Back in the Soldier's Arms (11 page)

There was an edge of finality to his tone that terrified her. Because she knew it was true.

If she was home for good and Daniel said he was going out with a friend or with his brother, would she believe him any longer? Or would she always worry, have her thoughts betrayed time and again, that he was sneaking off to meet a woman? That he’d hurt her again?

Would she ever be able to look into the eyes of this man sitting before her and trust that it was honesty shining from them? That the words falling from his pillowy lips were honest? Truthful?

“Penny?”

“Don’t pressure me, Daniel. Please,” she pleaded. “I’m not ready to give you an answer.”

The waiter came, cleared the table.

Penny was wondering how she would even stomach the main course, even though she’d been ravenous when they’d first arrived.

“I’m sorry, Penny,” he told her. “I’ll say it a thousand times if it helps. Because I honestly, truly, hand on my heart mean it.” His chocolate-brown eyes bored into hers, filled with more emotion that she could ever believe could be held in a single expression. “I’m so sorry that it’s killing me. Even if we can’t work through this, even if it is over, I need to know you forgive me.”

She looked up at him and took a deep breath.

“I know you’re sorry,” she said. And she did. She believed him now. “But it doesn’t make it any easier for me, okay? One day I’ll be able to forgive you, because that’s the kind of person I am.”

A flicker of hope crossed his face that she moved fast to stamp out. She had no intention of giving him false hope when she had no idea herself what was going to happen.

“What I’m trying to say, Daniel, is that I’ll be able to forgive you because you’re the father of my child. What I don’t know is if I’ll ever be able to forgive you as my partner.”

Silence stretched so tightly between them it could have snapped.

“Can you honestly tell me that if I’d been unfaithful, if Iȁ stÑ if I)d done the same thing to you, that you’d ever be able to move past it? The hurt I feel, the pain.” She held up her hand to stop the conversation. To tell him it was enough. “I just can’t give you an answer right now.”

It was as if she’d winded him with a fist to his gut, but he regained his composure within half a second.

“Let’s enjoy our meal, shall we?”

He gave her a tight smile. She responded by topping up her glass with more red wine.

She wasn’t used to drinking, it had been a long time since she’d had anything alcoholic, but tonight she needed it.

To help her make one of the biggest decisions of her life.

It was like he was fighting for his life.

The idea of losing Penny was akin to a life-support machine being taken from a terminal patient. Like a limb being torn from a still-warm body.

But he was tougher than this. Had the will and strength to do something, anything to give it his best shot.

To try to survive this.

Hell, he knew tough. He’d been in the depths of hell in the cockpit of a helicopter more times than he could count.

He’d been a helicopter pilot with the navy for almost all his adult life.

Surviving was in his blood.

“Thanks for dinner, Daniel. It was … lovely.”

Penny was making an effort and he appreciated it. He’d half expected her to walk off that plane and slap him. To yell and curse and throw him out of the house.

But that wasn’t her. She was hurting, and it hurt him to know he was the cause of her pain.

She might be dying a slow, painful death on the inside, but Penny was strong. Women didn’t survive to rise through the ranks in the U.S. Army without being intelligent, strong and resourceful.

And Penny was all three.

“Do you want to take a walk before we drive home?” She looked about to hesitate. Then surprised him.

“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s.”

Daniel gave the waiter a wave as they left, following Penny down the stairs and into the slightly chilly air outside.

It had been warm when they’d arrived, but the sun was long down and the weather coolish.

“Pen …”

“Daniel …”

They laughed, the second time that night they’d done it. “Snap,” he said.

But he waited for her to go this time, wasn’t going to interrupt her.

“I was just going to say that I don’t want to fight anymore while I’m here.”

He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans because he didn’t know what else to do with them.

“I don’t want to either, Pen.”

She wrapped her hands about herself and he had to resist the urge to warm her with his arm. To hold her to him and steal the cold from her body.

“I’m not here long enough for us to waste the time arguing.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I don clÑx201C;I d’t know if we’ll ever work together again as a couple, Daniel, but I’m not going to say no. Because I don’t like living with regrets, and I don’t want to wish we’d remained civil, that we could have been something great again, but that I was too pig-headed to believe that you were sorry. That I was too self-absorbed to see the problems you were facing.”

