Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover. Merline Lovelace

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СКАЧАТЬ she thought. She wished she could see the face behind the beard.

      Then she noticed the scars. How had she missed them before? She must have been too transported when they made love to notice the multitude of white scars, some small and thin, a few larger and longer, that marked one side of his torso.

      “Morning,” he said. He saw where she was looking and asked, “Should I get a shirt?”

      “No. No! It’s just that... I guess it was really bad.”

      “I don’t remember much of it. A blessing.”

      “I’m glad you’re alive,” she told him, meaning it as much as anything she’d ever in her life said.

      “Me, too.” He gave her a crooked smile. “About time I was able to say that. Sorry I fell asleep.”

      “It’s not like you were on guard duty,” she reminded him. “And you have to sleep sometimes. Besides, the house is locked, and one of us would have heard if someone tried to get in.”

      “Very true.”

      “Have a seat. I’m making toast. Would you like some?”

      “Just some coffee when it’s ready, thanks. I haven’t been up long enough to feel hungry. You look exhausted.”

      She shrugged and pulled her slice of toast from the toaster. “I had a restless night. One of those where you feel like you keep waking up, but you almost never wake up enough to actually do anything about it. You know, like turn on a light and read or something. In and out like a swinging door all night.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      “It happens. In a strange way, it almost felt like when I was in the hospital.” She sat at the table and began spreading jam on her toast. “When they had me drugged. I wasn’t really sleeping, I had the oddest dreams, and I kept waking up but couldn’t really wake up. Weird.”

      “Yeah. Been there.”

      She laughed quietly. “Can’t blame the drugs this time. Maybe too much coffee, but not drugs.”

      He grinned. “Leading the clean life, eh?”

      “Oh, yeah. I donate blood as often as I can, and when I go in, they have these forms. Same questions every time. I tease them that I’ve led a very dull life. Last time the nurse asked me if I’d ever received money for sex, I said, ‘I wish.’ I thought she was never going to stop laughing.”

      His smile broadened.

      “But you know,” she added more thoughtfully, “I find there are lots of questions I answer negatively that I ought to be able to answer affirmatively.”

      “Such as?”

      “‘Have you been out of the country in the last three years?’ Heck, I haven’t even taken a real vacation locally. So I go in and answer the questions and start thinking about taking a cruise, or visiting another country, or...”

      “You’ll do it someday.”

      She let go of her wistfulness and smiled. “Yeah, I will. Someday.”

      “I can’t donate blood at all anymore. Been overseas too often and too much.”

      “That’s okay. I think you’ve given enough, anyway.”

      He shook his head. “Wrong way to look at it.”

      “You think so?”

      “You can never give enough.”

      As she considered his words, she nodded. “You’re right. There’s always a need to be met somewhere.”

      “Maybe I will have that toast,” he said. When she started to rise, he waved her back. “I can make it for myself. You just rest.”

      “Bread’s in the bread box. If you want butter...”

      “I know.” He smiled. “The refrigerator.”

      She laughed then. “Something about being a mother changes you forever. You start assuming that people need explanations for the simplest stuff.”

      “Looking after others is never a bad habit.”

      His words warmed her, and she sipped her coffee, savoring its richness, trying not to stare at the scars on his back. There were probably more she had missed, and somehow she felt embarrassed not to have noticed them. Even in the throes of their incredible lovemaking.

      He popped a couple of slices of bread in the toaster, said, “Be right back,” and disappeared from the kitchen. He returned before the toast was ready, wearing a sweatshirt of his own.

      “Are the mornings always so chilly here?” he asked.

      “Most of the year,” she admitted. “At the height of summer it can get really hot in the daytime, but the nights cool down fast. I’ve never yet had a night when I didn’t need a blanket.”

      “That’s the best way to sleep.”

      They sat together for a while, sipping coffee, eating toast, no conversation necessary. They had reached that exquisite point where neither of them felt pressed to fill a silence. Connie savored that comfort. To her, that had always been a mark of a truly good relationship, when there could be companionable silence.

      Eventually she glanced at the clock. “I guess we may as well go to the early service, if I can get Sophie and my mother up.”

      He nodded.

      “Do you want to come?”

      “Sure. Dress up?”

      She shook her head, smiling. “Times have changed. Jeans will do.”

      “Nobody complains?”

      “Why should they?” She shrugged. “I’ve often felt that God couldn’t care less what we’re wearing when we pray. Clothes are for other people, not for him.”

      “I like the way you think, Connie.” Standing, he astonished her with a kiss. “I’ll go wash up real quick while you wake the others.”

      Julia awoke quickly, with a smile, and agreed she would like to go to the early service. “Much more peaceful,” she said. “Not so many folks stirring around and coughing.”

      Connie laughed. “Then up and at ’em. I’m going to get Sophie.”

      She climbed the stairs feeling better than she had in a week. Somehow Ethan’s presence this morning had managed to batter back the night’s vague fears, and the sunlight pouring in every window seemed to fill the world with a crisp, clean glow. The sky, she thought, would be almost unbearably clear and blue this morning.

      She knocked on Sophie’s door, then opened it. For an instant she didn’t register what she was seeing. For an endless, eternal instant, she couldn’t put the pieces together.

      “Sophie?”

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