The Girl He Left Behind

by Patricia Kay

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  An Officer and Her Gentleman

  by Amy Woods

  Chapter One

  A blast rang out in the still night air, rattling windows and setting off the bark alarm of every canine within a mile radius.

  In a small guest room of her younger brother’s ranch-style home, Avery Abbott’s eyes shot open as she was ripped suddenly from what had passed as sleep for the past few months—a shallow, daydream-like consciousness that really didn’t qualify as true rest.

  Pulse thumping against her temples, Avery kicked her legs free from tangled sheets and fumbled in the darkness for the baseball bat she kept nearby, cursing when her fingers didn’t grasp it immediately. Her nerves had always been her biggest weakness during army basic training. Even the tiniest spark of fear or anxiety could transform her otherwise capable hands into jelly. The slightest hesitation or worry over a possible imperfection had the potential to eradicate months of training in an instant, leaving Avery, who was at the top of her class, one of only a handful of females in a company dominated by males, frozen and utterly useless. It hadn’t happened often during her service, but the occasion it did stood out in her memory, far above her many accomplishments.

  Seconds, Abbott—her sergeant’s voice boomed through her brain as Avery finally gripped solid material and held it poised—seconds mean the difference between the life and death of your comrades.

  As she made her way from her room into the hallway, through the house and out the front door into a thick darkness punctuated by only a thin sliver of light from the waning crescent moon, her nightmare blended seamlessly with reality.

  Her brother’s small farmhouse and the old red barn disappeared as Avery stalked the grounds, weapon firm and steady against her side, its material solid and reliable in her grip, searching for the source of the noise that had awoken her and threatened the safety of her fellow soldiers.

  When the flashback gripped Avery, it was no longer cool, wheat-colored, late-autumn grass her bare feet plodded through, but the warm desert sand of a country in which she’d served three tours.

  She wasn’t safe at home in Peach Leaf, Texas, anymore, but a stranger in a foreign land, her vulnerability evident in every accented word she spoke, in her uniform, in the caution she knew flickered behind her eyes each time she faced a potential enemy.

  She would be okay, she thought, pacing the too-quiet darkness, so long as she didn’t run into any kids.

  The women and children were the worst part of combat. You never knew whose thumb they were under, who controlled their futures...who’d robbed them of their innocence, threatened their families if met with anything but obedience, and turned them into soldiers to be sacrificed without a choice.

  Regardless of where their loyalties were planted, they were children... It didn’t make sense to hold them responsible for their misguided actions.

  Avery wanted to bring the many homeless ones back with her when she returned to the US. She had something in common with them. She knew what it was like to be an orphan, to feel alone in the world, unprotected.

  Once, before she’d been adopted by a loving couple, the birth parents of her brother, Tommy, Avery, too, had known firsthand what it was to be without a family.

  But that was a long time ago, and now she needed to focus on the threat at hand. Still holding her weapon, she used her forearm to brush a strand of long blond hair out of her eyes. When she’d tumbled from bed, she hadn’t time to twist her hair into its customary bun. There was only room in her brain for one objective: locate and—if necessary—eradicate the cause of the blast.

  She paced silently through the muggy night air, the blanket of darkness hiding any detail so that all she could see were the shapes of unfamiliar objects.

  In her mind, it was her first week in Afghanistan, and she was afraid.

  Despite extensive predeployment training, nothing could have prepared her for what it would feel like to be hunted. She knew she shouldn’t be outside of her bunker alone, but evidently no one else had heard the explosion, and for all she knew her team could be in danger at that very moment.

  So First Lieutenant Avery Abbott pressed on through the black night, searching, searching, searching.

  * * *

  Isaac Meyer was humming along to the local country music station when a rear tire blew out just a quarter mile away from home, causing his truck to skid into a ditch on the side of the road.

  Only seconds passed before he got it under control and pulled to a stop, but they felt like hours.

  “You okay, girl?” he asked his backseat passenger, still trying to deep breathe his way back to a normal heart rate. His palms were shaking and slick with sweat despite feeling like ice, and his brain was still too rattled to discern whether or not he was okay. But he needed to know if his best friend was all right before he made a single move.

  He turned and still couldn’t see her. Then Jane gave an uncharacteristically high-pitched woof from the seat directly behind him, letting Isaac know she was startled, but the absence of any cries of pain settled his stomach a little, and a second later her sandpaper tongue swept along his elbow.

  Isaac heaved a sigh of relief and unbuckled his seat belt before getting out of the truck to check on his companion.

  As soon as he moved up his seat to let her out, Jane bounded straight into his arms and both dog and human crashed to the ground in a heap.

  “I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” Isaac said, stroking Janie’s coat and feeling her limbs and ribs for any injuries. “I sure am glad you’re not hurt.”

