Because of You: A Loveswept Contemporary Military Romance (7 page)

She shouldn’t have cleared Shane to deploy today. But the need and the loyalty in his eyes when he’d asked her to let him go had touched her deeply. No one had ever shown her that kind of loyalty before, and to see a man willing to risk his health to stand by his men was compelling and something unique that she did not understand.

And heaven help her, she’d sent him to Iraq.

Four Months Later, Taji, Iraq

Shane closed his eyes, and prayed. For a man who wasn’t particularly religious, that said a lot. He was running on little more than faith and caffeine and a hell of a lot of adrenaline and he was just about out of caffeine. He’d known this deployment was going to be bad. He’d had no idea how bad. Shane and his boys had been going full throttle since they’d transferred authority and taken over their battlespace. Patrols had been running every sixteen hours around the clock and they were getting hit every goddamned time they rolled outside the wire. They didn’t even have a decent place to crash after patrols. They were stuck sleeping in the middle of a wide-open hangar bay, bunks packed in next to one another.

His men were tired and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Frustration clawed at his heart. He had to do something. He had to figure out how to stop, to slow the train down, because it felt like his men were heading for a wall and had no brakes.

Something heavy landed on his gut, forcing the air from his lungs. He balled up and waited for his lungs to relax to make room for more air as magazines, envelopes, and a box scattered over his stomach and onto the bunk with a flutter.

“Mail call,” Carponti said.

Shane hardly ever got mail, and when he did, it tended to be junk. He squeezed his eyes closed and prayed for patience.

“Really, Carponti? Was it that fun dropping crap on my guts?”

“Ah, yeah. Why else would I have done it?” Carponti sank into the bunk next to Shane’s. “LT Randall is looking for you by the way.”

Shane rolled his eyes and swore as he sat up, throwing a stray magazine at Carponti’s head. Shane hated the fact that Randall’s father had been able to get him into West Point. There was no other commissioning source on earth that would have made him an officer otherwise. But he had to watch what he said to Carponti because Carponti was as likely to tie the lieutenant to the turret of their Bradley fighting vehicle’s main gun as not. If Shane went to jail, he wasn’t going because of one of Carponti’s stupid pranks.

“What now?”

“Inventory or something,” Carponti said with a shrug. “Can you please go see him so he’ll stop nagging me every time he sees me? Why isn’t he talking to the platoon leader, anyway?”

Shane tossed his mail into a pile and sat up. His platoon leader, Lieutenant Miller, and Lieutenant Randall, the company executive officer, were officially not speaking, but Carponti didn’t need to know that. At least, he didn’t need to hear it from Shane. It would end up scribbled all over the Porta-Potty walls, and that wouldn’t do anyone any good. Randall would just cry about it and then the first sergeant would make the guys paint over the graffiti in the hundred-and-twelve-degree heat. He’d laugh, but he’d still make them paint. No matter how many times it happened. “Him and LT Miller are having a disagreement.”

“Well, shit, can’t they stop bickering like first graders and act like adults? Why doesn’t Miller tell Randall to pound sand.”

“Sergeant Carponti!”

Carponti’s face went completely blank at the sound of Randall’s voice echoing across the bay. Shane narrowed his eyes and studied his sergeant. His expression was pure innocence.

“What did you do?” Shane asked.

“Nothing.”

“What did you supervise?”

Carponti sniffed and his mouth twitched. “Nothing.”

“What did you see happening and not stop?”

“One of the troops drew a new picture of the LT on one of the latrine walls.” Carponti’s face broke into a shit-eating grin. “It’s really a work of art. You can completely see the freckles on Randall’s nose and everything.”

“Carponti …” Shane fought the urge to laugh. Last week, Randall had been the subject of a particularly off-color demotivational poster that had made the rounds. Something about being the officer in charge of killing fun.

“It’s got a camel and a water bottle and …”

Randall stalked up, his face flushed. He looked like he’d been trying not to run. “Sergeant Carponti, I don’t appreciate your attitude. If I find out that you’re behind this …”

“Behind what, LT?” Shane asked as he stood up, stepping between Carponti and Randall. “What can I do for you?”

