by Selena Kitt
She nodded, both hands splayed across the swell of her stomach. "I-I'm fine."
Suddenly, she felt him move again, placing his hands on her shoulders and turning her to look down into her face. God, even through the film of her tears, she could see his eyes widen as his gaze dropped to the baby bump.
"Oh, Jessa…"
"It's all right. I-I'm fine. You don't have to…"
"One more word and I swear to God, pregnant or not, I'll remind you who is in charge here. Of course I would be here for the baby. Our baby."
She opened her mouth to tell him she was thinking he had a career that required him to risk his life and that he didn't need to be distracted. She was going to tell him that he didn't deserve to be held responsible for a child he'd not wished to create. She wanted to tell him that when he'd rescued her, she knew that her freedom shouldn't steal his. Instead, the moment he pulled her close and his hand dropped to feel the first movement of the life they'd created, she said, "I-I wasn't."
His gentle caress turned to steel as he crushed her to his chest and his mouth found hers. When he pulled away, he said, "I told you that I would always be by your side, Jessa." He ran a fingertip over her lips. "I did claim you as mine, after all." He smiled, pulled her to him again, and proved his claim by kissing her until she couldn't breathe, and yet knew she'd found life again. This time, when he released her, he was shaking his head.
"I'm not going to let you raise our child alone. This is our baby and our light from all the darkness of the past. I'm here to stay, and I'm not going anywhere, understand?"
"Yes."
"That's yes, sir, young lady."
A shudder ran through her at the reprimand and the look in his eyes. Stepping back a bit, she lifted her right hand and saluted. "Aye, Aye, Captain."
"It's Major now," he corrected as he swept her off her feet, cradling her like a child and pushing through her door. "And I'm about to give you a major lesson on what happens to my naughty girl. I need to remind you that I claimed you."
"You are a sick bastard, you know that," she said with a giggle.
The rumble of his laugh reverberated against her cheek which she pressed against his chest. "Red, white and fucked, is what I remember you calling me."
Jessa shook her head. "No. You are anything but. You are my hero, Major Decker Cassidy. You are, and have always been, my hero in disguise."
The End
Alta Hensley
Alta Hensley is a USA TODAY bestselling erotic romance author who has had #1 top-selling books in BDSM, erotic science fiction, humor, and historical. She writes the naughty... and then the cure for it.
Being a multi-published author in the Domestic Discipline genre, Alta is known for her alpha heroes, sweet love stories, hot eroticism, and engaging tales of the constant struggle between dominance and submission.
You can find out more about Alta on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Goodreads. You can also contact her at [email protected]
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Other Titles by Alta Hensley and Blushing Books
Caring for Citrine
Traditional Love
Traditional Terms
Traditional Change
Poppa's Progeny
In the Palace of Lazar – Harem: Book One
Conquering Lazar – Harem: Book Two
Enrolling Little Etta (with Allison West)
The Nanny (with Allison West)
Little Secrets (with Allison West)
Captured by Time (with Carolyn Faulkner)
A New Forever (with Carolyn Faulkner)
Ruby Rose
Of Yesterday
The Slave Huntsman
Anthologies:
Milestones
Confessions of a Spanking Author
A Soldier To Cry On
By
Abbie Adams
Chapter One
Tony
A siren in the distance. Voices. Beeping. Movement, not a car—my bed. Metal cart, maybe? With wheels wobbling like a bad shopping cart. Stops fast. Drawers are being opened.
A face, a man with a white coat: Doctor. He shines a penlight into my eyes. "Jerard, you're okay. We're going to get you looked at. The blood on you, it isn't yours. You're going to be all right. Hang in there."
It's gone dark.
From somewhere across the room or in the distance. "BP is dropping. Sixty-four over twenty-eight." High-pitched voice: Female. Nurse?
"Frankie…" Moaning. "Frankie, Frankie. God, Frankie. I'm so sorry." Distant voice getting softer and raspier. Farther away.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beeep…
"He's bleeding out. Get him to the OR." Movement, lights, rushing. Crashing of doors.
"Move. Move. Let's go!"
* * *
"Jerard, what the hell? Every time I come in here, you are sleeping. I thought you wanted to go home." Lieutenant Johnson's bark was worse than his bite, as they say. It did however jolt me awake. "You sure you're ready?" The bite was gone from his voice when he said this in a warmer tone, almost fatherly. Johnson had the heart of a lion. Not a man in their squad would say different.
"I'm not sleeping; I'm just resting my eyes. It's a long way to stateside. You know how much sleep you get on a C-9." I sat up in the narrow hospital bed I'd quickly come to detest, and concentrated hard at ignoring the waves of pain pulsing in my temples. I was ready to go, and had been for a while. Not home, but somewhere. Anywhere but here. More than a month had passed since I had been ready to go, ever since I'd finally really remembered. It was actually my ongoing mental quest to find this Frankie that may have kept me in the hospital longer. The heads were trying to decide if I actually had a mental illness instead of—or because of—the traumatic brain injury or, as they liked to call it, TBI. "Besides, I have a month off if I still need rest."
