Back to You

by Jessica Scott

  He turned slowly. Studied her, standing straight and stiff and pissed. “How can I call myself a leader? Honey, until you’ve bled in combat, don’t talk to me about leadership. But go ahead. Keep protecting this shitbird and tie up all the counselors so that warriors who genuinely need help can’t get it. He doesn’t belong in the army.” He swept his gaze down her body deliberately. Trying to provoke her. Her face flushed as he met her eyes coldly. “Neither do you.”

  * * *

  Emily sucked in a sharp breath at Iaconelli’s verbal slap. In one single slap, he’d struck her at the heart of her deepest fear.

  It took everything she had to keep her hands from trembling.

  Her boss appeared in the doorway, saving her from embarrassing herself.

  “Is there a problem, Sergeant?”

  The big sergeant turned and nearly collided with a full-bird colonel who looked suspiciously like Johnny Cash.

  Sergeant Iaconelli straightened and his fists bunched at his sides. “You don’t want me to answer that. Sir.”

  “I don’t think I appreciate what you’re insinuating.”

  “I don’t really give a flying fuck what you think I’m insinuating. Maybe if your doctors did their jobs instead of actively trying to make my life more difficult, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

  “What brigade are you in, Sergeant?” her boss demanded.

  She watched the exchange, her breath locked in her throat. The big sergeant’s hands clenched by his sides. “None of your damn business.”

  Colonel Zavisca might be a medical doctor but he was still a full-bird colonel. Emily had never seen an enlisted man so flagrantly flout regulations.

  “You can leave now, Sergeant. Don’t come back on this property without your commander.”

  The big sergeant smirked and stalked off.

  Emily wondered if he’d obey the order. She suspected she already knew the answer.

  Her boss turned to her. “Are you okay?” he asked. Colonel Zavisca’s voice was deep and calming, the perfect voice for a psych doctor. It was more than his voice, though. His entire demeanor was something soothing, a balm on ragged wounds. His quiet power and authority stood in such stark contrast to Sergeant Iaconelli.

  She had experience with rough men like Sergeant Iaconelli. He was energy and motion and hard angles. And he was rude. Colonel Zavisca was more like some of the men at her father’s country club. He was familiar.

  “I’m fine, sir. Rough morning, that’s all.”

  Emily stood for a long moment, Sergeant Iaconelli’s verbal slap still ringing in her ears. He had no idea how much his comment hurt. She didn’t know him from Adam but his words had found her weakness and stabbed it viciously.

  In one single sentence, he’d shredded every hope she’d held onto since joining the army. She’d wanted to belong. To be part of something. To make a difference. He’d struck dead-on without even knowing it: Her family had told her she’d never fit into the military. She fought the urge to sink into her chair and cover her face with her hands. She just needed a few minutes. She could do this.

  The big sergeant’s opinion did not matter. Her parents’ opinion did not matter.

  If she kept repeating this often enough, it would be true.

  Her boss glanced at the clock on her wall. “It’s not even nine a.m.”

  She smiled thinly. “I know. Shaping up to be one heck of a Monday. Is triage already booked?”

  He nodded. “Yes. I need you in there to help screen patients. We need to clear out the folks who can wait for appointments and identify those who are at risk right now of harming themselves or others.”

  “Roger, sir. I can do that. I need to e-mail two company commanders and I’ll be right out there.”

  “Okay. Don’t forget we have the staff sync at lunch. And if you have time, please confirm that we have Talarico’s reserved for the hail and farewell.”

  She raised both eyebrows. “I’d forgotten about that. Will do.” Reservations for functions were normally taken care of by the civilian secretaries but this was a purely military event, so as the most junior member of the team, the rose had been pinned on Emily to make it happen. She didn’t mind. Not in the least.

  Even this early, the day showed no sign of slowing down and all she wanted to do was go home and take a steaming hot bath. She’d been trying to work out a knot behind her left shoulder blade for days now and things just kept piling up. She needed a good soak and a massage. Not that she dared schedule one. The risk of cancelation was too high.

