WAIT STAFF CIRCLED the table, placing dessert plates before each guest—something fruity in red, white and blue. Quinn couldn’t focus on it. If he could harness the current coming through Anais’s hand now gripping his, he could power the capital.
He turned more to face her, pretending it was to share a dessert with her when really every ounce of his willpower was engaged in fighting his instinct to spirit her away. Just to hold her. Just to put his arms around her and rock through the pain he still felt vibrating through her.
He felt the weight of everyone’s gaze now—everyone but her—but he couldn’t blame them. Or her. But he needed to look at her as desperately as her grip said she needed to keep hold of him.
Mechanically, she went about a few bites of the berry concoction. She ate, but didn’t taste it; her half-bowed head and blank eyes made it clear.
Before they’d made a dent in the dessert the fireworks display was announced, and guests departed the table for the veranda to the rear gardens. She started too, but Quinn tugged her close enough to wrap an arm around her waist and steer her to the dance floor instead. His obligation to remain through the fireworks display was the only thing keeping him from taking her away with him.
The lights in the great room fell, to minimize the distraction through the wide veranda windows separating them from the guests outside watching the sky, but the dark also made it feel secluded, almost private.
“We’re not going out?” she whispered, but turned into his arms as he steered her around the floor.
“I can see from here,” he said, not wanting to break the spell between them and what it told him.
She loved him. She’d never stopped loving him. But it felt as if a stiff breeze could blow her away, so he folded her into his arms and rested his cheek against her temple.
Tilting her head, she whispered by his ear, “Are you okay?”
Worried about him. More proof.
“A little overwhelmed,” he admitted, unable to summon a better answer, unable to make a clever or cajoling response, the words aching in his chest. “I didn’t know that about your specialty. I’d wondered, but I should’ve asked. I should’ve sat down with you and just talked, not about all this…just to know. What I missed. We should’ve found time to sit down.”
He felt her nodding, felt her pull him a little tighter, even felt the regret rolling off her.
“We’ve never really done much of that. Only when we were dating.”
The softly spoken words burned. He tried to think about times after they’d eloped when they’d just sat and talked about anything for longer than a few minutes, but he couldn’t. In that moment, swallowing past the lump in his throat, he was glad for the dark, even glad for the way his lungs refused to draw a complete breath—it drove home the part he’d played in the downfall of their marriage—she hadn’t ducked out of conversations he’d started, not once.
“We’ll do better this time.”
Her nod expressed her hesitation as much as it could be agreement.
Yes, she still loved him, but that hadn’t stopped her from leaving the first time. He had to do better.
“I think you could’ve talked to me about Ratliffe if we’d had that kind of marriage. A relationship you felt safe in.”
“Maybe.” Her hand slid to the back of his neck and she kneaded as she gave him that single word.
No matter how long ago it had been, she was still raw. He felt it too, but that same wound had started to heal in him the day he’d found her again, when it started to feel like something he could control.
“We’ve got a good forty-five minutes right now.” He kissed the side of her neck just as the first flash of sparkling light illuminated the dark room and the music erupted with the loud, alarming bang.
“Quinn?” She leaned back and the fireworks illuminated her face; eyes wide with concern broke through the wariness that had grabbed him.
“I’m fine,” he said quickly, then forced himself to relax. “Just startled me.”
“I didn’t think about the fireworks. Are you sure? We can go. I can…” She paused, her eyes swiveled toward the ceiling as she tried to scheme. “I could faint or something as a cover?”
Her comical attempt at subterfuge relaxed him further. “I’m really all right. I don’t have PTSD. Just a bit of…inattention to anything that isn’t you right now.”
Even in the green glow of the skies, he saw her blush. Then he saw her focus on his mouth with a kind of intention that might as well be invitation. Quinn took it, pulling her closer again and brushing his lips over hers. The lingering strawberry from dessert only magnified her natural sweetness, and the sweet ache that had been growing in his chest since her story.
She’d given them an out and he could happily sink into her kisses, into the soft sighs she rewarded him with as he deepened the exploration of her mouth. When she stroked her tongue past his lips, he tumbled into the mind-blanking bliss that always came when touching her—but this time it came with a little needle of loss.
They’d been talking. He wanted to talk to her right now more than he wanted to kiss her, even if only just.
The music accompanying the thundering explosions shifted into loud, enthusiastic twentieth-century rock’n’roll, and he went with it—sealing the deep, toe-curling kisses with a slow, tender one.
