Shattered (9 page)

“Makes sense. Besides, it’s not as if you were going to find someone else while you were deployed.”

Another silence.

Even longer than the others.

“Oh, wow. You did, didn’t you?”

Okay, so it was prying. But Rachel had brought the subject up.

“I fell in love.” Rachel dragged a hand through her shoulder-length hair she usually wore in a braid, but had left loose for tonight’s dinner party. “For, I realized, the first time in my life. It was both the best and worst time of my life.”

“Why? Was he married, too?”

“No.” She shook her head. “He’s an unrelentingly honorable man. Unlike me, he never would have committed adultery.”

“Excuse me. But sleeping with a married woman doesn’t exactly make him a saint,” Kirby pointed out. “Not that I want to sound at all judgmental, because you’d already said your marriage was essentially over, but . . .”

“He didn’t know I was married.”

“What?”

“He didn’t know,” Rachel repeated. “Because I didn’t tell him.”

Since she hadn’t exactly been a font of personal information these past months, Kirby could believe she’d kept her secret from her love. And understand why.

“Because you wanted him,” she guessed. “And you knew your husband, who might be a husband in name only by that time, would’ve presented an obstacle.”

“A huge one.” Another sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe Michael—that was his name—would have slept with me, anyway, but I didn’t want to risk him feeling the need to be noble. Later, after we’d fallen in love, I kept trying to tell him, but I was a coward.”

“There’s not a cowardly cell in your body.”

“We’re all afraid of different things,” Rachel said. “Anyway, I’d just decided to tell him when I received word my father had been diagnosed with cancer.”

This was not where Kirby had expected the story to be headed. “I’m sorry.”

“So was I. Fortunately, he didn’t die. But it was tough going for a long while. The doctors had originally given him a year, maybe two, tops, to live.

“Perhaps it was because I was far from home, working in an unbelievably stressful environment after I’d moved to the Fifth, and was already feeling guilty about being unfaithful, plus desperately wanting to be Daddy’s ‘good girl’ so he wouldn’t have anything to worry about but getting well, but I couldn’t see how I could possibly get a divorce right then.”

“But you were in love.”

“Yeah. I was. Deeply. Thoroughly. But as I said, maybe Dad’s diagnosis was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, but the night I found out, I finally admitted to Michael that I was married.”

“How did he take that little bombshell?”

“He was surprised, of course. But since he’d already told me that he loved me, and he was not the kind of man to treat such feelings lightly, I suspect we might have been able to move past it. If I hadn’t also told him that when I got back to the States, I was going to try to repair my marriage.”

“Wow,” Kirby said again. “And here I was just thinking tonight at dinner how you don’t do drama.”

“You know that volcano looming over the village?”

“It’d be hard to miss, since it’s been steaming ever since I arrived down here.” Ixtab, named for the Mayan goddess of sacrifice, also created the most fabulously red sunsets Kirby had ever seen.

“Well, I suppose that’s pretty much how I handle emotions. I keep them all bottled up, then eventually the cork blows, and pow!”

“And it blew with Michael?”

“Sky-high.” Another swipe of her hand through her hair. “Since then I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and have come to the conclusion that the unpalatable but cold, hard truth was that I put off telling Michael about my marriage because our affair scared me.”

Kirby had never seen Rachel afraid of anything. But she could understand this reasoning. “Because you felt out of control for the first time in your life.”

“More than the first time I had to slice into a cadaver in gross anatomy class,” Rachel admitted. “Although I didn’t love my husband, our problems—not just his betrayal, but the fact that he’d never taken my work seriously—had hurt me. But worse, it had left me questioning my own judgment. I didn’t want to go through that ever again.”

She rubbed a hand against her chest in an unconscious gesture that suggested it still hurt to talk about it. Even after all these years.

“But after a night lying awake thinking about everything Michael had ever said to me, after all we’d shared, I knew that he was a man I could trust implicitly. I’d also come to my senses enough to realize Dad would never want me to be miserable on his account. But then a scud hit a group of our tents just as I was about to go try to mend things.”