  “There’s that smile. Relax. You’re going to die of a heart attack before you’re thirty. The army is a marathon, not a sprint.”

  “Roger, sir.” She waited until he closed the door before she covered her face in her hands once more. She could do this. She just needed to find her battle rhythm. She’d get into the swing of things. She wasn’t about to quit just because things got a little rough.

  Her cell phone vibrated on her desk. Oh, perfect. Her mother was calling. Not that she was about to answer that phone call. She couldn’t deal with the passive aggressive jabs her mother was so skilled at. Besides, she was probably just going to press Emily to give up on—as she put it—slumming in the army and come home.

  She’d worked too hard to get where she was and she damn sure wasn’t about to go limping home. How could she? They’d looked at her like she was an alien when she’d told them about Bentley. As though she had somehow been in the wrong for her fiancé’s betrayal. As though, if she’d been woman enough, he never would have strayed.

  There was no way she was going home. Not on their terms. If she ever went home again, she would do it on her own terms. She’d walked away from everything in her life that had been hollow and empty.

  She was rebuilding, doing something that mattered for the first time in her life. Every day that she avoided calling home or being the person her father and his friends wanted her to be was a victory. No one in her family had had her back when she’d needed them. She might not have found her place yet in the army but just being here was a start. It was something new and she wasn’t about to give up, no matter how much Monday threw at her.

  Tuesday really needed to hurry up and get there because as Mondays went, this one was already shot all to hell.

  Turn the page for an excerpt from Jessica Scott’s Coming Home Christmas novella,

  I’ll Be Home For Christmas

  Available now!

  Chapter One

  Fort Hood, Texas

  Early 2007

  Sergeant Vic Carponti paused outside his company operations office, taking a deep breath. It was funny how their corner of Fort Hood felt deserted the night before a deployment. The company colors had already been cased. They would uncase them in a few weeks, once they got settled into their new home across the ocean in the middle of the war.

  He didn’t know why this deployment was bothering him so much. It wasn’t his first time heading off to war, so he knew what to expect when the shit hit the fan in combat. But there was something hanging over his head this time. A fear that maybe this time his luck would run out.

  He sighed and rubbed his face with both hands before walking into the company ops. The only thing they’d left up was the plaque that bore the names of their fallen brothers from the last deployment. The commander—Captain Trent Davila, a man Carponti had known for years—was planning on carrying that with him personally so it couldn’t ever get lost.

  And so no one would ever forget. Carponti reached up and took it gently off the wall, then strolled into his company commander’s office with a nonchalance painted on his face that he damn sure didn’t feel. But people expected him to laugh and joke and make them forget the bad shit all around and so that’s what he was going to do.

  “Don’t forget this,” he said, placing the plaque on Trent’s desk. He plopped down in a chair, then kicked his feet up on Trent’s desk. “Are you coming out with us tonight?”

  Captain Trent Davila
lifted one eyebrow at Carponti’s feet and said nothing. Carponti looked at his commander and longtime friend, then at the plaque next to his boots.

  “Fine,” he said with a sigh, dropping his feet to the floor. “So answer the question.”

  Trent sighed. “I can’t go out with you guys. I’m the company commander. I’m not allowed to have fun,” Trent grumbled. “Besides, my boss would have my nuts in a sling if anything happens while I’m there.”

  “It’s the last day before our deployment. You’re allowed to have fun. You can just say you’re supervising all of us miscreants.” Carponti took the last Dr. Pepper out of Trent’s fridge. “The deployment hasn’t even started and you already look stressed the hell out. You should be working your lieutenant to death instead of trying to do everything yourself.”

  Trent shook his head and pushed his glasses to the top of his head. “Yeah, well, my new executive officer seems to think he’s God’s gift to the army. He’s good but he’s not as good as he thinks he is.”

