Serving the Soldier - Part 2 (An Alpha Military Romance) (2 page)

From there, I meandered through the den/sitting room/library, where the huge flat screen TV was bordered by shelves of books. In a cabinet under the television, I found a number of DVDs, some of them X-rated. After a quick glance at the titles, I quickly put them back exactly the way I had found them.

Leaving the den, I ventured upstairs. Although Jax had asked me not to go into his office, my curiosity got the best of me. The door was open, so it’s not like there was anything top secret in there. Besides, he wouldn’t know I had snooped, would he?

Just to be sure I wasn’t tempted to touch anything, I shoved my hands in my jeans pockets and entered his office. I just wanted to look. This room, as opposed to any other room in the house, had more personality than the others. Other than some framed pieces of regional art work, no personal items hung on the walls throughout the rest of the house. In here though, it was different.

On the walls hung a variety of framed photographs. With my hands still in my pockets, I moved from wall to wall, gazing at photographs of Jax and his buddies in a variety of locations. In each photo, he wore combat fatigues. One looked like it was taken on a beach, the other in the desert, and yet still another in a jungle. There weren’t many photos of him in civilian clothes, nor did I see any photographs of him with anyone I would have assumed was family.

The room had an odd collection of modern items as well as what looked to be antiques, and I wondered about his family history. Had he grown up in this house? Was it his? Did it belong to a friend or acquaintance and he was just staying here to recuperate? Perhaps it belonged to a family member, but then again, with no family photographs… it was like the guy didn’t have a history. I knew he had to come from somewhere, but if he did, it certainly wasn’t acknowledged on these walls.

It looked like the guys in his special ops unit were his family. I studied one photograph which looked like it had been taken rather recently and wondered if it was Afghanistan. I saw Michael in the photo, as well as several other guys, wondering if they were the men Michael had been talking about at the dinner table last evening. Which one of them was dead? Which one of them had survived yet another combat tour and then come home only to be murdered, or at least die under suspicious circumstances?

After I had gazed my fill at photographs on the wall, I ventured behind the large oak desk situated in front of a window that looked out over the backyard and the pool. On the desk, I saw a variety of papers, envelopes, and memo pads. A rather haphazard stack of papers was piled on one side of the desk. Some looked like bank statements. A lined and blank yellow memo pad lay on top of the stack. However, a portion of what I assumed was a bank statement peeked out from beneath the pad and I leaned over to get a better look while scolding myself for being so nosy at the same time. It was none of my business how much money Jax had, and his bank account was certainly none of—

What the hell? My eyes widened, and I stared, blinked, then looked at the number again. Wait, that wasn’t thousands of dollars or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, but millions… no, it had another zero.
Billions!
How in the hell did a soldier earn that kind of money? They didn’t. Not even special ops. Not even with hazard duty or combat pay. Even a mercenary would have trouble amassing that kind of fortune.

My only conclusion was that Jax was rich, and I mean Old Money rich.
Bloody
rich. This house was probably his. I stood in stunned dismay. Sure, some of my clients were pretty well-off, but not like this. I resisted the urge to look through some of the papers, knowing that that would go way beyond acceptable, and quickly forced myself from behind the desk and out of the office.

I made my way back to my own room and closed the door. I sat down on the bed, staring out the window, frowning. Why in heaven’s name would someone with access to billions of dollars risk life and limb to be a member of a special ops squadron?

I couldn’t even imagine that kind of money. For several moments, I struggled with feelings of jealousy and envy. Here I was, struggling paycheck to paycheck to get by, and here was a guy who had more money than I could even imagine,
ever,
and it was just sitting there while he was off at war getting blown up. Why?

My curiosity was piqued. That kind of money, if it was old money, came from generations of hard work. While I wasn’t normally a snoop, I was definitely intrigued, and I definitely decided that I needed to find out more about Jax Andrews. Maybe this week I could go down to the local library and do some research on Hilton Head, or maybe even this property and Jax himself without him finding out. It was either that or come right out and ask him, and that certainly wouldn’t be appropriate.

