Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover

And with that enigmatic statement, he walked out of the house.

Connie looked at Ethan. “Would you mind moving to the living room? I can hear Sophie better from there.”

“Not a problem.”

Just then the girl’s voice trailed down the stairway as she giggled on the phone.

Golden evening light filled the room, so Connie didn’t turn on any lamps. She sat on the sofa, and to her surprise, Ethan did, too. There was still plenty of room between them, but it felt more intimate than before. And she liked it.

That liking frightened her, raising images from the grave of her past. Leo hitting her, then apologizing and wanting to make love. Always, always, like some sick twisted game. How many times had she fallen for that?

Too many.

She began curling in on herself, as if in anticipation of an attack. She could feel it in every muscle and struggled to let go of it.

“Am I too close?” Ethan suddenly asked.

She nearly jumped as she looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“I seem to be making you uncomfortable.”

“It’s not you.”

He nodded. Then, after the briefest pause, he said, “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“Why? I show you my scars and you show me yours?” The words sounded so bitter that shock shook Connie. “I’m sorry...”

“It’s okay,” he said, and everything in his tone said it was. “It’s okay. I’m still reacting to threats that aren’t there. I know what it’s like.”

“Yeah. I guess you do.”

“It’s like your brain gets rewired.”

She nodded, still watching him in the golden glow.

“It’s hard to turn it back around. When I came back on leave from Iraq, I couldn’t drive. I absolutely panicked for a while, thinking every oncoming or parked car might be a bomb.”

“That must have been awful.”

“It was crazy. I knew it wasn’t true, but I couldn’t restrain the learned response.” He shook his head a little, as if trying to drive away an exasperating bug. “I guess everything in life changes you somehow.”

“So it seems.”

“I still can’t drive.” He said it flatly, but even that tone spoke volumes to her. “Well, I can if I have to, but it’s an awful lot of effort. More than it’s worth most of the time. That’s why you caught me hitchhiking.”

“I can understand that.” And she could. Maybe not in his precise terms, but in her own... Yeah, she could understand.

But the curling inward wouldn’t stop, and finally words burst out of her. “Sophie is the best thing in my life,” she said, tears starting to run down her cheeks. “My God, if something happened to her...”

He moved closer, drawing her into a gentle embrace, rocking her as if he knew how soothing that motion could be. “Nothing’s going to happen,” he murmured. “We’ll take care of her.”

The tears flowed silently, as if she couldn’t release the pain and terror enough to sob. Water seeping over a dam that held back the huge lake of terrible things that had never ceased to haunt her.

She felt guilty. The man holding her had been through far worse. Endured far worse. That thing about not being able to drive a car was only the tip of his iceberg, and she knew it. Yet he had the strength to try to protect her daughter. To hold her and offer comfort.

In the midst of it all, she realized what a crabbed soul she had become.

“My God,” she said, pulling away and hunting for the box of tissues she always kept on the end table. Finding it by feel, she pulled out a wad and scrubbed her face.

“What?” he asked.

“Sophie... She’s never known her father. It’s like with you. I took her away from him and made sure he couldn’t even see her on supervised visitation. What if she’s not as understanding as you? What if she grows up to hate me for that?”

Several heartbeats passed before he answered. He seemed to be choosing his words with care. “Do you think,” he asked slowly, “that it would have been good for her to visit her father in prison? Good for her to ask questions about it at such a young age?”

“God! How did you know about Leo going to prison?”

“Micah.” He touched her shoulder briefly. Then he moved back to his end of the couch, giving her space.

She needed that space, and she hated needing it. She wanted the comfort he offered, yet it terrified her. Finally she asked the most dreaded question. “Did you ever hate your mother for what she did? Ever? Did you ever resent your father for not knowing?”

“I’m human,” he said. “I felt some ugly things, sure. Mostly when I was younger. As I grew older, I understood better. My mother used to have a saying. It helps.”

“And that was?”

“The secret to happiness is wanting what you have, not what you wish you had.”

Connie nodded, wiping her face again. “That’s good advice.”

