Because of You: A Loveswept Contemporary Military Romance

by Jessica Scott

  The storm rumbled closer, but no rain fell from the slate-colored sky. He kept his eyes closed. She sat near him on one of the concrete benches, close enough that he could hear her breathing.

  Her fingers on his jaw surprised him. She turned his face toward her and for once, he didn’t have the energy to fight.

  He opened his eyes. She lowered her hand.

  Would he ever again be able to interact normally with people? He was utterly and completely at a loss, not knowing what to do or say.

  Apparently so was she. He saw her lip disappear beneath her teeth and he wondered what she was nervous about, even as he realized he felt the same way.

  “Carponti forgot to pick you up, didn’t he?”

  Seeing how it looked like he’d be sleeping outside in a thunderstorm tonight, he really wanted to kill Carponti. “Yeah.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “You ever see that SNL skit where Chris Farley played the motivational speaker?” Shane released a breath. Nothing like being homeless to drive a woman wild. Homelessness and wheelchairs were so sexy these days. He figured he might as well be honest. It couldn’t be any worse than his boner fiasco. He sighed hard and offered a weak smile. “I’m thirty-five years old and yes, I am divorced, and I live in a van down by the river.”

  Her laugh escaped her, despite her attempt to lock it down. Some of the strain loosened from around his heart. He had to get away from her before his want turned into a need. A need he couldn’t act on. And he really didn’t want to think about where this conversation could lead.

  “Do you actually own a van?” she asked.

  “This isn’t really all that funny.”

  “Yes, actually it is. That skit is one of my all-time favorites.”

  “Carponti should be here soon,” he mumbled. An odd mixture of emotions churned in his stomach. She was laughing, and he wished he could find humor in the situation, too. The storm rolled closer, rumbling over the hills. Yeah, this was definitely not funny.

  “My house is surprisingly wheelchair friendly.”

  Shane exhaled hard, unable to break past the blockage in his throat. “Do I want to ask why?”

  “Well, if you’re going to be a jerk …”

  He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Why would you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Open your home to a complete stranger?”

  “Seeing as how I’ve held your penis in my hand, I think that puts you firmly in the not a stranger category.”

  He coughed and choked and felt his face turn sixteen shades of hot.

  “Finally. Jeez, I was starting to think your sense of humor had gone AWOL.”

  He studied her then. Really looked at her. Her eyes sparkled in the darkening sky.

  “Won’t you get in trouble? Patient living with his nurse thing?”

  Jen smiled. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  Shane snapped his mouth closed. Her smile spread across her face, loosening the knots around his heart.

  “I can’t go home with you.” He could. That wasn’t the issue. Crossing into her home would bring down the last barrier between them. And he needed that barrier because he wanted to give, not take. He wanted her to be his and that was as selfish as he could be, because once he started, he wouldn’t stop until he claimed all of her. The urge to protect and cherish this woman was strong, stronger than anything he’d ever felt, and he didn’t want to ruin the one good thing he still had in his life. “I can’t ask you to do that for me.”

  “This isn’t about you asking me. It’s about you getting better. Bad stuff happened. It’s not the end of the world. So you have a choice. You can wallow in self-pity or get in my car. But it’s about to rain, so can we please go if we’re going?”

  She marched off, the click of her heels against the concrete fading. He was tempted, so damn tempted, to follow her and bare his soul. To talk about his failure to keep his men safe. His concerns about Carponti. Trent’s silence. How he’d always fucked up the good things in his life. He’d gone to Iraq to make a difference, to protect his men. Instead, he’d ended up being dragged across the battlefield himself.

  The words wouldn’t come, nor would the admission that his life was better with her in it, and as he watched her walk away, he couldn’t find the words to call her back. Then she was gone, and it was too late. He swallowed and looked down at the duffel bag in his lap. Carponti was a dead man. Frustration clawed at his soul.

  A familiar ancient Neon pulled up and Jen got out, slamming her door a little too hard. Relief popped in his chest. She opened the trunk and snatched his duffel bag from his lap before he could react. Then she opened the rear passenger door and waited, arms crossed over her chest. He just stared.

  “Are you coming? I’d like to beat the traffic off post.”

  “Where?” He felt dense, like his brain was moving in slow motion. It still felt strange to have the use of both of his hands, but he had nothing to do with them now.

  “Down by the river. I might as well drop you off, on my way home.”

  He rolled over to the backseat and looked in skeptically. The backseat was a tin can, tiny and small. “There’s no way I’m fitting in here with my legs like this.”

  Jen’s expression suggested otherwise. “Wanna bet?”

  Chapter 17

  She wasn’t really going to drop him by the river, but as they drove farther down Highway 195, he started to wonder. He watched the subdivisions fade away and tried to occupy his thoughts with all the ways he was going to kill Carponti for leaving him high and dry.

  The Texas hill country spread out for miles all around them. Finally, Jen turned right down a long dirt road that led to a large, two-story ranch-style home. It wasn’t new, like so many houses in the Fort Hood area. The yard was mowed, well kept, and the bushes were trimmed. There was a bright grey-and-white barn a few dozen feet from the house and an attached garage that looked like it had been added on long after the original house was built.

