by Rachel Lee
Twenty miles out of their way. Twenty miles into dangerous territory that had cost the unit, had cost a town, a whole lot of lives and futures. No, a simple map would have been enough to indict the man.
But of course he hadn’t been indicted. Academy grads on the fast track didn’t face court-martials. They just got reprimanded, and the track slowed down. Maybe.
So what could he have possibly done to have anyone after him, unless some Afghani with a serious grudge had tracked him down, and that was about as unlikely as you could get?
Other enemies? Oh, probably a few. And some he hadn’t even known he’d made. Emotions ran high under those conditions, guys got angry and some had long memories. Things got said that shouldn’t have been said. Punches got thrown that shouldn’t have been. Even a poker game could cause trouble. Unit cohesion went just so far. Human nature triumphed in the end.
His mind trailed back to that car parked out front. It hadn’t been there when they’d come outside, and it had driven off quickly as they came around the house. Perfectly innocent. It wasn’t as if he lived along a rarely traveled road. It could have been any one of the ranchers from farther out, and probably was.
But he wasn’t feeling quite so smug about how safe things were around here for either of them as he had been when Lacy arrived. His nerves were starting to hum with heightened awareness, a feeling he hadn’t had since he last came home.
Trouble could have followed Lacy, or it could have followed him. He couldn’t let his guard down until he was sure. That damn note. Totally cryptic. Maybe that bothered him more than anything else about it.
Rising, he went to the foyer window where he wouldn’t be backlit, and looked out. It took a few minutes for his eyes to adapt, but at last he could see that against the faint sheen from the snow no one was on the road. Time to remember some old habits. Time to be on high alert. For both their sakes, regardless of what might be going on, he couldn’t afford to relax completely.
“You’re nervous.”
He turned and saw Lacy standing in the door of the living room. “Fair to say I can’t quite settle.”
“I know that feeling.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I didn’t want to bring trouble to you, Jess.”
“First off, I’m not sure there’s trouble. And as Gage made so clear today, I’m not sure that if there is trouble that it’s because of you.”
“Nice conundrum.”
“Yeah.” He looked out the window again, his eyes adapting more rapidly this time. The little bit of light coming from behind her in the living room hadn’t been enough to fully kill his eyes’ dark adaptation.
“Jess?”
“Yeah?”
“If this were a mission, what would we be doing?”
He stiffened and faced her, forgetting the road for the moment. “What?”
“Seriously. I know you were a medic, but we’re both sitting here like cats on a hot stove, ready to jump at anything. So what precautions could we take? Assume someone is out there who wants one of us. Surely you learned enough in the military to know how we should get ready.”
Something inside him stilled as he saw Lacy in a new light. She might be afraid, she might be shy, she might sometimes look at him with quickly shuttered need, but she was also brave as hell. Courageous.
“You want to prepare for a siege?”
“I don’t know.” She leaned against the doorjamb. “What I do know is I’m tired of waiting and then reacting when the crap starts to fly. I’ve been doing that my whole life. For once I’d like to be ready before it hits the fan.”
He almost smiled. This attitude surprised him, but he honestly didn’t know why. This woman had taken on her bosses and some serious drug types. Maybe she thought that was simply reacting to what had landed in her lap, but he saw it differently. She’d made a brave decision. It may not have occurred to her that her life might be in danger, but she had certainly been aware there’d be a high price.
Then, even in the dim light, he saw uncertainty take over her pretty face. “Sorry,” she said. “That might stir up things for you.”
He stepped toward her, glad that his leg responded normally again. “Things are already stirred up. Might as well act. It’s better than waiting.”
Then against all reason and sense, he held out his arms. She astonished him by walking straight into them, and he wrapped her up tightly. It felt so good to hold her, made him feel more alive than he had in years. Her curves, usually concealed under loose clothing, fit him as if they’d been made for him, and once again awoke the man in him. He hoped she couldn’t feel it, and shifted a little to put a distance between his hips and hers.
Of one thing he was certain: for the first time in a very long time, he felt he had something to truly fight for. Something good. A long impenetrable shell began to crack open, reminding him of reasons to live. Reminding him that running on automatic was no life at all.
He could almost feel Sara with them, slipping around on the drafts in the house. He felt no disapproval. None. But sooner or later, he and Lacy were going to have to deal with Sara. Really talk about her. Create a new place for her in their lives.
Because she was still very much alive in their memories.
Chapter 9
“Jess?”
“In my bedroom. Come on back.”
Lacy had run upstairs to clean up a bit and returned downstairs to discover what Jess was planning.
She walked down the hallway toward the warm glow of light falling through an open door. When she stepped in, she caught her breath.
Jess had shed his pants and was sitting on the edge of the bed in a T-shirt and running shorts. For the first time she saw his artificial leg and the socket that ran up most of the way to his groin. It brought home the severity of his injury in a way that little else had, and filled her instantly with pain for him, and amazement that such a leg existed. Contradictory feelings that held her still while she absorbed them.
