Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover. Merline Lovelace
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scare both Sophie and me.”
“You think he just wants to scare you?”
“Him? I don’t know. In the end, guys like him often turn out to be bullies who can’t stand up against any show of strength.”
Ethan nodded. “Did he say anything threatening at all?”
“No. Just that Sophie was a beautiful child.”
“Could he have any other motive?”
“Why would he? He kicked me in the stomach when I was pregnant. Does that sound like a man who wants his child?”
“That sounds like a man who feels threatened.”
“Exactly. And maybe now he’s angry because I sent him to prison. But I’m not the woman he used to kick around.”
“I’m sure you’re not.”
She looked at Ethan, determination in every line of her. “If it’s Leo, we could put his photo out there. At least among the deputies.”
“How sure are you?”
She paused thoughtfully. Finally she said, “I’m not a hundred percent sure, but close to it. He only said one thing, which didn’t give me much to go on, considering how shocked I was. It was like I lost all sense for a few minutes there.”
“Hardly surprising.”
“Yeah.” Then she astonished him by taking his hand and holding it. “You’re a godsend, Ethan.”
“No. Just a guy who happened to be in the right place when needed.”
Her smile was pinched. “I think you have a worse self-image than I do. And it’s not right. I can tell what a good man you are. Yeah, you did some awful things, but you didn’t do them alone. You did them because I and every other person in this country asked them of you.”
“I don’t—”
“Shh,” she said gently. “It’s true. You were in the service. You got your orders from this country, and you went. If there’s any guilt in what you did, we all share it. All of us. We can’t claim lily-white hands because we didn’t put on a uniform. Not in this country.”
He didn’t respond, seeming to lack the words.
“You know it’s true, Ethan. You do the dirty work we ask you to do. Whatever gloss we put on it, however high we hold the flag and however loud we cry the justifications, you and your fellow soldiers are just carrying out our will. Sometimes you’ll be sure it was absolutely right. But I suspect that in all wars the people on the front lines often wind up wondering what they’ve done and what it makes them.”
“Connie—”
“Listen to me. Just remember, when you walk down a street, that you didn’t do a damn thing all the rest of us walking those same streets didn’t ask of you. Didn’t send you there to do.”
Her grip on his hand had grown vise tight, and he squeezed back. Finally he gave a short, mirthless laugh and said, “I guess this is a night for therapy.”
“Or a night for putting things into perspective. You tried to help me see I wasn’t responsible for what Leo did. Well, you need to understand that just because you were the tip of the spear doesn’t make you any more responsible than the rest of us, the spear throwers.”
For a few moments he seemed about to argue with her, but then tension seeped from him. Before she knew what to expect, she was swept up into his arms and being carried up the stairs as if she weighed nothing at all.
She didn’t make a sound, didn’t offer a protest. How could she? Nothing had ever felt so right as being in his arms.
He carried her into her darkened bedroom, where the TV still flickered, and laid her on her bed. Then he stretched out beside her, fully clothed, and pulled her close, as if he wanted their bodies to melt together. She managed to wrap one arm around him, feeling the breadth and strength of his back. Feeling the wonder of him in every cell of her being.
“This’ll sound crazy,” he said huskily.
“Tell me.”
“You just said something to me that made more sense than anything anyone’s said in a long time—except for something Micah said the other day.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me the past was past, that if I wanted atonement, I had to find it in today. And that if I had nightmares, I had to build new dreams.”
She drew a sharp breath. “That’s so true! So beautiful. Oh, Ethan, I need to remember that, too.”
“I know. We’re not so very different, in some ways.”
“No, we’re not.” She tightened her hold on him. “When was the last time someone told you how beautiful you are?”
“Me?” He gave an embarrassed laugh.
“You,” she repeated. “Not just the way you look, although you probably have no idea what a handsome man you are, but in other ways. The first night you spent here, I felt something about you, something in the air around you. You were saying something about having studied shamanism and being a bit of a mystic. I don’t remember exactly. I just know I could feel it all around you, as if you’re a special spirit.”
“Not me. I’m an ordinary man.”
“No, you’re more than that.” She sighed and shifted so that her head was cradled comfortably on his shoulder. “I used to think we were beings of light unwillingly tethered to the ground.”
“And now?”
“I still think we’re beings of light, but we aren’t tethered unwillingly.”
“No?”
She tilted her head so she could see his face. “No,” she repeated. “We came here for this. For something beautiful we can experience no other way. Holding and being held. Comforting and being comforted. Skin touching skin across the abyss of seeming separateness.”
He closed his eyes as if absorbing her words. “You should try poetry.”
“Not me. It’s just what I feel sometimes. Transcendence through our very limitations. Tell me you haven’t felt it.”
He nodded slowly. “Rarely,” he said presently. “Too rarely. But yes, I’ve felt it.”
“These are the moments we exist for, Ethan.”
He cradled her even closer, if that was possible, and rocked her gently. The motion was soothing, seeming to lift her to another level.
This wasn’t possible, she warned herself, but the warning seemed distant and faint. She knew she would never trust fully again, and she knew that Ethan would undoubtedly move on until he found a life that suited him. They were too wounded to build anything between them.
So if she gave in to the longings building in her, it would be for a night. A single night. There would be no future in it.
Oddly, that seemed to free her. It banished all the fears from her marriage that had been holding her back. There was nothing to fear here, because this wouldn’t be a commitment. Nothing to upset her carefully established balance.
In Ethan’s arms, she felt herself grow weightless, as if she were rising to the heavens, above it all, safe from it all. Magic surrounded her, sheltered her, filled her.
She hardly felt herself move as she turned her face up, seeking his kiss.
When it came, gentleness came with it, a tender touching of lips that spoke not of hunger but a different kind of need, a more important one.
She responded in kind, shedding her shell, reveling in the freedom to just experience and share. Savoring the deep sense of safety that must have been coming from him, because