Free Bring Him Home by Karina Bliss

sake. And mine. Don’t drag this out. Sign the papers. For God’s sake, let me get on with my life.”
    “You might not feel like you were his first priority, but you were. I swear, as soon I’ve assessed the risks—”
    “Go to hell.” Pale with anger, she opened the door, and Adam nearly fell in. “Don’t listen to this man,” she instructed. “I’m going to the lawyer’s to get him fired. Then I’m coming back.”
    She glared at Nate. “Don’t be here. In fact, I want your stuff out of the bach when I return.”
    “I have no transport,” he reminded her, though he suspected she was beyond reasoning with. Her next words confirmed it.
    “So walk!”
    * * *
    C LAIRE STORMED OUT of the estate agency and into the high street, eighteen months of unexpressed rage boiling through her veins. And God, it felt so good. So good to rip off the mantle of long-suffering widow, meekly accepting her husband’s fate because he’d died for his country. A good cause. Ha!
    Well, what about my cause? What about Lewis’s cause? Did you ever think of how your son would suffer if you died, you selfish bastard?
    It was freeing to have this anger in the open, anger she’d suppressed for so long because it was wrong to speak ill of the dead, wrong to rail at the man she’d so loved.
    But as she stabbed the unlock button on her car-key remote, Claire experienced the righteousness of rage. To hell with acceptance, to hell with stoicism, she wanted to slash and burn. Some tiny part of her brain knew this would wear off, but for now the brutal honesty was liberating, heady.
    She got in the driver’s seat and slammed the door. “At least you made it easy,” she yelled in the confines of her car. “I spent half our married life alone while you were on deployment.” It was like having a boil lanced; all the poison releasing in one toxic ooze.
    Claire revved the engine, made an illegal U-turn and accelerated in the direction of her lawyer’s office. She would never tie her life to a man’s again. Never. They only let you down. The lights turned red and she slammed on her brakes.
    As for Nate…
    She couldn’t even articulate her thoughts where Nate was concerned, there was just a welling of murderous impulses. If she saw him again, she’d hit him. Swear to God. When the lights turned green, Claire burned rubber. “Now he has a conscience,” she sneered. “Now he’s concerned about our well-being.”
    Ahead, a young woman with a pram waited at a pedestrian crossing. Reluctantly Claire pulled to a stop. Different if Nate had been there for her, after Steve died, when she needed him. Needed his empathy, needing that mutual understanding they’d always shared. Of all the times to resurrect that Nate, he had to choose now. “And after helping me get the best price for the house, too. I mean, what the heck was that?” The crossing clear, she accelerated again. Some imagined command from on high from his dead buddy and never mind her wishes. Claire could have screamed.
    “I don’t forgive you,” she said aloud to Steve. “You hear me? I don’t forgive you. Live with it.” She registered her words and suffered a pang of loss so sharp that she had to drop one hand from the steering wheel and press it against her breast.
    You did say you wanted to feel.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    H ER LAWYER TOOK Claire’s white-hot rage and doused it under dust-dry reality.
    “Ideally, a trust deed is a lengthy, precise document—” Jules Browne held up three flimsy pages “—containing detailed provisions on the trustee’s powers and responsibilities with a protector clause that would allow you to hire and fire, or limit what Nate can do.” She paused to tuck a strand of shoulder-length brown hair behind her ear. “As I’ve mentioned previously, honey, yours isn’t one of them.”
    “Unfortunately, you weren’t in our circle of friends then,” Claire said bleakly. The curse of accepting the cheapest quote. At the time the deed had been