Free Guarding the Soldier's Secret by Kathleen Creighton Page B

watched Yancy cuddle and comfort Laila until she finally fell asleep again. To add to his unaccustomed inner turmoil concerning his daughter, there was the continuing puzzle of Yancy.
    She was the same and yet different.
    Yes, she was as beautiful as ever. Yes, his attraction to her was as strong. Nothing had changed, and yet everything had changed. It wasn’t only the fact that in the eyes of the law she was Laila’s mother; it was more complicated even than that.
    It was his own feelings he couldn’t figure out. How the hell did he feel about her now—aside from wanting her so badly he ached all over? He didn’t like not knowing. Liked even less the dark and turbulent mess he encountered whenever he tried to think about it. He longed for the way it had been between them, the simplicity of it. Of a man and a woman, of mutual hunger, mutual need, giving and taking in equal measures.
    * * *
    There are parts of that first time I can’t remember, but I know I told her my name. I had gone to her quarters still dirty and stinking of death and battle, filled with the horror of it, needing to wipe it out of my head, and the only way I could think of to do that was to bury myself in a woman’s clean, sweet body and lose myself there. I don’t remember saying much. No explanation, no asking, nothing. I looked at her and then she was there, and I kissed her, knowing it wouldn’t stop with that. And she didn’t stop me. Seemed to know what I needed without my telling her. I wanted to cry, but instead I put all that was inside me into making love to her.
    She was generous with her loving. She gave it all, nothing held back, even though I hadn’t showered or shaved, and I know my beard marked her redhead-fair skin. I probably marked her other places, too, though not intentionally. Afterward—too quickly it was over—she didn’t give me a chance to feel ashamed. She smiled up at me and touched my lips with her fingers, and said, “Hello again, soldier.”
    * * *
    “She’s asleep,” Yancy whispered, and he nodded. “I think I should sleep here with her...in case she wakes up again.”
    “It was a nightmare?” His voice was hoarse, raw with remembering.
    She nodded, looking not at him but back over her shoulder at the sleeping child.
    “Does she have them often?”
    She pulled her gaze back to him, but it slid quickly away. “She did at first. But she hasn’t had one for a long time. Probably what happened today...”
    Again Hunt nodded. “It was probably seeing me that set her off—made her remember.”
    She opened her mouth to deny it, then shook her head and shrugged. “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.”
    He said, “Yankee—” just as she hitched in a breath to say more, so he yielded to her. The look she angled up at him was dark and troubled.
    “Hunt, what happened today? Was it—”
    Breath exploded from his lungs, and for the second time he said, “I wish to God I knew.”
    “I thought Kabul was secure—relatively. There haven’t been any bombings or kidnappings since the drawdown. And now—and here you are, and... Hunt, tell me the truth. Is it Laila they were after? What’s going on that I should know about?”
    He touched her face, unable to tell her what was in his heart just as he’d been unable to tell her then, that first time. Only now, though he needed her as much, wanted her as badly, this time there was no welcome, no giving, no compassion in the eyes that bored into his. Only questions and anger and fear.
    “Yankee,” he whispered, “all I can tell you is that I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t mean for you to know...about me. I wish I could tell you more, but I can’t. I hope you can understand.”
    She stepped back, away from his touch. “I wish I didn’t, but I do.” Her voice was soft as a sigh. “That’s what makes it so hard.”
    She closed the door. Gently.
    He stood for a long moment, her image burned onto his retinas. Then he turned and went upstairs to