“You’re kidding.” At least she’d managed something besides “wow.”

“I wish I were. They say I died, but I don’t remember that.”

“So you didn’t see any white tunnel of light? Lots of relatives hanging around, welcoming you to green pastures?”

“No near-death experience. Michael saved my life.” Her voice caught. “I’d already given him my heart. But that day he literally held it in his hands.”

As amazing as Kirby found Rachel’s story, she couldn’t help thinking how it so echoed her own unhappy experience with Shane.

Why the hell hadn’t she insisted they talk their situation out? Maybe not while he’d been in Landstuhl. But later, once he’d been transferred to Walter Reed and had had more time to adjust to the loss of his leg.

But no. She’d allowed herself to walk away.

The same as she’d done the first time after he’d flown off to Afghanistan.

“Anyway,” Rachel continued, “after emergency surgery, I was airlifted to Germany.”

“I’ve been to Landstuhl,” Kirby said.

“They do amazing work there,” Rachel said. “After a few weeks, I was sent back to the States, where my marriage finally broke up.”

“What happened with Michael?”

“Let’s say the window of opportunity had passed.”

“He found someone else?”

“In a way. It’s complicated. . . . Damn!”

The conversation came to an abrupt end as they turned a corner, their headlights shining onto the green-and-brown-camouflage-painted Toyota pickup parked sideways, effectively blocking the road.

Somersett, South Carolina

Wouldn’t it be damn ironic, Shane Garrett thought, if he were to survive a helicopter crash in Afghanistan that had cost him his leg, only to end up dying of humiliation back here in the States?

“It’s okay,” the woman in whose bed he was dying assured him. “It happens to everyone.”

“Not to me.”

Hell. He hadn’t really wanted to go on this blind date in the first place. After all, after all those months at Walter Reed and then in rehab, he’d gotten his life back on track. And it was a good life. All things considered.

His older brother, who’d taken over the day-to-day running of the family’s Oregon ranch, had offered him a job. But while he liked being a cowboy on the rodeo circuit, Shane had never been all that jazzed about cows. Unless they were served up on a plate as bloody T-bones with crunchy steak fries.

Which is how he’d ended up here, in South Carolina, where—thanks to his former Navy JAG service—he picked up extra bucks by giving an occasional lecture on military law at the Admiral Somersett Military Academy. He also taught flying and spent time hanging with two guys whom he felt closer to than his own blood brother.

The problem was, more and more he’d realized that he was becoming the odd man out. Not because of his injury, which, thanks to a lot of hard work and way-cool twenty-first-century technology, he’d overcome pretty damn well. If he did say so himself. But the reason the dynamics of the three men had changed since they’d gotten back to the States was because Shane was the only single guy left.

After that goatfuck in Afghanistan, Zach Tremayne had come back home and married a woman he’d known most of his life. Sabrina Swann was beautiful, smart as a whip, and loaded. Not that Zach had ever cared about money. And, to Sabrina’s credit, she never flaunted her wealth and was working damn hard on her goal of turning her family home and tea plantation into an inn.

Meanwhile, Quinn McKade, who continued to write his military novels while working with Zach at Phoenix Team—a high-risk international security company based on nearby Swann Island—had gone and gotten himself engaged to an FBI agent who was now also working with the team.

Apparently, the two women had gotten together with another friend, the wife of the Swann Island sheriff, and decided that what Shane’s life lacked was female companionship. When he’d protested that he really wasn’t interested in a relationship, his best friends had suggested that he was getting ahead of himself.

“We’re not talking about registering for flatware, flyboy,” Zach had told him, over pints of Guinness at the Black Swan pub. “We’re talking about getting laid.”

“First of all, the fact that you would ever use the term ‘flatware’ in a sentence proves that Sabrina has domesticated you to a purely pitiful state,” Shane complained. He’d bet dollars to Krispy Kremes that John Wayne never would’ve used that girly word.