  But it was the wheelchair ramp in front of the house that caught his attention.

  He caught her gaze in the rearview before she switched off the ignition. “You have a real wheelchair fetish.”

  “Are you going to be this pleasant all evening? Because I’ll be happy to leave you alone and not give you the grand tour.” She helped him out of the car and back into the wheelchair. He swallowed the bitter pill of needing her help and rolled toward the ramp. She paused before slinging his duffel bag over her shoulder. “And just to ease your mind, my grandmother was in a wheelchair. I took care of her before she died.”

  Her house was spotless, no dust or dirt anywhere. Nothing out of place. It was warm and inviting. It felt like a home. Something Shane hadn’t really had. Ever. He rolled through the main room into the kitchen, and nearly wept when he smelled the warm and comforting aromas wafting from a bread machine on the counter. Beneath that was a hint of apples and cinnamon.

  He was overwhelmed. She’d opened her home to him, a man who had failed everyone he’d ever cared about. But for some reason Jen had decided to help him rebuild the foundations of his life by sharing a little bit of hers. He had no idea what to say. Thank you seemed so small and insignificant.

  She kicked her shoes off at the base of the stairs and padded over to him in stocking feet. “Don’t freak out, you’re staying in Gran’s old room.”

  He followed her through the main room. The entire first floor was perfectly suited for someone in a wheelchair, the furniture spaced widely apart. Not once had he come close to banging into anything.

  “How come you never moved stuff around after your grandmother died?” he asked quietly.

  “What makes you think I didn’t?”

  “I haven’t bumped into anything.”

  She flushed and folded her arms over her chest. “I figured I’d at least offer you a place to stay.” Jen stunned him with her thoughtfulness—she’d arranged the furniture for him. She smiled at him, her eyes spa
rkling. “I can put everything back, if you want. Make a real obstacle course. It might improve your reaction time.”

  “Thank you” was all he could manage. He hoped she understood everything he couldn’t say.

  “There’s no old lady smell or anything.” She pushed him through double French doors to a bedroom that left him speechless again.

  “This was your grandmother’s room?” It was painted a deep burgundy red, with white trim around the doors and the crown molding. The mixture of scents was a welcome change after the sterile hospital smell that had taken up permanent residence in his nostrils. A large bed sat in one corner of the room, leaving plenty of space for maneuvering.

  He wheeled into the bathroom connected to the room, and immediately noticed that there were handles all around the room. Something simple that would allow him to take care of life’s basic needs without help or any more ill-timed erections. He turned slowly in the oversized bathroom, awed. Even if he lived a hundred years, he could never do enough to thank her for this. He could win the lottery and give it all to her, and it would never be enough to repay her kindness. “Jen …”

  She leaned against the door frame, her feet crossed at the ankles, hands tucked into the back waistband of her skirt. She didn’t let him finish. “Hungry? I’ve got some steaks.”

  “Steak? As in real food?” He seized onto the distraction. Whatever he might have managed to say wouldn’t have made much sense anyway.

  “Yeah, well, even I get tired of hospital food sometimes.”

  “When do you have time to cook?” He followed her into the kitchen, which was painted a pale, cheery yellow. He wanted to help her, but had no idea how.

  The feelings churning inside of him were so different from those that had defined his new normal. Things felt right and normal and good.

  Wide, dark granite countertops, spotlessly organized, were topped with shiny light cabinets. She opened one of them, and pulled out a chopping block, setting it down on the counter. Then she went out onto the porch and he heard the snap of the ignition as her grill sparked to life. She came back in, and set bright red tomatoes and a knife on the chopping block.

  “What?” she asked, smiling at his incredulous gaze.

  “You are the single most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”

  “Maybe I’m a sucker for a man in a cast.” She shot him a quick look before sliding the chopping block toward him, and then went outside to put the steaks on. She was still smiling when she came back in, smelling like barbecue and heaven. “There’s just something missing without it.”

  Here was a side of Jen he’d never really seen before. That night at Ropers, she’d been edgy. And at the hospital, she’d been confident and competent. Here, though, in her home? Here she relaxed. She was easy and comfortable.

  The want burned inside of him. “I can break my arm again to get another one.”

  She laughed as she pulled a bowl of potato salad out of the fridge, and dumped large scoops onto two plates. She paused, and looked up at him from beneath heavy lids. “Don’t do it on my account.”

  He chopped the tomatoes into chunks and slid them to one side of the chopping block. It felt so incredibly free to have the use of both his arms. The little things in life had never seemed so huge until he couldn’t do them for himself.

  “If I broke my arm, would you shave me again?” he said, a wicked grin spreading slowly across his lips at the thought.

  She cast a sideways glance at him. “I could probably do that for you,” she replied.

  The thought of having her hands on him again made him ache. He followed her out onto the porch.

  The porch encircled the house and was completely screened in. It allowed a little bit of Texas in without letting all of it in. They settled around the small patio table, and Jen doled out the food. The silence was comfortable, filled with the sounds of the night.

