HE REGRETTED THE words as soon as they’d left his lips but that did little to reduce their efficacy. His low blow had clearly left her reeling and he hated himself for it.
He was supposed to be protecting Elle from himself by keeping her at arm’s length so that he wouldn’t destroy her. He wasn’t supposed to be destroying her in the process.
‘I’m sorry. That was...uncalled for,’ he told her quietly, sincerely.
She inclined her head stiffly, plainly struggling to compose herself.
‘I appreciate your concern for my convoy, Colonel, but it’s misplaced. Furthermore, I would respectfully remind you that Colonel Duggan and I are running the medical side of this mission and I have administrative and operational command in his absence. I’m satisfied that the risk of dust storms is no greater than usual in this area. If we get caught out, as convoys frequently do around here, we’ll follow protocol and find shelter or at least pull off the road to wait it out.’
So stiff, so formal. He’d really hurt her.
‘I did try to warn you, even from that first night, that I wasn’t a good man. That I always end up destroying people.’
She pressed her lips together, her back bracing just a fraction.
‘I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that dust storms in this area are unpredictable, Colonel, so we’re going to have to take a chance at some point. And, to refer to your earlier question, yes, it is necessary,’ she cut in respectfully but firmly. ‘There are refugees crossing the border in their hundreds of thousands, and even though there are vaccination stations at many of the crossings there are still tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of children and babies who are missing out and who have already moved on and into existing communities. If I can spare children from suffering polio paralysis then I have to go, possible sandstorm or not.’
He almost smiled as her voice changed when she spoke of her work. That passion of hers had been one of the things to attract him in the first place. And the fact that she was desperately clinging to formality and keeping the topic mission-related hadn’t gone unnoticed either. Normally, he wouldn’t have pushed it—then again, normally he wouldn’t have been in this position to start with—but that...tenderness she’d demonstrated moments ago when she’d spoken of his family, of his loss, told him that she’d been touched at the idea he’d been worried for her safety.
He owed her the truth.
‘I’m sorry, Elle, but I tried to warn you I wasn’t a good man, whatever you might think of me right now.’
Her shoulders actually sagged.
A strange silence descended over them and he had to let her be the one to break it. But when she did, he wasn’t prepared for the sadness in her voice as it tore into his chest.
‘I never thought you were cruel, Fitz, even without seeing the way your men love and respect you. But you can’t keep doing this, flip-flopping between acknowledging this attraction between us one minute and then pushing me away the next.’
‘I’m just trying to do the right thing.’ He shook his head.
‘You create barriers,’ she countered. ‘You never intended to tell me those secrets of yours that first night, but you decided it didn’t matter because we were never going to see each other again; even if I hadn’t been set on one crazy night, you would have made sure of it. And then when we turned up here together you resented me for it. You’ve been using army barriers, rules that don’t technically exist, to push me away ever since.’
How did she do it? How did she see that side of him that no one else had, and yet fail to see the swirling darkness within him?
‘Why do you want to be with me?’ he demanded hotly, standing abruptly and rounding the desk so there was nothing between them. ‘I’m not a good man. I’m not the responsible, caring man you seem to think I am.’
‘Tell that to those men out there who think the world of you!’ she exclaimed.
They were so close he could feel her body heat, experience the emotion as it poured off her, her fierceness making his chest ache. Yet, deliberately, neither of them closed the gap any further.
‘Tell that to the men they’ve spoken to back home and at Razorwire who spoke so highly of you, leading from the front in more combat zones than they could remember. Tell that to High Command, who appointed you as one of the youngest lieutenant colonels.’
He wanted to believe her. So much that it hurt.
He couldn’t.
‘That’s just the army. I like the man I am when I’m serving. The responsibility, the care, the life is different. It’s easy to be a good leader, I know what’s expected of me.’
‘No, it’s easy because it’s who you are.’ She heaved out a shaky sigh.
He bowed his head towards hers.