She smiled even before her eyes opened back up and, with it, the heaviness that had crept over them lifted.
They were still on the dance floor, and he actually felt like dancing.
He started her swaying, in the way of two people who couldn’t let go of one another and couldn’t spare enough attention to pick their feet off the floor. “Tell me about medical school.”
“That’ll take much longer than forty-five minutes, unless you narrow it down.”
“Good point.” He squeezed her again and reformulated the first question. Then, as soon as she’d given a brief answer, he asked another, shooting forward another and another, gathering facts and amusing her by making her slow dance sway through “God Bless America” and “Born in the USA”…
* * *
The fireworks display passed in a heartbeat, long before Quinn was done asking questions, the lights inside had come back up and guests once more invaded the alone time he’d had with his wife.
Faster than could’ve ever been considered diplomatically acceptable, Quinn had whisked Anais to the US Ambassador and made their farewells to a knowing smile blessedly free of rancor for the representative of their host nation who’d failed entirely in all things diplomatic since dessert.
In the limo on the way to her house, their conversation turned to him. Even though the greed he felt to know more about her railed against it, he fought the desire to redirect—she needed to understand him if she would ever trust him enough to stay.
They talked about his adventures with Ben, things she’d heard about him via the media through the years, she even had him telling her a childhood story she’d heard before but which still made her laugh.
“I feel a bit silly offering tea in my living room while we’re both in formalwear,” she said, locking her front door behind them. She hadn’t asked whether he intended to stay the night, and he was glad for it. If he had to make the call right now, he’d say he was staying, and that would force a different conversation. Knowing she still loved him, he could wait for other admissions.
She kicked off her shoes, getting comfortable.
“If it helps, I’d be happy to strip down to my skivvies and drink tea. So long as Sharon won’t come downstairs and be horrified to find me in my boxers.”
One corner of her mouth lifted in tandem with her hand, a half-shrug and a half-grin to his silly offer. “Mom’s gone to Aunt Helen’s for the night to play cards. If she’d been here alone all evening waiting for me, she’d just have worried herself sick. Her heart tends to go out of rhythm when her blood pressure rises.”
She’d mentioned her mother’s illness a few times, but he’d never asked for specifics. That seemed like something else he should remedy.
“Is it bad?” He took her hand, even though knowing would make it harder to force Anais’s hand with the wedding—a threat that already felt inconceivable to carry out.
“It could be much worse than it is,” she said, stepping a little closer so that their arms weren’t stretched to the limit across the space between them, still happy to touch him, something he felt pathetically grateful for. “I’m hopeful that by the time surgery becomes imperative, the procedure will be safer. It’s pretty safe now, but there’s one sneaky, deadly, irreversible complication that hits about one percent of patients, and by the time it’s detected it’s almost always too late. As long as the condition is livable with medication and lifestyle management, I don’t want her to risk it.”
He could understand that. He’d take that situation with his grandfather in a heartbeat, but getting the old man to come around to the same way of thinking hadn’t yet worked for him. “Sneaky, deadly, irreversible…words you never want associated with a heart procedure.”
“No.”
He stepped closer so that she tilted her head back to look up at him. “I didn’t mean to turn the conversation to sad subjects, but I guess we do need to learn how to discuss painful topics too.”
She nodded, but the frown that crept over her face let him know the instant her thoughts drifted to some other painful subject, and hung there.
“A kiss for your thoughts,” he prodded.
“Not money?”
“Are you kidding? My kisses are far more valuable than money.” To prove it, he dropped his lips to her mouth—fleeting affection. “Play along. I’ve got a fragile ego.”
“Not unless you’re collecting other people’s egos as pets,” she snorted and then reached for his other hand—the one that she always insisted on holding, even when he tried to maneuver her to his right. Still she didn’t give voice to what was on her mind, just stroked his hand for a moment then, just as quickly, dropped it, freeing hers to slide under his lapels and over his shoulders, easing the jacket down his arms and off.
Waiting for her to talk was horrible. Especially when, in exchange, he had small delicate hands on his chest, burning through the thin barriers of his clothing. Focus diminishing…
“The suspense is killing me. I gave you the kiss; you’re supposed to pay up with words now.”
“I’m helping you get comfortable,” she argued, folding the jacket over one of her arms then reaching for the ridiculous American flag bow tie he’d gotten only for the flamboyant party.
