Enlisted by Love by Jenny Jacobs

husband-to-be adoring looks than in reading the articles. Watching Tess, he tried to imagine Greta giving a man adoring looks. His imagination failed. No, not just failed but was defeated utterly. Crushed.
Pulverized
.
    Yet once the idea entered his mind, he couldn’t shake it loose. What would it be like to see affection in Greta’s eyes? To change that frosty disapproval into warm acceptance? To convince her to trust him, to settle down, to build a life together. It would take a very special man to manage that, a man impervious to danger and fear —
    He ran a hand through his short hair.
Build a life together
? He was nuts. It came from hanging around Michael and his family-to-be. Tess, it turned out, came equipped with a daughter. Ian had met Belinda before Tess had scooted the little girl off to get ready for bed, and she had been curious about him, asking question after question until Tess laughed and hugged her and said it was time for a bath. Michael mentioned that he’d already started the adoption paperwork, which meant he’d thought it through — schoolwork, braces, puberty — and hadn’t reconsidered. Plus he’d already set a wedding date, at least according to the invitation Ian had gotten in the mail. Michael seemed perfectly willing to embrace his fate. Seemed rather happy about it, in fact.
    Ian narrowed his eyes at Tess. Of course, if your fate included a cuddly gorgeous creature who adored you, well, he’d heard of worse tortures. Experienced some himself.
    Still, he’d reached the age of — well, never mind — footloose and fancy free and he intended to stay that way. Yup. No dark eyed charmer would ensnare him. He did not need cuddles or looks of adoration. The very thought made him squeamish. Not that he blamed Michael for succumbing. Any man might: women did not fight fair. But Ian was an Army man, and he wasn’t about to surrender, no matter how cuddly the reward. A vision of a perfectly coiffed blonde raising an immaculately groomed eyebrow at him flitted through his mind. There was nothing in the slightest cuddly about her. That was the danger. That was the exact appeal. She didn’t smile at just anyone the way she had smiled at him in the storage unit, when she had understood about the table.
    Nonsense. That was a deadly line of thinking, that they could make something special. That was exactly how Michael had come to find himself hog-tied and thrown.
    â€œGreta dislikes them.”
    Ian started, disturbed from his ruminations, frowned and took a bite of his pizza. What had they been talking about? Ah, his collection.
    â€œWhy does she dislike them?”
    â€œShe thinks only a person who lacks imagination uses them as decorating accents,” Tess explained.
    â€œLacks imagination?” Ian asked, a sharp tone in his voice.
Lacks imagination
? Why did the accusation outrage him so? Army men weren’t exactly encouraged to develop their imaginations. That was why he’d hired a decorator in the first place. Still,
lacks
imagination
rankled. He’d show Greta he had an imagination. He would —
    He would not. He controlled himself and gulped more root beer.
    â€œSure,” Tess was saying. She’d stopped adoring Michael and was now leaning forward to talk to Ian, her voice and face earnest as she articulated Greta’s position on the use of tchochkes in interior decorating. “It’s the easy way out. Slap a curio shelf on the wall, instant personality. Greta hates that. Real design requires real thought, she says.” Tess gave him a challenging look, as if he would rise to the bait and argue that real design did not require real thought. But Ian was not an idiot.
    â€œThis is a great collection,” he insisted. Instant personality! He was not the kind of man who went around looking for the easy way to do something. If he had wanted the easy way, he wouldn’t have hired Greta in the first