“That’s actually a very intuitive thought.”
“For a guy, you mean?” He faked a smile. “Hey, call me Joe Sensitive.”
“You mean Major Joe Sensitive, right?” She laughed, but something sounded off. “I did enjoy the long soak. I may have even drifted off.”
“Good.”
Her eyes settled on the scrapbook in front of him.
He closed the album, fast. “I shouldn’t have looked without asking you.”
She reached to open the book again and turned it toward her. “It’s silly to keep one of these and then never let anyone look at it. I’m sorry that seeing pictures of him upset you.”
“Actually…” He flipped it to the page in question. “I was more upset with myself.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
He tapped the edge of the ballgame photo. “Could I have been any more obvious?”
“I didn’t know.” Her hand gravitated to his face in the picture, tracing his jaw until he could almost feel her phantom touch. “I mean, I knew that I was attracted to you. But I didn’t know you felt the same and especially not on a long-term basis.”
“The way I kissed you didn’t tip you off?”
“I figured I threw myself at you. You reacted on impulse. Which doubled my guilty feelings because I worried I might have harmed your friendship with Kevin.”
“Impulse, like hell.” He leaned back, folding his hands over his stomach. “Suppressed frustration’s more like it.”
She slid from the sofa and walked around to sit on the arm of his chair. Her fingers sketched his jaw for real, her fingertips soft and scented from her bath. “We have about a week and a half left to work those out.”
A week and a half and then he returned to base, to work.
And she stayed in New Orleans?
She hadn’t been willing to move for Kevin. She sure as hell wasn’t going to move because they had one night of crazy hot sex between them. He needed to use his time wisely to persuade her they’d started something here. Guilt be damned, he couldn’t let her go.
He pulled her into his lap and nipped her ear. “What do you say I carry you back to my room?”
“I think you should carry me back to that spa tub so I can take another bath—with you.”
Nine
Getting used to sharing a bed again was easier said than done. Especially since Hank was a serious covers hog.
Yawning, she struggled to orient herself, having been tugged from a deep sleep by the abrupt rush of air over her body. Gabrielle patted the bed in the dark, searching for a corner of the bedspread to yank.
In the week since they’d started sharing a bed—after amazing sex—she’d fast learned that he was a restless sleeper. Which was only made worse by the fact that she was a light sleeper after so many months keeping her ears tuned in for the smallest sound from her son.
But there were so many good things to offset Hank’s cover-snatching habit. Their week together had been packed with more great food and amazing sex. They’d even gone on outings with Max, a long drive, a simple walk along Lake Ponchartrain with Max in the stroller, a concert in the park. People mistook them for a family.
They felt like a family.
She blinked to adjust her eyes, but it was still dark. Moonlight streamed through the dormer window, slashing a pale yellow streak across the bed. She rolled to locate even a sheet and found Hank sitting up.
His eyes were open, but he was clearly still asleep. He’d tossed the covers to the ground. His fists were twisted in the fitted sheet. His mouth moved, mumbling something unintelligible, as if he couldn’t force the sound out.
He was in the middle of a nightmare. A really bad one, gauging by the tendons standing out along his neck. Pain, fear and something very dark pulsed from Hank like waves off a toxic cloud.
How could she wake him up without startling him?
She was afraid to touch him. Not that she thought he would ever deliberately hurt her, but he looked ready to snap. A simple touch could make him lash out.
Leaning away slowly, she turned on the lamp, hoping that might ease him out of whatever night terrors gripped him. His head twitched, but still he didn’t wake. Words tumbled from his mouth, some taking shape, others not so much.
Look out. God. No. Kevin. Hold on.
Realization seeped through her, that toxic cloud expanding to draw her in, as well. Hank was dreaming of Kevin’s death.
Her chest went tight. She wanted to yank on her robe and run far, far away. But she couldn’t leave him in that hell alone. He’d already lived through it once, a torture no one should face. Ever.
“Hank,” she said softly but firmly. “Wake up. You’re in New Orleans with me. Gabrielle. You’re all right. It’s just a dream. Can you hear me?”
Blinking faster, he hauled in breath after breath until he turned to her. “Gabrielle?”
She rested just her fingertips on his arm. “Are you okay?”
He scrubbed both hands over his head. “Crap. No.” His voice came out raw and ragged, as if he was pushing the words over broken glass. “Just give me a second.”