“Not always easy to follow, but it’s a good guidepost.” He fell silent and thoughtful as the golden light began to fade from the living room. When he spoke again, it was to express volumes in a few words. “Sometimes it’s impossible to want what you have.”

She drew a sharp breath, sensing the anguish those calm words covered. The urge to try to soothe him in some way nearly overwhelmed her, but she didn’t have a clue what to do or say.

“I guess,” he said after a moment, “the thing you need to keep in mind is that even the worst things pass eventually. Everything passes.”

She suspected he might know more about that than most, given what he’d done and where he’d been. Impulsively, she reached out and took his hand. He didn’t pull away but let her squeeze his fingers gently.

At that exact instant, Sophie bounded into the room, waving her cell phone and nearly hopping up and down. Connie swiftly released Ethan’s hand.

“Mom, Mom, Jody wants me to come over to spend the night tonight! Can I, please?”

Everything inside Connie shrieked no! but she held her tongue, trying to deal with the terror that swamped her and respond rationally. “I don’t know...”

“Aww, Mom, I’ll be safe there, and we’ll have so much fun.”

Connie fought the battle that every parent faces sooner or later, though in this case the threat was real, not imagined. In the end, after nearly biting a hole in her lip, she said, “Okay. But I’m driving you over there and picking you up in the morning, and under no circumstances are you to go anywhere without Jody’s mom.”

Sophie let out a shriek of delight and began babbling to Jody on the phone that she’d be over as soon as she got her pajamas and sleeping bag. A second later she was running up the stairs.

“That was brave,” Ethan remarked.

“Or foolish.” Connie shook her head. “I’m overreacting. She’ll be okay with Jody’s family.”

“Of course she will. One thing you can say about creeps like this is that as a general rule they prefer their victims to be alone and unprotected. She’ll be neither.”

Gratitude warmed Connie. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. You’re doing the hard job.”

“I just hope I’m doing it right. I guess you get the night off. Want me to take you up to see Micah?”

He shook his head. “We talked some this afternoon. Some things just take time, Connie. We’re taking our time.”

“All right, then. Help yourself to anything you want.” She rose. “It’ll only take me ten minutes to run Sophie over there.”

He nodded. “I’ll be fine. You just go.”

She thought about inviting him to ride along, then realized that would mean getting into a car, and she suspected that being a passenger probably was only marginally more comfortable for him than driving, despite all his hitchhiking. As a passenger, if he had a flashback at least he couldn’t be in control of the vehicle.

Sophie came bouncing down the stairs with her sleeping bag and backpack. “I’m ready!”

Ethan smiled. “I guess so.”

Connie looked at Sophie and started smiling, too. This child was so precious, so full of life. Her heart swelled with love. “Let’s go, sweetie.”

Behind her, Ethan sat staring into the darkening living room.

Chapter 10

While Connie was gone, Ethan stepped outside to walk around the house again. His training had built a restlessness into him, and he still struggled to realize that war no longer surrounded him. The thing with Sophie was keeping him on his toes, which he supposed was delaying his readjustment a bit.

Not that he blamed anyone for that. He actually felt good about having something useful to do, something he’d been lacking since he’d been shipped home on a stretcher from Afghanistan. He didn’t remember much about being wounded, and the pain that plagued him had become a background noise to his days.

He still didn’t fully understand why he was receiving a discharge. People with worse injuries returned to combat or took support positions of some kind. But somehow, because of the decision of some review board, he was out.

He struggled with that. He worried about his unit all the time. A sense of failure pervaded his every waking moment, just as nightmares haunted his dreams. He didn’t feel as if he had a problem of that magnitude, but apparently others thought differently.

You have inoperable shrapnel embedded near your spine. It hadn’t affected him yet, other than to cause pain, but one of the doctors had said that it would be years, if ever, before the body’s protective mechanisms immobilized it or even ejected it. Until then, the wrong move could paralyze him.

And maybe that was all it was. Maybe they felt he could endanger his unit. One wrong move and he could become an instant paraplegic. Yeah, that could be a problem, all right, but no more of a problem than if it happened because of a wound on the spot.