“Shocking?” he asked, a crooked smile on his mouth.
“No. Surprising. I’ve never seen a prosthetic before.”
“Curious?”
“Very. Do you mind?” Of course she was curious. And now that he was willing to show her, she wanted to know everything about it and what it meant to him.
He shook his head. “If I was ever modest, life took it out of me. I was about to remove it for a while, let it charge. But I warn you, my stump isn’t pretty.”
“Well, at least something about you isn’t. That’s a relief.” The tartness of her voice astonished her, but it drew a surprised laugh from him.
“So you think I’m pretty?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows.
“More like gorgeous.”
“Not nearly as gorgeous as you,” he said frankly.
He might have pumped all the air out of the room. She froze, and he watched her with gentle amusement. “It’s okay, Lacy. My pouncing days are over.”
“Too bad,” she muttered honestly, making him laugh again.
“Come sit beside me. You can see it all and satisfy your curiosity.”
She felt a flicker of shame, as if she were prying into someone’s extremely personal secrets, but noticed that he didn’t seem disturbed. He’d called her back here, after all.
All of a sudden she was more curious about why he’d wanted her to see this. Three steps brought her to the bed, and she sat beside him.
“This is it,” he said, rapping his fingers lightly on the black socket on his thigh, then holding his whole leg up. From the socket emerged the metal parts, a joint that appeared to be a knee. The whole ran down to an ankle with a metal band around it, then to a plastic foot.
“Okay,” he said, pointing, “this is the socket that holds the whole thing on. The knee that usually bends just as I want it
to now that I’ve learned to manipulate it. There’s a shock absorber in the ankle along with the joint. That plastic foot is so that I can wear regular shoes and socks. It’s not necessary, but people stare a whole lot less.”
She looked openly because he seemed to want her to and strove for humor. “Not going for the Terminator effect, huh?”
He chuckled. “Well, I could. Who knows, it might wow the kids when they come to the clinic.”
“You need a thicker accent.”
“Maybe some racing stripes.”
She turned her head more and looked right into his eyes and face. Was she imagining a bit of uncertainty there? If so, she wouldn’t blame him. He must have been wondering how she would react.
“What about the cold?” she asked, resisting the urge to just lean over and be and touch him like a brazen hussy. “You said it stiffened.”
“Sometimes when it gets really cold. There’s obviously no circulation in it, so nothing to warm it up. Most of the time, not a big problem.”
“But tonight it had you limping.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t as stable as usual. I think the microprocessor’s okay because it seems fine now. I guess the joint just got a little cranky. Anyway.”
He pointed to a white button on the inner side of the socket. “That’s how I break the vacuum seal. I press that until the socket is loose enough to remove.”
“That is quite a piece of engineering.”
“And they’re getting better all the time.”
“Does it ever make you sore?”
He shook his head. “Not unless I don’t fit it right, and with the vacuum setup, there’s almost no chance of that. As time passes, the stump will shrink in size and layers of padding will be added until I need a new socket.”
Risking the intimacy, she leaned closer, studying the assemblage. “Do they give you a personal fit?”
“That socket was molded right to my stump.” He reached for the button. “Anyway, you might want to go have coffee right now. I need to recharge this, and when I take it off, I’m going to remove the sleeve for cleaning. It’s not pretty.”
“You mean your stump?”
“What else?”
All of a sudden her mouth went dry. He’d just shared an amazing intimacy with her, but he was giving her a chance to escape because he didn’t think she could take the rest of it. Or maybe because he didn’t want her to see it.
She looked around, taking in the room. He’d been Spartan in his furnishing choices, as if he felt the other rooms needed to come first. But then through a partially opened door she saw a shower that could have stepped out of a magazine. At once she saw he could walk into it, and it was big.
“Lacy?”
She licked her lips nervously. “Do you want me to go or are you afraid of my reaction?”
“It’s not pretty. Considering I didn’t lose the damn thing through a neat surgical procedure...”
She turned to him and rested her hand on his forearm. “It’s okay, Jess.” Their eyes met and his seemed to bore into her, as if gauging whether she really wanted to see or was just being nice.
If she was being nice, she’d have left the room. No, she sensed a hurdle here, one they needed to cross if ever...if ever what? She had no idea. They both needed to know something, for whatever reason. Her mouth remained dry, but she half suspected that by now her imaginings were far worse than reality.
He shook his head a little, released a sigh and then pushed the button on his socket several times. She could hear the faint sound of air escaping.
Then, with surprising ease, he pulled the leg off. He stretched a bit to lean it against the wall, while she took in the plastic gray sock that covered his stump nearly to the groin. She could see even through that how misshapen his thigh was. She could barely imagine what he must have gone through. That exceeded her imagination.
With one more glance at her, he reached for the top of the sock and began to ease it down, turning it inside out as he did so. “Isn’t that hot?” she asked.
“Surprisingly not.”
