Until There Was You (Coming Home, #2)

by Jessica Scott

  “How?”

  “Let’s play twenty questions.”

  “Before coffee?” She sounded pained.

  “Yeah.” He skimmed his fingertips along the edge of a silver-pink scar, wanting to do more than savor this slow, sexy waking. “Why did you join the army?”

  “This really isn’t fair. I’m not conscious yet.” He nipped her shoulder and she cried out before she could stop it, the sound pure pleasure. “I wanted to do something different.”

  “Different than what?” He licked the spot where he’d bitten her, leaving a faint pink mark.

  “Working at McDonald’s, hell, I don’t know. Whatever there is to do in a rural Iowa town.”

  “You’re from Iowa?”

  “The last two years before I joined the army, yeah. We were never anywhere for long, though.” She stretched her arms over her head, pushing the curves of her breasts against the bed. He wanted to shape them in the palms of his hands, but that would require him to shift positions entirely and he was feeling too content to move.

  “Why did you move around so much?”

  “My dad was a welder. We went where the jobs were.”

  “No mom?”

  “Not exactly.” She twisted and pulled the sheet higher over her body. “When exactly will this game be over? I need caffeine or bad things will happen.”

  She was evading him, he noticed, as he traced the pattern of a star-shaped scar with the pad of his thumb. Her entire left shoulder and upper back bore the physical reminder of secrets she had yet to share. It hurt that she still held so much of herself away from him. “Tell me about these,” he whispered, tracing one with the tip of his tongue.

  She stilled, any trace of sensual energy fleeing on the edge of her tension. “I fell into a coffee table once.”

  There was more to the story. He could hear it in her voice, in the quiet hitch in her words. Evan changed tactics, massaging the soft skin between her neck and her shoulder, pressing his thumb against a knot. “You should take better care of these.”

  “You know an awful lot about taking care of people.” She kept her eyes closed. It was nice to see her face so relaxed.

  Claire nestled against him, pulling his arm around her body. She traced her fingers over the branches twisting over his biceps. “Why a tattoo?” she whispered.

  Evan closed his eyes, surprised that she’d turned the conversation back to him so suddenly. But this, he could answer. “Because I didn’t want to forget.”

  “She was your sister. How could you possibly forget the night she died?”

  He shifted and rested his head on his bent arm. “If you lie to yourself long enough, it becomes true.” He swallowed, barely daring to continue. “My mom and dad never came to visit me when I was at West Point.” He closed his eyes, felt Claire’s fingers curl into his skin. “We never had much of a relationship after Casey died. And I was willing to let them go because I couldn’t stand how much they blame me. I couldn’t let go of Casey, though.” He released a quiet sigh. “My parents let me go because they wanted to forget. I refused to let go of my little sister. I got the tattoo right after I graduated.”

  “You sound so … resigned.” She traced her fingers over the edge of his jaw.

  “Maybe I am. But I can’t force a relationship where there isn’t one.”

  Her fingers danced over his shoulders. “Your tribute is beautiful, Evan.” She kissed the dark branch over the center of his heart. “Your sister was lucky to have you.”

  He stiffened. “Claire, I killed her. She wasn’t lucky. She was cursed.”

  Her fingers were cool against his cheeks. “You were seventeen. You made a bad choice. And you’ve been punishing yourself ever since.” She pressed her lips to his. “You can regret the end of her life forever. Or you can remember her and honor the life she lived.” Her words pressed around the damaged remains of his heart, a salve. A bandage. And it was too much, all at once.

  He turned the conversation back to her. Attempted to lighten it.

  “So Claire joined the army. Then what happened?”

  * * *

  “Claire went to college at night and earned her degree and learned to shut her mouth long enough to make it through Officer Candidate School.”

  His hands were wandering beneath the sheet she’d pulled between them. She wasn’t good at this sort of thing. She struggled to avoid his dark eyes, afraid he’d see the tragic, lonely little girl that she’d been. But she didn’t look away.