“You can start by teaching your sergeants some basic customs and courtesies.”

“And you can stop trying to sleep with their wives. So I guess we’re at an impasse.”

For a brief moment, Randall looked like he was going to argue, but he apparently remembered that Shane was a hell of a lot bigger than he was. And the last time the lieutenant had run his mouth, Shane had ended up explaining to the battalion sergeant major how Randall had run into the end of his fist. Course, Trent didn’t know that and Shane planned on keeping it that way. As his company commander and his friend, Shane did his best not to put Trent in untenable positions. So long as he didn’t cross the line with this particular lieutenant anymore, Sarn’t Major Giles had agreed to keep it quiet, which would keep it from the battalion commander, which would keep it from Trent. Shane had no idea
how
Sarn’t Major was keeping Randall from running to the battalion commander or his father, but that wasn’t Shane’s problem.

Keeping Randall and Carponti from getting into it in the middle of the bay was.

Shane called on every ounce of patience he could and simply waited for the lieutenant to continue. As Trent’s friend, he owed him no altercations. Unless, of course, they couldn’t be avoided. Lieutenant Randall was rapidly pushing him to the couldn’t-be-avoided phase.

“I don’t need the executive officer to take charge of my troops’ training,” he said again, deliberately not using any form of address. He looked into Randall’s flushed face and couldn’t resist the urge to poke at the LT. Trent was going to kill him but what the hell. Randall needed an attitude adjustment, big time. “Pretty sure your job is to get us toilet paper and paper clips?”

“Sir. You can call me sir or lieutenant or LT Randall. But if you can’t be bothered
to act like a professional, then it’s easy to see why your soldiers don’t, either.”

He took a step toward the edge of the bunks, forcing Randall to either stand toe-to-toe with him or back up. Randall backed up. “Lieutenant, I’ve got two boys on their way to the hospital in Germany from last night’s attack. I’ve got a mission brief in fifteen minutes and I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours. I don’t have time to stroke your wounded ego. Find someone else for that. So get on with it, or get gone.”

Randall flushed and swallowed. Shane was starting to hate that nervous habit of his. He really was.

“I need the sensitive items report before you leave on patrol tonight,” Randall said, looking down at his clipboard like it held all the secrets of the universe.

“And yesterday I needed parts ordered for one of my fifty cals. Guess which one got someone hurt?”

“I can’t control the mechanics or the armament repair teams. There were other priorities more important than your weapons and trucks.”

“Really? Because I checked with the motor sergeant and he said he never got the maintenance report that I turned in. To you.”

Randall pursed his lips and clicked the cap on his pen. “I can double-check on that. But I need the sensitive items report.”

“I already submitted it through Lieutenant Miller.”

“I don’t have it and I can’t find Miller.”

Shane rolled his tongue over his teeth and started counting to ten, buying himself some time before he jumped down Randall’s throat and ripped out his spleen. He made it to three. “I could really give two shits about what’s going on between you and Miller. I
gave him the report; he knows when it’s due. If you two can’t act like adults and stop dragging the troops into your pissing contest, I’ll do it for you. But your incompetence has cost us time and blood, so my patience with you is running remarkably thin. Go find him and get the goddamned report yourself. And if I find out that you deliberately failed to get my equipment fixed because you wanted to get even with my lieutenant, I will personally nail your ass to the wall.”

Randall’s jaw flexed as his nostrils flared. “So that’s how it is?”

“I think I made it pretty clear.”

The LT lifted his chin and walked off. Not quite stomped, but it was a close thing.

Carponti snorted and a full-blown laugh wasn’t far behind. Shane’s temper finally snapped. “This isn’t funny. He’s not doing his job and people are getting hurt.”

“Not the first time.”

“And it probably won’t be the last, either, unfortunately. Did you check on Osterman like I asked?” Shane sat back down on his bunk, pulling out his weapons cleaning kit.

Carponti sobered visibly. “Yeah. He’s already in Germany and he’ll be back in the States by morning.”

“And?”

“He’s stable, but he lost the leg.”

