Free Because of You: A Loveswept Contemporary Military Romance by Jessica Scott Page B

been on the range, verifying their battle sight zeros and making sure they could actually hit what they shot at before heading north, and he’d been balled up on his cot, sweating and shaking and puking so hard he thought he’d crack bone.
    But he wasn’t about to tell her any of that. He pulled his knife from its sheath and sliced the box open with a flick of his wrist. Shane swore softly as he dug through the white foam and a billion packing peanuts scattered on the floor.
    Buried beneath the Styrofoam was a small, vacuum-sealed bag of brownies, a couple of boxes of salted almonds, beef jerky, and a small envelope with
Shane
scrawled on the front. He felt kind of stupid, but the smile wouldn’t leave his lips as he flipped her letter open.
    Dear Shane
,
    I hope its okay that I asked Laura for your address. When she mentioned you didn’t get a lot of mail, I thought this might cheer you up. Of course, she recommended that I send porn and junk food, but I don’t know you well enough for that. At least, not the porn part. I hope you like the junk food, though, and that the
brownies made it all right. Several of the wives swear that vacuu-sealing them is the way to go. Will you let me know?
    Anyway, I just wanted to drop you a note to let you know I hadn’t forgotten about you. In truth, I haven’t—
    “Carponti didn’t sign you up for another dating with herpes care package, did he?”
    Shane stuffed the letter back into the box like a guilty teenager as Trent walked up to him. “Nah, just another random care package from a support-the-troops organization. Jelly beans and magazines and sunscreen.”
    He nudged the box beneath his bunk, hiding Jen’s address. Something about the brief, distant contact with Jen had struck a chord with him, and he wanted to keep it private.
    Trent blew out a hard breath and sat down on Carponti’s bunk. Carponti would have kittens if he found out Trent had violated the place where the magic happened—nightly—with the woman of his dreams. Nicole apparently enjoyed sending her husband dirty letters.
    Briefly, Shane considered telling Trent what he might be sitting in then thought better of it. It was purely speculation and trash-talking on Carponti’s part, and to be honest, Shane just didn’t want to think about it. Damn, but he missed having a space of his own.
    “I suppose you’re here about Randall?”
    “Who else? I’m not really in the mood to deal with this bullshit. His or yours. So what happened this time?”
    Trent looked tired. More tired and beat down than Shane had seen him in years. He wasn’t sleeping, that much Shane knew. He often saw him up at night, pacing outside the company tactical operations center or crouched over his laptop on the other side of the bay at three a.m. The Surge was more brutal than anyone had expected. Shane and the other senior leaders in the company all pulled their weight and tried to mitigate Lieutenant Randall’s incompetence. He was unreliable at best, untrustworthy at worst.
    “Randall and Miller are fighting again. I don’t care why but I’m tired of playing mediator between whoever Randall has pissed off this week. You need to squash it. The troops are starting to notice and infighting isn’t what you need right now. No one does.”
    Anger flashed in Trent’s eyes, quickly followed by fatigue. “I’m aware of everyone’s responsibilities. But I’m at a loss about what to do about it. Because in fourteen years, I’ve never run into something like this.”
    “Two lieutenants not getting along is nothing new.” Shane nudged the box farther beneath his bunk and started lacing up his boots.
    “Believe me, that I know. But I don’t trust him. And that’s a bigger problem than you neutering him in front of the troops.”
    “Why don’t you trust him?” Shane had put the lieutenant in his place. And yeah, soldiers had seen it. So what? This was the infantry, not elementary school. Feelings got hurt. Suck it up. But he