Shelter in a Soldier's Arms (16 page)

She felt as if she wasn’t actually touching the ground when she walked. Everything seemed more brightly colored and nothing could upset her good mood. The downside was she’d had a darned difficult time concentrating in class. She’d found herself doodling Jeff’s name instead of paying attention to the lecture.

She had it bad.

Ashley walked to the refrigerator to pull out the chicken she wanted to roast for dinner. As much as she wanted to be with Jeff again, she knew that it could never work between them. There was no future here. She wanted to make a safe haven for herself and her daughter. She had no clue as to what Jeff wanted, but she suspected it was something very different. He wasn’t the kind of man who would love her more than anything. He would never promise to love her unconditionally, the way she would want to love him.

She froze in the act of removing the chicken from the shelf. Not that she was saying she loved Jeff. She didn’t. She liked him a lot and she thought he was hot, which was very different from love. Jeff was not the man for her—he had a past that was too different from her own. They obviously couldn’t make love again, even if he wanted to. She would have to tell him as soon as he got home.

*

Jeff couldn’t remember another more cowardly act in his life. However potentially difficult or painful, he’d never taken the easy way out until tonight. Instead of coming home at his usual time and facing Ashley, he’d had Brenda phone to say he had to work late.

It was after eleven when he pulled into the garage and turned off the engine. The situation had been worse than he’d realized. Not only didn’t he want to face her, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her while he’d been at the office. Despite his long hours, he hadn’t gotten anything accomplished.

He climbed out of the car and headed for the house. As he’d driven up, he’d noticed faint light from behind the drapes, so he wasn’t surprised to see that Ashley had left on a few lamps. As he crossed toward the kitchen, he tried to remember if he’d ever not come home in the dark.

He found a piece of paper waiting for him on the kitchen table. “Uncle Jeff” spelled out in very uneven, very large block crayon letters was followed by an arrow pointing to a plate with a slice of chocolate cake. The dessert looked too tidy to have been made by Maggie, but the welcoming note was pure little girl.

His chest tightened. He couldn’t recall anyone ever doing something like this for him. Maggie had actually thought about him while he’d been gone. Had Ashley, as well?

His house was no longer empty and impersonal. He told himself it didn’t matter, but it did. He told himself he shouldn’t like it—but he did.

Swearing under his breath, he ignored the dessert and headed for the stairs. He had to get himself under control. Distractions weren’t allowed. He promised himself the situation would get better with time. It had to.

She was waiting in his bed. Jeff stepped into the room and flipped the switch. Ashley lay curled up on top of the covers, one arm bent and supporting her head. She wore a lace nightgown that covered everything and concealed nothing. He forgot to breathe.

“Hi,” she said, slowly pushing herself into a sitting position. “I wasn’t sure what time you’d be home and I didn’t want to miss you.”

He couldn’t speak. He could barely set down his briefcase. His throat was tight, his groin was on fire. He didn’t care. He wanted to spend the rest of his life looking at her slender curves and remembering what it had been like to make love with her.

“It’s about Easter,” she said. She sounded calm. She looked calm.

He blinked. He couldn’t have heard her correctly. “Easter?”

“You know, that holiday we have in the spring? Maggie’s been talking about it, as you may remember. The thing is, I always hide Easter eggs for her. I would like to know if it’s all right for me to do that in your yard this year.” She wrinkled her nose. “Unless it rains. That would be a drag.”

He couldn’t understand what she was saying. Didn’t she know she was practically naked and making him crazy, lying there on his mattress? Yet she acted as if everything were perfectly fine.

“Use the yard,” he managed to say. “For the eggs.”

“Good. Also, when I talked to Brenda today, she invited us to brunch at her house. I hope you don’t mind that I said yes. So I figured we’d do the Easter egg hunt, then go to church, then over to Brenda’s. Of course if you object to church, you could meet us there.”

He was losing his mind. “Brenda invited the three of us?”