Shane shoved his mail out of the way and rubbed his eyes as soul-crushing agony wrenched his guts. Osterman’s accident was just a tragic fucking mistake. They’d expected an easy path to the compound where their target had reportedly holed up, but what they’d gotten instead was a complex attack. And Shane had led the team into that
goddamned choke point. The intel had shown a clear path through the village, but the militants had piled up burning trash and tires and created a funnel that Shane’s platoon had to either push through or turn and avoid and end up missing their objectivive. They’d pushed through the kill zone and captured the high-value target, but not without a cost. And it was too goddamned high for an intel mistake. Shane could do better. He’d get reports directly from brigade. He’d scrub the reports himself if the damned staff couldn’t do their jobs.

But none of that would help Osterman. Shane could move heaven and earth to get correct intelligence reports, but it would still be too damned late for Osterman. He breathed deep and met Carponti’s gaze. He couldn’t change yesterday. He had only today to make a difference.

That didn’t stop the regrets, though.

“Fuck.”

Carponti looked down at his hands and was silent for a long moment. “Yeah.”

* * *

“Laura, what’s wrong?” Jen approached her friend, who was directing a soldier’s wife toward the elevators.

They stood in the middle of the hallway of the army medical center where Laura had spent the morning checking on a couple of wounded soldiers who had come in from Trent’s battalion. Laura worked for Trent’s brigade family readiness group. She often told Jen that the position was a thankless one. Some in the military considered the wives to be a small insurgency. Many times, the spouses felt ignored and maltreated by the military, who they felt didn’t care about their soldiers. It was Laura’s job to mediate
between the two opposing forces and help the spouses take care of their own issues while getting the officers in charge to bend a little and care more about the wives’ challenges. And it was because of some dedicated spouses that soldiers weren’t charged travel days when they went on leave from the combat zone along with dozens of other quality-of-life improvements.

Jen didn’t know how Laura balanced it all but she did. One of her duties as the family readiness group adviser was to check on the wounded and make sure they weren’t swallowed up by the medical system or forgotten by their unit. Not everyone had a family to come in and run interference between the hospital administrators and the docs.

That’s where Laura and the rest of the family readiness group came in—all of them were volunteers. Laura’s was the only paid position. And asking a volunteer to sit with a family member who’d just lost a loved one … it was the hardest thing you could ask someone to do. Especially if that someone knew the next knock could be on their door.

But today, her focus was elsewhere. She was checking on the wounded that’d just been flown in from Germany, doing her best to ensure that the officers and the wives all had the same information.

Rumors could be deadly. But Jen was willing to bet that the soldiers’ recent arrival was not the main reason for the distracted look in her friend’s eyes. In the months following Trent’s departure, Laura had been relatively silent about her husband and that wasn’t like her. Laura
always
talked about her husband.

Laura pressed her lips into a flat line, a shadow of her normal smile. “That obvious?”

“Spill,” Jen said, as she threaded her arm through Laura’s, and started leading her
toward the small coffee kiosk near the hospital’s main entrance. There were exactly five tables and six chairs and, happy day, two chairs were empty. It wasn’t really a place designed for comfort or confessions, but then again, a caffeine fix required neither. “And it’s my turn to buy therapy coffee.”

Laura attempted to perk up at the mention of her favorite food group. “Thanks, but I think it’s my turn, isn’t it?”

“Not with that look on your face it isn’t.”

They sat tucked into a corner table, far from the crowd. Laura fiddled with her coffee stirrer while Jen waited for her to speak.

“I haven’t heard from Trent.” Her voice cracked ever so slightly. “I always hear from him.”

Jen leaned forward and squeezed her hand. Laura was the strongest person she knew and part of her strength was in trusting her husband. Trent’s constant deployments had taken a toll, but Laura had always bucked up. That was because Trent had always kept in touch. If she was worried, she had reason to be.

The thought left a deep disquiet in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean?”

“He called last week, right? And the entire conversation was all about work. He didn’t ask about anything back here. I know he’s busy and has a ton of responsibility, but he always asks how I’m doing. It’s not that I need to talk to him about everything back here, but it helps that he always asks. Jen, he didn’t even ask about Ethan or Emma. He didn’t crack any jokes. He sounded exhausted and just hung up after a minute. This isn’t like him.”