Thunder Running (2 page)

Chapter Two

“No way. No way. No way.” Chance muttered the phrase like a talisman, as though it might protect him from the most brutal flashback he'd ever had. Since coming home from Afghanistan he'd seen plenty of things that weren't there, enemies with RPG cannons sneaking around corners of buildings, olive-skinned men he was sure he'd already shot and killed receding just beyond his peripheral vision.

But this? This was downright cruel.

He blinked once, twice. She was still there, her whole body trembling with the force of her anger. He squinted across the street, trying to pick up some inconsistency or jarring impossibility that would convince him she wasn't real.

Nothing. She looked exactly as he remembered. Small. Curvy. Jaw-length dark hair pulled back in a short, careless ponytail that couldn't capture the thick chunks still hanging against her cheeks. Too-big, too-black eyes set too far apart. Skin like over-milked tea, just as silky and way smoother.

“Black and white have gotten so mixed up in my family for so many generations, I'm not sure what we are.” She smiled down her body at him, chin tucked against her chest, framed by the chocolate points of her nipples in the undulating terrain of her body. “Whenever I have to tick a box for race on a form, I go for ‘Other'.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. This was seriously unfair.

“Hello? Earth to dirtbag, come in, Sergeant McKinley.”

His eyes popped open. She'd moved—her hand was on her hips, those sensuous lips set in a hard line.

“You're here. It's really you.”

“Were you expecting someone else? How many ex-wives do you have?”

He shook his head. “Not ex. We're still no-shit married.”

“And you no-shit left me without a backward glance. What the hell, Chance?”

Her voice was level, but that tiny hitch on the last word betrayed how close she was to falling apart. He nearly laughed in disbelief at the thought—harder-than-cement Tara Lambert shedding a tear over his lost affection? Not in this lifetime.

Her lower lip trembled. She bit it so hard he bet she drew blood.

His heart fell into his feet.
I did this.
He'd hurt the one woman he thought was impenetrable, dented the only girl he'd ever met who seemed as unyielding as the asphalt beneath the soles of his shoes. He thought he was the only one who wore a scar from those two nights together. He was wrong.

And he was an idiot.

“I thought we were just having fun,” he lied. “It was a stupid bet. I figured you'd sober up and have the marriage annulled.”
So I left you sleeping, saving myself from watching you realize that you were legally bound to a combat-addicted nutcase. Because I couldn't stand to watch that newborn love drain from your eyes, not then, and not three or ten or seventy days later when you finally realized what you'd done.

“A marriage prompted by a roulette spin is still a marriage.”

Carl snorted at his elbow, drawing Tara's hostile stare.

“You laughing at my legally sworn union, GI Joe? You think it's funny that your good-for-nothing friend up and left me in the marital bed? So help me, I'll wipe that smug smile off your face if you so much as—”

“Whoa, calm down.” Chance took a step toward his erstwhile bride, nodding at Carl to proceed without him. His fellow NCO shot him a look that promised he'd be watching from inside, then pushed through the door of the bar.

“Calm down,” Tara echoed mockingly. Her arms were crossed so tightly he feared for the blood supply to her fingers. “Reunited with his wife after ten months and what does he say? Calm down, like I'm some overexcited filly.”

Chance frowned, sweeping his gaze from her feet to her face and back again, trying to collect his thoughts and put the facts in a row. Tara was here. She'd clearly worked hard to find him. And she was pissed. Why?

“Are you pregnant?”

“Not unless you're in the habit of poking holes in your own condoms.”

“How do I know you aren't?”

Dark eyes narrowed. “Jesus, I hope they don't put you in charge of counting how many bullets are left. What did I just say? Ten months. If you'd knocked me up back in December I'd be rocking the proof to sleep by now.”

“What took you so long, then?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Like you said, ten months since our wedding. Fort Preston's only a couple hours' drive from Kansas City. Why'd you wait almost a year?”

“I didn't think my car would manage the drive to Afghanistan.”

“I've been back for six months.”

