I'll Be Home for Christmas

by Jessica Scott

  Now, he was finally home.

  It didn’t matter where they were.

  He’d made it. Maybe not all of him, but he’d made it. Safe and warm in his wife’s arms, he’d made it.

  He was home.

  About the Author

  Jessica Scott is a career army officer; mother of two daughters, three cats, and three dogs; wife to a career NCO; and wrangler of all things stuffed and fluffy. She is a terrible cook and even worse housekeeper, but she’s a pretty good shot with her assigned weapon, and someone liked some of the stuff she wrote. Somehow, her children are pretty well-adjusted and her husband still loves her, despite burned water and a messy house.

  She’s written for the New York Times’s At War blog, PBS’s POV: Regarding War blog, and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. She deployed to Iraq in 2009 as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom / New Dawn and has served as a company commander at Fort Hood, Texas.

  She’s pursuing a PhD in sociology in her spare time, and most recently she’s been featured as one of Esquire magazine’s Americans of the Year for 2012.

  Turn the page for a preview of a brand-new book in Jessica Scott’s Coming Home series about a marriage falling apart and the love that can put it back together, featuring Captain Trent Davila and his wife, Laura.

  Back to You

  Available in January 2014

  Prologue

  Fort Hood, Early 2007

  “I put your checkbook in the front pocket of your rucksack. Did you find the sleep medication? You need to sleep on the plane so that you’re rested when you land. And I put your calling card—”

  Captain Trent Davila stepped in front of his wife, capturing her face in his palms. Her skin was smooth and soft and achingly familiar, and a deep part of his soul missed her already. “Laura.” He whispered her name, capturing her attention.

  She tried to look away, to pretend that today was just another day. But Trent knew her too well.

  Her eyes were what gave her away. He stroked an errant strand of copper hair away from her forehead, meeting her golden eyes. “Stop worrying,” he whispered.

  She offered a watery smile. “I can’t. No matter how many times we’ve done this, it never gets any easier.” Her voice cracked and broke beneath the weight of her emotions.

  He stroked his thumbs over her cheeks as the kids shrieked in Ethan’s bedroom. The sound sent a spike of anxiety through Trent’s heart, but he smiled, hoping to cheer her up. “Sounds like someone just lost a Lego.”

  “Daddy!”

  Laura squeezed his arm.

  “He’s probably going to beg you for a hamster again,” she said.

  He slid from her embrace, regret sealing the walls that four deployments had erected around his heart. Trent tried not to notice how intently Laura watched him, her gaze sweeping over the scars on his body as he finished getting dressed. His dog tags banged against his ribs as he dragged his t-shirt over his head and pulled on the rest of his uniform and then his boots.

  “Well, you could get one,” Trent said.

  “Or,” Laura said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, “you could promise him one when you get home. It’ll give him something to look forward to.”

  Trent frowned at the odd note in Laura’s voice and focused on tying his boots and tucking the laces beneath the cuff of his pants. “He won’t even notice I’m gone. They’re both too little.”

  Trent straightened as Laura approached, placing her palm over the scar on his heart. “Keep telling yourself that,” she said with a soft kiss. “They miss you when you’re gone. We all do.”

  He sighed quietly and glanced at her, resting his hands gently on her hips. “Laura, you know I have to go.”

  She brushed her thumb over his bottom lip. “You don’t have to explain it to me.” She blinked rapidly and the sight of her tears almost pierced the shell around his heart. “I just wish it got a little easier waiting for you, that’s all.” Her fingers wrapped around his dog tags. “But we’ll be here when you get back. We always are.”

  He ran his fingers lightly over her face. The lie he’d told his wife so often sat like a concrete wall between them. She didn’t know that he’d volunteered for this deployment, for so many others, and he had no way of killing the lie without killing their marriage. It was a need, a duty. He couldn’t sit at home while his boys were heading into combat again. But he couldn’t explain that to her. “Don’t go get a deployment boyfriend while I’m gone.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about that.” Laura grinned and wrapped her arms around him, nuzzling his neck. They stood for a long moment before Laura eased away.