He paused, looking up at the stars, noting that here in town he couldn’t see very many. Not nearly as many as he had seen at night in Afghanistan. Most people in this country probably had almost no idea anymore of how many stars were up there, how many could be seen in the inky blackness of true night. He knew he’d been amazed when he’d looked up from the mountains of Afghanistan the first few times.

Sighing, he continued his perimeter check. He wondered if the good memories would ever begin to replace the bad. These days, his brain functioned like a bad TV show, with almost subliminal flashes of people being torn apart, buddies dying, and all the rest of it. It was as if no matter what he was doing or thinking about, some nasty director would flash up an image so fast he almost didn’t catch it.

Except he knew what they were. He didn’t have to wonder what had just zipped past his mind’s eye. Some things were burned too deeply into memory to escape awareness that easily.

Time, they said. It would just take time, and maybe some therapy. He’d tried the therapy while he recuperated but found it pointless. The guy he had talked to didn’t have any direct experience. Oh, he tried, even offering medication, but how could you discuss something worse than the worst horror movie with someone who hadn’t even seen The Exorcist?

Smiling grimly, he finished his circumnavigation of the house, aware that if this were his post, he would be ripping out a lot of concealing shrubbery and cutting down a few trees that came way too close to the roof.

But this wasn’t a military post, and he wasn’t preparing for a Taliban incursion. Drawing that distinction seemed to be getting a little easier, and for that he gave thanks.

Inside again, he glanced at his watch. Connie had been gone more than ten minutes. A man who had learned that tardiness could be a sign of catastrophe found it hard to remember that she had probably just stopped to talk with Jody’s mother for a few minutes.

God, this living in two worlds was going to drive him nuts.

The phone rang, and he hesitated only a moment before answering it.

“Hi, Ethan, this is Julia. Is my daughter there?”

He felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth as he heard laughter in the background. “Sorry, ma’am, she took Sophie over to spend the night at Jody’s. She should be back any minute. Do you want her to call?”

“Oh, that’s not necessary. Just tell her I won’t be home tonight. The girls have decided to have an old-fashioned pajama party.”

“Hey, that’s great,” he said with as much warmth as he could muster. “Have fun.”

“I will. Sally will bring me home in the morning.” Then Julia paused, her voice taking on a different note. “Take care of my girls for me, Ethan. Please.”

“I intend to.”

When he hung up, he felt oddly revitalized. As if he had his orders now and knew what to do.

He heard Connie pull into the driveway and come through the kitchen door. He heard the lock click behind her; then she returned to the darkened living room.

“Ethan?”

“I just realized something,” he said without preamble.

“What’s that?”

“That someone else has been organizing my life for so long, I don’t know how to get on without orders.”

She came farther into the room but didn’t switch on a light. “That must stink.”

“In a way it does. In another way it’s good.”

“How so?”

He turned toward her. “It’s another challenge. I need challenge.”

“I see.” Leaning over, she switched on a light at the end of the sofa. It wasn’t terribly bright, but it blocked all view of the world beyond the windows and revealed them to one another.

“Your mother called. She said she and her friends are going to have a pajama party. She’ll be back in the morning.”

At that Connie laughed. “Those women. They’re in their second childhood. It’s so neat.”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes came back to him, searching his face. “Didn’t you have decisions to make in the service?”

“Plenty. But they were always directed at completing my assignment. My orders.”

She nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that. And you’ve been feeling at loose ends without an assignment.”

“Basically, yes.”

He made a conscious effort to relax and sat on the couch again. “That’s probably part of the reason I feel so out of it. I’ve lived one lifestyle since I was eighteen, and now it’s gone.”

“That’s gotta be tough, Ethan.”

“No. I just needed to understand what was happening. Part of it, at least.”

“Is that why you were so ready to step in and help with Sophie?”

“Partly. But most of it is that nothing makes me madder than a guy who wants to hurt children.” His hands clenched on his lap, and he let them. “But don’t think this is some kind of therapy for me.”