  And what she felt with this man was warm. And safe. And deeply, deeply arousing. She let her own hands wander, sliding over his torso and chest, loving the feel of his dark chest hair crinkling beneath her palms. His belly was tight, his skin hot and smooth. This big, gorgeous body was hers.

  She let her hands wander lower and his body tensed beneath her touch. She chuckled deep in her throat, loving the feeling of power that surged inside her at his tacit admission that she aroused him. She teased the evidence of that arousal with the tip of one finger and his erection jerked beneath her light stroke.

  She surrendered to a rare feeling of playfulness and leaned closer, breaking away from the hypnotic grip of his gaze to drag her teeth over the rough skin of his jaw, nipping closer to his ear as her fingers circled his erection and stroked him. Slowly.

  He exhaled sharply, his breath cutting off as she squeezed him. “Are you torturing me on purpose?”

  “No more than you waking me up without coffee.” She traced her thumb over the head of his cock, spreading the warm, moist liquid over the thick, wide tip.

  “I might have to get rid of all the coffee in Colorado if this is my reward.” His voice grated against her ear.

  He encircled her with his arms, tugging her closer.

  Her lungs shut down instantly. She tried to push away the sudden panic but failed, and she reacted the only way she knew how.

  She turned away from him. Offered herself to him with a deep, sensual arch of her back and the slight spread of her thighs.

  He said nothing to acknowledge her panic and for that she was immensely grateful. He stroked her body, his palms cradling her breasts as he slid his erection between her thighs from behind, teasing her with it.

  A crinkling of plastic and then beautiful, tight pressure as he pressed against her core. She lifted one knee, opening her body, protecting her soul.

  And when he slid deep and slow inside her, she cried out at the relief spreading through her veins like a warm, hot drug, sedating the panic. He wrapped his arms around her, cradling her against him as he moved, an anodyne balm to ragged remains of her soul. She loved the stark, harsh contrast of his tattooed arm against her own. It was deeply moving, erotic and sensual all at once.

  She surrendered then to the pleasure, giving herself over to the power of his touch. Dragging him with her into a sensual haze, reveling in the desire, hiding the strength of her reaction from the man loving her body. Because the truth was that she was no longer in control. Somehow, Evan had wormed his way past her defenses. He’d snuck in and nestled near her heart.

  And that scared the hell out of her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was barely noon, but Evan was not at all surprised to find Iaconelli at the bar. For once, he was not even halfway to half-cocked. The big man was nursing a single beer, a fat lip, and a piss-poor attitude.

  “I’m not in the mood right now,” Reza said when Evan pulled up a seat and ordered a beer.

  “Yeah, me neither.” Evan ordered a beer, waiting until the bartender slid it in front of him before he spoke. “Did you get the pyro for Engle?”

  Reza’s silence was enough of an answer. Evan swore viciously. “What the hell were you thinking, Iaconelli?”

  Reza sniffed and scrubbed his hand along the scruff of his unshaven jaw. “I was in Kuwait in late ’02. We weren’t going to war, the President said. We hadn’t made up our minds. Diplomacy and blah, blah, blah.” He took a long pull off his beer. “We sat in Kuwait for weeks
. Went to ranges and talked about how easy Desert Storm was, how unprepared the Iraqi Army was. Then the balloon went up and we were heading north.” He shifted and pinned Evan with a hard look. “Do you know what it feels like to cross into a war zone, knowing you could have prepared better? Trained harder. Worked longer hours.”

  “Ike, none of us is ever really prepared,” Evan said quietly. Every time he deployed, he felt like there was more he could have done. “And now Engle may be out of the fight because you couldn’t play by the rules the one time it mattered.”

  “Engle knew the risks. It wasn’t her first rodeo.” Reza drained the bottle. “And she knew what she was doing. She’s a hell of a lot smarter than you give her credit for.”

  “Yeah well, using unauthorized pyro and deviating from the training plan isn’t very smart when it gets you taken out of the fight. Now her team is probably going downrange untrained and without one of the few people who actually have combat experience.” Evan scraped his thumb over the label on his beer. “Her ass is going to fry because of the pyro.” He swallowed and met his longtime platoon sergeant’s eyes. “Were you drinking?”