Some of her calmness faded. He sensed her tension. Suddenly Ashley wouldn’t look at him. “Yes, well, I thought that was odd. Then I figured she’d run it past you and you’d agreed.”

Brenda hadn’t said a word.

Ashley slid to the edge of the bed, then stood. She was barefoot and nearly naked.

“The thing is, I’d told myself I was going to be practical,” she said, moving closer to him. Her hazel eyes glinted with humor. “Having an affair with my boss is not only crazy, it’s potentially dangerous. I have goals, you have goals and they’re not the same, right?”

He suddenly wanted to hear all about her goals. Instead he nodded.

“So it would be dumb to get involved.”

As she spoke, she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed off his jacket. The thick fabric slid down his arms and slipped to the ground.

She pressed her fingers against his chest. “But you’re so darned cute when you’re all stoic and soldierlike. I’m not sure I can resist that. There’s also the way you’re patient with Maggie and incredible in bed. All that attention focused on what I want. Call me spineless. One minute I was getting ready to crawl between my own sheets and the next I was here. Want me to go away?”

Instead of answering with words, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. She responded the instant his mouth brushed hers, leaning into him and groaning softly. Desire filled him, making his blood heat and his arousal flex against her belly. He wanted her. He’d been fooling himself by thinking he could share the same house and ignore her.

He swept his tongue against her lower lip. She parted for him, but he waited before entering, brushing back and forth until she trembled. Only then did he slip inside and taste her sweetness.

She clung to him. Bodies pressed, heat flared, need grew. He felt the rapid pounding of her heartbeat and knew that his own beat just as fast. Desperate for more, he broke the kiss so he could nibble his way along her jaw and down her throat. She groaned and arched her head back.

“Jeff,” she gasped. “You don’t have to do the Easter thing if you don’t want to. I mean I won’t change my mind about wanting to make love with you.”

He couldn’t help chuckling as he tugged on her lace nightgown. “I’ll do the Easter thing,” he said softly, pulling down her short sleeves and baring her to the waist. “Right now I’ll promise to do anything you want.”

Ť^ť

Jeff awakened shortly before dawn. He jerked out of a sound sleep only to find himself right where he was supposed to be—in his bedroom. It was nearly a full second before he was able to register two important facts: he hadn’t had the dream and he wasn’t alone.

He didn’t know which startled him more. After he and Ashley had made love the previous evening, they’d slipped under the covers. He’d held her close, fully expecting to spend another night staring at the ceiling, not daring to close his eyes and experience the nightmare. Instead he’d drifted off without being haunted by the specters of his past.

He turned toward the feminine warmth pressing against him, only to find Ashley watching him. She smiled slowly.

“Good morning.”

Her voice was velvet, her body silk. He found himself instantly aroused by her presence and the acceptance he saw in her eyes.

“How’d you sleep?” he asked, turning toward her and touching her cheek.

“Really well.” She hesitated. “At the risk of starting your day with the words every man hates to hear

we have to talk.”

Her hair was a mess. Dark curls teased at her face and shot out in every direction like an uneven halo. Her skin was slightly flushed and the scent of their lovemaking clung to the sheets. Her need to have a conversation didn’t disturb what he considered a perfect moment.

He knew what she was going to say. A casual relationship with him wasn’t her style. This wasn’t sensible; they had to end it. He told himself that he didn’t mind. The past two nights had been more than he’d expected. They would be enough.

“Talk away,” he said easily, propping his head on one hand.

“Oh, sure. Make me be the one.” She flopped onto her back, then turned her head toward him. “Jeff, what are we doing?”

He wanted to say they had been sleeping and now they were having a discussion, but he knew that wasn’t exactly what she meant. “What would you like us to be doing?”

“If anyone else gave me that answer, I would instantly accuse the man of hedging, but I suspect you’re asking because you genuinely want to know. Am I right?”

He nodded. She wanted to talk about them. About their potentially mutual goals and desires. He didn’t have either—at least none that included a normal relationship with a very nice woman.

