Craving Her Soldier's Touch

by Wendy S. Marcus

  He slid to the edge of the bed, looked like he wanted to get out, but stopped. Good. Because Jaci was so out of there.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  Yes, he did. “In the end, life has to be about more than the titles and status you’ve achieved and the money you’ve amassed in your investment portfolio.” She found her tank and sweater and put them on, to hell with the bra. “And if those are the things that matter most to you, you are obviously not the man I thought you were.” She turned to leave.

  “Jaci. Wait.”

  “Good luck, Ian,” she said over her shoulder. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.” On her way through the living room Justin said, “Take it easy on him. He’s having a tough time.”

  She knew that. Any fool could see it. Jaci picked up her nursing bag. But that didn’t give him the right to insult someone who was trying to help him. She opened the door, fortuitous timing as it turned out, because Zach the delivery boy headed toward her.

  “Two bags, just like you ordered, Miss J.” He held them up. “And thanks for the mongo tip. You rock.”

  She smiled despite her lousy mood. “I’ll take this one.” She took the bag in his right hand. “Give me a minute to get to the elevator and you can deliver the other one to the condo I just came out of.”

  “Will do.”

  Her emotions churning, Jaci held it together through the elevator ride and the walk down the hall to find her home blessedly quiet. Jena sat on the couch in the darkened living room, her bare feet up on the coffee table a glass of white wine in hand. “I started without you.”

  After the day and evening she’d had, “I’ll be caught up in two seconds.” Jaci set the bag of food on the kitchen table, took the wine from the refrigerator and filled the glass Jena had left on the counter to the rim. Uh, oh. She bent to take a few sips before lifting it to avoid spillage.

  Jena joined her in the kitchen. “You okay?”

  No. She wasn’t. Jaci burst into tears. “I’m sorry.” She reached for a napkin. Jena had her own problems to deal with. She didn’t need to be saddled with Jaci’s.

  “Don’t be.” Jena set her wineglass on the table. “Come here.” She opened her arms and enveloped Jaci in a tight hug, which made her cry even harder.

  “I’m so h-happy you’re home,” Jaci sobbed. “I m-missed you so m-much.” Had been so sad and lonely after both Jena and Ian had deserted her without a word, within months of each other.

  “Come sit on the couch.” With her arm around Jaci’s shoulder, Jena guided her in that direction.

  “Wait,” Jaci said. “Our wine.”

  “Heaven forbid we should forget the wine,” Jena teased as she retrieved the glasses then met Jaci in the living room and sat beside her on the couch. “Spill.”

  Jaci glanced at her glass to see if she’d inadvertently tipped it.

  “Not the wine, you boob. What has you so upset?”

  Where to start? “Ian’s back.”

  “Ian. The guy who kept you so busy you barely had time for your sister? The one we had the ménage with?”

  Jaci glared at Jena. “That is not funny.” She couldn’t believe her sister’s flippant response. “You left town. That rumor—and all the ones that’d followed—made my life hell for weeks.” Especially because of Jerry’s repeated demands that she accompany him to social events to do damage control. Like exaggerated, erroneous accounts of her sex life could possibly have a financial impact on a multi-billion-dollar corporation.

  She’d expected it was all a ploy to dangle her in front of his eligible, well-connected business associates and refused to respond, which only served to anger him more.

  “I’m sorry, hon,” Jena said. “I was trying to lighten the mood and cheer you up like you’ve done for me every single time I’ve called you over the past months. Guess I’m not as good at it as you are. One more thing to add to the list.”

  Jaci responded like she always did when Jena put herself down. “Stop it. You’re perfect.” Because she was. She followed the words with a few hearty swigs of wine, welcoming the subsequent spread of warmth in her belly.

  “Ian being back is good isn’t it? You were crazy about him. At least until the—”

  Jaci jerked up her hand. “Don’t say it.”

  “Never again.” Jena pretended to lock her lips with a key. As if.

