Page 67 of Men of Fort Dale: The Complete Series

It was irritating.

Flashing on his computer screen brought his head up, squinting at the display.

His sister’s face popped up with a shaking phone symbol.

For a moment, he considered letting it go to voicemail.

But Sara wouldn’t stop calling if he didn’t at least show some measure of attention.

His older sister was laid back, but when she wanted to talk to him, nothing would deter her, not even him.

She arched a thin brow. “Wow, you answered on the first call? I’m shocked.”

“I see you’re learning,” Sara chuckled.

“I’ve been bullied, harassed, and beaten down. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“Harassed. That’s putting it a little dramatically, don’t you think?”

“I notice you didn’t object to bullied or beaten down, however.”

“Well, no, I can’t argue with the truth.”

David snorted. “What can I do for you, Sara?”

Her brow stitched together. “Really? You’re going to ask that? It’s been over a month since we last spoke, David.”

Squinting faintly, he ran the numbers through his head and winced as he realized his sister had been generous. It had been closer to two months, and even then, Sara had reached out to him.

“Ah, hell, I’m sorry. Things have been a little chaotic lately, and it seems a few things slipped the net,” David explained.

“Your sister included. Also, you look like shit.”

David scowled. “Thank you so much.”

Her comment, however, drew his attention to the little square in the upper corner of the call window.

The head of once thick onyx-black hair was almost fifty-fifty salt and pepper.

There were a few lines around the dark circles beneath his pale green eyes and a few more around his lips than there had been ten years ago.

Still, he didn’t think he looked that bad for a man on his way to forty-six.

“And I look just fine,” David finally said.

Sara laughed. “You do, but I made you look.”

“What are you, five?”

“No, just not a stick in the mud.”

Despite being the oldest, his sister was young at heart.

Sara was the first to laugh and quick with a joke to make someone else smile.

Their mother had always insisted she take things more seriously and then begrudgingly said Sara would learn one day.

..maybe. By the time their mother passed, she had long since given up hope that Sara would ever ‘grow up.’

David thought that was a little unfair. Despite the pitfalls she had fallen into, she’d done well for herself.

David wasn’t sure what she’d got up to at college, but she’d come out of it with a major in education and taught at a high school in Houston.

While her love life had been tumultuous, she’d met, married, and settled down with Ryan, and their three kids were doing great.

“You do look a little tired,” Sara said, interrupting his mental wandering.

“I always look tired to you.”

“Yeah, and?”

There wasn’t much he could say about that; he usually was tired.

If their mother had wished Sara was more serious, David was the epitome of everything their mother wanted in a child.

Their father had referred to him as an old soul, claiming David had always been quiet and studious even before he could talk.

He looked at things with a measured approach, whether schoolwork or basic training and MOS training in the military.

“These days, tiredness is a state of being, not an odd occurrence. You should know that by now,” David told her.

Sara shook her head. “You’re the oldest forty-five-year-old I know, David. You need a vacation.”

He was overdue for time off, but every time he thought about taking a week or two, something came up. His plate was currently pretty full, and he couldn’t imagine what it would look like if he had to put it all off for a while.

“And leave this place to fall apart? I think not.”

Sara raised her brow again. “Don’t you have people who can handle things for a few weeks while you blow off steam?”

“In theory.”

“But not in practice?”

David cringed, not wanting to divulge too much. The problem was that the person next in line, Philip Rogan, was not the sort of man David wanted running Fort Dale day-to-day. Rogan was a decent enough administrator, but he wouldn’t be David’s first choice to run the whole base.

“Still having problems with Phil?” Sara asked knowingly.

“I wouldn’t describe it as a problem.”

“If you’re unwilling to let him do his job because you don’t trust him, I’d call that a problem.”

It was both a fair and unfair assessment.

Rogan could cope well enough, but David didn’t trust him to do things right.

Rogan had joined the military in peacetime, not when the nation was at war, and knew nothing about what it was like to be a soldier, in David’s opinion.

Trained and growing up in peacetime had created a politician out of the man in charge of Operations, and David was loathed to put his trust in someone who looked at the men and women at Fort Dale as little more than numbers to be crunched.

“I thought you were going to take care of that at some point,” Sara continued.

David snorted, looking at his screen where his to-do list sat open. The damn thing was so long it required him to scroll to reach the bottom. There was too much at Fort Dale that needed addressing, and he found himself adding things more than subtracting them.

“It’s on the list,” David said with a gesture.

“The ever-growing list that’s going to send you right to an early grave. That one?”

“I’ll have you know I’m in good shape. My last check-up went without a single new comment to worry about.”

“Meaning your blood pressure is still sky-high.”

David shifted uncomfortably. “It’s a tad high.”

“Which you refuse to take medication for or lower your workload.”

“Is this a conversation or an inquisition?” David demanded.

Sara frowned at the screen. “You know damn well I’m worried about you.”

“There’s no need to worry. I’m not in any danger of a heart attack or stroke. I’m eating well, and I always make time each day to exercise.”

“You’re also sleeping like absolute shit and have a workload that would give a dedicated workaholic gray hair at the thought of it.”

“Well, that’s not fair, I sleep just fine. I’m just not getting much sometimes.”

“David.”

“What? There’s a difference.”

Sara shook her head. “I love how you only develop a sense of humor when you want to be a smartass.”