"I know, and I want you to use it to recuperate. Masters said you were planning to track down the family of one of the deceased. You know that the FRG and Casualties Assistance Officers will have taken care of the widow months ago." Lt. Johnson's brow furrowed in three ridges above his dark brows. Between the lines, I could read the concern etched deeply there. Apparently, Johnson was worried about my mental health as well.
"The nurse said there was another man in the bay when I came in. She admitted that he kept mumbling. It fits. Maybe it won't mean anything, but if it does, it will be worth it to have an answer and some peace. If it's him, the man died apologizing." I dragged my hands over my cheeks and scratched the stubble covering my chin. I'd give anything for a razor that wasn't hospital standard. I had more scars from the cheap blades than anything my eleven years in service had given me. "It's the only thing I have to go on—and it's better than believing I'm crazy. There is no Frankie in my life. I remember everything else. Getting the answers could help me get rid of the fog, and hopefully this damn headache, too."
"You are stubborn, Jerard, but I wish you the best." The older man was built like a bear, probably six-three, but I dwarfed him when he came forward to clap me on the back and pull tight, leaning in and bumping chests. Real men didn't cry and didn't hug, but when you had been in the field and stared death in the eye together, your fellow soldiers became your brothers. I was going to miss my men, my squad. After my month off, I'd be back on the post at Schofield Barracks on Oahu. My squad would still be on deployment a good six months yet. It would be hell. Almost as bad as being left behind to begin with. Totally not my thing. I am a soldier, and soldiers fight to protect their country. I'm a fucking leader, and I'd let my squad down. I should be with them until I brought them home safely. With a sigh, I looked behind me at the other soldiers filling many of the ten beds lining the long roo
m. Some were sleeping, others were not. I nodded my goodbye to the ones who met my eye. I didn't avoid the eyes of the men missing a leg, an arm or an eye. They were a reminder to me of just how much I'd had to lose and hadn't. I could deal with a headache. I was a lucky one. And I'd pay it forward.
We walked the long, stark white corridor toward the exit in silence. The gravity of the situation weighed heavily on both of us. I was going home, leaving my men behind. Two soldiers would never go home again, and many more would be leaving as less than the man they were before. Others were still going to finish their tour, and maybe more wouldn't be going home at all.
I still felt like I was leaving a job unfinished. My father had raised me better. A man did what he had to do. He should be there to take care of his men—but the heads had refused! I'd been in the service long enough to know that I couldn't do anything else. There was no argument. I was going home. My side mission motivated me, so that I could pretend I wasn't just 'going home'. I was moving on to phase two: finding Frankie.
I'd forgotten everything, my home-town, my mother's name, my division, company, squad… Every waking hour of the last five and a half months had been spent trying to remember my life so I could be discharged from the hospital. Every sleeping hour too, it seemed, and yet it was different—I had different memories in my sleep. During the day, I had remembered bits and pieces of reality, but it was my dreams at night that didn't make sense.
It didn't all come back to me at once like the movies portrayed. It was bits and pieces of fuzzy, foggy scenes. But I finally did remember all of it. At least, I'm pretty sure.
"I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry, Frankie…" It came as a raspy whisper, then the rubbing, like fabric—no, like movement. Like someone rolling over. "Frankie…" He moaned.
I kept hearing it, every time I went to sleep. My head pounded. A heavy cloud of confusion hung over me like fog as I searched desperately for answers. It was dark, I couldn't see anything. The voice was the only clue—and only when I slept. I wanted to remember it all when I was awake so that I could move on, but when I was awake, the voice was absent.
Later, months later, after more of my memories had returned, I heard things other than the raspy voice: beeping, varying tones, warning. Stabbing pain in the back of my head. Nurses calling out medical stats. Doctors giving orders. The soldier moaning—and crying.
The puzzle pieces finally came together to give me a complete history, including waking up in the Kandahar Military Hospital after the incendiary explosive device. I don't remember the actual explosion but I do remember the truck, the squad, the map, the heat. The only thing still lost was that little time period in between. That was where Frankie fit in.
She didn't exist anywhere else. That was the only part of my history that was missing. One hour and forty-eight minutes. That's what my CO had come back with when I had asked for the low down.
Left Kandahar post at fourteen hundred hours.
Transferred load into three HETS—heavy equipment transporter—at fourteen twenty hours.
IED at sixteen thirty hours.
Helicopter at sixteen fifty hours.
Hospital at seventeen ten hours.
Awake in recovery at nineteen fifty-five hours.
Where did Frankie fit in? It took searching. She wasn't a nurse on base. Not Francesca, Frances, Francine, not even a fucking Frank to be found; first, middle or last. It was like another lifetime. Maybe I'd been to heaven for a little while—or hell. Yeah, maybe I'd been to hell and back. That would explain the burns, the roaring in my ears, the weight on my chest. But no—it still didn't explain Frankie.
* * *
Coming home to Ogden, Utah, wounded after three tours in Afghanistan was a lot like saving a kitten from a tree. Tear-filled eyes and thank yous seemed like silly flattery. I felt nothing like the hero my home town believed me to be. I hadn't completed my mission; I'd left my men behind, all because of a silly fucking bump on the head. Even though I'd tried to convince myself I was still on a special assignment, I had stopped talking about it with anyone else. Even my own mother had given me the shifty-eyed, concern-laced pleas to take care of myself. It was the same look the military-assigned head-shrink had given me. I was not a mental case and would prove it when I found Frankie, even if I was the only one I proved it to. I looked down at the yellow legal notepad on the table in front of me.
