Shelter in a Soldier's Arms (23 page)

“Ashley?”

She looked up and saw that he’d seen her. She read the questions in his eyes. Things hadn’t been right since they’d had that late-night talk. She glanced at her daughter and knew this wasn’t the time.

“I just wanted to say hi,” she told him. “And that I love you.”

Hope flared in his eyes. “Still? Even

” His voice trailed off.

“Still,” she assured him and felt contentment. He was the one she wanted, for always.

*

After Maggie was in bed that night, she went searching for him. He was in his study, going over some papers. As she approached, he set down his pen. “We have to talk,” he said.

“I know.” She circled around the desk and slipped onto his lap. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. “I’ve decided that we’re going to be all right. You need some time to come to grips with all that’s happened between us. It’s been fast and a real change. I understand that. You’ve spent the past, what, fifteen years living like some Rambo guy. Family life is going to be an adjustment. I trust you. Completely.”

“I’m glad,” he said, setting her on her feet and standing next to her. “Because we have to go over a few things before I leave.”

“Leave?”

“My trip to the Mediterranean. The Kirkman case.”

“Oh. Yeah. You told me.” In all the emotional trauma, she’d forgotten. She followed him over to the leather sofa and settled next to him. She pointed to the folder waiting on the coffee table. “State secrets?”

“No.”

“A security plan?”

“Not exactly.”

She tilted her head. “Okay. You’re not being wildly chatty. Why don’t you take over the conversation.”

“I want to talk about my will.” He opened the folder and drew out a thick document. “I saw my lawyer yesterday to get a new will. I’ve left everything to you, except for two separate life insurance policies I had set up for Maggie and the baby. You’re the trustee for both policies. It should be enough to cover raising them, along with college.”

She stared at the document, but couldn’t make it come into focus. A will? “I don’t understand.”

“If things don’t go well, I want you to be taken care of. The business is set up with an automatic sale of my half to Zane, if something happens to me, and the same if he dies. You’ll receive the proceeds from the sale, along with the house. I have a 401k, investments, checking and savings accounts. Brenda will get in touch with my financial adviser if anything happens, and Jerry can walk you through it all.”

“No.” She pushed the folder away. “I don’t want to talk about this. Not now. I told you. I’m not interested in your money.”

His gray gaze was steady. “I understand that, Ashley, and I believe you. However, if I don’t come back, I want you taken care of.”

If I don’t come back.

She slid into the corner of the sofa. “Don’t come back? What are you talking about?”

He sighed. “Probably nothing. This isn’t an extremely high-risk operation.”

Operation? “Are we talking about your business trip?”

“It’s a security detail. These men are very highly placed. There have been both death and kidnapping threats. We’ve prepared for the worst and I’m sure everything will be fine. But if something happens, I want you to have financial security.”

She sprang to her feet. “No. I don’t want financial security. I want you to come back.”

“I’m sure I will.”

She pointed to the folder. “You’re not sure. That’s why we’re having this conversation. Jeff, are you telling me that you could die on this trip?”

He shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. “It’s unlikely.”

“How unlikely?”

“Less than a thirty percent chance.”

Her mouth dropped open. Thirty percent? There was a thirty percent chance he could die? While he was gone?

“No,” she said firmly. “No. You can’t go. You cannot die. Not until we’re both old. I don’t want you to die.” She’d just found him. She refused to lose him.

“Ashley, be reasonable. This is what I do.”

“You’re crazy, then. How can you walk out on Maggie and me? And what about the baby?” She paced to his desk, then spun to face him. “You can’t. You just can’t. Dammit, Jeff, you’re not some solitary soldier giving his all for God and country. This is just some assignment. You can’t leave like this. It’s wrong. You have a responsibility to us. We need you to come home to us.”

“This is what I do.”

“No, it isn’t. You run a security company. You have a staff. You have other people to do this kind of thing.”

“So I should send someone else out there to die?”

She felt as if he’d hit her in the stomach. She clutched her midsection and bent at the waist.

