A Soldier's Redemption (11 page)

At that he lifted his head. “Lady, if you're going to ask a man to bare his soul, it might be best to let him choose the time and place.”

She felt hurt. Unreasonably so, she tried to tell herself, but it didn't quite erase the pang. Logically she knew that women were more likely to become emotionally attached through the act of lovemaking than men, and logically she realized the experience they had just shared had probably made her feel a whole lot closer to him than it had made him feel to her. They were strangers, after all, brought together by a coincidence, and now held together by a threat. He undoubtedly planned to move on as soon as he sorted out whatever it was he had come here to deal with.

And she would be left alone again. Common sense dictated that she not allow herself to grow close to this man. She needed to think of their lovemaking as merely a way to affirm life, and not one thing more.

She ought to know better, and clutching at straws just because a man was decent enough not to leave her in the lurch with this mess was dangerous. She didn't think she could take another loss, so why set herself up for one?

She tried to smile at him, but her face felt pinched. “I need to get dressed. Gage might call at any minute.”

“Ah, hell,” he said and rolled onto his back.

She looked at him and saw he was staring at the ceiling now. “What?”

“I just hurt you, and I really didn't want to do that.”

She felt another pang, this time for him. “No. Really. It's just a girl thing, expecting confidences at a time like this. I know better.”

He turned his head to look at her. “I should know better, too. I'm sorry.”

Then he jackknifed up off the bed and started hunting up clothes. Hers he dropped beside her on the bed. He climbed into his own swiftly, and left the room before he even finished buttoning and zipping.

One hot tear rolled down Cory's face. She had tried to reach out, and had reached out in exactly the wrong way at the wrong time.

Why would any man want her anyway? She had become a terrified husk of a woman, with nothing left inside her that anyone else would want.

She definitely ought to know better.

 

Wade stood in the kitchen, filled with self-loathing. He had started another pot of coffee brewing, because coffee had fueled him through some of the most difficult times in his life and had become a habit he clung to the way some people clung to a cup of tea or a blanket for comfort.

He'd drunk it instant, mixed with water barely safe for drinking. He'd sucked it down hot and thick on shipboard. He'd guzzled it thin and watery when what few grounds he had needed to be reused. It didn't much matter how it tasted as much as it mattered that he could cradle a cup in his hands and take comfort in one of life's small habits.

Despite warning himself, he'd taken the step: he'd made love to the woman. And despite warning her and himself that he couldn't make connections, he'd taken the one action most likely to create a connection. You didn't
make love to a woman like that and expect her to treat it as a form of entertainment.

So he'd taken that all-too-critical step, he'd started forming a connection, a connection he absolutely believed himself incapable of sustaining. If he had an ounce of common sense, he'd rupture it right now, pack his bags and get out of here before he did some real harm.

He couldn't do that, not with the threat he believed to be lurking. Yes, he knew the sheriff and his entire department would be keeping an eye on Cory. No, he didn't have an inflated sense of his own importance. But he
did
know how the best net in the world remained a sieve simply because you couldn't plug every hole, and unless Gage meant to assign someone round the clock to stick to Cory's side—and he doubted that because this was a small county and probably had a force just big enough for the ordinary tasks it faced—then someone had to be pinned to Cory's side. Someone who knew how to handle threats like this.

That left him.

Even if others had such training hereabouts, he doubted it was as fresh as his own. He doubted their reflexes remained so honed that the merest glimpse of something moving out of the corner of their eyes could shift them instantly into hyperdrive.

It was true that you never forgot your training, but you could slow down. Hell, hadn't he come here intending to do just that?

So that likely made him the meanest, fastest SOB around here right now. Walking away was not an option.

What to do about Cory? She'd naturally felt their lovemaking had brought them closer, and to be fair, he kind of felt it, too. Not like with the women who'd just
wanted to sleep with a SEAL. This was different. Different kind of woman, different kind of experience.

Hell, he wasn't even proud of the way he'd made love to her, so rough and ready, without any of the hearts-and-flowers-type stuff she deserved.

He'd been strung out on need in a way he'd never felt before, and all the self-control he owned seemed to have been focused on giving her a chance to say no. When she hadn't, his self-control had vanished.

And then, after his caveman routine, all she had wanted was to feel closer to him. To know that she hadn't been used like some plastic fantastic lover.

Cripes. He leaned his forehead against the cabinet, waiting for the coffee, and asked himself how he had just managed to mess up two people with one thoughtless act.

But that was him, wasn't it? The whole relationship thing was beyond him, always had been. The relationships he had managed over the years had been built on shared experience and trust within the boundaries of his job. With Cory he had no rules, no guidelines, no purpose other than making sure she survived until they figured out what was going on here.

And he didn't know how to handle it. The only thing he knew for certain was that Cory was as fragile as fine glass emotionally, and he'd probably just added a ding, if not a crack.

He ought to be hanged.

“Wade?”

Her tentative voice reached him from the kitchen entryway. He screwed his eyes shut and tried to get a grip on his self-disgust. “Yeah?”

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked.”

He whirled about to find her standing there, clothed
once again, her eyes pinched and lost-looking. She was apologizing when
he'd
put that look back on her face.

“Goddamn it,” he said.

Her head jerked. “I'll just leave you alone.”

“No.”

She hesitated, wrapping her arms around herself as if she needed to hold something in, or hold herself together. “No?” she repeated.

“No. Grab a seat. Stay.”

Still she hesitated, but then, after what seemed an eternity, she moved to the table and sat. She kept on hugging herself though, a sure indicator that all was not right in the world of Cory Farland.

He turned his back to her. “I stink at this,” he said. Once again he pressed his forehead to the cabinet, glad the coffee hadn't finished yet because it gave him time not to look at her.

