Back in the Soldier's Arms by Soraya Lane, Karina Bliss Page B

much.
    “Okay,” he called out, jogging to catch up with her. “Okay,” he said, softer this time.
    “Don’t look at me,” she told him, her eyes trained ahead, her pace fast. “Just answer me and don’t apologize. Don’t pad it out, tell me the details as I ask them.”
    He nodded, even though she wasn’t looking at him and couldn’t see the action.
    “Where did you meet her?”
    This was going to be harder than he thought.
    Because not only was this going to hurt Penny like the pierce of a dagger through her heart, it was also like ripping out his own heart again even saying the facts out loud.
    Telling her was admitting to himself what he’d done all over again.
    “I’d been out with some of the guys who’d just arrived back in,” he said, recalling the details of that night. He’d gotten rotten drunk, had felt so low when they were all talking about where they were off to next, what they’d been doing while they were away. He’d felt like such an outsider, when once he’d been at the heart of that team of men. When once he’d been such a part of them that he’d never imagined letting it go. “They all left and I was the last one there. At the bar.”
    “What was her name?”
    No. He wasn’t goinlinÑ2019;t gog to go that into detail. “Penny …”
    “Her name,” she demanded.
    “Karen.”
    “What was so special about—” she hesitated, like she couldn’t say her name “—Karen?”
    Her voice cut a hole through him, it was so pained.
    “I was stupid drunk and we got talking. She was drunk, too.” He glanced over at her and saw the bland expression on her face, like she was trying to store the facts away somewhere and not admit they were true. “She was recently widowed, I was lonely and miserable as hell, and somehow we ended up at her place. We started talking and realized we were each as lonely as the other, and somehow it happened.”
    “Did you spend the entire night there?”
    No. He’d run as soon as he could, in the nicest of ways, because he’d regretted betraying his wife like that from the moment he’d realized what he’d done. The woman hadn’t deserved being left like that, but he hadn’t known what else to do. Had been too full of guilt and sadness to do anything but leave. Not that he was rude to her, they’d gotten talking because they were both alone, and she’d known he was married.
    But the blame was his and his alone. He had no intention of letting anyone else shoulder even a smidge of it.
    “I left soon after. I mean, well …” He didn’t know how to explain it. “I didn’t want to hurt her because it wasn’t her fault, but I was so disgusted with myself after, for doing what I did just because I was so pathetically desperate to be held and loved by someone, that I left. I swear I’ve never seen or heard from her again, and I never will. It was the biggest mistake of my life.”
    Penny turned cold, distant eyes in his direction.
    “Leave me, Daniel,” she said.
    What? “I’m not going to drive off and leave you here alone.”
    She made a low noise that sounded like a cruel laugh.
    “Fine. Leave me the keys, then, and you make your own way home. I need to be alone.”
    He didn’t know what to say. Whether to attempt to comfort her. To tell her he was sorry again, to reach for her. He’d hurt her so bad.
    But the look on her face was all soldier. It wasn’t his wife standing before him now—the soft, lovable woman he’d married. This was the toughened soldier who could deal with whatever was put in her path. Who made life-or-death decisions and knew how to deal with the consequences.
    “Give me the keys, Daniel, or get the hell out of my way. I need some time and I can’t look at you right now.”
    He didn’t hesitate. Daniel reached into his pocket and gave her the keys. She took them, without touching his palm, and turned to walk away. Shoulders straight, hair moving in a wave across her back.
    The only difference between his wife