
    He was out of his chair before he
could talk himself out of it. As he headed down the commonway, one by one he
dismissed all the reasons why this wasn’t a good idea, why he should find
someone his own age, why he needed to emotionally distance himself from Mari, why
he shouldn’t be standing in front of her door at this hour.
    He pressed the halfmoon sensor
of her door chime. When he could hear it sound loudly inside, he swore under
his breath, feeling certain he had woken her. For what? He didn’t have time to
think of an excuse.
    The door slid open.
    “Hi.” Mari’s lazy smile
and tiny green nightie made him want to dock her right there in the hallway.
    “Hi.” He felt a tad
foolish, but more than a little excited. “I was working up the incident
report and thought I should get your take on what happened. You do have that
photographic memory.”
    Still can’t admit why you’re
here, can you, Anlow?
    “And to make sure you were
really okay,” he added.
    Mari slid her arm through
David’s. “Nothing a drunken coffee won’t fix. Do you want one?”
    Say no.
    He’d had more than enough alcohol
tonight. Another drink and his judgment might be impaired. That was one of the
reasons he didn’t take the stims she offered from the med suite.
    “What kind of bourbon do you
have?” he asked.
    “Koley’s Reserve. What
else?” She winked.
    “You’re kidding.” He
let his skepticism show. “Do you know how difficult that is to get? It’s
only made in the Koley Mountains, and in very small batches.”
    Even as an Armadan captain, he
sometimes had to wait months for a bottle and he’d given his last one to the
dockmaster as a bribe.
    She just smiled that big smile of
hers. “I wouldn’t kid an Armadan about bourbon.”
    “Well, then how can I refuse
a taste of home?” David took another quick survey of the strappy emerald-colored
nightie draped over Mari’s curves. Or you .
    Once inside, the glowing vibrancy
of her living quarters bombarded him.
    “That’s a lot of blue and
green,” he said.
    “My favorite colors. It’s a
work in progress because you would not believe how much it costs to remodel one
of these suites.”
    Now that she mentioned it, he
could see traces of the original décor peeking from around billowing curtains
and beneath thick area rugs and under an abundance of shiny pillows. For a
soldier used to basic quarters, or even a man used to living alone in a sizable
but modestly decorated lake house, the loud, plushy world