Guarding the Soldier's Secret (17 page)

“You want to tell me what that was about?” Rubbing his jaw between thumb and forefinger, he gave his head a rueful shake. “You know, you’ve got a pretty good right cross, for a girl.”

She made a sound, halfway between a laugh and a snort, but didn’t say anything, just went on cuddling the kitten under her chin.

He climbed onto the haystack and settled himself on the ledge one level below hers, and he was instantly surrounded by smells he hadn’t smelled in a very long time. Hay and dust and bird droppings, old leather and animal sweat. Smells that filled his soul with nameless dread.

He pulled up one leg and turned sideways so he could see her. He let out a breath. “I guess you saw the news.”

“Yes. A helicopter crash.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. Cool and steady. “They said you were dead.”

He gave a soft huff of laughter. “It’s hardly the first time you thought I died. You said so yourself. It was why—”

Her eyes met his, but in the dusky light he couldn’t read their expression. He really wished he could, because her voice told him nothing.

“You know, this time I believed it. I’m not sure why, but I did. I truly
believed
it.” She straightened and reached out to put the kitten on the ledge with the others.

Without knowing he was going to, he lifted one arm and intercepted the kitten, bringing it down to his own chest. It squirmed and squalled in momentary panic and dug its claws into the front of his shirt. Though it had been years since he’d last held a kitten, his hands seemed to remember just how to reassure it, how to stroke and cuddle it. In a very few seconds the kitten had settled down and was snuggled against him, purring like a buzz saw. He gazed down at it, conscious of a strange stirring in his chest.

“I couldn’t tell you,” he said, watching the kitten curl itself more comfortably into the nest of his hands. “The plan for my extraction had to be top secret. You must know that. If my identity had ever leaked, everything I’d worked for all those years would be for nothing.”

She dusted her hands, then rubbed her palms on her thighs. “I do know. Oh, I do. I understand.” There was the tiniest break in her voice before she caught a quick breath and went on, once again sounding cool and oh so calm. “It was the mission. It always has been and always will be.” She stood up, her feet on the bale he was sitting on, and brushed at her backside.

“You’ve always known that,” he said quietly. There was a coldness deep down in his belly. “Yankee. Come on. It’s the way it’s always been with us.”

She nodded. “Yes. That’s true. You can’t help it. It’s who you are.”

A crash of thunder shook the barn. Hunt placed the kitten on the ledge Yancy had just vacated, and it scurried to join its siblings and disappear with them into the cracks and crevices of the haystack.

He reached for Yancy’s wrist and gently tugged, pulling her down to sit beside him. He took her hand and held it because he couldn’t think of anything to say. Her hand was cold, in contrast to the warmth he felt all down his side even though she wasn’t touching him, and all he wanted to do was remedy that, pull her into his arms and kiss her until she forgot to be hurt and angry with him and responded with the passion he remembered. Wasn’t that the way it had always been between them?

He didn’t know how, now, to fix things with only words.

She was right: things were different between them now. In ways he couldn’t—or didn’t want to—name. But he knew it, and the knowledge made him feel lost. He, who was known for his cool head in the most desperate of situations, now felt close to panic.

“Yankee—” he began, without knowing where to go next.

She sniffed in a breath as she straightened up and pulled her hand from his. She used both of her hands to wipe her cheeks, then lifted her head and shook it, making her hair fall back and lick her shoulders like flames. It occurred to him that he’d never seen her hair so long. On assignment in war zones she’d always kept it shorter. It had looked tousled and windblown. As if she’d combed it with her fingers. Or just gotten out of bed.

Outside the barn the rain made a rushing sound, and it was hard to hear her when she finally spoke.

“I can’t do this anymore, Hunt.”

His body went still; his mind shut out all distractions and focused with laser-like intensity on the moment, the way it did when he was moving through dangerous enemy territory. Quietly, carefully, he said, “Do what?”

