Shelter in a Soldier's Arms (9 page)

She wondered if he would ask for details. She didn’t want to talk about the strange men who had come to the house in the middle of the night, or the gun she’d found in her husband’s coat pocket.

But Jeff didn’t ask about that. Instead he said, “When he wouldn’t go straight, you left him?”

“I didn’t have a choice. I filed for divorce. Six months after it was final, he was killed in a car accident.”

“You’ve been on your own ever since.” Again, not a question.

She nodded.

He leaned forward and set his drink on the desk. “You’re strong, Ashley. You’ve more than survived all that life has handed you—you’ve succeeded. Not many people can say that.”

His kind words made her squirm. “I didn’t have a choice. There was Maggie to think of.”

“You named her after your sister.”

“I love them both.” She cleared her throat. “And things are looking up. In eighteen months I’ll have my degree and I’ll be able to get a real accounting job, with good pay. Maggie will be entering kindergarten. A couple of years after that, I’ll be able to afford a town house for us. We’ll be a regular family.”

She was counting the days until that time. She was tired of watching every penny and stretching them until they snapped like rubber bands. She wanted to be able to buy her daughter pretty clothes and occasional dinners out. She wanted to go to the movies every couple of months and maybe even afford a trip to Disneyland.

That would come, she reminded herself. The worst of it was behind her. She would-

“I don’t want you going back to work at Ritter/Rankin Security,” Jeff said.

Her world shattered. In that second, as he spoke those few words, everything changed. Her throat tightened and her hands started to shake.

“Because I brought Maggie to work?” she asked, barely able to breathe, let alone speak. “But Jeff, you have to understand why.”

“I do understand. Your schedule is impossible. You don’t get any sleep. Your free time is spent studying and taking care of your daughter. You have no savings, no back-up. I’m amazed you’ve stayed as healthy as you have.”

So why was he firing her? She needed the money and the benefits the job provided. Where else would she get such perfect hours and medical insurance for her child? Her eyes burned, but she refused to give in to the tears.

She set her glass on the desk and rose to her feet. “You can’t fire me,” she insisted. “Dammit, Jeff, I do good work. How can you do this—cutting me off without a way to support my child? I’ll have to drop out of school. I—”

She couldn’t go on. It was so unfair.

“You misunderstand me,” he told her. “I’m not trying to make your situation worse. I’m offering you alternative employment. I would like to hire you as my housekeeper. You’ll take care of things here—cooking, cleaning, whatever else there is to do. You can live here rent-free. In addition, I’ve spoken with my financial director. There is plenty of contract accounting work. If you’re interested, you can do that to supplement your income. The combined amounts should give you about double what you’re making now.”

As usual, she couldn’t read what he was thinking, but she had a good idea. No doubt he was pleased with himself for acting so magnanimous.

“So I’m your charity case for the month?” she asked. “It’s an interesting practice, taking people off the street and fixing them. Will you do orphans next?”

“You’re overreacting.”

“Probably because I’m a woman, right?” She pressed her lips together to hold in the rage. He was playing with her. She didn’t understand why, but she recognized the sensation of being manipulated.

“Your offer is generous,” she told him. “But I’m not interested. Maggie and I will be fine without you. And we’ll be leaving in the morning.”

Ť^ť

Ashley hurried to her room. She felt hot and lightheaded, as if her flu had returned, but she knew her symptoms weren’t that easy to explain. Her eyes burned and her hands balled into fists. She felt angry and embarrassed—but most of all she felt betrayed.

How could he have said all that? Offered her all that? It wasn’t right. She was a temporary guest in his home and he’d treated her like a—a— She stopped in the center of the upstairs hall and leaned against the, wall. She didn’t know what he’d treated her like, but it made her feel ugly inside. As if she’d somehow been selling herself. As if

Damn.

Ashley sank onto the floor, pulling her knees up to her chest. Shame flooded her as the truth crashed over her with the subtlety of a Midwestern thunderstorm. She was an idiot. A down-to-the-bones kind of fool.

