exactly dainty slippers, are they?” she murmured, smiling. Considering her state of mind when she’d arrived, smiling felt damn near like a miracle.
“No. Gotta say though, the uniform’s kinda hot. I’ve always thought so. Something about a woman in authority.”
Heat rose into her cheeks. “You weren’t exactly clearheaded when I last exerted my authority.”
“No,” he answered, “I wasn’t. I was a mess, like you were tonight. Only I’d been that way for months. I wasn’t coping. I pretended everything was great. I drank a lot to forget all the ways I’d failed.”
“I’m sure you didn’t fail, Jake.” The summer evening was melting into twilight and the light coming through the windows was faded and weak.
“Oh, I did. And you know as well as I do, Kendra. When people like me fail, other people die.”
Chapter Six
He was beginning to open up. Kendra wasn’t sure if she was glad or if she needed to escape. She wasn’t good at this sharing thing. But he’d been here for her tonight. He was holding her in his arms, and she owed it to him to listen. She wanted to help even though the very idea scared her to death.
“Someone died?” she prompted, swallowing hard. All she could see in her mind was that beautiful young girl. A person’s face changed when their heart stopped beating. For a few precious moments it had been peaceful and beautiful, but then it was different. Like a shell where once there had been a soul.
Soullessness scared her to death.
“I still have nightmares about it. She…” His voice broke a little and he stopped, inhaled.
“It was a woman.” Her voice sounded hoarse.
“From a nearby village.”
He stopped. Kendra didn’t urge or nudge. She just waited. If it wasn’t time, he’d stop and they’d talk about something else. And if he needed to get it off his chest, she’d listen. Jake was turning out to be so much more tender and caring than she’d expected. It wasn’t fair that he’d been so tied up in knots for what, a year? Two years?
“We were in a pretty delicate spot. Lots of insurgents around. Lots of Taliban and a lot of frightened villagers. I met this woman—Khaterah.”
His voice hitched saying her name. It was a beautiful name, exotic and lovely. Had Jake fallen for her? Had she been someone special?
“Khaterah. That’s beautiful.”
“It means desire.”
“Oh,” she answered. Oh , she thought. There was definitely something here. There was something in the way he said her name. A quiet reverence. A wistfulness. Kendra was relatively sure no one had ever spoken her name in quite that way, not ever. For a fleeting moment, she was the tiniest bit jealous that this woman, whoever she was, had captured Jake’s heart so completely.
Jake’s chin rested against Kendra’s temple as he spoke quietly. “She wore a burka. The first time I met her, I could hardly see her eyes. She wouldn’t look at my face—it was wrong to make eye contact. Wrong to touch. The burka was shapeless and covered her from head to toe, but she moved with a grace that was beautiful. She passed me a message that day. It was incredibly brave and stupid of her to do that.”
Kendra’s heart started beating faster, afraid of what was coming next. “Any woman who would do such a thing—”
“She was risking her life. When I met her later, I told her never to do it again.” He swallowed and she felt his Adam’s apple rise and fall. “She met my eyes. More than that. She showed her face to me that day. I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman, brave and determined. And yet her life was about hiding, about being faceless and powerless. She fought back in the only way she knew how.”
There was anger in his voice now, and frustration. Kendra leaned back a little so she could look into his face. It was so tense, so…haunted. She lifted her fingers and touched his cheek. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I meant it when I said it was