“This. The not knowing. You know. Wondering whether you’re alive or dead. Believing—” She caught her breath and whispered, “Thinking I would never see you again. The...fear. I don’t want to feel that fear anymore. I can’t.”

Ah.

Listening to her words, he thought he probably should have felt alarm or a sense of impending doom. Instead, he felt a spark ignite somewhere inside him and grow steadily until it filled his chest with... He didn’t know what, exactly. Awareness. Hope. Triumph?

“Don’t want to feel...what? The fear?” He was almost whispering, too, now.

She shrugged and turned her head away from him. He put his hands on her shoulders and forced her to face him. But her eyes were closed, her face pale in the deep gloom.

“So...does this mean you care?” Which he knew was an asinine thing to say, even before he said it.

She jerked out of his grasp. “Of course I care. Don’t be ridiculous. You’re Laila’s father. She’d be devastated if her Akaa Hunt—”

“No. Don’t do that. Don’t make this about Laila. This is
you
I’m talking about.” Having said such a stupid thing once, he figured he had nothing to lose, so he said it again. “Do you? Care what happens to me?”

“That...is an incredibly
stupid
question.” She bit out the words, her voice bumping as she slid off the bale to the next one down, then the next.

He followed her down. “Maybe. Yeah, it is. But I still want an answer.”

Having reached the floor of the barn, she stood up, brushing at the seat of her jeans, then stalked toward the barn’s wide-open door. Her movements were jerky with anger. He assumed it was anger.

The rain was a silvery curtain across the doorway.

“Come on, Yancy. Don’t go out there. You’ll be soaked in a heartbeat.”

He was right, of course. She halted, close enough to the downpour to feel its spray, its dampness, its chill. She felt his warmth come close behind her.

She didn’t want him there. She
didn’t
. She shouldn’t.

It took all her will and strength not to lean toward his heat, not to turn into his arms and feel them come around her, strong and protecting as steel. To lay her head against his chest and feel his heartbeat thumping in her ear. Oh,
God
, how she longed to hear that sound.

“Of course I care.” She cleared her throat. Shook her head. “But it doesn’t matter.”

“What do you mean, ‘it doesn’t matter’?” The words were murmured, a warm breath very close to her ear.

She shivered but shrugged away his hand when he would have touched her. “We’ve been through this before, Hunt. Things are different now. You know they are.”

“Because of Laila.”

“
Yes
, because of Laila. The way things were back then, that can’t happen now. You must see that. Whatever was between us—” She halted, shaking her head.

Oh, she wasn’t explaining it well! She, who made her living with words, couldn’t seem to find the right ones now to make him understand.

Understand what?
How could she, when she didn’t understand herself?

“What
was
it between us?” There was a rasp in his voice now. It seemed to come from deep in his chest, like a tiger purring.

She shook her head, unable to answer. He took her arms and turned her to face him, giving her a little shake so that she had to look at him. And she did, as a matter of pride if nothing else.

Oh, but looking into his face was a mistake, as she’d known it would be.
Ah, those eyes, those golden eyes.

The huge knot inside her chest burst, spilling warmth all down through her body, into her belly and thighs, sending it pulsing through her blood, into every part of her. Her cheeks felt hot, her breasts tender, her legs weak.

“What was it, Yankee? Tell me.”

Don’t tell him. You can’t tell him. Now or ever. It will only make things worse.

“Sex,” she said, summoning every ounce of strength she had just to keep her voice steady.

He let a breath out slowly. “Just sex? That’s all?”

She looked away and made a gesture, casual and dismissive. “Maybe not
all
. You needed someone. I understood that. And...I guess I was there.”

“And that’s it? You really think I didn’t care whose bed I hopped into?” There was an angry edge to his voice.

She snapped her gaze back to him. “I’m not saying that. I just meant that I was what you needed then. You had all this...this pent-up adrenaline, maybe. And maybe you needed to forget what you’d just seen. And done.”