“You were dreaming about being in the Middle East, weren’t you?”
He nodded without speaking.
“About Kevin?”
He nodded again, pulling away to sit on the edge of the bed. If she let the silence stretch, he would leave. His feet were already on the floor. He would shut her out and deal with the pain on his own.
After all he’d done for her, she couldn’t let him shoulder everything. The man put up hefty walls. Time for somebody to be persistent enough to scale them.
She scooted to sit behind him, leaning her cheek on his shoulder blade. “Seeing Max and me must bring it all back. This can’t be what the military meant by taking time off to recharge after a deployment.” She stroked his arm, up and down, again and again, until the tensed muscles relaxed. “Maybe it would have been better for you if you hadn’t come here right away.”
“Don’t go blaming yourself.” He grabbed her hand fiercely. “I could look at a damn penny and somehow it would make me think of Kevin and that day… .”
“Can you tell me what happened?” she asked, only half sure she really wanted to know, but she couldn’t bail on Hank now.
He glanced back at her, the moonlight casting stark shadows on his face. “Didn’t Kevin’s parents tell you? They were given the official report.”
“I know what happened to him and that you were there.” Although they hadn’t been overly wordy in sharing the details. To this day, she was foggy on why he’d been attacked on the ground. She’d always expected that if the worst happened, it would come from their plane being shot down. Bile burned as she thought about losing both Kevin and Hank. “I want to hear what happened to you.”
He stayed silent so long she feared he might not talk, after all.
Then a sigh racked through him. “We were at a checkpoint. Everyone had to get out of the bus and show papers. Should have been quick and easy, wasn’t even particularly a hot zone.”
His heart hammered faster under her ear as she kept her cheek pressed to his back. She slid her arms around him, holding him, and yes, making sure he didn’t bolt away. She just held him and waited.
“A sniper hit Kevin with two shots before I could even move to cover him.”
Only a few simple words, and he’d transported her there with the pain in his voice. She could almost smell the acrid air, feel the grit of sand in her mouth because she would have screamed. God, how could anyone not?
“I carried Kevin back to the bus.”
She hugged Hank tighter, the ridge of scar tissue on his collarbone suddenly all the more awful. “Is that when you got the scar?”
“Yeah.”
She squeezed her eyes closed, swallowed down the push of tears. He had been shot, too. She could have lost them both. But right now was about Hank, being there for him the way he’d been there for her.
Clearing his throat, he continued, “Back in the truck, I radioed for the medics to backtrack, but the frequency was full of everyone calling in. I tore off his vest, his shirt.”
Her mind filled with images of those final moments of Kevin’s life spent in a stark military bus in a foreign land. How many others had been on the bus with them? Just his crew or other crews, as well? She could hear the voices, the shouts, imagine the smell of death and desperation.
And Kevin’s last thoughts of her had been about how he knew she and Hank had feelings for each other. Guilt blanketed her all over again. Might Kevin have found some comfort in knowing she was expecting his child? She hated that she hadn’t shared the news with him. She’d thought it would distract him when he needed to focus and in the end he’d died anyway. She battled back her tears, needing to be strong for Hank.
“I’m sure you did everything you could,” she offered, knowing it wasn’t enough. Knowing he barely heard her since his eyes were unfocused, and, in his mind, he still knelt over Kevin in a hellish desert.
“I did the only thing I could think to.” The words fell faster and faster from him. “I put my fingers in the bullet holes to try to stop the bleeding. He asked me to look after you, and then I watched the life leave his eyes.”
Her heart broke at the desperation he must have felt.
Hank stood sharply, her arms falling away. He didn’t look back, just grabbed his jeans from the back of a chair, hauled them on and left the room. As the door closed behind him, she realized she’d been so worried about how much being together would hurt her. She’d selfishly overlooked how much being with her must hurt him.
Even if she managed to get past the guilt to take this affair into a relationship, Hank might not.
* * *
Hank charged down the stairs to the kitchen.
He needed a beer but would settle for anything that gave him an excuse to walk out of that room full of memories. The nightmare had been bad enough, but reliving the day Kevin died drained him dry. He’d spent ten months coming to grips with what happened. But coming back to the states, being here with Gabrielle, it was as if he had to learn to deal with Kevin’s death all over again.