‘But that’s not the man I am out there, away from the structure. Where real feelings are needed. I don’t have them. I’m empty, and broken, and toxic.’
Much closer and their heads would have touched. That last absence of contact was the only thing saving either of them right now.
‘I don’t believe that,’ she whispered at length. ‘Because that’s not the man I met that night. Just Fitz opened up to me because he wanted to. A thoughtful, considerate, sensitive man in the bar with that young lad, and then later with me, in bed. I couldn’t have hoped for anyone more giving or generous to make me feel respected. You made me feel desirable again.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you knew the things I’ve done. The lives I’ve destroyed. I can’t forget my mistakes, I can’t pretend they were okay.’
‘Everybody makes mistakes, Fitz. The trick is to learn from them.’
‘Why don’t you have the sense to walk away?’ He demanded. ‘I have learned from my mistakes. I learned that I’m just like my old man. Selfish, joyless, destructive.’
‘Funny,’ she whispered, ‘but that isn’t a description I recognise, and neither would your old friend Major Howes, who speaks of you so highly.’
‘That’s because I’m a different person here.’
‘Then let me say that it isn’t the side of you that I saw that night.’
Pain expanded in his chest, almost crushing everything else.
‘But it would be. If that night was allowed to be something more.’ His voice sounded raw even to his ears. ‘That’s why I’m trying to shield you.’
Her whisper was so low he had to strain to hear her.
‘See, that’s where I have the difficulty. If you’re so much this selfish person, then why would you be trying to shield me?’
He stiffened, momentarily thrown. She made him want to believe in himself the way she seemed to.
‘Because there’s worse you don’t know about.’
‘So, try me.’
Hot. Urgent. Desperate.
And he wanted to. He wanted to tell her everything, to lay every last, ugly truth out there and let her smooth it away, the way he suspected she could.
But if she didn’t, if she saw what he’d been trying to hide all along, the mirror image of his father, Fitz didn’t think he could bear it.
It was a reminder he needed.
This wasn’t about him. This was about Elle. If they hadn’t ended up here, at this hospital, in this place, they would never have tried to see each other again. He ignored the voice that reminded him how he’d been considering contacting the hotel about her when he came back off his tour of duty, however unlikely it was they might have assisted. And, yes, it was more than just sex, it felt like there was some kind of connection there. But how long would that last? It would disappear in the end. He’d feel stifled, trapped, just as he had with Janine. And then, despite his best intentions, hurting Elle would be inevitable.
‘I have to live with the consequences of my choices every day,’ he bit out, firmer now. ‘But I can make sure I don’t hurt a single other person. I can make sure I don’t destroy you.’
It was for the best.
‘Except that you can’t, can you?’ Elle whispered. ‘You keep trying to push me away but then you can’t help yourself, you have to reel me back in. You might not mean to but you do. You obviously care about me in some small way when you worry about a dust storm, but when I challenge you, you call me a meaningless fling. How is that not hurting me?’
He froze. As much as he might not want to admit it, there was merit to her words. From the moment they’d met he’d felt some kind of connection with her and he’d found it next to impossible to leave her the next day without also leaving his phone number, even though he’d come to his senses and binned it.
He’d dragged her into his office and dredged it all up that first day he’d turned up to see her, and he’d allowed himself to kiss her, to convey all the confusion neither of them could articulate. And now he’d dragged her here again, dismissed Carl, engineered things to be with her. He should have left days ago. He could have worked on the plans back at Razorwire, but this was where Elle was.
The more he pushed her away, the more aware he seemed to be of her. As though the fact that she was out here on site, yet avoiding him, left him feeling illogically hollow. The more she avoided him, the more she took up residence in his head. Instead of her absence helping to quell his ache for her, it only made him want her all the more. Crave her.
And not just physically. He ached to hear her laugh, see her smile, feel the warm glow that accompanied her presence.