He snorted. “When you say it like that, I sound like a selfish son of a bitch, don’t I? Was it really so one-sided?” He slid his hands up her arms and over her shoulders to curve around the sides of her neck. “Was there really nothing in it for you?”

It took all her willpower to keep from closing her eyes. But willpower couldn’t stop her reflexive swallow, couldn’t keep him from feeling it, from hearing it. His eyes burned into hers. Tension seemed to hum in the air between them.

“Was it all one-sided, Yankee?”

“No,” she whispered. “Of course it wasn’t.”

“You always seemed to welcome me when I came to you. Was I wrong about that?”

Aching and miserable, she shook her head. “No. You weren’t wrong.”

“Okay, so you know why I wanted you, or at least you think you do. My question is, why did you want me?”

It struck her then that there was something in his voice. Something in his face. Was it...
vulnerability
? Her heart wanted—yearned—to respond to it, to go into his arms, thoughtlessly, joyously, heedlessly, the way she’d always done before.

Before Laila. Oh, so long ago!

But her body remembered.
Oh, God, yes.

She had closed her eyes. Now she opened them and pulled away from him, putting up her hands to hold her hair back from her face. Her hands felt cool against her hot cheeks. “What does it matter now? That was the past. This is
now
. I have to figure out what to do.”

“What to do about—”

“About
you
, Hunt.” He tried to inject another exclamation, but she spoke over it, rapidly, her voice rising dangerously, on the edge of control. “We were happy, Laila and I. We
were
. Then you came back from the dead, and everything turned upside down. Then you were dead again. And now you’re alive, and you’re
here
. I’m still not sure what you want or what you expect or how you’re going to fit into our lives. Never mind what we did or didn’t mean to each other back
then
, it’s what happens next I’m concerned about. So tell me, Hunt. What is
next
? What do you want?”

“What do I
want
?”

He folded his arms across his chest, making her aware—suddenly, vividly—of the way his muscles bulged, in his arms and beneath the formfitting black knit shirt. Making her remember that he’d seemed to her, the first time she’d laid eyes on him, like some sort of superhuman being, part man, part machine.

It was only later she’d learned how human he really was.

His voice went soft. “Well, for starters, I want to see my daughter.”

My daughter!

Fighting for calm against the cold rise of panic inside her chest, she said evenly, “Yes, of course. And she will be thrilled to see you. And after that, what?”

“What do you mean,
what
?” Although his folded-arms stance hadn’t changed, it somehow seemed defensive now.

“I mean, what happens after you’ve seen her? Are you planning on staying a few hours? A few days? A week? Then you’ll leave again for...? How long this time? A few weeks? A few months? A few
years
? I can’t let you do that to her, Hunt. Not again. Not this time. She’s not five years old anymore. She’s old enough to ask questions. To want answers. She wants to know about her daddy. What do I tell her? Do you know how many times I’ve had to lie to her about her daddy? Do you know how hard it is—” Her voice broke at last, and she turned blindly toward the door, needing to escape the tension, needing to put distance between herself and its source, needing to regain control of her emotions.

The rain had stopped. The sun had come out, and steam was rising from the gravelly dirt driveway. The storm’s coolness was yielding once more to the late-afternoon heat. She could have walked out of the barn, down the lane, back to the villa.

She didn’t. What would be the point? He would only follow her, and she certainly wasn’t going to outrun him. The thought was so ludicrous it almost—
almost
—made her smile. No, he was here, and she was going to have to deal with him. Sometime.

Once again, she felt him come behind her, felt his heat, his size, his strength. Overwhelming, almost. She drew her defenses around her like armor.

Which he pierced with a whisper. “Yancy, I’m sorry. I truly am.”

Chapter 13

S
he didn’t reply.