He was going to die. That’s what he was trying to tell her. The claim of it only being a thirty percent chance had been a lie designed to calm her fears.

“Ashley—”

“No!” she shouted, straightening and glaring at him. “All my life the people I’ve cared about and loved haven’t loved me back. Not enough to stay. Not enough to keep from dying. I thought you were different. I thought you really cared, but because of your background you couldn’t get in touch with your feelings. But now I know that I was wrong. You can’t express your feelings because you don’t have them. I thought you would change and realize you love us, but you won’t. You don’t love us. You’re going to leave me and die, just like everyone else. You don’t think I’m worth living for.”

He rose. “You’re wrong. You are worth living for. I have every intention of coming back to you.”

“That’s not good enough. I don’t want you to go.”

“I have to go. It’s my job.” He hesitated. “You knew what I was before, Ashley. Nothing has changed.”

“Yes, it has.” Before, she hadn’t realized the truth. “Loving someone means wanting to stick around.” As soon as she said the words, she braced herself for him to say he didn’t love her at all, so what did staying matter. But he didn’t. Instead his expression turned sad.

“I would have thought loving someone meant accepting every part of that person,” he said. “You knew who and what I was when you first met me, so I don’t understand why it’s suddenly a problem. It’s ironic. Nicole could accept what I did, but not what I’d become. You understand who I am, yet you won’t accept what I do. I guess we both expected more of each other.”

Ashley felt as if he’d slapped her. She’d been so sure she was the one in the right and that he was wrong. But his words caught her off guard. Too stunned to speak, she could only watch as he walked out of the room.

*

Jeff waited the entire night, but she never came to him. He’d tried to go to her, but her door had remained closed and she hadn’t answered his light knock.

The next morning he packed his suitcase and made his way downstairs. He’d left the folder on the coffee table in his study. If something happened to him, he wanted Ashley to be able to find it.

She was in the kitchen with Maggie. The dark circles under her eyes told him that she, too, had had a restless night. As they stared at each other, he wished he could find the words to make it right between them. He wished there was a way to explain why he had to do this job—why he had to do every job. That stepping into the line of fire was the only way to atone.

Maggie saw him and scrambled out of her seat.

“Daddy, Daddy, Mommy says you have to go away and I don’t want you to go.”

She flung herself at him. With an ease he wouldn’t have believed possible just a couple of months ago, he set down his suitcase, bent low and picked her up, swinging her into his arms. She clung to him.

“Don’t go,” she said, her big blue eyes filled with tears.

“I have to. This is about work. But I’ll be home in about a week.”

“A week is a very long time.”

“I know. I’ll miss you.”

As he spoke he looked over her head toward Ashley, but the woman who had so changed him wouldn’t meet his gaze. She sat at the table, carefully stirring her coffee.

Maggie rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. She was so small, he thought uneasily. How could she possibly survive? He found himself wanting to stay, to make sure that she was going to be all right. But he couldn’t. He had a job to do.

“I’ll bring you something,” he told her as he set her on the floor.

She brightened immediately. “A kitten?”

“No. Mommy and I have to talk about that first. But something nice.”

“Something for Mommy, too?”

He looked at Ashley. She was still staring intently at her coffee. “Yes, something for Mommy.”

Jeff hesitated. He wanted to say something that would make things better between them. He wanted to heal the breach, but he didn’t know how. In the end all he did was pick up his suitcase.

“I need to get to work. I’ll guess I’ll see you in a week.”

“Will you call?” Ashley asked without looking up.

Phone her? He’d never considered the possibility. But he could. Staying in touch would be easy. “Sure.” He calculated the time difference. “Say the early evening, after dinner?”

She nodded. “That would be nice. Thank you.”

He wanted to go to her and pull her to her feet and into his arms. He wanted to beg her to tell him that she wouldn’t give up on him, that it wasn’t over between them. He wanted to know how he was supposed to make her happy when everything about their relationship confused him.

Instead he said nothing. He turned on his heel and walked out of the kitchen.