She pressed her lips together. “I’m going to take a wild guess here and say that I think you’re out of your element with me. Am I right?”

He nodded again. Now it was his turn to settle onto his back.

“Jeff, is there anyone special in your life?”

He knew what she was asking. “No. I wouldn’t be here with you if there was.”

“That’s what I thought but I had to be sure.” She slid her hand toward him under the covers and lightly touched his arm. “Has there been anyone special recently?”

He thought about the question. Recently there had been no one. “No. There hasn’t been anyone in my life since Nicole.”

And in an odd way, Nicole hadn’t been in his life at all. The young man she’d married had disappeared in a matter of months. By their second anniversary, it was as if that Jeffrey Ritter had never existed.

He saw now that he shouldn’t have married her. Or having married her, he shouldn’t have gone into Special Forces. He’d changed so much so quickly. Their marriage had never had a chance. As for other women since then, they had existed but not the way Ashley meant. They had been nameless, faceless companions of the night. Strangers who welcomed him for an hour or a day. One woman had hung on for nearly two weeks.

“I haven’t been with anyone since Damian,” Ashley confessed. She shifted, curling against him. “There were a few guys before I met him, but I was pretty young then. It didn’t really count.”

“You’re still pretty young.”

“Jeff!”

He looked at her as she raised herself up on one elbow. “I’m twenty-five. That’s hardly a baby.”

“I’m thirty-three.”

“So what? That makes you an old man?”

He was older than she could know. He’d seen so much that no one should ever see.

She sighed and settled back against him. He could feel her bare breast pressing against his arm. “You make me crazy,” she murmured. “You’re not that old.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. Besides, that wasn’t the point. Damian was the first man I’d ever been with, which makes you the second.”

Her words stunned him. He heard them and turned them over in his brain without having a clue as to what to do with them.

“Ashley?”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. More than you wanted to know.”

“Why did you tell me?”

“Because

” She pressed her lips to his bare arm. “Because I want you to know that I think what we have is very special. I think you’re special.”

She thought they had something. A relationship? Was that possible? He wanted to tell her that he didn’t know how, that he wasn’t safe. That this wasn’t safe. Not for either of them.

“I didn’t want this,” she continued. “Getting involved, I mean. Based on how you live your life, I’m guessing you didn’t want it, either. Which means we should probably assume it’s just hormones and that whatever it is will pass.”

He risked looking at her and nearly lost himself in her beautiful eyes. “What didn’t you want?”

She smiled. “The complication. The attraction. I spent yesterday being completely schizophrenic—bouncing between grinning like an idiot and promising myself I would end this immediately.”

So she’d been feeling the same things he had. “If you planned on telling me it was over last night, the lace nightgown was a mixed message.”

“I know.” Her smile faded. “Jeff, neither of us wants this. The timing is bad, it’s confusing. There are probably a hundred reasons to pretend it never happened, but that’s not what I want.”

“What do you want?”

She settled her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. “To play it by ear. To enjoy my time with you without getting too personally involved or getting hurt.”

Until it’s time for me to leave.

She didn’t say those last words, but he heard the message and knew she was correct. They could pretend for now. Pretend that they were allowed to be lovers and act like other people. But they both knew the truth. Eventually she would walk away from him because he could never give her what she needed and deserved. And he would let her go because to keep her in his world meant being distracted. One mistake on an assignment could easily be the end of him and the client.

“I need to keep my own room,” she said. “So Maggie doesn’t get confused. I don’t want her to know about this. I thought I’d plan on heading back there before she wakes up.”

She was talking about spending her nights with him. Of them being together in the same bed for hours at a time. Not just making love, but holding and touching and sleeping together. Longing filled him. A need to inhale the scent of her and be with her until the memories were so strong that he could never forget.

“So what do you think?” she asked. She opened her eyes and looked at him. “You haven’t said what you want.”

He knew this was all pretend, but it was more than he had ever had, so it was enough. “I want to make you happy,” he said. “I want to do whatever you would like.”

She grinned. “Really?”