Jeff Ritter had come out of nowhere and rescued her. There was no other way to describe his taking charge of her life and setting everything right. He’d brought her into his gorgeous home and he’d been kind to her and her daughter. The second the flu bug had departed her system, she’d found out she was incredibly aware of him as a man. She thought he was good-looking and sexually intriguing. That kind of attraction hadn’t happened to her in years. In fact she’d been so immune, she’d assumed that part of her was dead.

She’d been startled to feel like a woman again and she’d gone from zero to having-a-crush-on in less than nine seconds. His offers for her to be his housekeeper and do part-time accounting work had blown her fantasy apart in a single breath. She’d been left feeling like an idiot and acting even worse.

It was the stress in her life, she told herself. Too much to do, too little time and money. Years of just getting by had worn her down. At the least little upset, she’d fallen apart. So she’d thought Jeff was the answer to a single mom’s prayers and he’d thought she was efficient hired help. Did that matter? He wasn’t responsible for her fantasies being destroyed. She shouldn’t be having them in the first place.

She leaned her head against the wall and wished she could take back the past fifteen minutes and have them to do over again. This time she would see his offer for what it was—kindness from a stranger, not a rejection from a fantasy lover. Unfortunately time wasn’t going to bend just for her.

*

Jeff stared at the chair Ashley had used and wondered what the hell had happened. Somehow he’d upset her or insulted her, or both. She was going to leave in the morning and he couldn’t stop her. Not that he should want to.

He drained the last of his brandy and hoped the fire burning down to his stomach would ease some of the ache inside. He could almost remember a time when normal conversations had been simple. When he’d been comfortable around people and had taken pleasure in their company. He could remember laughing with Nicole. Touching her, kissing her. He remembered easy words spoken without thinking. Not anymore. Not ever. He weighed each word, wondering if he was getting it right. Because he didn’t know how to do that anymore.

He’d been so close, too. Ashley had opened up to him, telling him about her past. He knew enough of the world to be able to read what she didn’t say as much as what she did. He imagined a frightened girl of twelve, losing both her mother and her sister within a few months of each other. A teenager looking for love with boys who were clueless about what that meant.

Somehow she’d survived, saving both herself and her daughter. She’d even kept her humanity—something he hadn’t been able to manage.

He thought about how the light had played on her face, illuminating perfect skin, emphasizing wide hazel eyes. Her smile seemed to come from the heart. She was smart and determined, and thin in a way that made him wonder how many times she’d had money to feed her daughter, but not herself.

Sometime that afternoon he’d come up with a plan to rescue her. He’d worked out the details and then he’d spoken without thinking and he’d insulted her. Because he had a need to fix, to mend. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t his business or that she wasn’t his problem. In an odd and dangerous way, he wanted to be responsible. Which meant that there was something wrong with him. He knew better than to get involved. His soul was too dead to allow for any kind of connection beyond the physical.

Still, he had to make amends. He might not understand the extent of his transgression, but he would do his best to make it right.

He walked through the house to the stairs and climbed to the second floor. He turned toward the guest wing, then paused when he saw Ashley sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. Faint light from her bedroom spilled into the hallway, illuminating the left side of her face.

Desire rushed through him, making him need with an intensity that sucked the breath from his lungs. She was soft and sweet. Her gentleness called to him. As if he could risk being with someone gentle. As if she wouldn’t run in horror if she knew the truth about him, that in the deepest, darkest part of him, he’d ceased to be a man.

She looked up at him and smiled slightly. “I was sitting here trying to talk myself into going back downstairs and apologizing. You’ve saved me the trip.”

Her words didn’t make sense. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“What about the fact that I seriously overreacted? That should count for something. You were just being nice and I took it wrong. At least I assume you were being nice.”

Nice? Him? “I was trying to do the right thing. I need a housekeeper and you need to make a change in your work.”

She wrinkled her nose. “You do like telling me what to do. Is this a military thing or a male thing?”

“Both.”

“Figures.” She sighed. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the offer, Jeff.”