Then came the scars, still vivid, many of them. Some small, some big, some stitched as neatly as a seamstress might have done, others looking hurried and sloppy. Probably the first urgent ones meant to save his life. The neater ones had probably been from the surgeries to repair him enough to wear his prosthesis. There were occasional pits where she assumed flesh and muscle had vanished forever. She could definitely understand why he’d been concerned about her reaction, but all she could think about was the pain each of those scars represented.
She reached out and laid her hand on his thigh. “I’m so sorry, Jess. So sorry.”
“I’ve got plenty of company,” he said, clearly trying to sound light about it.
“I know you do.” Then on an impulse she couldn’t restrain, she twisted and bent over until she could press a kiss to those wounds.
He let out a sound like air escaping a tire. “Lacy...”
Arms closed around her and the next thing she knew they were lying across his bed, legs dangling but torsos pressed together. He lifted a hand, brushing hair back from her face. “You’re amazing,” he murmured.
“Why?” Truthfully, she didn’t care. This close to him, looking into his beautiful eyes, everything else slipped away as if carried on the howling wind of need that swept through her. And just as powerfully, she felt as if she had found her fortress against the world.
He brushed her hair again, smiling slightly, but making no other move. “You were always pretty,” he said. “But until you came here, I never noticed just how pretty.”
Of course not, she thought with a sinking stomach. Sara. He’d probably been operating under the same “’tain’t mine” rule that she always followed. Some feelings weren’t worth the cost and had to be ignored.
You just couldn’t afford them.
He leaned closer and pressed a kiss to her forehead. As if she were a child. A bubble of resentment grew in her, then popped almost as quickly. He would always be Sara’s husband. They both knew that.
With clear reluctance, he urged them both into a sitting position. “I need to plug in,” he said gruffly. “Get some warmer clothes on. You wanna make some coffee or something?”
He was sending her on her way. Wisely, even though she hated to admit it. For just an instant she could have sworn she saw a flicker of heat in his gaze. Had felt tendrils stretching out between them.
A dangerous thing.
“Sure,” she managed to say brightly, and rose, walking away to the kitchen, her feet feeling like lead. Maybe it was time to address her own confused state.
* * *
Jess joined her a little while later as she was stirring cocoa on the stove. She heard him come down the hall and could tell from the sounds that he was using his crutch.
She turned as she heard him enter the kitchen behind her, a smile ready on her face. He stood there in kelly-green sweats with one pant leg pinned up so it wouldn’t flop around.
“I smell cocoa,” he said, returning her smile.
“Yes. I hope it was the right choice.”
“Sounds good to me.” He swung himself over to the table and sat. “We need to talk.”
She turned back to the stove, her stomach fluttering nervously. “About what?” Sara? Why they had to ignore the attraction that seemed to be growing between them? Or the unknown threat that might be stalking one of them? None of those promised a quiet mind for the night.
“You asked me to make a plan,” he reminded her.
“Oh.” Now her stomach sank. For a little while she’d allowed fear to fade into the background, allowed blossoming desire to take its place, even though that promised no happy ending, either. Silly wishful thinking, of the kind she was usually too practical to allow herself. An
d all the worse because of Sara. Don’t hate me, Sara, she thought silently. Please don’t hate me.
“Planning,” Jess said, “would be easier if we had any idea who and what might be coming. Right now, I’m at a loss. The note seems ridiculous. Why warn us?”
“Pleasure,” she answered slowly. “Letting one of us know what’s coming so that we’ll be miserable and afraid.”
“That’s a twisted mind.”
She turned to look at him over her shoulder. “It would take a twisted mind to do any of this. So he’s a sadist. Or she.”
He nodded agreement. She poured the cocoa carefully into mugs and carried them to the table. “Sadist or not,” he said as she sat near him, “he wanted us to guess that something was up. I half suspect he doesn’t expect us to take any action.”
“Why? Or better yet, how can we? We don’t know that he intends to do anything. We don’t know what it might be if he does, or which of us he’s after.”
“Which is exactly the problem I’m up against. The only thing I know for sure is that he can’t get into this house without making some noise.”
Startled, she creased her brow. “Why?”
“Because the windows won’t open.” He looked almost rueful. “I told you I hadn’t gotten around to replacing them yet. Well, they have wooden frames, and they’re old. Before I bought this place, they’d warped enough that no amount of effort will open most of them, and the few that will make a horrendous noise. As for the doors...deadbolts, no access from the outside. So he can’t just waltz in here.”
“Fair enough. But maybe he doesn’t plan to.”
“And that’s where we start running into problems.” He surprised her by reaching out and resting his hand on her forearm, giving her a gentle squeeze. “I can turn this house into a fortress against penetration. It’s halfway there. I could put trip wires outside that would warn us if anyone approaches. So I could make us credibly safe in here.”
She nodded as it sank in. Great. They could be safe as long as they didn’t leave the house. How long would that be?
He sighed and ran his hand back and forth along her forearm. “All I wanted to do was help you feel safe. Instead I walked you into a situation where I don’t even know the parameters.”
