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Because of You CHAPTER 1
‘What crawled up your ass?’
Shane shoved his last Ziploc bag of T-shirts into his army-issued duffel bag and tried to smother his rising irritation. ‘What part of no don’t you understand?’
Carponti aka the most annoying soldier in Shane’s entire platoon picked up Shane’s grey ACU pattern patrol cap and put it on, strutting around like he owned the place. Then he puffed out his chest and swung his arms wide, like a bad caricature of an angry gorilla. Sometimes Shane wished he didn’t let Carponti into his apartment as often as he did. But Carponti had recently turned into a permanent fixture in Shane’s after-duty life. Shane wasn’t sure what that said about the state of his affairs. As if Carponti mocking him in the empty apartment wasn’t enough of an indicator. ‘I’m Sarn’t Garrison. I’m too badass to relax and have a good time.’
‘Piss off.’
‘Did your wife take your sense of humor in the divorce, too?’ Carponti asked, flopping into Shane’s chair. ‘Come on, man, it’s just a few hours and a couple of beers. The whole platoon is going to be there.’
Shane sighed and hooked his duffel bag shut, tossing it into the corner of his apartment near the front door. He flinched as the sudden movement stretched the fresh stitches that were holding two tiny holes in his abdominal wall closed. Carponti didn’t know about Shane’s recent brush with death and Shane intended to keep it that way. If Carponti wanted to believe the divorce was keeping him from going out, then so be it. But the truth was that Shane had been too busy, over the past five months, to dwell on the end of his marriage. Of course, he missed feeling like he had a home, but he couldn’t lie to himself Tatiana hadn’t made their life together a home any more than he had. She’d been familiar, though, and he missed that. At least, that’s what he told himself when he had time to think about it. So many of his guys were having problems in the lead-up to this deployment that Shane had barely seen the air mattress on the floor of the apartment they’d shared, let alone slept on it. And tomorrow he was leaving for good.
Shane shoved his body armor into a second duffel bag, then stuffed socks and more T-shirts into the gaps. It was a pain in the ass packing for deployment. It was easier just being deployed.
‘The whole platoon being there is the problem. Makes it kind of hard to explain why the platoon sergeant is in jail with the platoon if you guys get too fired up tonight. Someone has to be around to bail your sorry asses out of Bell County tomorrow.’
Carponti rolled his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck, serious for one hot second. ‘Look, just come out with us. You’ve been a real asshole since your wife left; you need to unwind, or we might just shoot your ass when we’re in country for being such a dick.’
Shane rested his hand over his heart and blinked rapidly. ‘God, I’m so touched by the depth of your concern. I can drink beer here. Alone. Quietly.’
‘Sissy.’
Shane laughed and the feeling caught him off guard. If it had been that long since he’d laughed, maybe his wife had taken his sense of humor along with all of his furniture. He shook his head at Carponti’s relentless nagging and finally surrendered. Under duress, but still. ‘All right, fine. But I swear, if a single one of you miss movement tomorrow . . .’
Carponti made the sign of the cross over his heart. ‘Promise. Let’s go. I’m picking up Nikki on the way.’
Shane stuffed his wallet into his back pocket and grabbed the keys to his truck. At least he didn’t have to change. Killeen, Texas, didn’t exactly sport any high-class bars. The place they were headed to, Ropers, was only moderately slimy, meaning that he wasn’t likely to die of dysentery from the beer glasses and he was just fine in his T-shirt and jeans. They were clothes he didn’t care if he ruined if scratch that, when he had to drag one of his soldiers out of a brawl.
Truth be told, he didn’t have any problem with the boys going out. Shane just didn’t want to watch them say good-bye to their wives and girlfriends, and it had nothing to do with his own divorce. Shane hated the knowledge that he might not be bringing everyone home to their families.
It was 2007 and they were deploying as part of the Surge to stabilize Iraq. He knew he would probably bury some of his men this year. He’d deployed too many times to entertain the naive hope that all of his boys would come back in one piece. He’d move heaven and earth to protect them, and it looked like that would have to start tonight, instead of tomorrow. He couldn’t promise they’d all come home from the war, but they’d sure as shit make it to formation in the morning.
That much he could guarantee.
* * *
‘Stop touching it.’
Jen St. James jumped and dropped her hand from the edge of her blouse. ‘I wasn’t.’