Maggie called after him. “Mommy and I love you.”

He could only hope it was still true.

*

Six hours later he pored over the diagrams of the villa one last time. The private jet would take off from Boeing Field at four. The team was already assembled, the equipment checked.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Zane said as he walked into Jeff’s office.

“What are you talking about?” he asked his partner.

Zane stalked over to the table and stabbed at the papers. “I can’t believe you’re really going to do this.”

“The job? It’s my responsibility.”

“No. It’s our responsibility. I’m a partner in this, remember. I can do this job.” Zane glared at him. “It was bad enough when you wanted all the glory for yourself, but now you have a family to think about.”

Glory? “Is that what you think?” Jeff asked. “That taking the most dangerous assignments is about glory? I never wanted my name in the papers. None of that mattered.”

Zane’s dark eyes were bleak when he spoke. “If it’s about the dead, don’t you think I have some ghosts of my own? Just because I was a sharpshooter doesn’t mean I wasn’t involved. Killing from a distance is still killing, Jeff. When I had to plan operations, the numbers of the dead weren’t faceless. I studied the recon photos afterward to see how my plan had been carried out. I could see what I’d done in every shade of color.”

Jeff stared at his partner. “I hadn’t realized,” he said.

Zane shrugged. “Before, it wasn’t important for you to know, but things are different. You have Ashley and Maggie now.”

And the baby, but Zane didn’t know about that yet. A family. That’s what his partner was saying. Jeff had responsibilities for more than the job. At one time he would have agreed, but not now. Ashley might claim to love him, but he doubted it was true. She loved parts of him. The parts she could admire. But the true blackness of his soul was beyond her. He thought she understood who and what he was, but he’d been wrong. She was already pulling away.

What he couldn’t admit to Zane, what he could barely think to himself, was how much it hurt. He’d allowed himself to believe. When she’d heard about his nightmares and hadn’t turned away, he’d experienced his first spark of hope. Later, instead of being frightened off by the executive retreat, she’d had fun. He’d told her more details about his past and still she’d stayed, eventually claiming to love him. And he’d believed her because he’d been desperate to keep her in his life.

But in the end, she couldn’t handle what he did. She wanted him to change, to take a job that wouldn’t put him in danger. She wasn’t willing to love all of him.

“I don’t think Ashley and Maggie are going to be sticking around much longer,” Jeff said, gathering up the diagrams. “Ashley doesn’t approve of these kind of missions.”

“Can you blame her? Who wants to see someone she loves facing down a bullet?”

“It’s what I do.”

“That’s complete bull and you know it. You chose how you participate in the assignment. You hire the best and train them to be better, then instead of letting them get on with their job, you meddle.” Zane took a step closer to him. “You know what I think, Jeff? I think you’re afraid. You care about Ashley and her daughter and that scares you. You’ve never had to care before. Suddenly, after all these years, you have something to lose. What if your edge is gone? What if at the last minute you don’t want to take the bullet? But instead of celebrating the fact that you have a chance at a normal life, you walk away.”

Zane glared at him in disgust. “You’re an idiot. Don’t you get it? Chances like this don’t come along very often.”

“You don’t have anyone in your life,” Jeff said, trying to ignore the truth of his friend’s words.

“You’re right. Because the one person I was supposed to be with died. There’s not a single day that goes by without me thinking about her, wishing things could be different. I lost my chance. What’s your excuse?”

Jeff wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, well, now you do. So quit being a jerk who would rather take a bullet in the back than admit he might have fallen in love.”

*

Ashley couldn’t get Jeff’s words out of her head. She kept telling herself that he was wrong, that she hadn’t betrayed him. She was the injured party. But no matter how many times she told herself that, she couldn’t quite make herself believe it.

She paced the length of the kitchen, ignoring her open accounting books. While she knew she should be studying, she couldn’t stop thinking about Jeff. Thinking and watching the clock. His plane would take off in less than two hours. After that she wouldn’t see him for a week

or maybe not ever again.