Her shoulders looked tense, implacable. But her hair, the ends curling just above them, looked soft and slightly damp. He longed to touch it and her neck beneath. He knew how her neck would feel in his hand—warm, vibrant, strong, but slender and strangely vulnerable, too. The urge was so strong he actually lifted his hand, then curled his fingers into his palm to resist it.

“I guess we have a lot to talk about,” he said.

“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “But not now. Please? I need—” She gave a small, liquid-sounding laugh. “I’m still getting used to the idea that you aren’t dead. I’d like to at least take a shower before we—”

His resolve shattered. He put his hand on her shoulder and gently turned her, and after a moment’s resistance, she came into his arms while he wrapped them around her and held her close. Her arms came around his waist and her head lay against his chest. He felt her tremble just slightly and rested his cheek on the top of her head, while something grew heavy inside his chest.

What do you want?

The question terrified him as nothing he’d faced during combat missions had ever done. Maybe because he didn’t know the answer? Or maybe he did know, and it was the answer that terrified him.

Images, feelings, memories...they whirled through his mind like the leaves he used to rake up from the front yard of the house he’d grown up in, picked up and scattered and swirled by an autumn dust devil.

Yancy’s body, warm and musky with sleep, her voice murmuring a question, then laughter smothered against his neck...

Big brown eyes, going shiny with recognition when he’d see her somewhere in the daylight, then softening with secret knowledge...

Her voice, husky and soft, with her usual greeting, “Hello again, soldier.”

A little girl with tear tracks in the dust on her cheeks, sleeping with her head on the flank of a growling mother dog...

A little hand clutching his as though her life depended on it, frightened eyes lifted up to his...

The same little girl lifting her arms to Yancy, lamplight turning her nightmare tears to gold...

Or leaping with baby goats in a farmer’s field, laughing as she called out, “Mom, did you see me?”

Then...wind chimes on his mother’s porch...the smell of hay and barns and kittens, and his father’s tobacco...

The endless prairie sky, the hills wavy with grain or dotted with cattle, the distant horizons and the restlessness in his soul that felt like an itch he couldn’t scratch...

The sadness in his parents’ eyes when he’d said goodbye.

All of those memories and a hundred more swamped his thoughts as he stood in the sunlit doorway of another barn with a woman in his arms. A woman he felt he’d known for half his life yet didn’t know at all.

Yancy.

What do I want?

He wanted the woman, Yancy, the way he’d always wanted her. Ready for him when he needed her, demanding nothing for herself. Didn’t he? And yet the thought made him feel strangely bereft.

He wanted the child, Laila.
His
child. Wanted her needing him, looking to him for safety and protection. Didn’t he? And yet the thought made his insides quiver with fear.

He couldn’t have one without the other. He knew that. And yet the circumstances for both of them had changed so drastically. He couldn’t have them the way he once had, without cost, without commitment. And commitment was the way of life he’d once run from as if his soul’s survival depended on it.

Wasn’t it?

The way he saw it, he couldn’t have Yancy and Laila in his life without sacrificing the freedom he’d given up so much for already. The freedom he needed the way he needed air to breathe. How could he reconcile those two and be happy?

It seemed impossible.

It was then that she lifted her head and turned her face to his, and without thought he closed his eyes and lowered his mouth to find hers unerringly. Found her lips cool and moist and tasting slightly of tears. He’d never known her to cry before. Never.

Something lurched dangerously inside his chest, and it seemed as if his world tilted on its axis. He tightened his arms around her and took what she offered, took her mouth like a lifeline, while everything in him cried out in denial.

No! I didn’t want this. I didn’t come here for this.

Didn’t want...what, Grainger? It’s only sex, after all.

She’d said it.
Sex.
That was all it was. It always had been. Whenever he’d needed her, wanted her, she’d been there, ready and willing to accommodate him. Even the last time he’d come here, only a few weeks ago, when he’d had her in his arms and known he could have taken her with very little effort, that was what it had been about:
sex
. Physical desire. Lust, pure and simple. Uncomplicated.