  Trent swallowed and let her go. Again.

  * * *

  Five hours later, Trent kissed his wife good-bye for the fourth time in six years. His four-year-old son and two-year-old daughter were getting antsy, climbing up and down the bleachers nonstop. As he walked away from the gym where he and the rest of his unit had checked in for the deployment, he glanced up at her in the stands. She was trying valiantly not to join the ranks of the wives and children who were crying as their soldiers left them, assault packs and weapons in hand.

  “You ready, sir?”

  Trent glanced over at First Sarn’t Roy Story, a man who’d taught Trent the right way to kick in doors and the difference between knowing when to whip a nose or whip an ass. The war was lined into Story’s leathery face. Fifteen years as an infantryman that had started in Mogadishu and continued with the long slog through Iraq.

  “Are we ever really ready for this?” Trent asked, taking one more long look at his wife and kids, wishing he was a better man. Wishing the time he had with them made him forget his responsibilities to his men, to his next mission. And then he turned away, needing to harden his heart for the battles to come.

  Outside, Trent climbed aboard the bus that would take them to the airfield. Spouses filed out from the gym along the sidewalk. In the seat behind him, Sergeant Vic Carponti was harassing one of Trent’s platoon sergeants Sergeant First Class Shane Garrison. He almost smiled. With those two around, things would never be dull.

  He scanned the crowd, searching for his wife amongst the blurry faces of other people’s spouses lining the sidewalk. There. She held her vigil in front of a fire extinguisher, a tiny hand in each of hers. Beside her, Ethan stood bravely, tears streaking down his face. He held a tiny salute, his mouth pressed into a flat line as he tried to be a tough little man. Emma waved brightly at the bus, still too little to fully understand that Daddy was leaving for longer than a trip to the grocery store.

  He looked away but it was far, far too late. When he closed his eyes, the image of his small family was burned into his retinas.

  “Never gets any easier, does it?” Story asked quietly, sucking on the end of an unlit cigar while he fiddled with a light on his helmet. His eyes were unclouded with emotion. There was little love left between Story and his wife and he was very open about the fact that he deployed to avoid his wife.

  But Trent deployed to avoid his life. Because life back in the rear was too complicated, too loud, too chaotic. War was simpler. Deadlier but simpler.

  The scar on his chest ached and he rubbed it, wishing he could forget the way his family looked as the bus pulled away.

  He closed his eyes trying to put them out of his mind as he returned to the war yet again. He didn’t want to remember his wife this way, didn’t want to see her cheeks streaked with tears or the raw grief in her eyes. He wanted to remember her face as she slept curled into his side. Or laughing with their kids. He needed to carry those memories into war with him. Because that was all that would steel him against the long hours and bone-crushing fatigue to come.

  He had soldiers to command. His family would be there when he came home.

  Chapter One

  Fort Hood, 2008

  “Son of a bi—iscuit!”

  “Bad Mommy!”

  Laura Davila wrapped her scraped and bleeding knuckles in
a paper towel and prayed to the patron saint of army wives for patience. Her six-year-old dishwasher was currently laid out in pieces across the kitchen floor and counters. And now the cavernous white interior was splattered with her blood. Classy.

  Her son Ethan looked up at her with disapproval in his dark brown eyes, and Laura flinched. “Sorry, honey. Mommy just hurt herself.”

  “You said a bad word.” This from her daughter, Emma. “Agent Chaos said you’re not allowed to say those words.”

  Laura glared at the fat brown hamster that was clutched in her daughter’s hands. Agent Chaos looked up at her with disapproving beady brown eyes. Sitting there, judging her.

  Almost two years ago, she had joked with Trent that he should buy the kids a hamster when he returned from his latest deployment. By the time he came back, things between them had already started to crumble but he had still remembered the damn hamster. He’d bought not one, but two of the stinking, smelly animals. The hamster cuteness factor did not override the pain in the ass factor of having to clean their cages every other day to keep the smell from overpowering the entire house.