  “He said it was all a big misunderstanding,” Jaci explained. “A bunch of guys acting like idiots, combined with the picture of us at the Fourth of July barbecue two years ago, and the twin fantasy run amok.”

  “Ew.” Jena scrunched her face in revulsion. “Men are pigs.”

  Jaci took a more ladylike sip of wine, smiled, and relaxed into the back of the sofa. “That’s what he said.”

  “When was the last time you ate?” Jena asked.

  “Lunch. And some stale crackers at Ian’s.” Which she’d surely worked off in bed.

  “We’d better get some food in you before you pass out,” Jena said, taking Jaci’s glass—which was almost empty. Okay, maybe the last sip hadn’t been as ladylike as she’d thought.

  Over dinner they talked about Ian, Jaci’s work and the crisis center. Every time Jaci tried to steer the conversation in Jena’s direction—to find out where she’d been, how long she planned to stick around, and the twenty-five-million-dollar questions, who was her babies’ daddy and had she come home to tell him, she found her wine topped off and the conversation veering back in her direction.

  She yawned. “I have a long day tomorrow and I’m scheduled to be at the crisis center from four to nine.” After visiting a packed schedule of patients.

  “I know why you’re working so hard.”

  “Because I have two jobs that I love and can’t decide between them so I do both?” Although the fact she was paid to be a community health nurse made that one slightly more appealing at the moment since most of her available cash went to purchase things for the residents at the crisis center.

  “No,” Jena said.

  “So I can have the weekend and afternoons off next week to spend with you. I have us booked for manis, and pedis Saturday morning. Celia is coming to do our hair and makeup—” identically, which was imperative “—at four. The car is coming at six. We’ll be at the benefit ready to meet and greet by six-thirty. Sunday brunch at the Inn at Elmsford then we’ll relax and play with the girls. Monday shopping. Tuesday into the city for dinner and a show.”

  “And you’re going to try to fill up every moment we have together so we don’t talk about it.”

  “I’m not the only one avoiding certain discussions,” Jaci shot back. “I know. You want to talk? Let’s start with where you’ve been? Why you left? Who’s the—?”

  “I’m the guest. So I decide what we talk about.” Jena adjusted her napkin in her lap primly and spoke like her words were written in an etiquette guide somewhere. “And I want to talk about you and who you’re going to marry.”

  Yeah, well Jaci would rather solve quadratic equations. And she hated math. She pushed her plate away, too full, or, more likely, too unsettled to eat another bite. “I refuse to be forced into marriage.” She gave her standard answer.

  “What about Ian? You sure seemed to like him enough at one point.”

  True. But she’d only seen the fun, let’s-hang-out-and-do-enjoyable-things-to-each-other’s-bodies side of him. “He’s changed.” And while the physical parts of him still very much appealed to her, his transformation into an overbearing, lecturing, worrywart who no longer worked with the army and would be home, nosing into her business, all the time, did not. “I’m torn between advertising for a husband on a couple of billboards around town, just to see Jerry’s reaction, and telling him to shove the damn money, I don’t want it.” But while she made a decent living and had invested enough of the inheritance she’d received from her mother to live comfortably for the rest of her life, a large infusion of cash would eliminate the need for her to continually contribute her persona
l money to keep the crisis center going.

  With her portion of the fifty million dollar trust due to be distributed when she and Jena turned twenty-five, if they were happily married at the time, Jaci could open more centers in other areas of the county, provide more services to help more women.

  Jaci cleared her dishes and placed them in the sink so she could have her back to Jena when she shared her present plan. “There’s a guy up on the tenth floor. We speak in passing. He’s not bad to look at. Investment banker. Dresses nice. Brandon says he’s a generous tipper and he couldn’t recall seeing him with the same woman more than once. I’m considering offering him a deal. Marriage for money. A straight business transaction.” Payment for husbandly services rendered to include acting adoringly at public functions, letting Jaci come and go as she pleased without question, and relieving any physical urges somewhere else—discreetly—so neither of them got too content with their living arrangement. Because five years to the day from when she put her signature on a marriage certificate she’d put it on a divorce petition. Her penance served, she would return to her life of independence.

