Back in the Soldier's Arms (13 page)

When she met his gaze, when her soft brown eyes hit his, a warmth spread through him.

Because it was the first time in what felt like forever that he thought they might have a chance of being what they’d once been.

Best friends. Lovers.

Life partners.

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

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CHAPTER TEN

PENNY woke up with a dry mouth and her head resting on something that was somehow familiar.

She stretched her legs out and raised her head.

Oh.

“Hey.”

A warm flush spread across her cheeks and down her neck.

It had been a long time since she’d woken up beside Daniel like this, felt his eyes trawl hers, watched the soft dimple crease at the side of his mouth as he spoke.

“Morning,” she croaked.

It took her a second to realize where she was. Why they were sitting side by side, in the early morning, rather than with their heads on pillows.

Then it all came crashing back to her.

“Gabby?” Her voice was even weaker this time.

Daniel’s smile hit his eyes. “She’s fine.”

“How long have I been sleeping?” She should have been holding Gabby’s hand all night, waiting for her to wake up. Instead of falling asleep and leaving her alone.

“It’s okay,” Daniel told her, skimming the side of her face with one outstretched finger before standing. “She’s just nodded off again, but she’s been talking.”

He must have seen the question mark on her face.

“Talking and eating,” he added.

Penny took the hand Daniel held out and pulled herself up to her feet.

“I should never have …”

“You needed the sleep,” he said. “Don’t beat yourself up about getting some shut-eye. You’ve flown halfway around no d‡ the world, not to mention spending the last however many months serving. I think you deserve a little sleep in with that kind of jet lag.”

“Daddy?”

Gabby’s tiny voice put a stop to their conversation. They both shuffled almost instantly to her side, but Penny held back. She’d asked for her father, and there was only room for one of them to hold her hand.

She stole her eyes away from Gabby to glance at Daniel, saw the pained yet happy expression on his face as he bent to kiss their daughter on her forehead.

But it was the bright eyes and excited words that put Penny’s heart in her mouth.

“Mommy!” Gabby gasped the word, her eyes so wide they looked ready to pop.

She jumped forward, nearly pushing Daniel out of the way in her hurry to touch Gabby. So pleased to be wanted, to hear the excitement in her daughter’s voice.

“Hey, baby,” she said, covering Gabby’s hand and squeezing it. “You gave us such a fright.”

Gabby didn’t say anything, but she never dropped her eyes, didn’t so much as blink. Like she was so happy to have her mother beside her, holding her hand, that she didn’t want to look away and find she’d disappeared.

Penny felt the same.

“What happened?” Gabby asked.

Daniel walked around to the other side of the bed, sinking down onto the edge of it to give her a cuddle.

“Well …”

“Good morning!” The doctor’s cheery voice made them all look up.

“Morning,” Penny and Daniel both replied without looking up.

“I see our patient is wide-awake,” he said, smiling at Gabby before lifting the chart from the end of her bed. When he placed it back down, he folded his arms and looked between them.

“The good news is that Gabby doesn’t have anything serious.”

“It’s not meningococcal?” Penny asked.

The doctor shook his head. “Thankfully we’ve been able to rule that out. It appears she just has a very bad strain of the flu, hence the high temperature. I’m happy to discharge her so long as she has a close eye kept on her. Any sign of a fever again or anything else out of the ordinary, and I want her straight back here. But she should be fine within twenty-four hours.”

“Yes, sir,” said Penny, smiling as she gave him a mock salute.

“Ah, of course. I heard from the nurse that you were a soldier,” the doctor told her.

“United States Army Sergeant,” Penny responded, left hand still covering her daughter’s.

“I take it you’re home for good now?”

Didn’t she wish. Penny cleared her throat and avoided looking at Daniel. Or Gabby. It was hard enough dealing with her own emotions without seeing the looks on their faces.

“Unfortunately, no. I’m here on short-term leave, back with my unit next week, before I return home for good.”

The doctor didn’t react either way, just gave her a warm smile and a nod before turning to leave.