“I can’t multi-task. I’m either all in this conversation or I’m going to want to enjoy being undressed. That’s it.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “I’ve been avoiding asking you about your tours. I don’t know if you need to talk about them, or if you want to, or if talking would do anything good for either of us.”
Good for either of us. That part was what stuck out to him. She was a little afraid to ask, but felt compelled nevertheless.
“I can talk about my tours in a far more civilized manner than when I told you about my hand.” Recalling that conversation put tonight’s revelation in an even harsher light. Guilt bit even through the feel of her gentle touches, and lingered as she hung the jacket in the coat closet.
He wouldn’t apologize for it again; that would turn the conversation, make it harder for her.
“Ask, love. Ask me anything.”
She closed the door and leaned against it, compelling him to come to her when she didn’t return. He could control his need to touch her, but not if she felt far away, if he couldn’t feel her heat and wrap himself in her scent.
“Why didn’t you come home after you were wounded? I know it was offered, automatic, expected even. You had to fight to remain.” She’d been serving wounded soldiers long enough to have wondered, but he didn’t even have to ask to know she’d had that question in her heart for years.
It was right there in her furrowed brows—old pain, worry she’d sunk into years ago, something he couldn’t even blame her for anymore.
He couldn’t blame her, and he didn’t want her to blame herself. She would if he answered.
After he’d decided to return to active duty, he’d allowed himself to fantasize that she was worrying about him. Pretended she was suffering over him. Even sometimes in the hospital during his recovery, when he recalled the deaths of so many friends and how easily it could’ve been him, he’d pictured her mourning him if it had. All immature ways to handle his grief over losing her, but it had all come from a deep-seated belief that she’d never feel those things, even if the worst had come to pass.
Knowing it would’ve been all he’d imagined and more made it even harder to say the words.
“Ask anything except that?” she ventured when he failed to find words.
“I don’t want us to stop talking.”
“It’s a conversation-stopper?”
“Feels like it.”
The worry was still in her eyes, but she kept on. “We need to learn to discuss painful subjects.”
His words from only moments before jostled his conscience, despite her not giving them even a hint of mockery.
“It’s not that I don’t want it to hurt me.” It was the only way he knew to put it.
Her slow nod and pained expression hit him harder than her silence.
Continue or not? He couldn’t always trust his instincts when it came to Anais.
“I’m going to put the kettle on and change. You think about a way to say it,” she directed then just left the room, as if words were so easy. She knew better.
Though, to be fair, he was probably the one hiding the most right now. She still thought Ratliffe had just taken photos of her—she didn’t have any idea about the video. But this conversation wasn’t that one. Focus on one trauma at a time.
Quinn undid the top few buttons of his shirt, then rolled up his sleeves to the elbow and sat on the sofa, but he couldn’t make himself comfortable. If they’d sorted out their relationship already, he’d rip off the formalwear and get comfortable. Hell, he’d rip off all the formalwear, carry her upstairs and kiss every inch of her—especially the inches that made her writhe and moan.
Where they stood now, stripping down for comfort would be even weirder than late night tea in a tuxedo in her living room.
And thinking about how uncomfortable he felt was kind of a dodge for thinking about the subject that made him even more uncomfortable.
He puffed a breath and laid his head back on the sofa cushions.
There was no gentle, non-accusatory way to put it, which meant it could only end one of two ways: by starting a fight with her, or with her just taking more blame onto herself.
She wafted back down the stairs in pajamas that looked equal parts comfortable and silly—littered with hearts and, inexplicably, cartoon monkeys. Somehow the baggy tee and shorts made his modified formalwear look like the most ridiculous outfit in the room.
It was a quick trip to the kitchen and she returned with two steaming mugs and a package of cookies tucked under one arm, but he was still unprepared for the subject.
“Come up with the right words?” she asked, placing the lot on the table and sitting beside him crossways, giving him no gentle lead-in.
“No.”
“Then just say it. However it comes out, that’s how you need to say it. I didn’t have the luxury of rehearsing a painful subject at dinner. It didn’t shut down conversation, but seems to have started it.”
Just say something.
He couldn’t stop his hands scrubbing over his face. He hated feeling helpless. “I went back because I thought I’d be going to a new unit with Ben.”
“You didn’t think he’d want you to be safe, away from the fighting?”
“I knew he would’ve, but I wasn’t so wounded as to be incapable of service. Leaving would’ve been selfish.”