  Jena’s fork clanged on her plate. “No, Jaci. You can’t marry a complete stranger. There’s someone out there for you, we just need to find him.”

  Sweet, naïve Jena still held out hope for true love. A myth. And even if she did manage to get all starry-eyed over some guy, how long until things changed? Until love turned to tolerance turned to dissatisfaction and abuse? “I haven’t found a suitable man in twenty-four years—” although old Ian had come close

  “—and I’m somehow supposed to fall in love in ninety days.” Impossible. Although, “If me marrying someone I don’t know is the problem, I guess I could always ask Justin,” she said, thinking out loud.

  Jena choked on a sip of wine.

  Very interesting. “I forgot. You used to have a crush on him.” Is that why she’d come back, to make a play for Justin? They were, after all, both in the same race against the calendar.

  “Well I certainly don’t anymore.” Jena added her dishes to the sink. “You can have him.” Her words lacked conviction. “He doesn’t want me anyway.”

  “I’m ashamed of us,” Jaci said. “Talking like any man would do.” They both knew firsthand the importance of vetting out a kind, easily managed, even-tempered partner.

  “Jerald seems to think so. As long as it’s someone he chooses for us.”

  And he’d become even more aggressive in that regard of late. “As far as I’m concerned, being a friend or business associate of

  Jerry’s warrants instant disqualification from the potential-marriageable-male-pool. But,” Jaci said, wrapping her arm around Jena’s shoulders. “Let’s keep that between you and me until after we take their generous contributions for the Women’s Crisis Center Saturday night.”

  “Deal,” Jena said on a nod with a conspiratory smile.

  * * *

  “You are a major-league jerk,” Justin said, barging into Ian’s room without knocking.

  “Five years as my friend and you’re just figuring that out?” Ian had forgotten all he had on was a pair of briefs until he turned to see Justin staring at his leg.

  “Looks like it got stuck in a wood chipper and some mad scientist stitched you up.”

  Because he’d lost tissue and muscle in the explosion. Burns. Skin grafts. Multiple debridements. And the surgeries to repair his shattered bones. “I’m guessing all the surgeons who pieced me back together would wave their fancy degrees in outrage over that statement.” Ian reached for a pair of sweatpants.

  “It’s better than if you didn’t have it at all.”

  Ian wasn’t so sure. Maybe he should have let them hack it off. Maybe adjusting to a prosthetic would have been easier than putting up with the constant pain and stiffness and damn unpredictability of what remained of his leg.

  “Stop,” Justin said. “I’ve had enough of you feeling sorry for yourself. You’re alive, Ian. Thousands of soldiers never made it home and you did.”

  That was the problem. “Why? Why me? My men had wives and kids. Families and friends who loved them.” Why was Ian chosen to live over them? His brothers. His family for the past ten years. He didn’t deserve the honor, didn’t want it, and given the opportunity he’d have traded places with any one of his dead buddies in an instant, with all of them.

  “You have family and friends who love you, too, you idiot.”

  “Why, Justin,” he teased. “I’m touched.”

  “Joke around all you want.” He picked up a framed family photo taken about a dozen years ago from Ian’s dresser. “Your mother and your sisters were wrong to turn their backs on you when you enlisted in the army.”

  “If you follow in your father’s footsteps you will wind up dead on foreign soil just like he did. I refuse to live in a constant state of anxiety. Worrying. Obsessing over news reports of what’s happening with the war. Stressing when I don’t hear from you. Dreading the sight of a pair of officers in their dress uniforms showing up on my doorstep. I can’t go through that again, Ian. And neither can your sisters.”

  “But that doesn’t mean they don’t love you, that they wouldn’t have gone to the hospital if you’d called them.”

  “A nurse contacted my mother when I arrived at the army regional medical center in Germany.” As next of kin since, his prognosis grave, there’d been concern he wouldn’t make it through the night. He hesitated, the next part difficult to admit. But this was Justin. “She requested to have her name and phone number removed from my file.”