“Take care, thenowñe care, tn, soldier. God bless.”

Penny still avoided Daniel as she turned around, wishing she hadn’t had to be reminded of what she was so shortly about to leave behind. Again. “Let’s get you home, miss.”

Gabby grinned and rubbed her tiny thumb over Penny’s hand.

“I’ll bring the car around the front,” Daniel told them, dropping a kiss to Gabby’s forehead.

Penny returned his smile even though her heart was breaking all over again. She had no idea how she was going to board that plane next week.

It was going to be the hardest thing she’d ever done.

She’d thrown grenades and completed some of the hardest combat training courses in the world. But nothing, nothing, compared to this.

All she could think about was leaving Gabby all over again, just when they’d started to connect again. Her daughter’s face lighting up at seeing her today, calling for her when she already had her beloved father beside her, it made her feel alive. Like she hadn’t been herself and she was slowly recovering from whatever had been holding her captive until now.

And Daniel. She shut her eyes for a moment. Daniel was … still her husband. And she didn’t know what was going to happen there, or what could happen there. Whether they could ever go back to the way things used to be.

She had such limited time to act, to decide what to do and to figure out how she was going to cope.

What she had to do was draw on the strength of knowing that soon, she would be coming home for good.

She just had to decide now what it was she’d be coming home to next time.

Gabby was settled in her room like a princess, snuggled up watching a DVD. They’d moved the television from the master bedroom onto her dresser, and she couldn’t have been happier.

After a day running around looking after her, Penny was exhausted. But at least Gabby was feeling better, was starting to get her appetite back.

“I guess we’ll be having a quiet night in?” Daniel asked.

Penny kept stirring the pasta sauce, leaning over the large pot to inhale the tomato infused with fresh basil.

“As opposed to?”

Daniel came up behind her and reached for the spoon, plucking it from her hand.

“I have a few things I want to do with you, while you’re back. If you’re still up to giving me a chance, that is?”

Oh.

She watched as he tasted the sauce off the spoon, her eyes tracing his mouth as he did so. “Perfect.”

She grabbed the wooden spoon before he could drop it back into the pot.

“No.”

“No?” he repeated.

She tried to focus on manners instead of the cheeky, irresistible-as-hell look on his face.

“You don’t put a spoon back in there after licking it!”

He shrugged, dimple creasing at the corner of his mouth as he did so. “We’re all family. What does it matter?”

“What dintñ201C;Whatoes it matter?” Penny rolled her eyes and opened the drawer to find another spoon. “It’s not good hygiene.”

Daniel laughed. He actually opened his mouth wide and laughed at her. “Okay, I won’t do it again.” He paused, tilted his head while he was looking at her. “I think you’ve spent too long in the army and not enough time observing the disgusting things children, your daughter in particular, can do with food.”

Huh. “I guess if she’s learning her manners from you she gets up to all sorts of disgusting things.”

Penny tried to sound serious but she didn’t really care. What she liked was the easy banter between them. Play-arguing like they used to. Chatting and laughing for the sake of it.

“You know, when you think about it, we haven’t actually spent that much time together. Well, in the past few years anyway.”

Daniel arched an eyebrow in her direction as he leaned back against the counter on the other side of the kitchen.

“Meaning?”

She finished stirring and filled another large saucepan with water for the pasta. “I just mean that in ten years together we’ve probably only spent maybe a third of that time actually together.”

He moved his head from side to side like he was thinking about it, or maybe agreeing with her. She couldn’t tell.

“I guess you’re right.”

“Think about it,” she said. “We had one year together before we went off to the army and navy, add our terms overseas in there, and we’ve been more absent than together.”

His eyes met hers. “Maybe that’s why this has been so hard.”

Tears blurred her vision and she turned back to the almost boiling water. “It’s like we always had this idea of what it would be like when we both moved back here for good, but we didn’t really know what it was going to be like.”

Daniel didn’t say anything. As if he wasn’t sure how to broach the subject, how to contribute to the conversation, without hurting her.