Eric Owens
Damien Blair
Justin Aldridge
Peter McCullough
Lawrence Hanson
Luke Meyers
I had more to go on then, and I had finally found Frankie. I had found six names. Six men had come into the hospital during the same time period as I had after the bomb. But it hadn't taken me studying all six to find the right man. Two of the men had died. They'd told me that in Kandahar.
I turned the page to see the notes I had for the first man on his list. The army had not been the least bit helpful with the search, but the news had been. When a man dies while in the service, the news makes a splash. Of the two who had died, number one hadn't turned up anything interesting, but I'd hit a gold-mine with number two. It had saved me a lot of research on the rest of the men included on the list.
Sergeant Damien Blair of Fort Stewart in Allenhurst, Georgia, was survived by his wife, Frances Luann Blair of Savannah, Georgia. A more in-depth search through the White Pages had also filled my pad with notes. I knew her high school mascot, favorite soda, and her Sunday school teacher (thank you, Facebook) but not the reason for the apologies that flooded my sleeping hours.
The most perplexing issue at hand was what to do with the information. I couldn't really make a trip all the way to Savannah to stalk her and possibly meet her just to say it, either.
I had nothing else to say. He hadn't died in my arms, making me vow to tell his wife how much he loved her. It had been overheard. I was sort of an imposter.
I shoved the chair away from the table and refilled my coffee mug. I still couldn't let it go. I couldn't just forget Frankie now that I had found her. She'd occupied almost six months of my thoughts!
That was how I finally ended up on a commercial flight to Savannah less than a week after arriving in Ogden. I didn't know what I would do once I got to Georgia, but it was definitely better than making small chat back home (which hadn't been home in over ten years). If I couldn't go back to work, I needed something to occupy my mind. Finding Frankie would have to suffice for now.
* * *
Frankie
When I looked out the peep hole of my Savannah town house exterior door to see Sergeant Anthony Jerard standing there, my tummy flipped and my heart rate soared. It whooshed in my ears like the Doppler had with my baby's heartbeat last week. It wasn't just his muscular build, stunning green eyes or his commanding presence, it was the army issued dress uniform. A good-looking man in a dress uniform always had intrigued me. But, I was a widow. My husband hadn't been dead six months yet. I could not be getting all flustered over a sexy soldier now, even if Damien and I hadn't already been considering divorce prior to his death. I needed to honor his memory regardless.
The soldier still gave me pause. I'd been off post for well over two months already. No one from the army had contacted me in all of this time, so I assumed I was through with Uncle Sam. This soldier's presence could mean any number of things, and yet not one idea actually popped into my head. The longer I stood there, back to the door, with my heart pounding hard enough to echo his knock on the other side of the thick hardwood, the more I felt like I was about to be ill.
When the knock came a second time, I spun around and called out involuntarily, "Just a minute…" as I unlocked the deadbolt. He was taller and broader than the curved glass of the security hole had led me to believe. "Yes?" I asked, and refrained from repeating myself when my voice came out a little breathless and squeaky.
"Mrs. Damien Blair?" He touched two fingers to his brow and saluted me before folding his arm behind his back again. His chest was m
assive, and decorated with colors and badges I was familiar with, even though I didn't recognize him. "I'm Sergeant Anthony Jerard. May I come in?"
I briefly debated declining. I was no longer an army wife and I had no desire to behave as one. What had the army ever done for me, anyway? Unfortunately, my knees were a little weak and I preferred to sit down while I discovered the reason behind Mr. Jerard's visit.
"Sure… okay, come in." I backed into the foyer and gestured for him to step inside. Once I closed the door behind him, I motioned for him to follow me down the short hall to sit in the living room. He looked very out of place as he sat down on my grandmother's antique cream-colored sofa. It was a small piece of furniture to begin with, and with his big hulking self taking up so much of one side, it looked positively miniature. I gave up being respectful, patient, or even slightly considerate of normal manners. His presence made me feel ill altogether. "I'd offer you a drink but I'd prefer if we just get right to the point of your visit. Why are you here?"
He may have thought he disguised it but I saw the flicker of anger in his intense eyes just before it changed and amusement replaced it. Humor raised the side of his lips when he spoke. "I'm sorry for dropping in on you like this. I'm sure you've been through a lot. I didn't mean to bring you any more trouble or unrest." Then concern filled his troubled eyes as he looked me over. "Mrs. Blair, are you all right?"
As I had sat down across from him on the Queen Anne armchair I'd gotten at a great discount the day before, my stomach clenched and I felt as though I might be sick, soon—very soon. I'd had a backache ever since I'd brought the chair home and rearranged my living room. I thought I might have pulled something. "No, Sergeant Jerard, I'm fine. This is just a bit distressing. As you are probably aware, I've done everything required of an army widow. I'm concerned by your visit and would prefer you just get to the point."