Her jaw slackened, offering the barest flash of soft tongue, moist pink mouth. His groin twitched unhelpfully.

“What?”

“You heard me. I got back in April.”

“The hell you did. You said it was a nine-month deployment.”

“And in December I was on R&R, halfway through.”

Her shocked silence gave his mind the space it needed to produce a new, deeply cynical thought. It was his turn to cross his arms over his chest.

“I know why you're here. You think you're going to collect my combat pay while I'm gone.”

She blinked. “Combat pay?”

“You read it in the paper,” he accused, confidence bolstered by landing on what he was sure could be the only explanation for this high-spirited woman to go to all this trouble to find his sorry ass. “You saw the obituary for Alpha Company's medic, knew the 13th Infantry would need someone from another company to replace him mid-tour and you figured I'd raise my hand. Well, I've got news for you, girl, I've still got a month left before I deploy so if you were hoping to catch me off-guard at the last minute, you failed.”

A Fourth of July parade's worth of emotions marched across Tara's face. Surprise, bewilderment, contemplation, annoyance, then back to tight fury. She reached him in five scurrying strides and got in three hard swats on his arm before he managed to pivot out of range.

“What the hell kind of a fool
volunteers
to go back to the warzone he just left?” she demanded, homegrown Arkansas accent thicker than ever. “Have you got a death wish? Or are you that crazy that six months of peace and prosperity has already given you an itchy trigger finger?”

“Pretty much,” he replied honestly.

“Lord, give me strength,” Tara muttered, swiping her palm over her eyes. When she met his eyes again hers were hard with resolve. “It's not ideal, but a month is better than a week. We'll make it work.”

“Make what work?”

“This marriage, Chance. Maybe you're in the habit of swearing wedding vows you have no intention to keep, but I'm not. I don't want your combat pay or your car or whatever other raggedy-ass belongings you consider assets. I came here to give this relationship a shot, and I'm not leaving until I'm convinced one way or the other.”

On impulse Chance opened his mouth to protest, then closed it without a word.

Tara Lambert had roared back into his life unannounced, unanticipated, full of demands and accusations, riding a motive about as plausible as a dragon. He had four weeks to go before shipping back out to the sandbox and she wanted to spend them getting to know each other, trying to transform their wild wedding weekend into an actual, real-life marriage. Impossible. Ridiculous. The dumbest thing he'd heard in a long time, and a career in the military meant he heard a lot of dumb shit.

But he didn't hate the idea. In fact he was mildly flattered that she'd worked so hard to reconnect with him, and was willing to give up so much to see if their two-night stand could be something more.

And she looked so good. Even scowling and rigid, she was the prettiest woman ever to give him the time of day.

Nothing about you has changed since you left her in that hotel
, his conscience reminded him sternly.
You're still a violence-hungry freak who can only sit still when he's sighting in a gun. You'll never stop leaving her. She'll say goodbye at civilian airports, in hangars full of soldiers, at the side of your flag-draped coffin. You'll destroy her, and if you reckon you won't you're an even bigger fool than she thinks.

Chance set his back teeth. He deserved this. He left her in that hotel room like a coward—now he had to face the consequences. Now she'd come back to remind him exactly what he was missing, exactly what he couldn't hold on to. Then it would be her turn to leave.

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “All right, then. I'll lean inside to tell Carl I'm leaving, then you can show me where you're parked.”

Her eyes widened with hope. Inwardly he cringed.

“What are we doing?”

“Exactly what you came for, sugar. We're going home.”

“This is it?”

“What were you expecting, a ten-bedroom mansion with two staircases? I'm a soldier, not a CEO.”

“I guess I had higher hopes for the destination of my tax dollars,” Tara muttered, working hard to sound disappointed. Chance's small farmhouse with its several scrubby acres near the fort was the nicest house she'd ever been in, and nothing like the adolescently decorated bachelor pad she'd imagined. She had to fight the urge to gawk at the hardwood floors and new furnishings as he locked the front door behind them.

