Chapter One
The orange, cardigan sweater had been a bad choice. Though the crowd waiting with Amelia Barker was awash with color, she felt like a blast of sound in an otherwise silent room. But the terminal of the international airport wasn’t silent. She was the quiet one amidst the excited chatter. The other women spoke quietly to their antsy children and to each other. They chatted about plans, about what was going on in their lives, club meetings, how long their spouses, fiancés or boyfriends had been deployed.
Everyone seemed to know everyone else.
Amelia didn’t know any of them and felt very much like an interloper who’d stumbled into a family reunion. Her teeth sank into her bottom lip as she waited, her cold hands clutching her small purse.
She didn’t know the man she awaited, either.
Well…she knew him. She’d just never met him. And he thought she was someone else. She suppressed a groan as the butterflies in her belly tripled their intensity. Damn her sister, Grace, for starting this and double-damn herself for her soft-heart that hadn’t wanted to let down a soldier at war. Still, she should have told the truth before it was too late.
Now he thought Amelia was her sister.
Grace had written letters and emails to him for months, but when the first phone call had come, she’d run and left Amelia on cleanup. Grace was engaged to a banker, so Amelia had been solely responsible for all the calls and webcam chats. She’d fallen hard for the soldier who thought she was someone else.
Still, as an electric undercurrent of tension sizzled through the crowd, she wondered what the hell she was doing here. He’d leave once he discovered she wasn’t Grace, life of the party and actress who’d just won her first part on Broadway. In comparison, Amelia was just boring and normal—a school teacher with more curves than any Hollywood or Broadway starlet.
She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, envisioning the soldier.
Lieutenant Keon Munro. That’s why she was here. A flutter took off in her belly as she thought his name and a tingle surged through her pussy. Lord, she wanted him. Even if nothing came of their encounter, she wanted to meet the man who’d filled her dreams the past few weeks.
She took another deep breath, easing back her nerves as his flight was announced. Well, not just his flight. His entire unit was arriving with him. She’d been surprised to learn his return from deployment in Afghanistan would take him through an international airport rather than straight to a base, but this was apparently how things sometimes worked.
The other women and their families moved closer to the gate. Everyone seemed to be holding their breaths as they waited. After more than ten years of military combat, American soldiers’ homecomings seemed routine to the nation, but Amelia understood without a shadow of doubt that this was a monumental personal moment for all those involved. Other travelers rushing through the airport terminal paused and watched as the first warriors were spotted coming down the concourse to the gate.
Amelia pressed her lips together as surprising emotion welled inside her. Her heart beat faster at the sight of the Army combat uniforms. It was time.
The muscles in her torso went taut as hot prickles cascaded up across her back. Heat and panic shook through her, and try as she might, she couldn’t stop her legs from trembling. She wasn’t scared of Keon; she was worried about the situation and his reaction to the truth. Expectation, excitement and nerves battled inside her. She’d felt this way the first time he’d called her, the first time he’d contacted her by webcam. This was ten times worse—and better.
She’d get to see him in the flesh. Maybe even touch him.
By now, she knew his face well, and her eyes locked on him as he rounded the corner that led to the gate’s exit.
God, he was beautiful, the personification of strong,
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