She should have known Laura would catch her tugging at her clothes, which, with the addition of a triangular-shaped silicone form, now fit much better. And that was part of what made Jen uncomfortable. She wasn’t used to her blouses hanging properly anymore. But she couldn’t tell Laura that. It had been hard enough to convince her that she wanted to buy only one form and not the entire shop.
Laura couldn’t seem to wrap her brain around the fact that Jen didn’t need to feel sexy, that she wanted to be comfortable instead.
‘Yes, you were. No one can tell and the more you play with it, the more horny GIs are going to check your boobs out.’ Laura raised her glass, and then lowered it. ‘On second thought, keep playing with them.’
‘Boob. Singular.’
‘You still have two. Just not a full set. And honestly, no one can tell. So please quit worrying and relax. You look amazing.’
‘Except for the silicone stuck to my chest.’
‘That no one can see. Here,’ Laura said, shoving a sweating green Heineken bottle into Jen’s hand. ‘Drink. Don’t argue. I finally got you out of the house to have a good time and damn it, I’m going to accomplish that mission if it kills me.’
‘You sound like a soldier,’ Jen said with a smile.
Laura took a pull off her drink. ‘I can’t help it. I spend all day every day around soldiers. I’m bound to pick things up here and there.’
It had been a long time since Jen had been around this many people. She felt the proximity of too many bodies, too much cologne and spilled beer. The smells bombarded her and reminded her of the life she’d had once upon a time. A time when she would have danced until dawn and then closed the night out with pancakes at IHOP.
Jen had not been inside a bar for more than two years, and she was no more comfortable today than she’d been the last time she’d been out whenher ex had made a point of announcing to everyone in the bar that she had only one breast. So the fact that she was here was amazing in and of itself. The loud music, the crowd, and the GIs mingling with the wannabe cowboys was not an ambience Jen typically sought out. The smoke grated on her lungs but wasn’t nearly as smothering in the seat she’d managed to snag at the edge of the bar. Still, anything was better than the sterile smell of the hospital, and she wanted to get back to feeling normal, really she did. Whatever normal meant nowadays.
Laura was the one saying good-bye to her husband for the fifth time in seven years. Jen was just here for moral support, so the least she could do was put her own demons to rest and have a good time. She lifted the beer to her lips.
‘I can’t believe you dragged me here,’ she shouted in Laura’s ear over the din of Kenny Chesney.
‘I can’t believe I found a babysitter. Trent’s whole company is here tonight.’ Laura smiled and nursed a Corona while Jen sipped on her Heineken.
‘Shouldn’t you be molesting your husband? He’s the one leaving.’
‘I don’t want to leave you hanging out here, teasing all these horny soldiers with your fake boob.’
‘Ha-ha-ha. My fake boob and I are just fine, thanks. And speak of the devil.’ Strong, wide hands slipped around Laura’s waist, yanking her back. Laura tipped her face up to her husband’s for a kiss and Jen offered Trent a mock salute with the tip of her beer.
‘Will you please take your wife to dance?’ Jen shouted with a smile.
‘Gladly.’ Trent pulled his wife into some convoluted line dance, leaving Jen alone at the bar where she was quite content to watch everyone else and sip her beer.
She discreetly tugged at her blouse again. In a dark corner at the other end of the bar, a sensual flare of movement caught her eye. She looked closer and saw a couple kissing intensely, so engrossed in each other she couldn’t say where one person ended and the other began, lost in the heavy scent of lust and liquor. She looked away, studying the green bottle in her hand. She wondered if she would ever again know what it felt like to have warm, rough hands move over her flesh.
Jen had come a long way, and it had still taken all of Laura’s persuasive powers to convince her to buy the breast form. But it didn’t mean that her scars no longer bothered her. She’d hesitated for a different reason. The round shape beneath her blouse now was just false advertising. She swallowed and pushed aside a brief flicker of melancholy.
Someone solid and heavy knocked into her and sloshed beer down the front of her blouse. A strong vise latched around her arm to steady her. She glanced up into the lightest grey eyes she’d ever seen. Grey eyes that she’d seen before but never this close. In the dimly lit bar, they looked almost silver.