After all, I was just his nurse. I wasn’t his girlfriend, I wasn’t a relative, and I really had no business digging into his background or his history. What would I accomplish doing that? Nothing really, other than to assuage my burgeoning interest and curiosity, not that I would act on it. My job might last a couple of weeks, maybe a week or two after that, but when Jax received the all clear from his doctor, I would be discharged and moving on to another client or two, back to my ‘regular’ routine.

It didn’t really matter who Jax Andrews was. Well, it kind of did, especially if he was into something illegal, but I doubted that. Everything about his background and his military career indicated an upstanding, patriotic, fiercely loyal and honest individual. Then again, what did I know? Still, it made me wonder about him.

Had he ever been married? If he had, did he have kids somewhere? Did it matter? No. Then again, once I got curious about something, I had a bad habit of gnawing on it like a dog gnawing on a bone. Besides, other than scolding Jax about what he was supposed to do and what he wasn’t, and doing a little cooking, perhaps some cleaning, and helping a little with rehab, what else do I have to do?

I decided a little exploring wouldn’t hurt. I wasn’t going to dig too deep, but just enough to amuse me, keep me occupied, and for heaven’s sake, keep my mind off his body and every attractive thing about it.

Later that afternoon, I sat down at the kitchen table, working out some kind of a menu. I don’t think Jax would care what I fixed, but I was the type of person who liked to know what’s on the menu not only today, but tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Actually, I had gotten used to this method of meal planning and preparation because of my work.

If I didn’t have an evening shift or a live-in job, I never really felt much like cooking by the time I got home from a long day’s work. Because of that, I tended to hit a drive-thru, but I got tired of that fairly quickly and missed the foods I had grown up with. I decided after that that on one of my days off, I would spend the day planning my entrées for the week, shopping, and preparing them. After they were prepared, I portioned them into serving sizes in plastic containers and then put them in the freezer.

Simple and easy. In the morning before I left for work, I took one out of the freezer and put it in the fridge. By the time I got home, I could nuke it, fix a salad or a side and it was done. Quick, efficient, and healthy.

So there I sat at the wooden kitchen table in one of the cushioned chairs, working on menu ideas for the foods I had brought home and put away from the store just that morning. Suddenly, a shadow crossed over my paper and I glanced up, startled.

“Will you please stop doing that?” I exclaimed, one hand over my pounding heart, the other clasped over my mouth.

“Doing what?”

I stared. I couldn’t help it. Jax was standing next to the kitchen table, again completely naked. As a matter of fact, his dick was probably no more than twelve inches away, on a direct level to my eyes. In response to my stare, it moved. I shook my head and glanced up, scowling. “Must you always run around naked?”

He shrugged. “No, but I do rather enjoy it, especially when it gets your attention.”

I began to sputter a reply, to deny such an accusation, but I would be preaching to the choir. The plain truth of the matter was that I
was
fascinated, not only by his penis, but by his entire body. If I didn’t feel so self-conscious, I probably could’ve spent hours admiring every contour of his body; the way his muscles rippled when he moved, the way his transverse obliques hugged his rib cage, and the slight bulge of the transverse abdominus muscles where they pulled in his lower abdomen from his hips down to his—

“Okay, I won’t offend your feminine sensibilities,” he said. He turned and walked toward the kitchen sink.

I could only stare now at his butt, his gluteus maximus in all its glory. From his narrow waist upward I watched the muscles of his back ripple as he reached up into the cupboard to retrieve a glass. I ogled the broad shoulders, well-defined delts, the way his triceps made a little knot when he straightened his arms. His legs were just as attractive, his thighs perfectly formed, strong, and thickly muscled. I saw the obvious indentation where his calf muscle or gastrocnemius inserted into the top of the Achilles’ tendon. Was there no aspect of this guy’s body that wasn’t perfectly formed? Oh, I’m not talking about the scars, those were superficial, but the musculature beneath was so incredibly admirable that I—

“Are you staring at my butt now?”

I glanced from his buttocks and legs back up to his head just as he turned around, grinning. He was incorrigible! Again I shook my head. “Okay, you’ve tested me. I’ll admit it. You’re an attractive guy and you have a great body. Now what? Is this how you scared your first nurse out of the house?”

