A Soldier's Journey

by Patricia Potter

  He continued after a moment. “End of story—she had an affair with my boss. I think that’s how I got my job. They had an affair while he was married and I was more or less their cover. When his wife died, she wanted a divorce after we’d been married for five years.

  “I knew it was not a good marriage, but commitment meant something to me. I thought we both wanted children but we were having bad luck. I later found out that she had lied about not taking birth control. I don’t even think she was pregnant when she came to me for help. She spent every penny I made and piled up credit card debt in my name by forging my signature. It did a hell of a job in shattering my ability to trust.”

  “You didn’t go back to school?”

  “No heart for it. I’m a good craftsman and designer, but I wanted to come home. My brother moved to Chicago. Mom was alone and getting older, and I figured it was payback time. I loved growing up in Covenant Falls and its sense of community. I just didn’t realize how much I did until I lived in a big city.”

  Andy reached out her hand to him. Regardless of his last comments, she sensed the wound in him.

  “She’s an idiot,” Andy said.

  “You think?”

  “I know,” she said with such emphasis that he leaned over and kissed her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  DAMN IF NATE knew why he was spilling his guts. She was just so easy to talk to. No judgment, no “you’re an idiot.” Just she was the idiot.

  But the kiss was reward enough. His hand tightened over hers and he stood, guiding her to her feet. She leaned against him and their bodies gravitated toward each other. Her lips met his again, and his world exploded. Heat rushed through him.

  So did the rush of other feelings, and they all had to do with the heart. They had been building since the days since they met. It seemed longer because they’d been thrown together so much...

  He knew he was in deep trouble. He’d never believed in love at first sight, but basically that was what happened when he’d seen Andy summoning the courage to step out of her car and into a new life. He’d tried to deny it. Considered that it had been too long since he’d had any real feminine companionship. Or maybe an aberration that would disappear in the light of reason. Reason didn’t seem to be working.

  Her body felt just fine against his. Soft and supple and strong. The kiss deepened and ignited fireworks that radiated through every nerve in his body.

  His heart thundered and his body shuddered as her arms went around his neck. She looked up at him with those large gray eyes. The void that was there the first day they met had been filled with an intensity and hunger that matched his own.

  Then he felt her hesitation, and he stepped back, his hand catching hers. “I’ll go slow, Andy, as slow as you want.”

  “I don’t think I want you to go slow,” she said. He heard the bewilderment in her voice. “How could I...feel this way...”

  His fingers caressed the back of her neck. “I’ve felt as if I’ve been hit by a tornado since I first saw you. It’s crazy, I know, but...” He looked down at those wide, confused eyes, and his heart melted from a different kind of heat than that which had rocked his body.

  His fingers moved from her neck and traced the cheekbone. “You’re so pretty.”

  “You’re not bad, either,” she admitted in a wry voice.

  He chuckled at that. “You’re not very good at compliments, are you?”

  “I’ve been told that.”

  He realized they were standing there, lost in each other’s gazes and making ridiculous small talk while her eyes were saying something else, and he imagined his were doing the same.

  He reached out and took her right hand in his so she couldn’t escape suddenly. Her fingers were soft, although he felt the strength in them. They would have to be strong and supple and efficient to work in an army hospital, especially a forward base. Casualties often came in multiples and they were usually critical.

  Then he took her left one. The fingers were stiff and barely managed to curl slightly into his. She tried to pull her hand away but he took it up to his lips and caressed it.

  “It’s ugly,” she said.

  “I think it’s beautiful. Just like everything about you.”

  She shook her head silently.

  “I can’t pretend to know how this is happening or why,” he said, lifting her chin so she looked up at him, “but I’m sure as hell not going to question it.”

  She stood on tiptoes and kissed him thoroughly, and he felt as if he had arrived in some glorious place he hadn’t known existed. The embers that had glowed between them flared, enveloping them in a circle of heat. Raw sexual hunger filled him and he feared it was very obvious. It was all he could do not to pick her up and carry her off to the bedroom.

  Even the air around them was charged with electricity.

  Not wise. Not yet. She was still fragile. Vulnerable. He wanted to make love to her, but he sure as hell didn’t want her to have regret about it.

  He drew back. “You don’t know how much I hate saying this, but I should probably go.”

  “I...think I do know,” she said with a rueful grin. “But I don’t want you to.”

  He closed his eyes for a second to keep from grabbing her. She looked so...beguiling. And bewildered. The admission was obviously galling her.

  He took her hand and they went inside, Joseph trying to get between them. “Do you think Joseph is trying to tell us something?” he said.

  “Joseph?” she asked the dog.

  Joseph barked.

  “Do you think he approves, or what?” he asked.

  “He likes you, so I think he approves.”

  “Let’s see. One bark for approval,” Nate said.

  Joseph barked once.

  “Great,” Nate said.

  “I think you rigged that,” she said. Her gray eyes were alive but then he detected a shadow.