  “One time,” Reza snapped, sticking his finger up. “One time I screw up pyro in my entire career and you’re going to assume I was drunk?”

  “You sent a lieutenant to the hospital. And that’s not even the worst of it. Claire has been covering for you for years and you’ve been letting her.” Reza’s dark skin blanched, but Evan drove on. “So asking if you were drinking is a fair question, given the circumstances.”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  Evan slammed his fist on the bar. “This is absolutely about you! Do you care how much you’re hurting Claire and everyone else who cares about you?”

  “You know what pisses me off?” Reza shoved the stool away from the bar. “You and Claire and every single person I know thinks I’ve got PTSD or some bullshit. You all talk about me like I’m one step away from killing someone in a drunk driving accident when I’ve never, ever gotten behind the wheel of the car when I’ve been drinking and I don’t plan to start anytime soon.”

  “No, but you’re not above drinking in a combat zone or during training exercises.”

  “Fuck you, Sir.” He snarled the words an inch from Evan’s face. “I didn’t ask either one of you to try and save me. But you’re right about one thing.” Evan could not remember Reza ever being so furious. Not downrange. Not back at Hood. Never had he seen the depth of the anger flashing from Reza’s dark eyes. “This is about Claire. And it’s about you, too. The two of you are pretending that I’m the thing holding you together because you’re too scared to have a grown-up relationship based on, hell, being adults.”

  Reza took a pull from the glass in front of him, then slammed it down, remembering it was already drained. “Claire has never trusted anyone for as long as I’ve known her. She’s always been one of the guys and that’s it.” He yanked his wallet out of his front pocket. “Until you came along, I’ve never seen her relax enough to just be with someone. And you’re wasting this chance because you’re using me as a third wheel when what you need to be doing is figuring out how to hold on to her all by yourself.”

  Reza slammed a twenty onto the bar to pay for his beer. “This isn’t about me. This is about whether you’re man enough to love her without me or the war or anything else between you as a buffer. Just you. Just her.”

  He left and Evan let him go, stunned at how a simple question had nearly turned into a barroom brawl. It was a long time before Evan left the bar.

  * * *

  “So the eval was a disaster and our deployment has been canceled,” Sarah said by way of greeting as she walked into Claire’s suite early Monday morning.

  It usually took an act of God to cancel training, but one bad explosion and a broken arm had done the trick this time. Almost everyone else had been sent home after the incident. Claire had been going through the motions for most of the time since Evan had left her room. She hated the room she’d once thought of as opulent luxury. Now it felt like a prison while she waited for her appointment to see Colonel Danvers. The walls closed in on her. She wasn’t forbidden from leaving, but she felt locked in nonetheless.

  Claire managed a smile. “Really?”

  “No. And if you believed that, then I have this bridge in Arizona you might be interested in. I just came by to see how you’re doing.”

  Claire sniffed and palmed her forehead, leaning against the table. “Surviving. Sorry your eval sucked.”

  “Oh yeah, ’cause five more days practicing being miserable was high up on my to-do list. It’s fine.” Sarah pulled out a chair and sat next to her. “We’re still deploying, regardless of whether the evaluation sucked or not. No commander in the world would tell their boss they’re not ready to go to war.”

  Claire stared longingly at the small fridge, wondering if she dared to have a drink. Maybe if she had a few drinks, she’d be over the worst of her anxiety. Probably wouldn’t help much with the saving-the-career part. She swallowed and realized her problems were nothing compared to what her friend was preparing for. “How are you holding up with the idea of leaving Anna?”

  Sarah sank into the couch. She didn’t answer for a long moment as she pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her cheek on them. “It’ll be okay. My mother-in-law loves her. And Anna’s little. She won’t even remember this in the grand scheme of things.”

  “Hon, you sound like you’re trying to convince yourself,” Claire said gently. She moved to sit next to her, resting her head against Sarah’s shoulder.

  “Maybe I am.” Sarah’s voice was barely above a broken whisper. “But I don’t want to talk about it because I don’t want to start bawling. Anyway, what’s up with you?”