Dangerous word…
He stared at the ceiling but there weren’t any answers there, just an expanse of white. And a tiny spider, which he could probably point out and distract her from this conversation…
“Why would that hurt me?” she asked, not raising her voice—still calm, but too perceptive to be dodged. “What aren’t you saying?”
His head throbbed behind one eye and he mashed his palm against it.
Didn’t help.
Touching her would help. He caught her closest hand again and worked his thick, clumsy-feeling fingers between her slender digits. Her thumb stroked his skin, helping more with that connective current still buzzing between them.
“Because it felt like I’d be abandoning them. Him. It wasn’t some kind of respect for duty or the honor for service that got me back in a forward area. When my grandfather sent me into the military I had to make a new family, and I couldn’t abandon them.”
Like everyone here abandoned me.
He didn’t need to say the words; he could already hear them echoing in her mind.
Her thumb stopped stroking and silence fell as she digested it. Even without looking at her, he felt her staring at his hand, and impulse confirmed it as he gave in to the need to see her.
But it was the distinct lack of yelling that spoke the loudest. She was taking it onto herself.
“It wasn’t just you,” he said softly. “It felt that way with my family too.”
“Because of me.”
“Because of me.” He leaned on the word. “If it had just been a failed marriage, everything would’ve gone differently. Seven years of service has given me a different perspective. I know I was spoiled—I always thought of my wants first. I wanted you—I made it happen. Like everything else in my life. I don’t begrudge them my military service—I came to love it pretty quickly. I would’ve easily been a lifer if I hadn’t been called home.”
She nodded at appropriate intervals, assuring him that she’d at least heard him, but when she slipped her hand free and roughly shoved the rolled cuff up to bare his left arm—specifically the scar peeking below the cuff at his elbow—he wondered if she’d heard him after all.
“You went through another attack?”
Redirects were better than wallowing in what he’d laid out.
“That happens in a war zone, but I’m going to assume you’re asking if I was wounded in another attack. And, yes, I’ve picked up a few non-life-threatening wounds here and there.”
“A few?” Her voice rose sharply and she climbed over to straddle his lap while her fingers tore through the buttons on his shirt, her face a picture of such horror he was almost afraid to say anything else.
“Non-lethal,” he said slowly, but leaned forward as she shoved the shirt off his shoulders, then attacked the tee shirt beneath.
The word hadn’t penetrated; she searched him as if he carried live explosives.
“No one reported other wounds. It wasn’t in the news or in the papers. Mom would’ve told me if she’d heard anything like that, and I had alerts. I had alerts, Quinn. I had Internet alerts to tell me when anything happened with you. There wasn’t anything reported!” She leaned back enough to look at his chest, and found both scars at once.
“I didn’t report them. They were nothing…”
“Dammit, Quinton Corlow! What else?”
“Should I just list any wound I’ve had since I saw you? These are nothing.”
“Was this another bullet?”
“No,” he answered as her gentle fingers stroked over a puckered scar on his right flank. “That was a little piece of shrapnel. Again, it was nothing. It barely got past the body armor.”
“And this?” She gingerly touched a three-inch slice of a scar on his other side.
“That was a bullet. Grazed me.”
“Any other places hidden by your clothes?”
He tried not to look at the scar on his left arm, the one she’d initially spotted but had gotten so carried away in searching she seemed to have forgotten. He’d like her to keep forgetting it; he’d like her to forget anything to do with that injury. “Just what you’ve seen.”
Nothing more to see. Move along…
“None of these required surgical intervention?” She caught his face and those gorgeous blue-green eyes drilled into him.
He wanted to be annoyed, but he had a seven-year void to fill where he would’ve killed for her attention and concern. “The bullet didn’t lodge in me. The shrapnel was so shallow I grabbed it with tweezers. Only needed antibiotics and butterfly strips.”
“And this one?” She let go of his cheek and reached for his left arm, his heart plummeting as she lifted it to examine the scar. “A fourth attack?”
“No.”
“Two at once?”
He nodded and, for all his talk of openness and learning to discuss painful things, he let instinct take over—to protect her from further gory details as he protected family. She was family again. Gripping her hips, he tugged her forward until that hot little mound of flesh between her thighs ground into him.
Pressed against him, it wasn’t even a stretch to trace kisses along the side of her neck, to nose into the strawberry locks she’d let down when she’d gone upstairs to change.