  Maybe if Trent had been around more over the last year, she wouldn’t have minded them so much. But instead of sitting at Fort Hood and working in an office like any other officer who was under investigation, he’d volunteered for several rotations at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin. He’d spent more time there than at Fort Hood over the last year. He might as well have just moved there.

  She took a deep breath and pressed on her throbbing knuckles, focusing on the pain so that she wouldn’t feel the tension that squeezed her heart every time she thought about her husband. She’d regretted sending him the divorce papers more than a year ago while he was still deployed, but as time had ticked by and he’d refused to sign them and let her go, she’d moved beyond regret. Now, she wanted to move on with her life. Maybe someday, she’d even stop waiting for the phone to ring.

  Maybe someday, she’d stop caring whether it did.

  “You have to pay us each a quarter,” Ethan said, stroking the fat orange hamster in his hands. Laura was seriously thinking about buying a cat—that would solve the hamster problem all right. But it would be just one more thing to clean up after.

  She pursed her lips and counted to ten… thousand. “Okay, guys, why don’t you go play in the garage or something? Mommy has too many parts in here, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Or move anything. But she didn’t say that out loud, because that would only encourage them to run off with some vital component that it would take her three days to identify and two more days to find online and order. A new dishwasher was not in the budget at the moment. Besides, she wanted to see if she could actually fix the thing herself.

  She shooed the kids and their accompanying hamsters out of the kitchen and made her way through the master bedroom to the cache of Band-Aids she hid in her bathroom. The kids were all too eager to use every bandage in the house if she let them, which always meant that she couldn’t find a Band-Aid when she really needed one.

  Laura pulled down the shoebox that held the first aid kit. She held her breath as she cleaned the cuts on her knuckles with iodine, then wrapped gauze halfway down her fingers, covering the empty space where her wedding rings had once been. Amazing how easy it was to wrap up a wound when there were no rings to catch on the gauze.

  She’d taken her wedding rings off more than a year ago. The pale skin marking her ring finger was no longer pale. On that day she’d finally realized that her marriage was dead and no amount of waiting or wishful thinking was going to change that. And though her husband still refused to sign the divorce papers, she felt in her heart that they were finished. He had lied to her so many times about his deployments. That alone had destroyed her trust in him. And then there was the rest of it…

  A spike of melancholy pressed on her lungs. Damn it, what was wrong with her today? She was past mourning the death of her marriage. At least, she kept telling herself that. So when was it going to stop hurting? She briefly considered a shot of vodka to numb the pain, but that wasn’t really a good idea since she was alone with the kids.

  And since she was almost always alone with the kids, she barely ever had a drink these days. She sighed and glanced wistfully at the discreet box on the top shelf in the bathroom closet. Droughts were not limited to alcohol.

  She had gotten used to it, this new normal. While the kids were vibrant chaos, full of life and joy, the married part of her life was… well, it simply was. There was nothing there anymore. No joy. No hatred. Just silence and cold detachment.

  She simply wanted it to be over. And damn Trent to hell for dragging it out when he wasn’t even willing to fight for them. He wasn’t fighting. Hell, he was barely back at Fort Hood long enough to see the kids. And the silence between them? Between her and the man she’d thought she’d love for the rest of her life?

  Once she never would have thought the silence would grow too loud or that the emptiness in the bed beside her would become too heavy to bear. Once she would have waited forever for him to come home to her.

  But forever was a long time.

  Turn the page for a preview of another brand-new book in Jessica Scott’s Coming Home series about a desire that defies reason and a love worth sacrificing for, featuring Sergeant First Class Reza Iaconelli and Army Captain Emily Lindberg.

  All for You

  Available in February 2014

  Chapter One

  “Where the hell is Wisniak?” Sergeant First Class Reza Iaconelli hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and glared at Foster. Luckily Foster didn’t take him too seriously. The kid was the exact opposite of the snot-nosed and slick-sleeved sergeant they were looking for. He could count on Foster. The same could not be said for Wisniak.