“But you don’t trust me.”

Her gaze sharpened. “It’s not that exactly.”

But it was that. He could read it in her eyes. She wanted to believe and she wasn’t sure. Could he blame her for that?

I want you.

The words remained unspoken, but they burned inside of him. He wanted and he needed with equal intensity. He wanted to inhale the scent of her body, touching her everywhere. He wanted to feel the silk of her short, dark hair and taste her mouth. He wanted to fill her until they both forgot everything but the heat of the moment.

Instead he drew in a slow breath. “The offer still stands. I hope you’ll reconsider.”

“I can’t.”

He wanted to ask why. He wanted to know how she’d figured out the truth about him so quickly. How had she learned that the safest course for her was to run away? He wanted to protest her decision, telling her that she was the closest to caring that he’d come in years. That when he was with her and Maggie, sometimes he forgot he wasn’t like everyone else.

What he said instead was “Let me know if you change your mind.”

And then he walked away, because if he didn’t, he would say something he would regret. He might even tell her the truth.

*

The next morning Ashley carefully replaced the phone in the cradle when what she wanted to do was throw it across the room and stomp her feet. She hadn’t thought it was possible for her life to get any worse, but she’d been wrong. One brief sentence had turned her world upside down. Just one sentence.

“Your apartment building has been condemned.”

With that, her home was gone. The city official had been very polite, offering assistance in finding a new place to live. However, there were no plans to help her with the costs of moving, nor was she likely to find such low rent. She was completely and totally screwed.

The timing was incredible. Just last night she’d told Jeff they would be moving out in the morning. Mostly because she’d expected her apartment to be habitable by now. Talk about being completely wrong.

She wanted to go back to bed, pull the covers over her head and wait for the world to go away. Unfortunately that wasn’t likely to happen. Instead she had a child to worry about, and classes, not to mention solving her living arrangement issue.

She left her bedroom and moved toward the stairs. Smile, she told herself as she walked down the hall. Jeff mustn’t know she was in such dire straits and she didn’t want Maggie worrying, either.

She stepped into the kitchen to find her daughter and Jeff having breakfast together. Neither of them looked up, although she was reasonably confident that Jeff knew she’d arrived. She ignored the man sitting at the table and instead focused on her daughter.

She’d dressed Maggie in her favorite pink corduroy overalls with a matching pink-and-white kitten-print shirt. She’d washed her daughter’s face, helped her with her shoes and socks, but she hadn’t had time to do her hair. Yet Maggie’s curls were drawn back from her face with two tiny, plastic, pink barrettes. They weren’t even, or anchored to last the day, but they were in place.

There was no way her daughter had managed to fasten them in her hair, which left only one possibility. Ashley’s gaze slid to her host. Jeff was in a suit, as usual. In fact she didn’t remember seeing him wear anything else. His white shirt was starched, his tie perfectly in place. He was showered, shaven and ready to start his day.

The breadth of his shoulders spoke of his strength. His firm mouth barely smiled. Yet he’d taken the time to fix a little girl’s hair. Something he’d done before. Maggie wasn’t afraid of him. If anything, she adored Jeff. She’d trusted him from the first moment they’d met. Was that the intuition of a trusting child, or the hunger of a fatherless girl to interact with a substitute male? Ashley knew generalities about Jeff—that he was a former soldier, a dangerous man who excelled in a potentially deadly occupation. But what did she know about the person inside? What was his story?

“Mommy?” Maggie had looked up and seen her in the doorway. “I’m eating all my cereal.”

“Good for you.” Ashley raised her chin slightly. “Jeff, may I speak to you for a second?”

He nodded and rose to his feet, then joined her in the hallway. “Is there a problem?” he asked.

She stared into gray eyes. She couldn’t read him any better than she had when she’d first arrived. “I talked to someone from the city just now. Did you know my apartment building had been condemned?”

His gaze never wavered. “No, but I’m not surprised. The water damage looked extensive.”

“I have to find a new apartment.”