wasn’t, that he was attracted to her.
John hadn’t exactly come out and said it, but with his track record of running and hiding from relationships, it might as well have been a love letter.
Chapter Eleven
The soft chime heralded a new email as a pop-up balloon that read, You have a new email from SSgt John Blake appeared on screen.
Maureen scurried to open it. Her heart skipped a beat, and she felt a smile cross her face just anticipating reading his words. Then three words popped into her head that stopped Maureen dead in her tracks and wiped the smile from her face.
I love him.
She sat in shock and stared at the screen of her computer as the ramifications of the unbidden thought sunk in. They had only been corresponding for a few weeks. They had been innocently flirting—all right, maybe not so innocently—for far less time than that. How could she feel this way? She’d never even met the man.
Was it possible she could be falling for him? People fell in love online all the time on dating websites. Only they hadn’t met on a dating website where you knew the person you were corresponding with was at least interested in a relationship. And when on those sites, the people usually met in person at some point. He’d never discussed when or if he was coming to the States, or even about them meeting.
Maybe she was just romanticizing the entire situation. The whole scenario was worthy of a romance novel. Deployed soldier in danger of being killed or wounded. The woman who writes to him to relieve his loneliness.
That had to be it. It was just the war. Emotions ran high during times of war. Just like how men and women who barely knew each other during World War II would write letters to one another and fall in love and get married, sometimes not in that order.
Maureen realized she was shaking as she began to read John’s email. Either he was interested in her or she didn’t know anything at all about men. Although with her record of comically bad dates, the second was a definite possibility.
He’d written that he wondered what she looked like. He’d asked if he could call her by her real name. If John was thinking about her, he couldn’t be married. Right? God, she hoped she was right. Falling in love with a married soldier would be bad. Really, really bad.
She chose, for the moment anyway, to assume he was single and proceed accordingly. She’d work on Jazzy for an answer to her question next.
Weeks ago, Peter had emailed her some pictures of the two of them together. They were taken on the first of their bad double dates so she was dressed up and had makeup on. Her hair even looked good in them.
Peter had joked they needed photos to commemorate their great social experiment, that one day Summer Winters might come out of the romance-writer closet and want the pictures to publish in her memoirs. Her memoirs were far down the road—she wasn’t even thirty years old yet—but she was happy to have the pictures now.
John had figured out her real name. Tiffany had noticed the similarity of Maureen’s dating experiment and the one on Summer’s blog. Others eventually might too. Her days of secrecy might be numbered, but as long as she was still living the secret life of an erotic author, Maureen couldn’t post a photo on her website. She could definitely send John a photo and let him use her real name in their emails though.
Something about him calling her Maureen made the whole thing seem more real.
After glancing over the wall of her cubicle to make sure nosy Tiffany or their boss, Pam, wasn’t nearby, Maureen opened the pictures Peter had sent. She carefully inspected each of the photos. She finally selected one that not only didn’t embarrass her like most pictures of herself did, but made her boobs look really good. Peter was right—the wrap dress showed them off nicely. If they looked good enough for a gay man to notice, a deployed soldier cut off from female companionship for months at a time
John hadn’t exactly come out and said it, but with his track record of running and hiding from relationships, it might as well have been a love letter.
Chapter Eleven
The soft chime heralded a new email as a pop-up balloon that read, You have a new email from SSgt John Blake appeared on screen.
Maureen scurried to open it. Her heart skipped a beat, and she felt a smile cross her face just anticipating reading his words. Then three words popped into her head that stopped Maureen dead in her tracks and wiped the smile from her face.
I love him.
She sat in shock and stared at the screen of her computer as the ramifications of the unbidden thought sunk in. They had only been corresponding for a few weeks. They had been innocently flirting—all right, maybe not so innocently—for far less time than that. How could she feel this way? She’d never even met the man.
Was it possible she could be falling for him? People fell in love online all the time on dating websites. Only they hadn’t met on a dating website where you knew the person you were corresponding with was at least interested in a relationship. And when on those sites, the people usually met in person at some point. He’d never discussed when or if he was coming to the States, or even about them meeting.
Maybe she was just romanticizing the entire situation. The whole scenario was worthy of a romance novel. Deployed soldier in danger of being killed or wounded. The woman who writes to him to relieve his loneliness.
That had to be it. It was just the war. Emotions ran high during times of war. Just like how men and women who barely knew each other during World War II would write letters to one another and fall in love and get married, sometimes not in that order.
Maureen realized she was shaking as she began to read John’s email. Either he was interested in her or she didn’t know anything at all about men. Although with her record of comically bad dates, the second was a definite possibility.
He’d written that he wondered what she looked like. He’d asked if he could call her by her real name. If John was thinking about her, he couldn’t be married. Right? God, she hoped she was right. Falling in love with a married soldier would be bad. Really, really bad.
She chose, for the moment anyway, to assume he was single and proceed accordingly. She’d work on Jazzy for an answer to her question next.
Weeks ago, Peter had emailed her some pictures of the two of them together. They were taken on the first of their bad double dates so she was dressed up and had makeup on. Her hair even looked good in them.
Peter had joked they needed photos to commemorate their great social experiment, that one day Summer Winters might come out of the romance-writer closet and want the pictures to publish in her memoirs. Her memoirs were far down the road—she wasn’t even thirty years old yet—but she was happy to have the pictures now.
John had figured out her real name. Tiffany had noticed the similarity of Maureen’s dating experiment and the one on Summer’s blog. Others eventually might too. Her days of secrecy might be numbered, but as long as she was still living the secret life of an erotic author, Maureen couldn’t post a photo on her website. She could definitely send John a photo and let him use her real name in their emails though.
Something about him calling her Maureen made the whole thing seem more real.
After glancing over the wall of her cubicle to make sure nosy Tiffany or their boss, Pam, wasn’t nearby, Maureen opened the pictures Peter had sent. She carefully inspected each of the photos. She finally selected one that not only didn’t embarrass her like most pictures of herself did, but made her boobs look really good. Peter was right—the wrap dress showed them off nicely. If they looked good enough for a gay man to notice, a deployed soldier cut off from female companionship for months at a time
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