Page 31 of Her Faithful Protector

“Huh?”

“What are you laughing about?”

“Her. Always her. God, Raiden, Cami was a force to be reckoned with. First, there was her logic. That woman could out-argue a supreme court justice. She had it figured out that I was going to the SEALs, so I would be based in either Coronado, California or Little Creek, Virginia. So she started her campaign. California was easy because it was San Diego State. That school was killer, and she had a full-ride offer. Virginia was trickier.”

“How so?” Raiden asked.

“Camilla explained how close William and Mary College was, and how she could study there and get just as good an education as she would at Harvard, MIT, or anywhere else. Hell, she sent the curriculums and the professor bios to me through certified mail. Then when I still balked, she had one of the alumni of W&M show up at my apartment when she was there, forcing me to listen to him.”

“She didn’t.”

“Oh yes, she did.” Nic grinned, remembering how pissed-off he’d been. How impressed he’d been.

“What was she planning on majoring in?”

“Mathematics. There was this famous mathematician who was a professor at W&M that she intended to study under. She’d been offered a full ride at that school. Her parents were furious that she was even considering it. They were bound and determined that she go to MIT.”

“How did you find that out?”

“Little girl might have been fighting her fight, but don’t think that her parents weren’t on my ass.”

“How’d they get to you?”

“They didn’t really, they went to my parents.”

Raiden laughed and laughed some more. “Oh shit, I would have loved to have seen that. I haven’t met your mother, but I’ve heard stories. And your father? Captain Hale doesn’t take shit from anybody. I can’t imagine him putting up with some interfering Ph.Ds.. What did they do?”

“I don’t know. They told me about their visit, and how adamant the two Doctor Ross’s were that I not marry their daughter. Apparently, a sailor wasn’t good enough at any point. Mom was pissed.”

“I imagine. Did you tell Cami?”

“Fuck no. Her campaign only would have intensified, then she would have been angry with her parents, and I would have hated that. But her parents solidified my stance. She needed to go to school and totally focus on that, not try to juggle a new marriage.”

“So, I repeat my original question,” Raiden said as they made their way through a particularly dense part of the jungle. “What did you do to convince her to wait?”

“I told her there wasn’t a chance in hell we were getting married before I joined the Navy. I told her. She didn’t believe me. Eventually, I told her to register for William and Mary College, because she had convinced me that was the right university for her undergraduate degree. She figured because of that, she had me. The day her first class began, I was off to Lake Michigan for my first day of training.”

“So no wedding,” Raiden sighed.

“Nope. Jesus, did my phone blow up. She even flew up to Chicago to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center.”

Raiden laughed again.

“Hey, it wasn’t funny,” Nic glared at him.

Raiden raised his hands in surrender. “I’m just liking her more and more. She’s going to need that kind of resilience right now. So tell me how all of this ended. Why didn’t you just marry her after she graduated?”

Nic closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them to watch where he was going. He remembered following her college career at William and Mary, even though he was going through intensive training to become a SEAL, he kept tabs on her. In all that time he’d never once lifted the communication embargo, not wanting to derail her career, wanting her to stay focused. But when he got his trident, it had been time. It was the summer after her junior year. He’d sent her a letter. He knew that she’d be back with her parents. He didn’t want to call her, instead he’d poured out his heart. He told her that he was stationed in Little Creek as a SEAL. He knew they could make this work. He loved her, and wanted to see her. He waited three weeks and there was no reply. He figured he deserved that. He’d been too much of a wuss to call her, what he needed to say needed to be said in person or in writing, so he kept sending letters, ten in all. It wasn’t until September that he had gotten a response.

The return address was her parents, inside was nothing more than a newspaper clipping of an engagement announcement, Camilla Ann Ross and Harris Prescott.

“Nic, you still with me?”

“Not really,” Nic admitted. “Don’t we have a mission?”

“Seriously, what happened next?”

“It ended. End of story. We went our separate ways, and I followed the age-old sailor tradition of wine, women, and song.”