He laughed and casually walked to the refrigerator where he poured himself a glass of orange juice. “You found out about that, did you?”

“Of course I did,” I said. “I needed to know what your care plan instructed since the moment you left the hospital. What did you do to her?”

He downed half the glass, then turned casually but carefully, and leaned against the kitchen counter, crossing his legs, not caring at all that he was fully exposed to me once again. By the time my eyes rose back to his face, I saw his lifted eyebrow. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m sure I’ll get used to it sooner or later.”

“I believe the nurse’s name was Melody,” he began. He took a few more sips of orange juice. “And no, I didn’t prance in front of her naked—”

“Then why are you doing it to me?”

He ignored my question, placing the now empty glass back down on the counter. “I think I intimidated her—”

“I can’t imagine why,” I interrupted.

He said nothing, but merely shrugged before continuing. “I get the fact that I’m not the easiest patient to deal with,” he admitted. “But she was getting to be quite a nag about it. I guess she told her supervisor, and long story short, the supervisor notified my doctor, and then it went back to the nurse, and I got the feeling that she just wasn’t interested.” He pushed himself away from the counter. “She pretty much hid up in her room for the rest of that day. Didn’t come to see how I was doing, didn’t make any food, didn’t say anything about exercising.”

I listened, not interrupting now. This is the most he had spoken about his situation since I’ve gotten here. I knew that some home health care aides and nurses were not particularly suited to the home-based environment, and while they could be perfectly good at their jobs in a hospital or in a healthcare facility, they kind of fell apart when in someone’s home. I couldn’t really understand it because to me, patient care was patient care, and environment didn’t matter. For some, however, it was quite intimidating and scary.

“Anyway, the next morning she was gone.”

That did surprise me. “She left without saying a word?”

He nodded and I frowned. “She just up and left you here by yourself? How long after your discharge from the hospital did this happen?”

He shrugged again. “A couple of days, maybe.”

Now that really pissed me off. If I knew the name of that nurse or the agency she worked for, you could believe that I would be calling them now and reporting her. She had abandoned her patient! That was just not done. If a nurse felt that he or she couldn’t do the job, it was mandatory to always make sure that someone else was on site before they left.

“What are you frowning about?”

I glanced up to find Jax watching me with interest. I schooled my expression. “As nurses, one of our primary duties is to make sure that our patients are taken care of and provided for. To just leave like that… it equates to abandonment.”

“Abandonment?” he asked, his eyebrow lifted again.

I desperately tried to keep my gaze above his waistline as I sought to explain. “Let’s say the shift I’m working at the hospital or the long-term care center is over at two o’clock. The nurse who is supposed to show up at two o’clock is late. I can’t just leave. I have to wait for that nurse, to pass the baton so to speak. If I leave before other nurses arrive, even if my shift is over, I can be charged with abandonment of my patients.”

“Okay, I get that, but this isn’t a hospital or a facility. This is my home. Why would it still apply?”

“The fact that it’s a home scenario is even more important. Regardless of your status or your ability to take care of things on your own, if you’re assigned to certain hours, and nobody has arrived to replace you or to fill in for you, you are not allowed to leave.”

“Even if your shift is over?”

I nodded. “Let me put it this way. One time I was caring for an older woman with Parkinson’s. She needed supervision when she was up and about because she was a fall risk. She spent most of her time lying down in bed watching television. I had a four-hour shift with her in the late afternoon, before her husband came home from work.” I paused and noted that he was listening with apparent interest. “One day, the husband didn’t show up on time like he usually did.”

“So what did you do?”

“I called my supervisor and let her know that the husband hadn’t arrived yet. Nevertheless, I couldn’t just leave the woman by herself because I didn’t know when the husband would arrive home. He might’ve come home five or ten minutes after I left, but what if he had gotten into a car accident? What if something had happened to him and no one showed up for hours?” I shook my head. “My duty requires that I either stay until someone comes to replace me or a family member could be notified to take my place. The only problem with that was the family lived about three hours away and the weather was already bad.”