  Her appointment with Colonel Danvers was in two short hours. She seriously contemplated taking a trip to the doc and asking for some anti-anxiety medication. She hadn’t eaten at all that morning and the coffee she’d attempted to drink had twisted and writhed in her guts like a live thing. It was not a good way to start off a meeting that was sure to end with an epic ass-chewing.

  “You okay?”

  “I should ask you the same thing,” Claire asked.

  “I’m fine. Engle’s arm was broken in two places, but she should be healed up enough to still deploy with us.” Sarah sounded relieved. Tired, but relieved. “She may or may not still get fired.”

  “That’s good. Listen—”

  “Don’t you dare. I don’t want to hear a word about an apology or anything. It was fun having you up here, my folks learned a lot—no matter what Colonel Danvers says—and that’s the long and the short of it.” Sarah’s voice broke, and with it, her composure. “I’m more worried about you.”

  Claire blinked rapidly. Sarah was one of her best friends in the world. Her only real girl friend, and at that moment, it struck her forcibly just how much she missed having her around. She tried to sound flip. She failed. “I’m really going to miss you.”

  “You, too. You have no idea.”

  Claire glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to go. I might need some help writing that résumé.”

  “Not funny.”

  “Not joking.” Claire smiled. “I’ll be fine. I’ve landed on my feet before.”

  But as she drove onto the main post at Fort Carson alone, Claire was not so sure she was going to survive this one. Colonel Danvers was not her brigade commander, but Claire had no doubt that Colonel Richter had already been informed.

  Before they’d left Fort Hood, Colonel Richter had told her not to screw anything up. He’d warned her. And despite the fact that she hadn’t put Engle up to changing the training plan and getting the unauthorized pyro, Claire felt responsible.

  Because she’d told Evan the truth: she would have done exactly what Engle had done. So the question now was what she should tell Colonel Danvers. Should she deny everything and let LT Engle take the fall by herself? Or should she stand in front of the lieute
nant and defend her to a commander who would not appreciate a captain telling him how to train his officers?

  She parked the rental car and walked into the Palehorse headquarters. Lifting her hand to knock on Colonel Danvers’s door, she had no idea that the questions she was about to face would challenge every facet of her loyalty. Loyalty to a man she would die for and loyalty to a man who’d touched something sacred inside her.

  Claire faced Colonel Danvers.

  And that loyalty was tested.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Later that same morning, Evan knocked on the brigade commander’s door, hating the fact that his guts were clenched so tight. He should be better at taking an ass-chewing by this point in his career, but the simple fact was that he didn’t get lit into that often. He was a good soldier. Still, as the officer in charge of this now epic training disaster, he was the one on the chopping block to see Colonel Danvers.

  The evaluation was a disaster. Training cancelled. Engle was still in the hospital. And worse? As he approached Colonel Danvers’s office, Evan wasn’t even remotely thinking about the brigade commander. Instead, he was focused on the much more personal disaster of his relationship with Claire. He hadn’t been able to get Reza’s words out of his mind. He should be able to be with Claire without Reza standing between them. Couldn’t he? He tried to think of a single regular conversation they’d had that hadn’t involved Reza or the army. There had been very few.

  Evan knocked on the solid mahogany door.

  “Come in, Captain.” Danvers’s use of his rank was not a good sign. “I won’t waste either of our time with small talk. Here.”

  Evan reached forward and flipped open the cover of the manila folder Danvers had slid across the desk. The paperwork from range control expressly forbidding the use of pyro on the range.

  Signed by Lieutenant Engle and Reza Iaconelli. He skimmed through the paperwork, realizing with aching clarity that he was looking at career-enders. Reza had not been legally certified to use the pyro on this range. Engle had not had the authority to sign for it, let alone authorize its use. Disobeying orders was one thing, but Reza’s carelessness had gotten someone hurt. And worse, he’d roped Lieutenant Engle into the fiasco with him. The training plan had been ignored, the prohibition against pyrotechnics violated.