  The sun hung low, casting reds, pinks, and oranges across the horizon that still threatened a storm. He winced as the memory of another red-streaked sky slipped in, the night of the attack that had sent him home. His throat constricted and he drank deeply to break up the knot. His heart beat faster against his chest, as the echo of the machine-gun thunder hammered in his ribs again. He pushed out a hard breath to force the memory back.

  Crickets chirped in the encroaching darkness. There were no crickets in Baghdad.

  Her hand covered his suddenly, pulling him out of the past. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Just realized I can’t remember the last time I heard crickets.”

  She squeezed his fingers. “When I first moved here, it took a whole summer for me to realize it didn’t cool off at night like it did back east.”

  He turned his hand so that his palm opened beneath hers. “How long ago did your grandmother pass away?”

  “Four years. Sometimes I can’t believe it’s been that long.”

  “How did she die?”

  “In her sleep.” Jen pulled her hand back and picked at her potato salad. “It wasn’t bad. She was in a lot of pain.”

  “You don’t look like it wasn’t bad.”

  “The fight that followed was the bad part. My family decided that her will wasn’t valid and that they wanted to fight over the house and the couple thousand bucks in her checking account.”

  He studied her in the shadows. They danced over her features and tugged at his heart. He wanted to reach for her and soothe the hurt he saw in her eyes. He hated that anyone would hurt her over something so trivial as money.

  She glanced up at him. “My grandmother raised me. My parents divorced when I was three. Dad’s out there somewhere, I guess, but Mom was killed by a drunk driver when I was six. It really hurt to lose her.” She released a deep breath. “Anyway. Do you need help tonight?”

  He swallowed and shook his head. “I should be good. Thank you, though.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it. He wanted to know what she’d been about to say but she left the table, clearing the best meal he’d had in he couldn’t remember how long.

  The truth was that she’d crept into his heart when he hadn’t been looking, and now? Now he had no idea what to do next.

  * * *

  Despite trying to get back on normal footing, the space between them was quiet. Not quite to the point of being strained, but close.

  She left him, needing some space to sort out everything in her head. He was just as quiet as she’d been at the end of dinner. She hadn’t felt like sharing the rest of her family drama, how they’d tainted the memory of her grandmother’s life over a checking account. Or how her brother had accused her of faking her illness to keep the house.

  She wasn’t ready to give voice to the fear that nagged at the back of her skull. She sighed and looked toward the closed door across from the kitchen.

  Shane was there, on the other side of that door. Today had been overwhelming. She understood that. The bravado she’d grown accustomed to whenever he was around Carponti was gone, replaced by a deep disquiet.

  His inability to get through to Osterman had knocked him back a few paces. She hoped that she had at least lifted some of the burden he carried by offering him a place to stay. But she was worried that he wouldn’t bounce back. For all his tough talk, Shane was a man searching for a purpose.

  She took a deep breath and stepped back onto the porch. She’d felt the full force of the demons he wrestled with tonight, swirling in the darkness around him.

  Shane was out there, too—he’d wheeled himself out through the sliding glass doors of her guest bedroom, and was facing the fading sunset, watching the impossibly huge Texas sky fade into an inky blackness that could only be seen at a distance from city lights. He’d taken his shirt off, and she wasn’t about to object to the view. Light from the bedroom painted his pitch-black tattoos in shadows and light.

  His legs, though, remained covered by a cream-colored chenille throw from the edge of the bed.

  He looked into her eyes when she sat down
on the bamboo patio sofa next to him. The wood creaked as she shifted to pull her legs beneath her.

  Crickets filled the silence between them.

  So much for anything being easy with this man. At the end of the day, she could guess at what was bothering him, but she didn’t want to. She hugged her arms to her chest and decided to simply be, rather than hounding him with questions. She would just sit, and be there if he needed her.

  The lights from the house backlit his profile and she studied him. Strong. Steady. Troubled.

  After a moment, he dropped his head back against the wall behind him. Shane’s voice was quiet in the evening darkness when he finally spoke. Like he was testing out his words carefully before he voiced them.

  “I had no idea what to say to Osterman today.” He scrubbed his hands over his jaw. “I haven’t been at such a loss with one of my guys since I was a brand-new sergeant.”

  Jen tucked her hair behind her ear and waited. The urge to reach for him, to offer comfort, was strong enough to be a compulsion. But he didn’t want comfort right now. She wasn’t even sure he was seeking absolution. The recrimination in his voice suggested he wanted judgment.

  Shane shifted and the wheelchair creaked under his weight. “I don’t have any way to relate to what he’s going through. Carponti nailed it dead to rights. I’ve still got ten fingers and ten toes.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re not hurting. That doesn’t mean you can’t relate to him.”

  “Yeah, actually, it does.”

  “No, actually, it doesn’t. You don’t have to have similar injuries to have similar emotions, Shane.” Now she reached for him, threading her fingers with his. “Just because you haven’t lost a limb doesn’t mean you’re not hurting. It’s not like you just got a scratch and were returned to duty. You know what it feels like to get sent home before your team. Just like he does.”

  He flinched and looked away, but he didn’t pull his hand free. “It feels like shit.”

  “I know.”

  Instantly his gaze returned to her, intense and fierce. In the darkness, her scar throbbed against her bones.