“I don’t want you to think I’m making excuses, Pen, or that I want to bring this up again, but thinking you were coming home then having that snatched away from me.” He ran a hand through his thick, dark hair and tugged on the end of it. “It was like we had this fantasy of what it was going to be like one day, like it would make everything right, and when that day came it wasn’t as I’d imagined it to be.”

She kept her back turned. “What if it had worked out? What if we’d both finished up at the same time like we’d planned? Been together?”

She heard him sigh behind her.

“Honestly? I don’t know for sure, but maybe it wouldn’t have been so easy. Adjusting to being home full-time is hard, Penny. No matter how much you think you want to come home, you’re going to miss the army so bad you’ll feel like a crack addict trying to go cold turkey. We’ve both made out like everything’s been okay all this time, because that’s the kind of people we are, but there are times when it’s been truly hard.”

As much as she wanted to deny it, to not believe him, she had a feeli;Hoñhad a feeng he was right. Because no matter how badly she wanted to come home, to be a full-time mommy and leave her career behind, leaving was going to be tough. Just like being a proper wife again would have been tough, even if Daniel hadn’t been unfaithful.

Knowing that she was giving that life away forever was not an easy decision. It was one they’d both been prepared to make, a sacrifice they’d both chosen, but it wasn’t easy. But she’d only ever joined the army as a way to finish her degree, for the scholarship. She’d never intended on serving more than the mandatory four years of service.

Penny dropped the pasta into the pot as the water started to bubble and blinked away her tears. This was not the time to be getting all emotional. She had a daughter down the hall to care for, less than four days to enjoy her company and a husband standing behind her who was trying so hard she was starting to think that maybe he did truly deserve that second chance he was asking for.

“So what was it you said you had planned?” she asked, turning a happy face toward him when she spun around.

Daniel was still standing on the other side of the kitchen, leaning against the counter, but the way he was watching her made it feel like he was standing less than a foot away. She couldn’t tear her eyes from his stubble-grazed chin, the soft curve of his mouth, the endless brown pools of his eyes …

Hell!

He looked … hungry. Was watching her in a way that sent an involuntary shiver down her spine and a tingle through her lower legs.

“I want it to be a surprise,” he told her.

She hated surprises. “I don’t know, Daniel. I’m not sure about anything that involves leaving Gabby, to be honest.”

He shook his head.

“How about a compromise,” he suggested. “We’ll spend as much time as a family as we can, but when Gabby goes to bed at night, then we can spend time together. The two of us.”

Even if she was going to let him prove himself to her, being alone with him, spending intimate time together, made her feel like a schoolgirl about to go on a first date with her dream crush.

“That’s what we did last time, Daniel, and look what happened.”

He shook his head.

“I’m as worried about her as you are, Penny, but us spending time together is important, too.”

She sighed, knowing in her heart that what he said was true. The last thing she wanted was to leave Gabby after what had happened, but she couldn’t blame her mother-in-law for the way things had turned out last night. It could have happened to any of them. And in less than a week, she wouldn’t have the luxury of deciding to stay home. Would have to go back to trusting Daniel and Vicki to care for Gabby in her absence.

“Give me a chance, Penny, please.” Daniel took her hand and stared straight into her eyes. “Let me show you why I think we can find a way to make this work.”

“I’ve already told you I will,” she said softly.

He tucked a finger under her chin and tilted her face. There was still distance between them, a distance she wanted to close and yet didn’t. Because even the thought of letting him in again still terrified her.

“The">&ñ“Tn show me,” he said, voice low and tender as he captivated her with his gaze. “I don’t need to tell you how few days we have left.”

Penny looked down, couldn’t face talking about how little time she had left here.

“Don’t remind me, Daniel,” she pleaded. “Please don’t.”

He curled his fingers tighter for a moment, then trailed them slowly down her neck and away.

“Let me in, Penny. If we don’t spend time together, if you don’t put your words into action, we’ll never know what could have been. This is the time we need to be honest with each other about how we’re feeling, to see if we can fix us.”