Of course it was.

There was something like desperation in the way he took her mouth, in the thundering hunger that all but overwhelmed him. He knew she must have felt it, too, from the way she opened to him, from the little whimpers of desire that came from her mouth into his, the tremors in her body, all the things he remembered of her responses to him. His body ached with the need to be inside her. It was such a familiar feeling, and somewhere in the instinctive part of his mind were cries of joyful recognition.

Yes! Oh, yes, I’ve missed this! I’ve needed this! I want this!

Touch her—yes, there! Make the barriers go away. Make her hot and wet and ready for you!

His hands moved, without guidance from his clamoring thoughts, it seemed. They moved upward over her back, flattened across her shoulder blades, curved over the rounds of her shoulders and gripped hard, with an effort that made his muscles quiver and the voices in his head scream in protest.

No! What are you doing? Don’t stop, you idiot! You want this!

No. He didn’t.

The realization left him chilled and a little sick. This wasn’t what he wanted. At least, not
all
he wanted. He’d never been good at self-delusion, and this new awareness wasn’t something he could hide from. His feelings for Yancy Malone had changed. He didn’t know what to call it, what he felt for her, but it was more than just sex. That much he knew. What he didn’t know was what he was going to do about it.

Especially since for her, apparently, it was just sex. She’d told him so.

He laid his hand over her cheek and ear and pushed his fingers into her soft, damp hair. He held her head against his chest while he lifted his head and stared up into the old barn’s cobwebby shadows. For one of the few—perhaps the only—times in his life, Hunt Grainger had no idea what he was going to do.

* * *

What was it she felt, with her head laid against his beating heart, her own heart hammering in her throat? Pain, yes. Pain in her chest that made tears seep between her lashes and her breath shudder. Relief? She felt she
should
be relieved that he’d pulled back—pulled them both back—from the brink. But what she felt instead was something like grief. Grief, because what she wanted so badly she knew she could never have.

She loved him. She couldn’t deny it any longer. She knew that Laila loved him, too, on some instinctive level, without even knowing he was the father she so desperately wanted.

But Hunt was Hunt, and neither she nor Laila would ever be enough to hold him. He would always have other priorities. He could never be counted on.

Sam had said it.

Can’t change who you are.

Nobody—not you or me or that little girl down there—is ever gonna change him. Best you remember that.

Oh, but how good it felt to be wrapped snugly in his arms, his heart thumping in her ear and his hand holding her head nestled there against his chest.
How I’ve wanted this. How good this feels.

He’d held her like this before. Just like this, gently, almost...tenderly. Without urgency or passion. Just...held her. Right after the bombing of the WNN offices in Kabul. Had anyone else ever held her like this? Her mother or father, maybe, when she was very small, but if so, she didn’t remember it.

The pain inside became an ache that threatened to undo her, a longing so vast it would swamp her pride and common sense, all her defenses, like so many rowboats in a hurricane. If she didn’t pull back now. She had to stop this. Now.

Somehow, she found the strength to lift her head and take a step back, and her whole body quivered in protest. His hands slipped down along her arms and she drew her hands free and used them to finger-comb her hair back from her cheeks. Her hot cheeks, which she hoped weren’t flaming brightly enough to be noticeable in the barn’s dim light.

“Laila will be home any minute,” she said. “I should—”

“Of course,” he said. “My car—”

“You’ll want to come up to the villa, I guess. Meet—”

“Yes. Sure. Are you—” His grin was crooked. “It seemed like you were heading that way, when I—”

“Yes. I am. I was, uh—”

“Can I give you a lift?”

The whole conversation, spoken in breathless fragments, seemed ludicrous in the context of what had just happened, the circumstances, the emotions simmering just beneath the surface. For her, at least. And probably for him, too. Yes, almost certainly for him, too. He was
here
, after all, barely hours after his own faked death on the other side of the world. That had to mean something.