  His fingers tightened around hers. He liked the quick comebacks. Her dry wit. Hell, he liked everything about her.

  He led the way and they sat on the sofa. It was time, he thought, to address the third person with them. “Tell me about him,” he said, knowing he risked losing her, but he also knew it was something she had to face before they made love, if, indeed, she wanted it as badly as he. He didn’t want to be a substitute for someone else. He needed her to want Nate Rowland, not a ghost.

  She didn’t answer immediately, then slowly, hesitantly, she started to speak. “Jared and I worked together in Germany, then we were sent to Afghanistan. We were just colleagues then. He was a really fine surgeon and I was a surgical nurse, and there was a line I didn’t want to cross. There was respect but distance.”

  Her fingers tightened around his as she took a deep breath, then continued. “Things changed when we went to Afghanistan. Our job was to keep our guys alive until they could reach Germany, and sometimes...we lost. We all grew close, especially as the danger increased. After one hellacious day and night when a ranger team was ambushed, we worked nonstop for eighteen hours and still lost three.

  “I was exhausted, emotionally ripped to pieces. They were so young. It didn’t matter that they were seasoned soldiers. They were little more than boys, and the wounds were so bad. They were depending on us and there was nothing...nothing we could do to save them.

  “I was shaking when I left. Jared caught up with me. He took me to one of the storerooms to help me come down before I went to my quarters. He held me, as much for himself, I think, as for me, and suddenly we were tearing each other’s clothes off.” She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “It was grasping for life. Trying to find something that wasn’t blood and pain and...defeat because we couldn’t save them. We made love that night,” she said. “It seemed the last night in the world.

  “That�
��s how it started,” she said. “Maybe it would have ended there except I saw a side of him he kept hidden. Unlike the emotionless, staid perfectionist he presented to everyone else, I came to know a man who hurt every bit as much as I did.”

  She looked up at him. “Everything was...intense. We took refuge in each other, but we knew we would be transferred if our superiors found out. Maybe the secrecy added to the...intensity. We fell in love, and when our deployment was coming to an end, he asked me to marry him. It didn’t matter then if anyone knew. Neither of us were staying in the service.”

  She paused. “He was a great orthopedist, particularly with traumatic injuries, and he’d received a number of offers. He was considering job offers in Chicago and Richmond. We were going to be married. One week later, an Afghan orderly, a man Jared helped get the job and to whom I gave money for his family, charged into the operating room and shot everyone there. Jared stepped in front of me. He died. I lived. The others died, too. The anesthesiologist and two another nurses, as well as a soldier who was on guard outside the tent. All of them died...all of them except me.”

  Her face was rigid as she said the words, as if it were made of marble. All but her eyes, those big gray eyes, and they were misty with grief that was obviously still very raw inside her.

  For a second he regretted asking the question, but then he realized he’d had so much bottled inside when he returned from Iraq that he’d been useless to himself or anyone else. It was like getting a two-ton truck off his back when he finally talked about it to someone who had been there, who understood. He hadn’t experienced anything as rough as she had, but he’d seen some pretty bad stuff and had lost too many buddies. It still haunted him. Why them? Why not me?

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, knowing that the words meant little as he put an arm around her. “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked...”

  “Yes, you should have,” she said. “I didn’t want to talk about it, but I had to.” She said it with such intense sadness that he felt it flow through him, as well.

  Nate closed his eyes for a minute. He’d thought he had known what happened. He hadn’t. No wonder she seemed so closed off, or why Josh’s psychologist friend had recommended she come here. The mountains had a way of cleansing the mind and nourishing the soul, and Covenant Falls was a place where she could find others who’d gone through similar experiences, a place that would embrace her without asking questions.

  But he had asked questions, and he wasn’t sure she wasn’t lying about needing to open up. Her fingers, which were entwined in his, had gone stiff, and he sensed she was barely holding herself together, and he...well, he had licentious thoughts.

  He pushed them away. It wasn’t what she needed now. She was already riddled with guilt that the man she loved had died protecting her. He knew he could take her to bed now. It would be for the same reason she went with the doctor that first time. Pain. She was still crying inside.

  He leaned over and kissed her lightly. “Want to take a walk?”

  “Your ankle...”

  “To hell with my ankle.”

  The ankle was nothing compared to the ache in his lower region. His heart ached, as well. He had to get the hell out of this cabin.

  He stood and guided her up. He put an arm around her shoulder and looked her in the eyes. “I want you as much as a man can want a woman,” he said slowly. “And I’ll wait as long as it takes for it to be right for you.”

  She looked at him with those haunted eyes. They were misted over. She visibly swallowed. “Did I tell you how much I like you?”

  He noted the like instead of love but then, it was early. “Ditto,” he said and grinned. “Let’s go.”

  “I would like that,” she said.

  * * *

  ANDY TOOK HIS HAND, and they walked to the door. She felt...drained down to her toes, but she needed the fresh air.