“Sticks and stones.” Zach wagged a dark brow and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth to get rid of the ale-foam mustache. “Don’t knock domestication until you’ve tried it,” he said. “At least I know I’m going to have a sweet-smelling, sexy woman in my bed tonight.”

“Believe it or not, frog boy,” Shane countered, snagging a sweet-potato French fry from the basket in the middle of the table, “not every guy goes through life with sex on the brain every other minute.”

“Which, if it’s true, just shows that some guys need to prioritize,” McKade said.

Shane cursed as the two men exchanged fucking satisfied grins and lifted their glasses to each other.

“How long has it been since you’ve had sex?” Zach asked.

“Not that long.” Hell, he’d had it in the shower this morning, but he wasn’t prepared to share that in public.

“Since that therapist in D.C.?”

“She wasn’t my therapist.”

His therapist had been a sadistic, muscle-bound Valkyrie named Helga, who’d definitely bought into the “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” school of physical rehabilitation. Still, he knew he owed her big time. Without her, he might have gone through life as a helpless, one-legged gimp.

“She was my case manager in the Warrior Transition Unit.”

Made of combat-experienced officers and NCOs, the brigade had been established to provide command and control, primary care, and case management for service members suffering wounds during deployment in the war on terror.

The goal was to promote said warriors’ timely return to the force or transition to civilian life.

Apparently, his case manager took a hands-on approach to the situation, because his last night he’d been in D.C., she’d shown up at his apartment with a bottle of champagne, a pack of condoms, a Barry White CD and a hot-to-trot, skintight, crotch-length nurse’s costume with thigh-high white lace stockings from Fred-rick’s of Hollywood.

By the time the sun had come up the next morning, Shane no longer worried about his ability to have sex as energetically and physically as he’d had before the crash. And he’d always be grateful for the fortysomething divorced lieutenant’s generosity of spirit.

But the problem was, although he now had proof that all his important guy parts were in full working order, he’d yet to meet any woman who’d stirred him up enough to make the effort of dating—the movies, the dinners, the long getting-to-know you conversations—worthwhile.

Maybe it was due to having come so close to dying, but he no longer wanted to settle for the no-strings sex he’d once enjoyed.

Because he genuinely liked the matchmaking females, and because both Zach and Quinn had urged him to go along with the program so their women would get off their backs about his lack of love life, Shane had caved in and called the county prosecutor that the ladies had met at their Wednesday-night book group.

Gwyneth Giles was a tall, statuesque redhead whose body was nearly as ripped as his own, though not in any bulked-up steroidal way. The way the black silk dress clung to her magnificently toned body would probably have most guys panting before they’d made it through the fried calamari appetizers.

Although it had cost her a few points when Sabrina had mentioned she’d not only been Miss Buccaneer Days, but also first runner-up to Miss South Carolina while in college, Gwyneth didn’t fit his admittedly prejudiced stereotype.

Just the opposite. It turned out she’d used the beauty contestant scholarship money to attend law school, and now spent her days putting bad guys behind bars. Her conviction rate was not only the highest in the Somersett District Attorney’s office, it was among the highest in the state, and although she’d just turned thirty-five, there was already talk of her being appointed to a federal judgeship.

So, she was gorgeous, intelligent, and smelled damn good, too.

Which was why, when she’d invited him back to her place for a nightcap, he’d decided, What the hell, only a saint or a madman would turn her down. Shane had been called crazy a few times in his life, most often by superior officers who complained about a few of his more daredevil flying stunts, but he’d always known the verbal reprimand was more for show.

And despite having been an altar boy at All Saints back in Oregon, he’d certainly never been bucking for sainthood.

After hanging her coat and his leather jacket cozily side by side in the front closet of the harbor-front town house, she’d grabbed hold of his hair, brought his head down to hers and gave him a gilt-edged, wet, open-mouthed invitation.

Looking back on it, Shane knew that’s when he should’ve just called it a night.