He didn’t say anything and I continued. “So regardless of the fact that you’re able to ambulate… walk around on your own, and you have all your faculties, and you don’t have dementia, or any cognitive issues, the nurse that just left without contacting anyone or letting her supervisor know, or waiting for a replacement could be constituted as patient abandonment.”

He waved a hand as if it didn’t matter. “I didn’t like her much anyway. Way too snooty for my taste.”

I smiled, but shook my head. “That’s beside the point.” I cast my gaze down to my menu plan and then looked back up at him. “As a matter of fact, if your friend, Michael, hadn’t been here this morning to pick you up and take you to wherever it was you guys went, you were the one going shopping with me.”

He made a face and slowly padded over to the kitchen table. He sat down across from me, frowning. “Are you telling me that you can’t leave me alone for a minute?” He shook his head. “I was by myself for several days before you came.”

I nodded. “Unfortunately, that’s true, but definitely not recommended according to your care plan.”

He scowled. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“No, but you do obviously need some oversight. Do you know how many patients of mine permanently injured themselves because they refused to be compliant to their care plans, or to the advice of their doctors, nurses, and physical therapists?”

“Nope,” he said, apparently unconcerned. He glanced at the papers on the table. “What are you doing?”

“Making a menu plan for the week.”

“Why?”

“Because I like to be prepared,” I said. “I’ll spend this afternoon or evening doing some cooking, and then I’ll separate them into portions. Some can go in the freezer, others in the fridge. Saves time.”

He made a face and then smiled. “Sounds terribly efficient.”

“It is, and it alleviates the need to try and come up with something to fix you for dinner, only to find out you don’t have some of the ingredients.” He stared at me for several moments, until I began to grow uncomfortable. “What?”

“You take your job very seriously, don’t you?”

I made a face this time. “Of course I do! It’s my job!”

He said nothing for a moment, but his next comment took me by surprise.

“Is it also your job to go snooping around people’s houses?”

I sat stunned for a moment, confused. “Snooping? What are you—” then I remembered. Against his direct instructions, I had ventured into his office, and yes, I had snooped, but how did he know? I felt another deep blush rise from the bottom of my throat up into my cheeks. “I didn’t touch anything—”

“No, I don’t believe you did,” he said, still watching me carefully, those chocolate brown eyes boring into mine. I coveted the color of his eyes, and even more so his long, dark eyelashes. They were just damn sexy. Compared to his short-cropped brown hair, mine was downright mousy, but my mother had always told me that my green eyes perfectly matched my sandy brownish-blond hair. Still.

“Then how did you know—?”

“I smelled you.”

Smelled me? My eyes widened. Did I stink? I didn’t wear perfume, and even chose non-scented deodorant and hand lotion because sometimes scents and perfumes bothered my clients.

“You have a natural smell about you, not unpleasant at all, don’t get me wrong. I don’t know if it’s the lingering scent of shampoo or just your particular body scent, but I noticed it in my office.”

The fact that he could smell me was a little embarrassing, but it wasn’t as if he was telling me that I stank of BO. “I apologize, Jax, but I’m just trying to get to know you a little better. I saw the pictures on the wall and wanted to take a peek.”

“And you also lingered over my desk, glancing at my papers, didn’t you?”

For a brief moment, I wondered if he had hidden cameras in the room. How in heaven’s name would he have known that I looked at his financial papers? Just in case there
were
cameras, I supposed there was no denying it, so I didn’t even try. “Yes, I saw a few…” I dropped my head in embarrassment, staring down at the tabletop. He said nothing and I glanced up in curiosity. “Okay, so forgive me for being so blunt, but why is someone as rich as you risking life and limb to be Delta Force and go out on covert and deadly missions in the Middle East?”

He answered simply. “Why are you a nurse?”

“Because I love it—” I stopped and nodded. “Okay, I get it, I think.” He said nothing, but merely nodded and then stood. Once again, I became the lucky recipient of a full body view. This time, I didn’t react, but gave him a slow once-over, just to show him that his nudity didn’t bother me. He wasn’t going to scare me off like he had the other nurse.

I should’ve known better. The minute my gaze landed on his penis, it wiggled again. In a matter of seconds, it began to rise from its nest of curls. My eyes widened. What would he do if I—

“You want me, don’t you?”