“I can’t believe I found a babysitter. Trent’s whole company is here tonight.” Laura smiled and nursed a Corona while Jen sipped on her Heineken.
“Shouldn’t you be molesting your husband? He’s the one leaving.”
“I don’t want to leave you hanging out here, teasing all these horny soldiers with your fake boob.”
“Ha-ha-ha. My fake boob and I are just fine, thanks. And speak of the devil.” Strong, wide hands slipped around Laura’s waist, yanking her back. Laura tipped her face up to her husband’s for a kiss and Jen offered Trent a mock salute with the tip of her beer.
“Will you please take your wife to dance?” Jen shouted with a smile.
“Gladly.” Trent pulled his wife into some convoluted line dance, leaving Jen alone at the bar where she was quite content to watch everyone else and sip her beer.
She discreetly tugged at her blouse again. In a dark corner at the other end of the bar, a sensual flare of movement caught her eye. She looked closer and saw a couple kissing intensely, so engrossed in each other she couldn’t say where one person ended and the other began, lost in the heavy scent of lust and liquor. She looked away, studying the green bottle in her hand. She wondered if she would ever again know what it felt like to have warm, rough hands move over her flesh.
Jen had come a long way, and it had still taken all of Laura’s persuasive powers to convince her to buy the breast form. But it didn’t mean that her scars no longer bothered her. She’d hesitated for a different reason. The round shape beneath her blouse now was just false advertising. She swallowed and pushed aside a brief flicker of melancholy.
Someone solid and heavy knocked into her and sloshed beer down the front of her blouse. A strong vise latched around her arm to steady her. She glanced up into the lightest grey eyes she’d ever seen. Grey eyes that she’d seen before but never this close. In the dimly lit bar, they looked almost silver.
Shane Garrison. A friend of Trent’s. Jen had seen him around before, but had never actually spoken to him. He’d always seemed big, but up close he was massive. Black tribal tattoos twisted up both of his wrists, writhing up his forearms to disappear beneath the frayed edge of a green T-shirt. And who knew that bald could be so sexy in the right lighting? Had to be the rough jaw that did it.
“Sorry. You okay?” He leaned close to her ear so he didn’t have to shout. Jen shivered as his breath brushed across her skin. He stood closer to her now than any man other than a doctor had in over a year. The heat from his body caressed her skin, and she could smell him, a mixture of spice and smoke and something entirely male. She swallowed and tried to find her voice.
“I’m fine. Thanks. This place is crowded.” She knew better than this. She pulled her arm free and tugged the clinging blouse away from her skin, suddenly afraid that he would see the scars on her chest through the wet material.
As the words left her lips, someone jostled her into him again. He tried to steady her but she fell against him anyway.
Time hung suspended and she stood in this man’s embrace, feeling protected and safe and deliciously unflawed. It was impossible to miss the hard angles of his body. For one brief fantasy moment, she imagined what it would feel like if this dangerous and sexy man lowered his mouth to hers.
But the fantasy faded as quickly as it had come and Jen stepped back into reality. A reality in which a man like the one standing oh-so-close to her was just being polite to a woman he had met in a bar. Down girl.
He lowered his mouth to her ear again. “Since I nearly crushed you twice now, can I buy you a drink?”
She smiled and sipped from the sweating green bottle. “I still have some of this one left. Thanks, though.”
“Jen, right?” He retrieved his own beer. “Are you here with Laura and Trent?”
“Yeah. How did you know?”
“I’ve seen you around. How long have you known Laura?”
Jen ticked off numbers on her fingers. “Ethan is almost six, right? Almost six years. We met right after she had him.”
A shadow flickered across his face and was gone before she could truly say she’d seen it. Instead of letting it go, she chased it. “What?”
“I’ve known Trent a long time. That’s all.”
Why would that make him sad? She wondered at the man who scanned the bar, splitting his attention between her and the crush of bodies on the floor. With each question, he leaned in close to her, sending a shiver down her spine. A shiver that chased away her awkward discomfort and, for one brief moment, made her feel whole and feminine. There had been a time when she would have acted on impulse and pursued this man, but those days were long gone.