Instead, he’d cupped her very fine butt and waited with fatalistic curiosity for his body to respond to her amazingly talented lips.

It didn’t.

Seeming unfazed by his lack of response, she took him by the hand.

“Do you have any trouble with stairs?” she asked, revealing that she’d been warned about his injury.

Which perversely made him determined to forge on.

“No,” he assured her. “I’m good to go.” And determined to end the evening with a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner over her bed.

She smiled. Skimmed a look from the top of his head down to his wedge-heeled cowboy boots, then back up again. “Oh, I’d say you’re a lot better than good, darlin’.”

Twining her fingers with his, she led him up the stairs to the second floor and down a short hall to her bedroom.

Once again proving the problem with stereotyping, the room was not what he would have expected from the no-nonsense, law-and-order prosecutor image she showed to the world. It was pretty and feminine and smelled of flowers. It was the kind of room that a man would only feel comfortable in if invited.

Which he’d definitely been.

She kicked off her black alligator heels, then reached behind her back and lowered the zipper on her dress. The silk slid down her body to pool in a black puddle at her bare feet.

Her bra was the same color as her dress, and sheer, revealing taut, pebbled nipples.

For some weird reason, Shane’s mind suddenly zapped back to Iraq. Even weirder yet was the way the seemingly safe memory of Kirby’s practical white cotton bra did what that earlier hot kiss couldn’t achieve.

It made him hard.

Dragging his mind from that trailer in Baghdad, he realized Gwyneth was waiting for him to say something.

“Nice,” he obliged. Then, deciding that probably wasn’t expansive enough, added “and really, really hot.”

Obviously pleased, she unhooked the bra and let it fall to the floor with the dress. She was now down to a pair of black panties. “Why don’t you take your pants off and stay awhile?” she suggested.

Shane stripped out of his own clothes as she walked around the room, lighting white candles. The mattress dipped as he sat on the bed and unfastened his prosthesis.

She tilted her auburn head, studying it for a moment with understandable curiosity. “Wow. It looks real.”

“It’s pretty close,” he said, not wanting to kill the mood by getting into specifics about it being an experimental model using computer chips, Bluetooth technology, myoelectric impulse, and transplanted nerves to create a closed loop between his brain and his leg. Which essentially made it as close as technology could manage to a real leg. And this one, which he liked to think of as his “formal” leg, and while not quite as maneuverable as the others he’d been given, even resembled actual human flesh.

“Well, I’m impressed.”

But not overly intrigued, which suggested she wasn’t turning out to be one of those “devotees” some of the other guys in rehab had told him about: women who got off on having sex with amputees.

Fortunately, as she pushed him back onto the mattress and began kissing her way down his chest, the sexy prosecutor showed no sign of such kink.

Rather, Gwyneth Giles actually seemed to like him for himself.

And he liked her just fine, too.

Over the next thirty minutes, the sexy prosecutor proved eager and talented and everything a guy could want in a bed partner.

So why the hell was his body betraying him?

The minute she’d curled her long, manicured fingers around him, his erection had softened like a deflated party balloon. And although she gave it her best shot, pulling out every female trick in the book, no amount of coaxing could achieve liftoff.

Shane tried telling himself his problem was only because this was his first time with a civilian. Although his leg might be part Robo-Cop, part Bionic Man, the rest of him, including his brain, was totally human. Totally guy.

Maybe it was the beer he’d had with dinner.

Which didn’t make sense, since it was only a single bottle of Sam Adams, and he’d had more alcohol polishing off that bottle of Korbel with his case manager and hadn’t any problems. But he’d gone into that more as an experiment, to get back into the swing of things, so to speak.

Even as he worked his way through a litany of possible excuses, as that hot flashback of Kirby in her white bra danced seductively in his mind, Shane had the nagging feeling that his inability to perform had a whole lot to do with the fact that the sexy prosecutor who’d left a red lipstick brand on his dick wasn’t a certain sweet-tasting Army captain.

Which was when Shane realized, with full certainty, that he was well and truly screwed.