Shane Garrison. A friend of Trent’s. Jen had seen him around before, but had never actually spoken to him. He’d always seemed big, but up close he was massive. Black tribal tattoos twisted up both of his wrists, writhing up his forearms to disappear beneath the frayed edge of a green T-shirt. And who knew that bald could be so sexy in the right lighting? Had to be the rough jaw that did it.
‘Sorry. You okay?’ He leaned close to her ear so he didn’t have to shout. Jen shivered as his breath brushed across her skin. He stood closer to her now than any man other than a doctor had in over a year. The heat from his body caressed her skin, and she could smell him, a mixture of spice and smoke and something entirely male. She swallowed and tried to find her voice.
‘I’m fine. Thanks. This place is crowded.’ She knew better than this. She pulled her arm free and tugged the clinging blouse away from her skin, suddenly afraid that he would see the scars on her chest through the wet material.
As the words left her lips, someone jostled her into him again. He tried to steady her but she fell against him anyway.
Time hung suspended and she stood in this man’s embrace, feeling protected and safe and deliciously unflawed. It was impossible to miss the hard angles of his body. For one brief fantasy moment, she imagined what it would feel like if this dangerous and sexy man lowered his mouth to hers.
But the fantasy faded as quickly as it had come and Jen stepped back into reality. A reality in which a man like the one standing oh-so-close to her was just being polite to a woman he had met in a bar. Down girl.
He lowered his mouth to her ear again. ‘Since I nearly crushed you twice now, can I buy you a drink?’
She smiled and sipped from the sweating green bottle. ‘I still have some of this one left. Thanks, though.’
‘Jen, right?’ He retrieved his own beer. ‘Are you here with Laura and Trent?’
‘Yeah. How did you know?’
‘I’ve seen you around. How long have you known Laura?’
Jen ticked off numbers on her fingers. ‘Ethan is almost six, right? Almost six years. We met right after she had him.’
A shadow flickered across his face and was gone before she could truly say she’d seen it. Instead of letting it go, she chased it. ‘What?’
‘I’ve known Trent a long time. That’s all.’
Why would that make him sad? She wondered at the man who scanned the bar, splitting his attention between her and the crush of bodies on the floor. With each question, he leaned in close to her, sending a shiver down her spine. A shiver that chased away her awkward discomfort and, for one brief moment, made her feel whole and feminine. There had been a time when she would have acted on impulse and pursued this man, but those days were long gone.
‘Yeah. Going away party and all that. Are you deploying tomorrow, too?’ God but she loved how he smelled.
‘Yeah.’ He took a long pull from his beer.
‘For how long?’
He shrugged. ‘A year, with an option for fifteen months.’ She caught a glimpse of a black tattoo around the edge of his collarbone and wondered just how much of his body was covered by the twisting dark lines of ink. Tattoos didn’t usually do it for her. She wondered at people who would permanently color their bodies. But on Shane, they worked. They worked well.
She sniffed and sipped her beer even as Shane shifted, resting one arm on the bar behind him and angling his body slightly toward her so that he could see the dance floor. Jen turned in time to see Laura dragging Trent away from the Copperhead Road line dance. They wove through the crowd, heading toward her, and Jen felt a sense of guilt creep up the back of her neck like a flush. Laura was spending too much time worrying about her she should be focusing on her husband instead.
Trent’s face split into a wide grin when he saw Shane. ‘Miracles will never cease. Carponti actually got you to come out?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Jen, you didn’t tell me you knew Shane,’ Laura said, twining her arm with Jen’s.
‘I don’t. He bumped into me.’
Laura leaned close, so that the men couldn’t hear her. ‘Shane is one of Trent’s platoon sergeants, but they’ve been friends for years. And he’s divorc ‘
‘Not another word. Not one.’ It didn’t matter that she’d been wondering if he was single. Her friend’s words shattered her fantasy and brought reality into sharp, silicone-shaped focus.
Laura feigned innocence with widened eyes and a wicked smile that fooled no one. ‘What?’
‘I know where you’re going with this, and it’s not even close to possible.’
Laura shrugged, a smile painted on her lips, and danced away with Trent, leaving Jen alone at the crowded bar with brooding, sexy Shane. She sipped her beer and studied him. He was watching the crowd, his jaw flexing in the shadows.
What did it feel like to know that tomorrow he was going off to war?
ONE CLICK BECAUSE OF YOU
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