  Nate limped slightly. It probably cost him pain, but she suspected he wasn’t going to give in to it, no matter the cost. Joseph meandered along with them. He had obviously decided Nate was a trustworthy friend.

  She still felt an emotional overload. She had relived what she had tried, unsuccessfully, to forget. She felt cleansed. The grief was no longer festering. She had said the words without going to pieces, without the terrible anger that had once sustained her, then eaten her up inside.

  The moon was bright enough that they could follow the path up the mountain. They walked in silence but she felt his quiet understanding. Her hand in his, she moved closer to him, felt his warmth. He was a strong man. A good guy. She’d recognized it before but tried to ignore it.

  But tonight proved what kind of man he was. She would have gone to bed with him. She’d wanted to. Her body had wanted it as well, and it had been evident that his did, too. But he’d sensed, more than she, that she wasn’t ready.

  They reached the lookout, and she was grateful there was no one else there. He was right about the night and the view and the peace this particular place fostered. She turned around and saw the snow-capped mountains rising ever higher as she looked west.

  “It took me a long time to realize this is where I really wanted to be,” he said softly.

  “It’s beautiful,” Andy said.

  “It is that. In the winter it glistens.” Winter? Would she even be here then? Surely she should be vacating the cabin for someone else. The next vet.

  She shivered. She didn’t want to leave. Nate was behind her, and as if he sensed her mood—he was uncanny that way—he put both arms around her and she leaned back against him. He made her feel safe. And she would be kidding herself if she didn’t know he made her feel other things, as well.

  He touched her hair. “Your eyes... Damn, but they’re dangerous. Sometimes I think I can see your world in them and then they’re like the fog rolling in, and I’m losing my way.”

  New emotions flowed through her. With Jared, it had been all storm and fire and frantic love. Grabbed moments.

  She felt something altogether different with Nate. It was almost as if she had found a sanctuary in his arms. She also wanted him. Wanted to sleep with him because she knew it would be achingly tender and yet tumultuous. She’d felt both in his earlier kiss.

  It’s too soon. You don’t really know him.

  Yet she did. More than she’d known Jared despite the months they had worked so closely together. He’d always kept part of himself secret.

  How can you even compare the two?

  She swallowed hard, then moved away, but she couldn’t help looking at him. He had long lashes. She hadn’t really noticed that before, but now they swept down and half hid his eyes that always seemed to know too much about her.

  “I...think we’d better go back before...” Before I fall into your arms and sink to the ground and we make love right here and now.

  “Woof!” Joseph had looked asleep, but now he was on his feet. He nudged her. Apparently her words had awakened him.

  She stooped down and gave him a hug. “Okay. Home it is.”

  Nate took her hand and they started down. About halfway down, his ankle apparently twisted slightly and he went down, taking her with him. She landed on top of him and she felt his body react. He felt good. So good.

  She wanted to stay there, but Joseph wasn’t having any part of it. Obviously concerned, he made distress noises and kept poking them with his nose.

  Nate laughed, a fine rumbling sound that came from deep in his chest, and then she was laughing, too. Joseph barked. It was all too much for him.

  She sat up, then stood and held her good hand down to him. He took it and slowly got to his feet. “You’re strong,” he said.

  “I had army training, remember, and I carried my share of equipment.”

  “I bet you did, and we had better move, or Joseph will bring a rescue party or something.”r />
  He limped even more as they reached the Lake Road circle where the trail started and ended. “I’d better go home,” he said, “before I get in more trouble with Joseph.”

  She nodded and he limped to his pickup. In the past few hours, he had given her a priceless gift. She was no longer alone. He understood. He accepted. She suspected he knew her in a way Jared never had.

  “Come, Joseph,” she said, “first a snack, and then I’m going to read more about Angus and Covenant Falls and maybe even the Rowland family.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  April 7, 1849

  It is a sad day. My brother, Liam, died today just days from the mountains he longed to see.

  He drowned while crossing a stream swollen by a storm. The wagon he was driving overturned, and his body was caught beneath it.

  With a heavy heart, we gave him a Christian burial as the sun set. God give him rest. I am now the only remaining member of my family.

  I will stay with the train until we reach the mountains that are now in sight. Our scout reports we will stop at a lake on the edge of the mountains and stay there several nights to rest and refill the water barrels before taking the southern route to California. He said it would be a fine location for a trading post since the Ute would willingly trade deer and beaver skins for our goods.

  I will make the decision when we arrive there, but I am weary of travel and I wish to be close to where my brother lies...

  From the Journal of Angus Monroe

  ANDY REREAD SARA’S chosen selections in hard copy. She couldn’t help but compare the experience to reading the same words in the journal.

  It was different, reading it in faded handwriting, the ink blotted in one place. Was it a tear, or had Angus been as stoic as some of his writings indicated?

  She’d gone back to reading Sara’s selections after Nate left. She needed something to take her mind from the intimacy they’d shared. The next passage was her favorite.

  July 15, 1849