Just because she was out of sight it didn’t mean he hadn’t gathered as much information as he could about her from the other officers around the site, both those who had worked with her for years and those who had just started to get to know her on this mission.
Yet the answers were always the same. She was respected, admired, liked and not infrequently lusted after, though no one but Carl openly admitted it. As a man who was suffering from the same affliction he could recognise the signs, not least because it caused a fresh sense of possession to course through his veins.
He could hear a muffled part of his brain proposing that if pushing her away and distancing himself from Elle wasn’t working, then perhaps allowing himself to spend time with her, saturating himself with her presence would do the job. More time with her would allow him to see her as just another woman, flawed like everyone else. He could stop elevating her, could stop seeing her through the sentimental eyes of that first night, when the grim anniversary of his family’s deaths had already been stirring long-buried emotions inside him, and which Elle had inadvertently tapped into.
The events of that night had created a false sense of connection with her, and that was what was causing him to lose his head now. It was stopping him from focussing on a job to which he’d never had any issue applying himself in the past.
If he allowed himself to explore being with Elle, then perhaps he would finally be able to shake off this unreasonably acute, distracting need to know her, to understand her.
And if they both knew the rules of any such encounter from the outset, if they both agreed it was temporary, an extension of that one night, then surely he could also set aside his fear that he would hurt her. He’d never worried about that with previous relationships, he’d never let that stop him.
But Elle wasn’t like them. She was different. He felt different with her.
He needed time to think.
‘I’m trying to protect you,’ Fitz eventually stated flatly. ‘That’s the last thing I’m going to say. For now.’
He didn’t know how he did it, but he finally tore himself away from her and moved back around the desk.
‘When do you leave?’ he asked.
The hurt that made her whole body slump almost wrecked him.
‘Elle, I’m asking as Fitz. Not as a colonel. I’m not using protocol as an excuse. I know what you said last time.’
It was the only concession he could make to her, and he was relieved when she nodded, dredging up a faint smile, acknowledging it for what it was. He wasn’t shutting her down like he had last time. He was buying himself time. And she was prepared to sell it to him.
‘We leave at dawn. It’s a couple of hours’ drive so we’ll get most of tomorrow and then all of the following day. We’ll head back the day after.’
‘Okay.’ He nodded.
So tomorrow he’d either be heading back to Razorwire, putting Elle into his past for good, or staying here and riding this attraction out until he could finally let her go.
He barely had the night to decide.
* * *
‘He can’t be serious?’
Fitz could hear Elle’s muttered objection as she stood alone, her back to him, in the deserted square outside the hospital, the sunrise giving an almost halo effect to her flame-red hair. She was far enough from the hospital that she couldn’t be heard, but close enough that she could watch the convoy go through its final preparations without standing out against the backdrop of the building.
‘Something amiss?’ he asked casually as he walked up behind her, and she spun around with a startled cry.
She eyed him cautiously, as though recognising his less controlled, less distant attitude but still uncertain what it meant.
‘There’s a three-vehicle engineers’ convoy alongside my medical one, Colonel,’ she said, as she indicated towards where the vehicles were parked, less than a couple of hundred metres away, one of which was a four-by-four towing a boring rig.
‘Indeed there is,’ he agreed brightly.
Was it wrong that it gave him such a perverse pleasure to beat her at her own game?
She narrowed her eyes a fraction.
‘May I ask to what purpose, sir?’
‘You may. Although given that there’s no one immediately around I think we can dispense with the formality at this time, don’t you?’ he countered lightly. ‘Anyway, I realised that accompanying the mobile medical unit into the local communities could be advantageous to my men. As part of our mission in this area, the Royal Engineers are to be responsible for digging new wells and building schools throughout various communities in the region. After all the conflict over the last few decades, the people here are naturally suspicious of non-locals but they do accept the medical units.’
‘So you want to accompany us to trade off our good reputation?’ she asked slowly.
He grinned, knowing she couldn’t fault his logic.