  “Oh, the boys just love him,” Carponti said.

  “Really?”

  “No, not really. He’s an arrogant fuck who believes his own press. Personally, I can’t stand him, but luckily I don’t have to deal with him much. I just sic Sarn’t Garrison on him.”

  Trent grinned and reached for the plaque, sliding his hat on top of it so he wouldn’t forget it. “Yeah, Garrison has a way with words.”

  Garrison was Carponti’s platoon sergeant. Garrison and Trent had been squad leaders many moons ago when Trent had still been enlisted. In Carponti’s world, it meant a whole lot that Trent had stayed close with his enlisted friends even after he’d crossed over to the dark side and become an officer.

  “I’m swinging by his place on my way home. He needs to go out before someone shoots his grumpy old ass. He’s been a complete buzz kill since his wife left him.”

  “Your sympathy is astounding,” Trent said dryly. He grinned and shook his head. “Why do we put up with you?”

  “Because I’m charming and funny and good in a firefight?” Carponti said with a grin.

  “Pretty much. You can make anyone laugh.”

  “It’s an important life skill. Like balancing a checkbook. So seriously, find a babysitter and come out with us. Your wife could use some fun before she has to spend the year dealing with all the spouses in the Family Readiness Group and chasing your kids around while you’re off on another fun adventure.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call going to combat a fun adventure.” Trent rubbed his chest. There was a scar there, Carponti knew. A scar that had damn near killed Trent several years ago. Carponti wondered just how much stress his commander was carrying and not telling anyone. Trent’s face flushed when he realized Carponti had caught him rubbing his scar and he tapped the pencil hard enough to snap the eraser off. “You know, you’re right. Let me see if we can’t find a sitter.”

  “Excellent. We’ll be congregating by the bar when you get there. Now I just have to go convince Garrison to come out with us.”

  “Good luck with that,” Trent said, pulling his glasses down. “He’s on the verge of becoming a warrior monk.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” Carponti mumbled as he strolled out of his commander’s office. He wished he hadn’t seen the flicker of worry that flashed in his commander’s eyes when he’d mentioned Trent’s wife. He’d thought that Laura and Trent were one of the strongest couples he knew. She’d put up with him deploying back to back to back since he’d almost died a few years ago.

  But that flicker of worry? Yeah, Carponti hadn’t missed it. There were problems there, hopefully small ones that Trent would take time to fix after this rotation into the sandbox.

  Carponti looked down at his own wedding ring. It was his last night home and his last night with his wife.

  He was glad he’d convinced her to come out with him and the boys. That way he could make sure they had a most excellent party and spend time with Nicole at the same time. He was going to spend part of the night chaperoning his guys to make sure they made the most of it—which meant making sure no one ended up in jail—but then? Then the time he had left was going to be spent making his wife laugh.

  Because try though he might, he couldn’t shake the quiet dread that settled in the pit of his stomach that tonight was the last night of normalcy he had on this earth.

  * * *

  Nicole Carponti breathed deeply and fanned her eyes, trying to stop the burning of hot tears. She leaned against the wall of the bathroom in Ropers and tried to stuff down all the churning emotions chained to the fact that her husband was leaving for war tomorrow. Again.

  The first time he’d left she’d been scared, but then the war, the deployment… the waiting… it had all been unknown. She’d worked on finishing her degree and kept herself busy and waited by the phone like all the military wives who had gone before her.

  The second time he’d left, she’d known better what to expect. The long waits between phone calls. The silence when he couldn’t talk long. The quick e-mails saying “I’m alive” that once upon a time would have been too little, but during the war were more than enough to keep her going.

  But this time? This time was different. The Surge was different. They were sending in massive amounts of soldiers to try to quell the Iraqi insurgency. It was bloody and deadly and soldiers were getting attacked at higher rates than at any earlier time during the war.

  And Nicole was terrified.