* * *
Anais’s breath caught at the pressure of his rapidly responding body between her legs. The treacherously light brush of his lips along the tender, sensitive skin below her ear brought a melting heaviness that demanded more.
He’d survived—the living heat of him rocked beneath her, urging her fully against him, compelling her arms to slide around the wide breadth of his shoulders. He was safe now. It might feel urgent to know, but so did the desire to be closer.
His arms around her, his hands beneath her pants squeezing bare flesh as he ground her purposefully against him…made his intentions completely clear.
“Let’s go upstairs,” he murmured against her ear between kisses, and the words somehow brought their situation back into hazy focus.
He’d said no on Tuesday. Not without words from her.
Slowly, understanding began to seep back in.
They’d been talking and he’d suddenly shifted direction.
She knew that pattern.
She pushed against his shoulders to open enough space to look at him.
“Why now? You’ve changed your mind about sleeping with me?”
The sigh that burst from him accompanied by those previously heavily lidded eyes snapping closed answered even before he flopped his head back against the cushioned seatback.
No words. No denial. No agreement.
He was distracting her.
“You ass!” She shoved herself off his lap hard and didn’t stop until she was a good meter away.
“See? I knew this would lead to a fight.”
“You tell me about that scar right now!” She ran back through the conversation. He thought knowing would hurt her. “That happened when your hand was shot? A second bullet?”
He hadn’t lifted his head or opened his eyes. She’d have wondered if he’d fallen asleep if not for the vein pulsing wildly in his throat.
“No.”
“Shrapnel?”
“Yes.”
His flat answers made it worse—as if she was going to hear he’d been injured by friendly fire, or while hammering on a live bullet in some suicide attempt.
The ring…
“I thought you said it was stuck into your palm.” She meant to shout. She meant to scream. But the words were just above a whisper.
Enough to hear her, he opened his eyes but there still was no life in his words. “Not the ring.”
“No?”
He shook his head and a pleading look descended over him.
“Worse than the ring?”
What could be worse than the ring?
“Any additional information about that is going to make it worse. Just let it go.”
“Please tell me.”
“Bone.”
One word dropped and her body went haywire, like every possible sensation fighting for control of the nerves in her skin. Cold. Burning. Tingling. Jolting pain. Her hands flew to cover her face, as if that could protect her from it.
The darkness behind her eyes filled with terrible visuals to accompany the words. A slow motion track of a bullet striking his hand, then a spray of flesh, bone and platinum.
The first time her mind had conjured the images of what had happened, his fingers had come off intact…after dangling by skin. Now they exploded, flesh, blood, and pieces of his own bone lodging in distant parts of his body.
By the time heavy rolling nausea replaced the sensation short-circuit Quinn’s hands closed on her shoulders to shake her out of it.
“This is why I didn’t want to tell you.” He demanded, “Are you sick?”
Demanded.
“Yes!” she barked in return, flinging her hands free of her face and his off her in a spike of adrenalin she’d never been so thankful for.
Anger with herself wasn’t the only emotion she had a right to in this moment. He’d earned her anger too. “What else are you hiding about that?”
“Nothing.”
“You know what? I don’t care. I don’t care. You have to go now. I want you to go. You go home.” She knew she was muttering. She knew she was ranting. She became aware she was also ripping through the closet when she snatched up his jacket and slammed the door. “Clothes. You have clothes. Put on your clothes.”
He took the jacket, but eyed her with such calm she wanted to hit him.
“Clothes in case the cameras followed us home. And I hope the car waited so you don’t have to call a cab or hitchhike!”
“Anais…” The way he said her name proclaimed her the unreasonable one. “I didn’t want to make it worse. I was cruel when I told you about it the first time.”
Grabbing both shirts from the sofa, she pushed them into his arms too. “No, rather than just telling me, you did what you always do. Distracting me with sex from something you didn’t want to talk about. You said we’d do better this time, but you’re still doing it.”
The difference was she wouldn’t let him get away with it this time.
“We have done better. It’s a process. You don’t fix things overnight. Yeah, okay, maybe I screwed up, but you didn’t see your face at dinner when you talked about my hand. And when I told you the first time…”
When he started pulling his shirts on, she pushed past him to head up the stairs.
“This isn’t done. Be angry. That’s fine. I’m not exactly happy either right now, but we’ll talk tomorrow.”
Rolling her eyes, she called over her shoulder to lock the door behind him, too weary from the dreadfully long day to even keep fighting about it.