“Stink at what?”

“I told you. Connections. Relationships. Whatever the current terminology is. I'm the guy sitting alone at the back of the bar with a beer while the others shoot the breeze. I don't talk about much that isn't mission specific. Nobody really knows me, and I like it that way.”

“Because you can't be hurt.”

An impatient sound escaped him. “Don't give me the psychobabble. Even if it is true.”

“Okay.”

The coffee finished, and his excuse was gone. He pulled two mugs from the cupboard and filled them before he carried them to the table. Then he got her milk for her and put it in front of her.

He straddled the chair facing her, but didn't look at her. He didn't want to see that pinched expression again.

“I'm a minefield,” he said finally. “Loaded with emo
tional trip wires. Yeah, I was abused as a kid. So were lots of other people, so don't give me any special passes because of it. I got away as soon as I could, and I promised myself I'd never get into that position again, a position where anyone could beat me up like that. The navy picked me up out of the mud, basically, restored my self-confidence, gave me a purpose and a goal. But they couldn't take away the trip wires. So I learned to keep them buried because they're absolutely useless. What the hell good does it do to keep reacting to things that happened twenty, thirty years ago when they're not still happening?”

She made a little sound but he couldn't tell if she was agreeing.

“What matters,” he said finally, “is who I am now. What I became over the years. Unfortunately, I never got around to the part about dealing with people I didn't have a professional relationship with. So I stink at it.”

“Mmm.” Totally noncommittal. Well, what did he expect when he'd basically told her to shut up while he spewed?

Finally he raised his eyes and looked at her. At least she didn't look ready to shatter any longer. If anything, her face had grown calmer.

“I don't want to talk about when I was a kid,” he said. “I don't
need
to talk about it. I got past it the day I realized that if my old man ever came at me like that again I could snap him in two.”

She gave a little nod.

“I got past the fear. I got past most of the anger. I got past the feeling of helplessness.”

“Good.” She lifted her cup and sipped her coffee. “Good.”

“Anything that's left is my own fault, not theirs in any way.”

“Really.”

“Really.” And he didn't want to argue about this. “Anything I'm dealing with now is baggage I picked up all on my own.”

“Such as?”

“Things I saw, things I did, things I chose not to do. If there's one thing I learned from being in the service, it's that ultimately I'm responsible for myself. The past is past, and it's useless except as a lesson for doing it better next time.”

She drew a long breath. “You really believe that?”

“Yes. I do. And I'm quite capable of looking at the things I chose not to do over the years and taking responsibility for them. I chose to let my professional life consume me, I chose not to try to branch out into some kind of normal life. Admittedly, watching my buddies, I eventually concluded it wasn't worth the trouble. At least not while I was still on the job. So it's my fault and nobody else's that I chose not to learn how to build day-to-day relationships apart from the job.”

“So you take that whole burden on yourself?”

“Of course. I made the decisions.”

“That's a pretty heavy load. Most of us at least accept that our pasts played a role in making us who we are.”

“I'm not saying it didn't play a role. But I'm the one, in the end, who says how much and what kind of a role. I'm not arguing that I'm not a product of my past, I'm arguing that I'm a product of the decisions I made in my past.”

She nodded slowly, and his gut clenched a bit when he saw her face tightening up. “What?” he asked. “What did I say?”

Her lips tightened. “I'm just thinking about what you said. So you don't even think that as a child you were a victim?”

He shook his head impatiently. “I'm not saying that. When I was a kid, I handled what was dished out to me the best way I could figure out. Every kid does. And when we're kids, we don't have the breadth of experience that comes later, so we're easy to victimize. But later…no. Which is not to say no one is ever a victim. I'm not saying that at all.”

“Then what
are
you saying?” she asked, her voice stretched tight.

“I'm saying that it's what we choose to do with it that puts us in control. It's the choices we make, and the lessons we choose to take. And I made some god-awful choices, and maybe I took some of the wrong lessons. That's what I'm saying, and I'm not going to blame any of it on the kid I used to be, because I was a man when I made a lot of these decisions.”

She gave a single, jerky nod.

“Cory…what? Am I hurting you? Crap, I don't want to do that.”

“No…no. You're making me think.”

Oh, hell. He suddenly realized how she could be taking this. “I'm not criticizing
you.
I'm not saying you weren't a victim.”

“I know that. I get that. It's just that…”

He waited, and when she didn't speak, he finally prodded. “Just that what?”

“Just that you're right. I've kind of been thinking along the same lines over the past couple of days. That bastard stole my husband, my baby, my old life. But I'm still breathing. So what did I do? I crawled into a hole in the ground and stopped living. I chose to let him take away even my hope.”

“Aw, hell.” He couldn't take any more of this. He rose from the table, knocking over the chair and ignoring it. He
rounded to her and scooped her right up out of her chair, carrying her to the living room where he sat with her in his lap.

“You don't get it,” he whispered, hugging her close. “You didn't do anything wrong. Everyone needs time to heal before they can get going again. You needed the time. You
needed
it. I keep telling you that. What if you'd had your leg blown off? Do you think you could skip surgery and rehab? Of course not. All I'm trying to tell you is that I take responsibility for the fact that I chose not to learn basic life skills. Like how to talk to a lady. Like how to reach out. Like how to share myself.”

“Actually,” she said brokenly, “I think you're doing a damn fine job of it right now.”

“Not good enough. I've hurt you twice in the past half hour. I'm ham-fisted at this.”

Her hand gripped his shirt, balling it. “Listen to yourself. Just listen. You'll make all kinds of excuses for me, but none for yourself. Think about that, Wade. The people who used to beat you up are gone from your life. So what do you do? You beat yourself up
for
them.”