“I didn’t think it was. If anything, I thought it might make your reentry more difficult.”

That surprised him. He looked at her and felt an unexpected surge of something so primal and elemental that it shocked him. Urges he hadn’t had time or room for since the war began, not even when he came home on leave, because even then he was too busy just coping with what now seemed like an alternative universe.

Despite his preference for silence, for dealing with things in the privacy of his own mind, he started talking.

“Coming home doesn’t feel like coming home anymore.”

She nodded encouragingly.

“I don’t know if you can understand, but I walk around feeling naked because I don’t have an M-16 in my arms. It’s as if I’m exposed to every danger in the world, and I don’t even have a knife to pull.”

“Oh, Ethan...”

He made a slight gesture, asking her to just let him continue.

“I know it’s wrong. I know it’s a kind of mental instability, but there it is. I come home, and I feel adrift. Purposeless. Naked. Being at home...it’s like visiting another planet. I felt less out of place the first time I was shipped overseas.”

“They say that Peace Corps volunteers adjust to their new countries more easily than they adjust to their return here. There must be a reason for it.”

He sighed. “Sorry, I’m dumping.”

“Dump away.”

He rose and began pacing the living room slowly. He paused just once to draw the heavy curtains closed over the sheers. “It’s like I know things other people can’t understand. Some folks I know think that makes them better. Hell, I know a SEAL who’s so full of his own superiority because he’s been through life-and-death situations, because he knows things...he scorns civilians.”

“Do you?”

“No. That’s the thing. I took on this job because I had the stupid idea that I’d be protecting other people from having to know, not because it would make me special. But now I can’t come home.”

He hated showing his weakness the instant the words escaped him. He wanted to snatch them back and rip them to shreds with his bare hands, because he had no business whining about this shit. No business at all.

But before self-disgust could conquer him, he had a warm, soft woman in his arms, holding him tightly as if she wanted to anchor him in the storm.

“Oh, Ethan... Ethan...”

Her voice seemed to call to him from across an abyss, the abyss that separated him from his current reality. The yawning abyss of places he had been, horrors he had seen, evils he had done.

I’m not worthy.

The words had been rattling around in his head for a long time, but now they rang loud with a truth he couldn’t ignore. He’d bloodied his hands, whether for good or ill he no longer knew. How could he know? Clausewitz had written that war was politics by other means. He couldn’t judge the politics. And after he got to Afghanistan, he couldn’t even tell any longer if the cost of chasing the Taliban and al Qaeda was worth it. Because he saw the cost day in and day out. The cost in innocent lives, which hadn’t stopped on 9/11.

His job over there had been to win hearts and minds while pushing back the forces of darkness. He wished he could be sure that was all he had done.

But in a war without uniforms, how could you always tell?

You couldn’t. So you had to live with the stain and wonder forever.

His hands weren’t clean, might never be clean, but he wrapped them around Connie and held her as tight as he would a lifeline. He needed the affirmation as much as he’d ever needed anything.

Odd, he’d wanted it from Micah, but he found, instead, that it mattered more coming from this woman, an innocent who had never sullied herself. It didn’t make logical sense, but emotionally he felt as if she was offering forgiveness.

He just didn’t know if he could accept it. Didn’t know if he deserved it.

Soon, even that question began to slip away, replaced by deepening awareness of the body pressed against his. Sexual desire, long held at bay by the need for survival that could be lost in a moment’s inattention, began to pace within him like too-long-caged wolf.

Nor was it simply desire for any woman. No. He desired this woman and no other. Her warmth, her curves, awakened him. It would have been so easy just to give in and carry her to the floor, but conscience rose, reminding him of her vulnerability.

Just as he would have released her, she lifted her head and her lips found his. The brush of a butterfly wing, so light he barely felt it, but it sent an electric jolt to the farthest cells of his body.

He almost swore. Like Frankenstein’s monster, lightning was bringing him to life. She deserved so much better.