  His statement was conservative. They were damn lucky to be okay. After all, it was pitch dark on the gravel country road to his ranch house; even with his bright headlights on, they could have hit just about anything swerving into that ditch. Not to mention they’d have to walk home now, and Isaac was bone tired after a long day on his feet at work. All he wanted was a cold beer and his bed. He could only imagine that Jane, who’d worked just as hard as he had training a new puppy for a recently returned veteran, felt the same.

  “All right, girl,” Isaac said, attaching Jane’s leash to her collar. “Let me just grab my stuff from the truck and we’ll head home the old-fashioned way.”

  He’d only gotten as far as reaching into the cab before Jane erupted into a low growl, followed by loud, staccato warning barks.

  A tingle of apprehension fluttered up Isaac’s spine and the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention.

  Jane wasn’t the sort to cry wolf; she wouldn’t give a warning unless she’d seen, heard or smelled something beyond the range of Isaac’s senses.

  “What is it, girl?” he whispered, turning to peer into the curtain of trees on the other side of the ditch while reaching under the driver’s sea
t of his truck for the hunting knife he kept there. Jane would have to be his eyes and ears. He couldn’t see squat with everything obscured by the thick darkness.

  The dog let out another growl and raised her hackles.

  Finally, Isaac caught sight of something moving in the blackness. He squinted, trying to see a little better, as a shadowy form emerged from along the tree line. His instinct was to simply shout out a greeting. This was Peach Leaf, after all. The idea of a prowler out on the lonely ranch road leading to his home was almost laughable. But until he got a better look at whatever or whoever was traipsing through the night, he’d be wise to assume the worst.

  Suddenly, the figure—almost certainly human, he could now tell—crouched down low and crawled quickly toward the ditch. Jane barked furiously at this new development and tugged at her leash to be set free so she could investigate. But a threat to Isaac was a threat to her, so he called her to his side and patted the truck seat. Jane gave a whimper of protest but obeyed, jumping up into the cab. Isaac quickly rolled down the window an inch and locked the door, pocketing his keys and knife.

  He expected more movement from the ditch, but all remained still. Part of him knew it wasn’t too bright to follow up on whatever or whomever lay there in the dirt, but he didn’t have much of a choice. If he and Jane headed off down the road toward home, whatever it was might follow, and he’d rather deal with it now than have to look over his shoulder on his way back to the house or potentially deal with a break-in later in the night. On the other hand, it could be some runaway kid, lost or potentially hurt, and he wouldn’t be able to sleep wondering if he might have been able to help one of his community members.

  He realized he’d been standing still while he thought this through, but that settled it, so he grabbed his cell phone from his back pocket and turned on the flashlight app. The low-battery warning flashed across the screen a second later and Isaac cursed under his breath.

  He told Jane he’d be right back and climbed up out of their place in the ditch so he could walk along the edge. That way, he’d have the upper hand once he made it to wherever it was, and if Jane started barking again, he could run right back to the truck.

  He stepped slowly, holding the light out in front of him until he spotted a dark lump, stopping abruptly to get a better look.

  “What the—” he murmured, powerless to make sense of what he saw until it moved, which didn’t help at all as things only became less clear.

  The thing was a woman, Isaac realized.

  For a full minute, he simply stood there, unable to pick up his suddenly leaden feet. His heart might have kicked up its pace again at the sight of her, if it hadn’t already tumbled down into his stomach.

  Being the youngest child, and still single, despite the town’s many ill-advised attempts to remedy that situation, Isaac had never had anyone to protect. He had Jane, of course, but the spitfire dog who’d landed on his doorstep a few years back, demanding a home, had always done a damn good job of looking out for herself—and now she lived in the lap of luxury, spoiled beyond belief by her human.

  But he’d never really experienced that protective instinct, had never known the feeling that another person relied on him for safety.

  Until now.

  For some reason—as he stared down into that ditch at the pathetically thin, shaking woman curled into a ball there—a fierce burning sensation flooded his insides.

  He didn’t know who she was, or what in the hell she was doing there, but somehow something outside of him pulled Isaac toward her.

  Somehow, he knew she needed him.

  * * *

  When the flashback subsided and Avery finally came to, she had no earthly idea where she was.

  This wasn’t the first time it had happened.

  It wouldn’t be the last.

  She closed her eyes and pulled in a deep breath, but, as usual, the terrible shaking wouldn’t cease. The air around her was humid, and a warm spring breeze rustled through some nearby trees every now and then, but inside Avery was freezing, even as sweat rolled down her arms.

  Too-skinny arms, Tommy would say. She was thankful every day that he’d let her live in his house when things had become...too much...but sometimes his constant concern for her—the endless checking up to see if she was okay—was another kind of too much.