“Yeah. Going away party and all that. Are you deploying tomorrow, too?” God but she loved how he smelled.
“Yeah.” He took a long pull from his beer.
“For how long?”
He shrugged. “A year, with an option for fifteen months.” She caught a glimpse of a black tattoo around the edge of his collarbone and wondered just how much of his body was covered by the twisting dark lines of ink. Tattoos didn’t usually do it for her. She wondered at people who would permanently color their bodies. But on Shane, they worked. They worked well.
She sniffed and sipped her beer even as Shane shifted, resting one arm on the bar behind him and angling his body slightly toward her so that he could see the dance floor. Jen turned in time to see Laura dragging Trent away from the Copperhead Road line dance. They wove through the crowd, heading toward her, and Jen felt a sense of guilt creep up the back of her neck like a flush. Laura was spending too much time worrying about her—she should be focusing on her husband instead.
Trent’s face split into a wide grin when he saw Shane. “Miracles will never cease. Carponti actually got you to come out?”
“Yeah.”
“Jen, you didn’t tell me you knew Shane,” Laura said, twining her arm with Jen’s.
“I don’t. He bumped into me.”
Laura leaned close, so that the men couldn’t hear her. “Shane is one of Trent’s platoon sergeants, but they’ve been friends for years. And he’s divorc—”
“Not another word. Not one.” It didn’t matter that she’d been wondering if he was single. Her friend’s words shattered her fantasy and brought reality into sharp, silicone-shaped focus.
Laura feigned innocence with widened eyes and a wicked smile that fooled no one.
“What?”
“I know where you’re going with this, and it’s not even close to possible.” Laura shrugged, a smile painted on her lips, and danced away with Trent, leaving Jen alone at the crowded bar with brooding, sexy Shane. She sipped her beer and studied him. He was watching the crowd, his jaw flexing in the shadows.
What did it feel like to know that tomorrow he was going off to war?
Chapter 2
Shane sighed and looked out over the crowd, checking on each of his soldiers. He felt the little blonde shift against him and he leaned down so she wouldn’t have to shout.
There was something hot about the way she tried to keep her distance, like she thought he might bite.
“You’ve known Trent a long time?”
Shane nodded, inhaling the clean scent of her hair as he leaned toward her again. “We were privates together in Germany.” He looked into his beer. “Man, it’s been almost twelve years. He’s my commander now.”
He enjoyed leaning close to her ear. She had adorable earlobes and—man, he was pathetic. He wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight, let alone talking to a beautiful woman, and he was going to blow it by being melodramatic and staring at her earlobes like a psycho.
Laura and Trent embraced in the center of the dance floor, slow dancing to Lonestar, and a pang of longing stabbed him in the heart. He had never had that kind of closeness with his wife. Laura and Trent looked like they’d been made for each other, they always had. What did that kind of trust and comfort feel like?
“Isn’t that weird with him being yo
ur boss now?”
Shane shook his head. “Not really. I don’t put him in a position to make it awkward.”
She raised her beer to her mouth, and his body tightened as her lips circled the green tip of the bottle. A bolt of clean, pure desire shot through him. He was no warrior monk by any stretch of the imagination, but watching her struck something different inside of him. Something he thought he’d shut down and buried long ago.
She smiled up at him. “That’s nice of you.”
“Nice is not exactly how most of my men would describe me.” He snorted, taking a sip of his beer. So far, he’d managed to nurse his one beer quite well as the party went on around him. He didn’t need to get distracted, no matter how sexy the distraction.
She leaned in and her breath brushed against his ear, stroking the skin of his neck. “Why would you say you’re not nice?”
“I’m an infantry platoon sergeant. I say jump, my guys jump; they don’t even ask where or how high. That doesn’t equal nice.” He sucked in a deep breath and found himself wishing he’d had more practice being, well, nice.