But the thought never fully formed, because she moved against him, just a little, a soft murmur escaping her as she sought deeper contact with his mouth.

He couldn’t resist. He needed this kiss more than he had needed anything in his life. He lowered his head, pressing his mouth to hers, gently at first, then more deeply, as she welcomed him.

His groin throbbed with forgotten longing as his body woke to new possibilities that seemed to offer salvation of some kind.

He ached deeply, needing...needing...

“Ethan...”

His name sounded like a prayer as she whispered it. Buried parts of his very being burst free of their bonds, reminding him that he was a living, breathing man like any other.

It would have been less painful to rip off his own skin, but he pulled away, conscience piercing him like a dagger.

She looked at him from sleepy, worried eyes. “Ethan?”

“I don’t want to hurt you, and I’m afraid I might. I can’t even trust myself, Connie. How can I ask anyone else to trust me?”

A wounded look pinched her eyes, and finally she nodded. “You’re right,” she said thickly. “I can’t trust myself, either. I’ve been avoiding men since Leo because I know I’m not a decent judge, and...” She turned and fled.

He listened to her feet pound as she ran upstairs to her bedroom, and he hated himself.

Not hurt her? He just had.

Chapter 11

Although it was still early evening, Connie got ready for bed. She went through the motions automatically, trying to fight down feelings of hurt and despair that really had nothing to do with Ethan. All he had done was remind her of Leo. That wasn’t his fault.

In fact, she told herself as she brushed her teeth, he had been kind enough to protect her from herself.

So why did she feel so bad?

A quick shower washed off the day’s grit but not the day’s worries. Nothing could wash those away, and she seemed to nurture them sometimes. Oh, not her concern about Sophie. That was as real as a worry could be. But other stuff. Her past. Her constant tension, as if she feared being beaten again. As she knew only too well, not even packing a gun could protect her from that, not when she loved someone. Or thought she did.

Some old country song floated into her mind as she climbed into a cotton nightshirt. Something about it not really being love if it tore you apart.

Great line. But as someone who had been there, she knew the other side of that one. Leo had never loved her in the true sense of the word, but she had sure as hell loved him. At least until fear pushed out the love.

She flopped onto the bed and reached for the TV remote on her night table, then hunted for something that would occupy her mind enough to keep her from thinking. She’d been thinking for too many years as it was, but tonight she doubted she would be able to even manage to read a book. Everything about her felt scattered to the four winds.

No crime shows, too close to her job. No romances, too painful. Ghosts? Didn’t she already have enough of her own? Comedy didn’t seem very funny tonight. News? No, there might be something there to remind her of the very things she was trying to forget.

Finally she settled on a lightweight British police procedural. Amusing, devoid of ugliness, very different from the real thing.

She switched off the light and settled in, hoping the eccentric British characters would suffice to distract her.

Unfortunately, her body wasn’t quite ready to quiet down. She wondered if Leo had ever aroused her the way Ethan just had. If he ever had, she couldn’t remember now.

Somehow she doubted it. Something about Ethan was magical, tormented soul though he was. A pang seized her heart as she remembered what he’d shared with her. Awful. Absolutely awful. He needed a magic wand, but the universe didn’t hand those out to anyone.

Somehow you just had to keep muddling through, trying to mend yourself or put the bad stuff behind you. All a therapist could do, she had learned through experience, was give you the tools to do one or the other. Maybe that was the hardest thing of all: learning you had to be your own healer.

She rolled over on the bed, her body restless with hunger she couldn’t erase, hunger so strong it almost hurt. Her loins ached with it. Her breasts had become exquisitely sensitive to every movement of her nightgown across her nipples.

She didn’t want this. She had a child to think of, and her mother, in addition to herself, and the agenda didn’t include playing with fire.

But she burned anyway, television forgotten.

Could just one night be that dangerous? Why couldn’t she scratch the itch and move on? Other people did.

Why, she wondered almost angrily, couldn’t she enjoy the most basic human contact? Did she feel she had to punish herself for one major mistake? What made her so different from anyone else? Who said she could never trust herself again?