  “Ma’am?”

  The male voice came from somewhere above her head and, within seconds, Avery had uncurled from her position and bolted upright to face its owner.

  The last time she’d had an episode, her sister-in-law, Macy, had found Avery in Sylvia’s room. That was plenty awkward, especially when the two women had to work out how to explain to Avery’s five-year-old niece why her aunt was crouched, armed, in the child’s bedroom closet.

  That was when her brother insisted they clear the house of anything “dangerous” she might end up wielding in self-defense when one of the flashbacks hit. He didn’t know about the baseball bat she kept hidden under her bed in case she needed to protect her family.

  “It’s not that we don’t trust you,” Tommy had said in the same sotto voce he used with his children, while refusing to meet her eyes. “We just can’t risk anything happening. It’s for the best.”

  Avery’s stomach churned at the memory. The worst part was, her brother was absolutely correct. If she’d had anywhere else to go after that, she would have. But she did not. And, worse, she was completely dependent on the few remaining people in her life—the few that hadn’t given up on her—for everything.

  But that was the last time.

  This time, from what little she could deduce in a quick survey of her surroundings, might just turn out to be downright humiliating.

  He spoke again. “Is there anything I can do to help you?” he asked. “Are you lost?”

  Avery almost grinned at that last part, because yes, indeed, she was very, very lost.

  The only thing that stopped her was the tone of the man’s voice. Glancing around, she could see that she was completely alone in some dirt hole on the side of a gravel country road, in—she looked down at her body—a thin white tank and army-issue workout shorts. Clearly she was at the mercy of this guy, who’d evidently stopped to check on her. Under other circumstances, her training would have kicked in and she’d have flipped him onto his back in mere seconds.

  But something told her he wasn’t a threat.

  His voice.

  It was deep and smooth, his words bathed in the local accent, and full of genuine concern. On top of that, he stood above the ditch staring down at her, hands at his sides, and hadn’t made a single move to come closer. The man seemed...safe.

  Having lost her bat somewhere along the way, she braced herself for an attack when he bent his knees, but instead of jumping into the ditch with her like she thought he might, the man simply knelt down.

  The movement brought attention to long, muscled thighs beneath faded denim jeans, and when he leaned an elbow on his upright knee, Avery noticed the stretch of tendons in his sinewy forearms.

  How ridiculous it was, she thought, for her to notice such a stupid thing when her life could be in danger for all she knew. Seeing as how the guy hadn’t mauled her by now, it probably wasn’t, but still—it could be.

  Avery crossed her arms over her thinly clad chest. Not that there was much to see there. Not anymore.

  “I’m fine, actually. Just...taking a walk. Enjoying the stars and all.” She waved a hand above her, indicating the spread of twinkling lights above them. It was plausible.

  But when she looked up into his eyes, she could tell he didn’t agree. The man looked to be somewhere near her own age, maybe slightly older, and Avery was surprised she’d never seen him before. She’d grown up in Peach Leaf and knew just about everybody, so it was strange that she hadn’t met this person.

&n
bsp; Sure as hell would remember if she had.

  Not only did he have the toned body of someone who either worked at it or had a very active job—he had a face to do it justice. Clear, dark chocolate eyes—eyes that had a certain glint in them, as though they saw more than most—a strong jaw and hair the color of a panther’s coat.

  Right now those brown eyes narrowed with what appeared to be strong suspicion, but after a few seconds, they filled with a certain kind of warmth Avery wasn’t used to seeing anymore.

  Pity—she was used to that—but not warmth.

  “It is a beautiful night, isn’t it?” he said, seeming to relax a little.

  There was something easy about him that made Avery want to let her guard down a smidge. It was almost as if his mere presence lowered her blood pressure.

  “That it is,” she agreed, wanting the strange exchange to be over so she could figure out how far she’d gotten and how, for the love of all things holy, she was supposed to get back home.

  “Name’s Isaac,” the man said, stretching out a large hand.

  Even in the dark, Avery could see calluses and healed-over scratches. Must be some kind of laborer.

  She just stared at him, not offering her name, willing him to take his leave. It would be futile to try to explain the complexities of her condition, as she’d come to think of it, to this handsome stranger. She didn’t even completely understand it herself, even after almost a year of therapy. Besides, her knees were beginning to feel a little wobbly and a spot just above her left temple had started to ache...

  “Well, if you’re all set here—” he looked like he believed her to be anything but “—I’ve got a walk ahead of me.”

  Isaac hesitated for a long moment, then nodded and turned to leave.

  Avery was about to do the same when everything went blacker than the night sky.

  * * *

  Isaac had just started back toward his truck—every nerve in his body telling him to stay behind—when he heard a thud.