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself.” She turned and set her now empty beer bottle on the bar. “I’m going to run to the bathroom. Can you tell Laura if she comes back before I do?”
“Don’t females usually travel in packs to do that?”
“I’m a big girl.”
He watched her go, his blood singing with curiosity and something else. Just then, an elbow jabbed into his ribs, slamming right into the stitches he was doing his best to ignore. He didn’t have to guess who the elbow was attached to.
“Will you cut that out?”
“Who is that and why are you mooning over her?” Carponti’s speech was a little too smooth to be considered sober.
“I’m not mooning over anyone.”
Carponti snapped to the position of parade rest, slapping his hands together at the small of his back and spreading his feet. He swayed a little from the force of the movement. “Roger, Sergeant. My mistake.”
“Knock it off, asshole. I thought you were trying to have a good time tonight?”
“I am. I’m screwing with you, my number one pastime, Sarn’t G.”
Shane narrowed his eyes and studied Carponti, trying to decide if he was hammered. Anyone who’d been in the army for a hot second used the shortened sarn’t instead of fully pronouncing sergeant. He’d said it the right way, and without slurring, but that didn’t mean Shane’s suspicions about his level of intoxication were laid to rest.
Shane looked skyward, praying for a small dose of patience. Regardless of Carponti’s smart-ass ways, he was a damn fine infantryman. If he could ever get him to stop screwing off, he’d be one hell of a master gunner. But passing that course required studying and Carponti adamantly insisted he’d joined the army to avoid anything remotely associated with school.
“Where’s Nikki?” Shane asked, turning the conversation away from himself.
“The little girls’ room.” Carponti gestured toward the end of the bar, the same direction in which Jen had just disappeared.
Shane glanced over and his stomach tightened when he saw the one person who was more of a pain in the ass than Carponti could ever dream of being. Lieutenant Jason Randall—a thick-necked full bird colonel’s son—looked like he was lecturing one of Carponti’s boys near the latrine. Seeing it, too, Carponti stiffened. “Looks like Randall has his fan club with him,” he said.
Shane shifted to get a better look at Randall’s companions. “Isn’t that the female clerk we’ve got in the motor pool now?”
“Yep.”
“Wonderful. She’s one of the few women serving in a maneuver unit and Randall is already leading her down the path of self-destruction. He should know better than to hang out with enlisted.”
“Pot meet kettle.”
“I’m not a private and I knew Trent before he ever became an officer.”
“Whatever. I don’t care what he does or who he does it with.” Carponti took a pull from his beer, then set it roughly on the bar. “Things are getting a little rough in here. I’m going to go over there to grab Nikki.”
“I’ll go with you.” Shane finished his beer, following Carponti into the crowd, not so much to watch his back, but to keep his sergeant from starting any fights. Lieutenant Randall had a small group of soldiers—including the new clerk—who treated him like a god. Shane suspected it was because Randall’s father was a brigade commander up at Fort Carson. No one in Shane’s platoon was in Randall’s fan club, but that didn’t mean Shane could give Carponti a pass if he hit him. Lieutenant Randall frequently assumed that Daddy’s rank translated into Randall’s authority. Add in the fact that he didn’t listen to anyone, and that made him not only a dickhead, but a dangerous one. Officers like Randall got people killed.
Literally.
And the soldier Randall was currently chewing out belonged to Carponti, which meant he belonged to Shane.
Shane was determined that Randall was not going to ruin his boys’ last night in the States, whatever it took. He just hoped Carponti wasn’t as drunk as he appeared to be, because otherwise tonight just might turn into the fiasco Shane had feared—one he would have to explain the following morning. He waded into the crowd and started coming up with a good story for the sergeant major.
Well, Sarn’t Major, what happened was …
* * *
Jen stood in front of the mirror, studying her profile. She tugged at her blouse, and then squared her shoulders, seeing a full, equal-shaped silhouette. Why couldn’t she get used to it? She reached behind her to adjust the band around her ribs.