She didn’t doubt Laila was important to him. Of course she was. She was his
child
. Right now, she might even be the most important thing.

And I? Am I important to him?

Do I want to be?

The answer to that, she told herself, was
no
! Bad enough she loved him. If he loved her, that would only make things worse. Because it wouldn’t change anything. He would still have his job, his duty, his next mission, all of which would always be a higher priority for him than she was, or even his child. He could never be counted on. He would always let her down. Let
Laila
down.

No, she didn’t want to love Hunt Grainger. She didn’t want Laila to love him, either. But she did. They both did. And that was enough to have to deal with. More than enough.

She didn’t want to get into a car with him. She didn’t want to be close to him, not there or anywhere. More than anything she wanted to walk back to the villa, walk slowly, breathing in air that had no trace of him in it. She wanted to be far away from him so her mind might have time to clear and her emotions settle.

“Might as well,” she said, then glanced at him. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounds. I just mean, I probably should go with you, to introduce you to everyone.”

Introduce him? As what? Who do I tell them he is?

Sam knew already, in the mysterious way he had of seeming to know everything about everyone. But would he have shared that knowledge with anyone else? Josie, for example. Or Sage? It didn’t seem likely he’d have told anyone else, but the important thing was that
Laila
didn’t know. And for the time being, it should stay that way. Of course, at some point it would become necessary to tell Laila her beloved Akaa Hunt was actually her father. When the time came, who would tell her? Would it be Hunt, or would that impossible task fall on Yancy—her mother? Or would they tell her together, she and Hunt?

The thought made her feel sick to her stomach.

Somehow, they were walking down the lane, the ground still wet, puddles soaking rapidly into the parched earth. Far away in the north, thunder grumbled. In a few more minutes the sun would slip behind the mountain to the west. Evenings were long in June Canyon.

They walked without speaking, then both spoke at once.

“You said—”

“She’ll be—”

Yancy gave a short laugh and said, “You first.”

His laugh was an echo of hers. “You said Laila was going to be home soon. I was just wondering where she is.”

“She went with Josie to the Native American Center. She’s learning the language of the Tubatulabal people. She seems to have a gift for languages.”

“Ah.” His smile tilted sideways. “I guess she gets that from me.”

She glanced at him and felt a heaviness come unexpectedly to settle in her chest. She thought how much smaller he seemed to her now, though not in a way that diminished him. Not at all. She thought it might be just that, without his military armor or Afghan robes, he had lost that air of authority, that arrogance—or perhaps it was only supreme self-confidence. Without it he no longer seemed invincible.

She wondered whether she was glad about that or sorry.

As they reached the end of the lane where Hunt had left his car, Yancy could hear the growl of a four-wheel-drive engine. A moment later, Josie’s SUV appeared at the top of the wash like a whale sounding. It sorted itself out and came on toward them, and Yancy watched it with an inexplicable sense of dread. Though she didn’t look at him, the tension in the man beside her seemed almost audible, like a hum just beyond hearing.

Josie pulled her SUV in behind Hunt’s car and stopped. For a moment, silence hung in the air, dense as humidity. Then Hunt was moving toward the SUV, moving slowly, with his arms hanging loose at his sides. Through a humming in her ears, Yancy heard him say something. The passenger door opened and Laila slid out, her sandals reaching for the ground. She stood motionless, frowning, hanging on to the door for support almost, Yancy thought, like a shy child clinging to her mother’s skirts.

Of course, she thought.
She doesn’t recognize him. She’s never seen him without a beard.

Hunt spoke again. And it was as if a floodlight had been switched on in Laila’s face, transforming it in an instant from suspicion to sheer joy. She hurled herself at Hunt and was swept up into his arms.

Yancy put her hand over her mouth, knowing how easily the laughter forming in her throat could become a sob. Her chest was heavy with pain.
Oh, God,
she thought,
he’s going to break her heart
.
And I can’t do anything to stop it.