“Nice talk coming from someone who described her apartment as a shoebox so filthy even the rats avoided it. Or was that just your way to get me to pay for a hotel room?”

He remembered! Tara bit her lower lip to keep her thrilled smile at bay. She hadn't expected to be so sublimely happy to see him again, or so overwhelmed by his physical presence. She'd spent the twenty-minute drive to his house clenching the steering wheel, fighting to keep the car in the lane, imagining what would happen if she was pulled over.

“I'll pass that breathalyzer, Officer, but I have to confess to ingesting an illicit substance. It's the scent of this man right here next to me, of muggy summer nights and cold beer in aluminum cans and laundry dried in the sun. Add that to his Gulf-Coast Mississippi accent and long legs all folded up in my little car and we're lucky I could drive in a straight line.”

“I believe you passed me your hotel keycard long before we discussed the size of my apartment,” she replied primly. “As I recall, you'd already paid for the room.”

“Didn't realize I'd still be paying for it ten months later,” he grumbled, dropping her overstuffed, imitation designer tote bag onto the couch.

Tara's elation dissipated as quickly as it had erupted, but she kept her expression on the irritated side of neutral. This situation wasn't turning out at all like she expected, and it was going to take some quick thinking to keep it under control. He hadn't fallen at her feet in gratitude at her reappearance, he hadn't spent those long months in Afghanistan pining for her and realizing what a horrible mistake he'd made by leaving her behind; in fact he hadn't even apologized for disappearing from the hotel while she was sleeping off the tequila shots.

On the flipside, she hadn't expected her confidence to be so uncharacteristically shaken by the mere sight of him. She had no idea it would only take one glimpse of that ruffled regulation haircut, those mouth-bracketing dimples, the long-fingered medic's hands to reduce her to a pathetic, simpering schoolgirl swooning over an out-of-her-league upperclassman.

She was surer than ever that she wanted to be with him, or at least to give the two of them a try. But she wondered whether she'd made a mistake pursuing him, whether he'd ever really wanted her, and whether she was setting herself up for the biggest, most humiliating heartbreak of her life.

“Do you want me to give you the grand tour?”

“This house has, what, two bedrooms? I'm sure I can find my way around.”

Chance shoved his hands in his pockets. “Are you hungry? I can fix dinner.”

She was starving, but she wrinkled her nose. “Are you telling me there's food in that refrigerator?”

“See for yourself.”

Tara made a show of picking her way across the room, despite its being almost immaculately tidy save for a few errant boots and camouflage helmets scattered across the floor. The adjoining, open-plan kitchen was barely five steps away, and she made a point to hold her breath as she pulled open the refrigerator door.

“Oh.” She straightened, surveying the contents. Plain yogurt, milk, avocados, two packets of ground beef, three green apples, a hunk of Monterey Jack with a label from a local creamery. A far cry from the roll of slice-and-bake cookie dough and long-expired mustard that constituted food on-hand at her place.

“Well.” She shut the door. “I can't see what you could possibly make from that. It's so…um…miscellaneous.”

With a frown Chance moved to join her beside the fridge, reopening the door and peering inside. The sudden rush of cold air swept his scent into her face, and for a split second she had to close her eyes, reminding herself she could not touch him.

Not yet, anyway.

“What are you talking about? We can do fajitas, beef pasta, hamburgers, all kinds of stuff. I only went to the store two days ago.”

“It's all so…basic.” Tara shrugged.

He sighed exasperatedly. “What do you want for dinner, then?”

“Something fresh. Like sushi.” Tara only liked fish when it was breaded and preferably in stick form, so eating it raw was unthinkable, but she didn't want to seem unsophisticated. She had to assert her position in—and above—Chance's lifestyle no matter what it cost her.

“Sushi?” he repeated incredulously. “You know we're in Kansas, right? And that it's landlocked?”

She ignored the shame blazing in her cheeks. “I thought Meridian was supposed to be a cool town with good restaurants, because of all the army personnel from all over the country. Guess I was wrong.”