“Will you stop?” Laura said, stepping out of a bathroom stall. She moved to the sink to wash her hands. So much for going to the bathroom alone. And damn it, she’d gotten busted adjusting the form. Again. “You look great and the only one who doesn’t seem to know that is you.”
“I can tell.”
“Knock it off and have another beer, will you?” Laura reached for her, like she was going to plump her breasts together. Jen dodged with a horrified laugh, but ended up stumbling into someone else. Someone else turned out to be a beautiful strawberry blonde with brown mascara smeared beneath her eyes.
“Sorry!”
“Nicole,” Laura said at the same time. “Honey, what’s wrong? Carponti hasn’t been arrested again, has he?”
“Not if I have anything to say about it. If he costs me my job interview at CID, I’ll kill him.” Nicole offered a watery smile. “I just hate that he’s leaving again.”
Jen bit her lip, unsure of what to say or how to act. Surrounded by army wives, she was seeing a sadness that was usually hidden behind smiling masks. She felt like she’d been granted access to a secret world, a special world filled with women like Laura, who spent as much time as single parents and deployment widows as they did with their soldiers. There was a deep discomfort in her as she watched Laura help Nicole repair her makeup, complete with emergency concealer and mascara.
“He’ll never know you’ve been crying,” Laura said, dropping the small cosmetics bag back into her purse. “We’ll get together with the rest of the family readiness group. Just like last time. Make sure everyone’s holding up okay.”
“Okay. Let me go round up my husband before he does do something stupid.” Nicole breathed deeply. “Sorry,” she said, turning toward Jen. “I’m Nicole and I promise I’m not usually this melodramatic.”
“It’s kind of understandable,” Jen said, but Nicole waved her comment off.
“Doesn’t matter. Put it away and smile. I’ll cry once he’s gone.” And with that, she dashed her fingers beneath her eyes once more and pushed through the door.
Laura leaned over the sink and checked her own makeup.
“How do you do it?” Jen asked her suddenly.
“Do what?”
“Act like Trent leaving is no big deal.”
Laura shrugged, but her smile wavered, just a
little—just enough for Jen to see through the facade. “It sucks. And I won’t lie and say I’m not tired and frustrated and irritated, either. But I’ve got to hold it together back here so he can go do what he has to do to come home to me and the kids.”
Jen didn’t know what to say. Laura’s strength and resolve awed her. Laura filled the silence with a smile.
“Come on. Let’s go find Shane and Trent.”
“Um, how about just your husband? Don’t pawn me off on Shane. The last thing he needs right now is to have to babysit the resident basket case.”
“How about you take care of him so he doesn’t spend the entire night worrying about his soldiers. That man never relaxes. He needs a distraction more than you do.”
Jen rolled her eyes and wished the thought of seeing Shane again tonight didn’t send a tiny thrill through her. It didn’t matter, anyway. Even if she was interested—which she wasn’t—he wasn’t available and neither was she.
He was leaving for Iraq. Tomorrow.
And she was damaged goods.
“Don’t pawn me off on him,” she said again.
“I thought I was pawning Shane off on you.”
Jen backed through the door and for the second time that night, plowed straight into Nicole Carponti … and into in the middle of a tense, awkward conversation.
“… Nice to me, considering …” The guy running his mouth was dark and good-looking, but that didn’t prevent his drunken sneer from ruining his looks. Nicole was braced, feet apart like she was ready to fight. Or run. Jen wasn’t sure.
Laura’s smile was tight as she stepped up next to Nicole. “Lieutenant Randall, I’m sure you must have Nicole confused with someone else. Someone who isn’t married to a soldier in your company.”
Jen’s stomach pitched as her heart slammed against her ribs. It didn’t matter that Laura knew the drunk. The smell of beer on the man’s breath sent adrenaline pumping through her veins. Jen did not do confrontations. “Come on, let’s go.”
Carponti melted from the crowd and grabbed at Randall, shoving him toward the dance floor. “Get away from my wife, dickhead.”
Because of You: A Loveswept Contemporary Military Romance Page 2