  Sergeant Dean Foster rolled his eyes and spat into the dirt. He had the lean, wiry body of a runner and the weathered lines of an infantryman carved into his face though at twenty-five, he was still a puppy. “Sarn’t Ike, I tried calling him this morning but he’s not answering. His phone is going straight to voice mail.”

  Reza sighed and rocked back on his heels, trying to rein in his temper. “Have you checked the R&R Center?”

  Foster pulled out his phone before Reza finished his sentence and started walking a short distance away to make the call. “Nope. But I bet you’re right.”

  “I know I am. He’s been twitchy all week.” Reza glanced at his watch. The commander was going to have kittens if Reza didn’t have his personnel report turned in soon. Because herding cats was all noncommissioned officers were good for in the eyes of Captain James P. Marshall the Third, resident pain in Reza’s ass.

  Foster turned away, holding up a finger as he started arguing with the doc. Reza swore quietly, then again when the company commander started walking toward him from the opposite end of the formation. Reza straightened and saluted.

  It was mostly sincere.

  “Sarn’t Iaconelli, do you have accountability of your troops?”

  “Sir, one hundred and thirty assigned, one hundred and twenty four present. Three on appointment, one failure to report and one at the R&R center. One in rehab.”

  “When is that shitbird Sloban going to get out of rehab?” Captain Marshall glanced down at his notepad.

  “Sloban isn’t a shitbird.” Reza lifted his chin, daring Marshall to argue. “Sir.”

  Marshall looked like he wanted to slap Reza, but as was normally the way with cowards and blowhards, he simply snapped his mouth shut. “Who’s gone to the funny farm today?”

  Privately, Reza agreed with his commander but he’d never admit it out loud. The Rest and Resiliency Center was supposed to be a place that helped combat veterans heal from the mental wounds of war. Instead, it had become the new generation’s stress card, a place to go when their sergeant was making them work too hard. Guys like Wisniak who had never deployed but who for some reason couldn’t function as adults without constant supervisi
on. But Captain Marshall was the last person Reza wanted to agree with.

  Luckily Captain Ben Teague approached, saving Reza the need to punch the commander in the face. The sergeant major would not be happy with him if that happened. Reza was already on thin ice as it was.

  “So you don’t have accountability of the entire company?” Marshall asked. Behind him Teague made a jerking motion with his hand.

  Reza smothered a grin. “Sir, I know where everyone is. I’m heading to the R&R Center after formation to verify that Wisniak is there.”

  Marshall sighed heavily. Behind him Teague mimed riding a horse and slapping it. Reza rubbed his hand over his mouth as Marshall turned a pleasing shade of puce. “I’m getting tired of someone always being unaccounted for, Sergeant.”

  “That makes two of us.” Reza breathed deeply. “Sir.”

  “What are you planning on doing about it?”

  He raised both eyebrows, his temper lashing at the restraints. Nothing Teague could do behind Marshall’s back could keep Reza from mouthing off. His mouth would be the death of him someday. That or his temper.

  He started ticking off items on his fingers. “Well, sir, since you asked, first, I’m going to stop by the shoppette for coffee, then take a ride around post to break in my new truck. I’ll probably stop out at Engineer Lake and smoke a cigar and consider whether or not to come back to work at all. Around noon, I’m going to swing into the R&R center to make sure that Wisniak actually showed up and was seen. Then I’ll spend the rest of the day hunting said sorry excuse for—”

  “That’s enough, Sergeant,” Marshall snapped and Teague mimed him behind his back. “I don’t appreciate your insubordinate attitude. Accountability is the most important thing we do.”

  “I thought kicking in doors and killing bad guys was the most important thing we did?” Reza asked, doing his damnedest not to smirk. He failed. Miserably. Marshall’s head about exploded, which was satisfying enough for Reza. He’d pissed Marshall off. His day could officially not get any better. Time to crack open a cold one and kick his boots up on his desk.