“Nothing will ever erase what I did, Penny, but I want you to know …”

Penny held up her hand to silence him. He obeyed.

“I need to walk,” she said.

Daniel sped up to stay abreast with her fast pace.

“And I need to know the details.”

He groaned, like his insides were being turned inside out.

“Penny, no.”

She stopped and grabbed his hand, forcing him to spin and stop.

“That wasn’t a question, Daniel. I need to know about it. If I don’t know, then I can’t process it. I can’t deal with it. I need to know everything if I’m ever going to understand. I don’t want to fight about it. I just want to know.”

Despite the cool air a trickle of sweat hit Daniel’s forehead. His hands felt clammy inside his pockets. He pulled them out and ran them down the denim of his jeans instead.

“I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t, I mean, geez.” This was not something he wanted to do. “I can’t do that to you, Penny.”

She scowled at him before marching off. “You should have thought of that before you screwed someone else.” She could have yelled at him, could have screamed, but her words were so quiet and low that it scared him more than any argument could have.

But she was right.

If she wanted to know, then he had to tell her. She deserved that 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 right now and the woman who served as a sergeant was the fact she wasn’t in uniform and her hair wasn’t in the tight braid she preferred when she was working.

It only took a handful of minutes for her to disappear, then he was alone.

Night surrounded him, the voices of other people passing hit him thÑng hit hiwhen before it had felt as if he and Penny were the only people in the street.

His wife had walked away from him and he deserved it. Just like she’d deserved the truth, which was why he’d told her.

He hadn’t wanted to go back to that night in his mind any more than she had probably wanted to hear it. But it had to come out sometime if they were ever going to move forward.

Maybe now the path would become clearer.

Although from the look on her face before, he seriously doubted it.

Back in the Soldier’s Arms/Here Comes the Groom

CR!93BHZ3MAHS4NVAVVWQG1QCZMZ0ZB

CHAPTER NINE

PENNY wondered if her body was ever going to stop shaking. She felt like a whimpering puppy, unable to stop herself. So unlike the strong woman she was used to being.

Karen.

The name had circled in her mind ever since Daniel had told her. His words falling, crashing through her head. Tumbling over and over like they were never going to stop.

She’d wanted to know and yet she hadn’t. But she’d needed to know. The woman within her wanted to know why she’d failed so miserably, what this other woman had had that she didn’t. Whether she should blame herself for what had happened, even if it was only in part.

The mother within her wanted to shield herself and those she loved from pain. To push the memories away and try to move forward.

The wife within her was shattered.

But she knew now and she had to deal with it.

Penny pulled up outside their house and sat outside for a few minutes. The lights were on, curtains pulled so she couldn’t see in. But she knew the scene she’d find inside.

Daniel’s mother would be curled up on the sofa reading a book or watching television, and Gabby would be tucked up in bed, peaceful in sleep.

If she didn’t hurry up and get inside, Daniel might even beat her home. She’d driven around aimlessly for ages, thinking, not wanting to go home, because for some reason it didn’t truly feel like her home anymore.

Because she no longer felt like she belonged.

Penny hauled herself from the car and headed for the house. She needed to have a nice long sleep, stop fighting the pull of emotions within her, then figure out what the hell she was going to do come morning.

If anything, no matter how hard this night had been, it had told her that Daniel’s infidelity was only the tip of a very tall iceberg. Their marriage had been in trouble for longer than she was ready to admit, but instead of acknowledging it, she’d kept a brave smile on her face and acted like everything would turn out okay in the end.

“Penny!”

Vicki’s alarmed call rang through the otherwise silent night.

in T‡

Penny ran. Fast. Her arms pumping at her sides as she sprinted from the driveway and up onto the veranda.

Her feet skidded to a stop, slipping as she grabbed onto the timber railing.

Daniel emerged through the front door, dishevelled, his hair messy like he’d been running his fingers through it over and over again, T-shirt rumpled.

Penny’s hand flew to her mouth as her heart starting pounding with fury in her ears.

She couldn’t pull her eyes away from Daniel, because his arms carried their daughter.

Gabby lay tucked against him, her head on his chest, tiny like a mouse as his strong hands covered her, held her tight.

“What happened?” Her words were on the verge of a gasp, barely audible.

She didn’t have time to ask how Daniel had arrived home before her. Couldn’t care less about what they’d discussed. Not now.