‘And gain their trust more easily in order to perform a couple of test drills at each site you visit, yes. Furthermore, padding out your convoy will make you less of a target and mean only one lot of force protection will be required.’
Not that anyone was particularly expecting trouble in a non-combat area but a security detail was more about appearances.
‘I see. So...?’ she started, then paused, concluding feebly with another, ‘I see.’
She still thought it was about his fears over the safety of her convoy after his mother’s car crash. She wasn’t entirely off the mark, though it wasn’t the car crash that haunted him when he thought of Elle. The idea of her being out there, risking some of the most severe dust storms the region had experienced in a decade, brought fear and old demons to assail him. He knew all too well the impact of one of these dust storms on a military convoy. And he was fairly certain that Elle was only heading up that convoy as an excuse to get away from site, from him, for a couple of days. After the way he’d treated her, he could understand it.
If anything happened to Elle the way it had to Janine...all because of him...
‘I just... I don’t know if we have time,’ Elle hazarded. ‘Setting up your rig and doing your test drills will take time. We were intending to make this a brief dash. Get out there, vaccinate, head back.’
‘Indeed? Only yesterday you gave the impression you might be out there for a couple of days.’
She flushed.
‘You know these things are never straightforward.’
‘And you appear to have a vehicle loaded up with hens sent by one of the charities.’ He quashed a smile. ‘Presumably this is part of the nutrition and economic sustainability initiative? Give each family a couple of hens so that they have free eggs and, as they gain experience, the surplus can be sold at market to give them money to buy other supplies. All of which will take time.’
The corners of her mouth tightened with guilt.
‘Yes...well...’
He didn’t blame her for pushing him away. He wanted to apologise. To explain. But he couldn’t even explain it to himself. Had he really finally stopped pushing her away in some kind of attempt at reverse psychology on himself? It sounded ludicrous even in his own mind.
Not giving her any chance to stammer any further, Fitz adopted a deliberately breezy tone.
‘So plenty of time to test drill for suitable watercourses in each location.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And you know as well as I do that this country’s health status is one of the worst. Lack of education about defecating near the same rivers from which drinking water is collected is a significant issue, and admittedly the wells are only a small part of it, as is the long-term plan to start building new sewer and wastewater treatment plants.’
‘Yes, I know—’
‘But the wells will still help, not least in reducing diarrhoea and therefore malnourishment, helminth, typhus, kidney diseases, shall I go on?’
A look of defeat skittered over her face.
‘I suppose if you put it like that...’ She shrugged.
‘It’s exactly like that.’
He pushed back his sense of triumph, knowing that he was only trying to deceive himself. Accompanying the medical unit into the local communities was an inspired idea, but it was the knowledge that he would therefore have to accompany her that gave him the greater sense of satisfaction.
The entire situation was alien to Fitz and while he knew he would never compromise a mission, or his role, for Elle, the fact remained that he was more than happy at the prospect of being able to combine the two so easily.
Then again, the thought appeared from nowhere, how many times had he seen a vehicle flip over in front of or behind him?
The thought came before he had the chance to check himself.
‘Now, whose vehicle would you prefer to travel in?’
She looked aghast.
‘Say again?’
‘I recommend my four-by-four—it’s less of a bumpy ride than your ambulance—but it’s your choice.’
She sucked in a breath, actually squaring her shoulders as she glared at him.
‘I’m not travelling with the engineers.’
They both knew she meant she wasn’t travelling with him. He smothered a grin. This was a heck of a lot better than the tension of the last week. It felt like a step back to the easy banter they’d enjoyed that first night in the bar, and he was going to enjoy it fully for the next few minutes.
‘Is there a medical priority?’ he enquired with wry politeness.
She narrowed her eyes at him, quite aware that he was teasing her.
‘You know there isn’t. But—’
‘Good.’ Fitz nodded, ignoring her objection. ‘Because we still need to talk about the design variations for the hospital and several hours of driving through nothingness, with nothing else to do, is the ideal opportunity.’