  Unconditional love was a thing of fairytales.

  “When I arrived back in the U.S.,” Ian continued, “a social worker convinced me to call her so she wouldn’t worry. Mom told me I’d made the decision to join the army on my own, and I could suffer the consequences of that decision on my own. As far as she’s concerned, her only son died on his eighteenth birthday.” The day he’d enlisted.

  “Well that deserves a one-way ticket into the depths of hell.” Justin slammed the picture frame, face down, on the dresser. “But don’t take your anger out on Jaci. I’ve never seen her as upset as she was in the weeks after you left, even after your disappearing act, you coward. And yet she’s still talking to you and obviously still cares for you. You should be on your knees thanking God you have another chance with a woman like her. Instead you insult her and piss on one of the things that mean the most to her.”

  Did she still care for him? After everything he’d done to push her away? And why did Justin have to go ahead and put the idea of a second chance into his head? “I did not—”

  “You damn well did, too,” Justin yelled. “I can find my own job, a good job, a respectable job,” he mimicked Ian.

  “Got nothing better to do with your time than listen in on my private conversations?”

  Justin didn’t acknowledge that Ian had even spoken. “You basically screamed out that the center she’d donated huge sums of her own money to create, a tribute to her mother meant to benefit the cause dearest to her heart, one she works tirelessly to run and promote, isn’t respectable.”

  That wasn’t it at all. Ian had reacted—poorly as it turned out—to the idea of working for her and getting paid by her, because how could a woman as smart, successful, and wealthy as Jaci respect a man who was totally dependent on her emotionally, physically, and financially?

  “Have you ever been there?” Justin asked.

  Ian felt on par with the sludge in a latrine after chili night. “No.”

  “I’m happy to have you home, man. And I’m willing to give you time to get your happy-go-lucky back on. But I will not stand by and watch you hurt my best female friend, again.”

  Ian feared his happy-go-lucky was gone for good. “Exactly what do you plan to do about it?” He clenched his fists, needed a good fight. He and Justin were evenly matched. Bring it on.

  “I’ll shoot you in the head and claim it was a mercy killing.”

  Ian
deflated. “Yeah. You do that.” A month or two ago he would have welcomed a bullet to the head.

  “For the record, Jaci offered me the job last month after some jackoff got drunk and shattered the window in the reception area with a chair, trying to get to his ex.”

  A protective instinct flared inside of him. “They didn’t have security glass?”

  “It was supposed to be. Jaci didn’t know what to look for. Turns out the contractor had ripped her off. The plumbers and electricians overcharge. As much as she hated to admit it, the crisis center needs a more regular male presence than me showing up two evenings a week when men are let in for couples counseling. We interviewed a guy last week that was the best so far. I’m going to suggest she hire him.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Why?” Justin laughed. “You think you have a chance at that job, now? You’d have better luck applying at the lingerie shop down at the mall.”

  Maybe. But he didn’t like the idea of some slacker providing half-assed protection at

  Jaci’s crisis center. The thought of Merlene’s boyfriend showing up, gunning for Jaci, heated the blood coursing through his veins. He owed her. For her letter. For still caring about him. For bringing him back to life. He could help out, at least temporarily, until he finished with physical therapy and was ready to move on.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IAN spent the next day more on edge than usual, pacing, fidgeting, unable to find a comfortable position. Justin had convinced him to give Jaci the night to cool down. In the light of a new day, Ian wasn’t convinced that had been the best course of action. She was gone by the time he’d gone down to her condo that morning. And her sister’s voice through the closed door sounded so much like her it was as if Jaci herself had told him she’d already left for work. In what, he’d wondered, since the car she’d been using was still wedged under a tree in the condo parking lot. Jena didn’t know. And Jaci hadn’t answered one of his calls.

  Granted she was at work, but not even a quick, “I’m busy”? Things were not looking good.