  She had to hide it, though. She’d agreed to come out with him tonight just because it gave her a chance to pretend that she was fine. She had to keep everything in check until after he left. She couldn’t let him know how much she worried this time.

  Fanning her eyes once more, she stepped out of the bathroom and into the rowdy country bar. A place like this was guaranteed trouble on a normal night, but tonight her husband’s platoon was rolling deep. Which was either going to be a really good thing or a really bad thing for her future job at the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, depending on how cantankerous tonight got.

  She spotted her good friend Laura Davila at the bar with a cute blond woman Nicole had met in the bathroom a little while ago. She had already completely forgotten the other woman’s name. She was terrible with names.

  She wound her way through the pulsating crowd until she reached them. Laura grinned at her and she exclaimed, “I can’t believe you came out tonight.”

  “You’ve already said this twice,” Laura said. They had to shout to hear each other.

  Nicole flagged down the bartender and leaned around Laura to her friend. “I’m a terrible person but I already forgot your name. I’m Nicole Carponti.”

  The petite blond held out her hand. “Jen St. James.”

  “Nice to meet you, Jen. I won’t forget this time,” Nicole said with a smile.

  Laura leaned toward Nicole. “I’m trying to get her out of her shell. She had cancer and she’s been struggling with her self-esteem ever since.”

  Nicole frowned, glancing toward Jen, who was now trying to get the attention of the bartender. On the other side of her, though, was Garrison, her husband’s platoon sergeant. He was a big man and he was currently leaning down to talk to Jen. “How’s that for a self-esteem boost?” Nicole said, gesturing toward the two.

  Laura glanced over, then quickly looked away before she was caught. Her eyes lit with a brilliant smile. “Oh, that couldn’t be more perfect if I had planned it.”

  Nicole studied her friend through narrowed eyes. “Did you plan it?”

  “I wish. But let’s just see how this little situation develops, shall we?”

  Nicole raised her beer in mock salute to her friend. “You, m’dear, are a devious and loyal friend.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Laura said. “So how’s Carponti taking this deployment?”

  Nicole heard the undercurrent in her friend’s voice. “You know how he is. Always cracking jokes, which I suppos
e is a good thing. I’m fucking terrified, though.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve been talking to some of the spouses. The Surge has everyone terrified. One of the spouses told me it was a death sentence.” Laura took a sip from her beer, scanning the bar.

  Nicole scoffed quietly. “How’s that for melodramatic?” But she didn’t voice her own fear that this deployment was going to be worse than the previous ones. “I don’t envy you as the Family Readiness Group leader.”

  “Oh, come on, don’t you want to volunteer? You can be responsible for keeping me from going crazy. It’s a primary duty position, you know.”

  Nicole laughed. “Not in this lifetime,” she said. “I always feel out of place once the spouses find out I’m pretty much a cop.”

  Jen leaned over, rejoining their conversation as Shane wandered off in the direction of Laura’s husband. “What’s going on over there?” she said, pointing at Laura’s husband.

  Nicole sighed heavily and took another drink. “Oh joy. Looks like Trent is giving one of his lieutenants some love. Couldn’t have the rest of the night without drama, could we?” She glanced back at Laura and Jen. “We should go interrupt before the second round of fireworks go off.”

  Earlier Vic had gotten into an argument with Lieutenant Randall and now it looked like Laura’s husband was finishing things off with the arrogant prick. The LT made Nicole’s skin crawl and she wasn’t looking forward to another bar fight. Not two in one night, that was for sure.

  But whatever had happened was over now. She watched as LT Randall made a beeline for the door. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Garrison talking to Jen again. And Laura? Once Randall was gone, she and her husband moved off to a dark corner of the bar and were deep in conversation.

  She hoped it was a good one. She didn’t like the worry she’d seen in her friend’s eyes when she talked about her husband.

  She snuck up behind Vic, sliding her hands over his hips and up his t-shirt and the smooth hard skin of his body, placing a kiss at the little indentation between his shoulder blades.