“This from the woman who won’t give anything a rest until she hears she’s right. I feel more pity for Ryan every time we have one of these...fun conversations of ours.”

Sara smirked. “I promise he has ways of shutting me up.”

“Oh, God.”

And if the devilish look on his sister’s face was any warning, he knew exactly where this conversation was heading.

David held his finger out in warning. “Do not.”

Sara, predictably, ignored him. “So, my dear, sweet little brother, whatever happened to that love life you were supposedly getting ready to have?”

David groaned, giving up all pretense of dignity and flopping his head back to cover his face. He’d made the mistake last time they’d spoken of telling his sister he had a date. His complete silence afterward must have caught her interest, and he should have known it would eventually come up.

“Things did not work out,” David muttered.

“And what was wrong with this one?” Sara asked.

“Nothing, it just...didn’t work out. There doesn’t have to be a reason every time. Some things just don’t work.”

“Right, because the woman before that one was too much of a hermit.”

“As a man who’s expected to go to cocktail parties, galas, charity functions, and the like, having someone social by my side isn’t an unfair expectation,” David told her.

“And the guy before that wasn’t serious enough.”

“Anyone who thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to drink themselves stupid on a work night, more than once a week, is not someone I need in my life, Sara.”

“Okay, fair point. You made it sound like it was only once.”

“He and I talked for a couple of weeks, and he informed me it had happened four times.”

“Wasn’t he my age?”

“Yes.”

Sara wrinkled her nose. “Alright, you win that one.”

“Nice to know I can win something with you,” he said dryly.

“But that doesn’t change the fact that it is about time you stopped being so damn difficult and tried a little romance in your life.”

It wasn’t a new argument. Along with his sister’s zest for life and insistence on tackling every problem head-on, her passion for romance and love had not been diminished. That wasn’t to say David didn’t have aspirations for a companion.

“You and I both know I’ve made several attempts to date in the past two and a half decades, Sara,” David reminded her.

“For someone with a larger dating pool than most, you have a harder time finding someone than anyone I know.”

David frowned. “That’s not fair. And my pool is not bigger.”

“Right, being interested in men and women doesn’t open things up more.”

“A heterosexual woman does not exactly suffer from a dearth of choice,” David said dryly.

That and the pool got narrower when people he considered dating found out he was bisexual.

Twenty years ago, he would have understood people’s reluctance to date a bisexual man considering the mentality toward men being attracted to men and would have begrudgingly accepted it ten years ago.

Yet there was still an ugly stigma around being a bisexual man, even as acceptance of gay men was becoming the norm.

“And need I remind you of the handful of men and women who immediately ‘lost’ my number or whatever, when they found out I was into men and women?” David asked.

Sara wrinkled her nose. “At least you were spared having to find out they were an asshole further down the line, right?”

“Not the point.”

“The point is you can’t keep using excuses to avoid it.”

“You are aware I have a full schedule, right? If I can’t take time off for a vacation, what makes you think I have time for a relationship?”

“You can make time. You just don’t want to.”

David sighed. “What was the point of this call again?”

“To check on you and to go full worrying sister on you.”

“Thank you. Between you and my receptionist, I’m quite well covered.”

Sara’s eyes lit up. “Oh, Christian? He’s cute.”

David’s eyes darted to his message icon, which had blipped with an unread notification. He could see where his sister’s delight was leading, and he was not ashamed to take a moment to leave the conversation before she tried to find a new avenue to harass him.

“Yes, Christian. Speaking of, he’s just messaged me, and I’m going to assume it has something to do with my job. So, if you’ll excuse me, I really should get going,” David said.

Sara smirked. “Have you really got a message from him, or are you just trying to get off the phone with me?”

David snorted. “The amazing thing about my job, dear sister, is that I am more than capable of multitasking. So I can do my job and use it as an excuse to escape this conversation.”

Sara laughed, waving a hand at him. “Fine, you can run, but you can’t hide.”

“Love you,” David said, ending the call.

Shaking his head, he opened Christian's message to see if he was right about it being important.

Reading the contents, he realized his receptionist had put off his next appointment because the system had told him David was on a private call.

Shaking his head, David replied, telling him to send his next appointment in and to alert him next time rather than putting it off.

He opened the files for the scheduled meeting.

Out of the dozens of problems that cropped up every day, David was desperate to bring the current team of specialized soldiers back to full strength.

Team Maelstrom desperately needed help and a team member to fill their ranks.

As much as David despised having to shove a new member onto the team, only a few months after the men had lost one of their own in battle, his hands were tied.

When his door opened, David took a moment to arrange everything on his screen for ease of use. He already had a good idea of what he wanted to say to the Sergeant, but it never hurt to have notes on hand.

“Sergeant Rider,” David said by way of greeting.

The soldier snapped a salute. “General Winter.”

David looked up, immediately noticing how exhausted Sergeant Aidan Rider looked.

The man had been thrown from the desert and then to the other side of the country in the same week.

It was amazing that he could even stand up.

His expression was impossible to read, but David watched as the man’s eyes swept the room quickly before resting on David’s face again, watching him, observing.

David waved a hand toward the chairs. “At ease. Make yourself comfortable.”

Maybe when this was over, he could get Christian to order some food along with finding some damn pain relievers. The man knew the best places to find good food, and David had yet to be disappointed.