Shelter in a Soldier's Arms by Susan Mallery Page B

kidding when she’d asked the question. She couldn’t imagine Jeff as a young man. She’d never seen him out of a suit. Even now, despite the late hour, he wore a white shirt and slacks. He’d discarded his tie and rolled up his sleeves, but he hadn’t bothered changing into something more casual. Did the man own jeans?
    Not that it mattered. She was glad she had the cookies and milk to give her something other than Jeff to look at and touch. Otherwise she wasn’t sure she could control herself around him. She’d never once in her life wanted to be sick, but right now she couldn’t help wishing for a bit of the flu bug to return because it seemed to be the only thing that kept her immune to Jeff’s masculine charms.
    She hated the way she noticed the strength in his hands and wrists and the shivery sensation in her belly as she studied the stubble darkening his jaw. His voice sent ripples of need dancing along her spine and the darkness of the night made her think of bed and tangled sheets. She tried to convince herself it was a lack of male companionship that made her overreact to her new boss, but she was afraid it wasn’t that simple. Something chemical happened when she was around the man and she didn’t know how to make it stop.
    Conversation, she told herself as her breathing increased slightly. Talk about something normal and maybe he won’t notice the sexual tension in the air. “What sent you into the army?” she asked.
    “I didn’t want to go to college. I liked sports, but I wasn’t a big fan of school. I wanted to see the world.”
    “Did you?”
    He picked up a cookie. “I saw a lot of places I didn’t want to see.”
    “Is that where you met your wife?”
    He bit into the cookie and chewed. “No. She and I had dated in high school. We married right before I enlisted.”
    It sounded so normal. A guy marrying his high school sweetheart. Ashley looked at Jeff and frowned. She couldn’t imagine a moment of it. “You two were pretty young,” she said.
    “Agreed. Too young. I’d signed up for four years. From day one I knew I’d found where I belonged. I was sent into special operations almost right away. Nicole and I had thought we would be together after boot camp, but that didn’t happen. They didn’t allow dependents in the places I went, so we were apart more than we were together. That was hard on both of us.”
    “Marriage is difficult under the best of circumstances,” she pointed out, trying not to notice the intimacy of the night. The overhead light illuminated the table, but the rest of the kitchen was in shadows. Outside, the darkness was silent. There weren’t even any cars driving by.
    “Things changed,” he said. “I had assignments that were
    ” He hesitated as if searching for the right word. “Challenging. I couldn’t talk about most of what I did, and what I could talk about she didn’t want to hear. After a while we stopped talking.”
    Ashley knew he’d seen things she couldn’t even imagine. There were horrors in the world that no sane person would want to know about. But what of the people who had no choice but to live through those experiences?
    “You changed,” Ashley said, making a statement rather than asking a question.
    His gaze sharpened. “That’s what Nicole said.”
    “Wasn’t she telling the truth? How could those circumstances not change you?”
    “You’re right.” He stared into the distance, as if exploring his past. “In the end she decided it was easier to leave than to make the marriage work.”
    “Do you regret that?”
    “No.”
    She wondered if he was telling the truth. “Accepting that a relationship isn’t going to work is really tough,” she said, then nibbled on a cookie. “I had to make that decision when I was married to Damian. When it was just the two of us, his irresponsibility didn’t seem like such a big deal, but after Maggie was born, it mattered more.”
    She sipped her milk. “Some of the reason I