Letters to Her Soldier (2 page)

After clearing
her throat, she croaked out, “Um, yeah.
 
Sure.
 
I
know where to go. ”

Putting the car
into gear, she headed out of the airport car park and paid the toll before
driving the forty minutes to the base.
 

They sat quietly
for the first twenty-five minutes.
 
Bianca’s mind replayed the kiss and the look
in his eyes as he caged her against the car.
 
She frowned, thinking about the house he’d
been given.
 
The Army didn’t give single
men houses. They stayed in the barracks.
 
“Do you have someone moving in with you?”

She shot a
glance at him and noticed he’d undone some of his shirt buttons.
 
Blinking she turned back to the road in time
to brake at the car in front.
 
“Sorry
. ”

He chuckled.
 
“Watch the road.
 
I’ll answer your questions.
 
I didn’t serve sixteen years in the Army to
die in a car crash. ”

Bianca bit her
bottom lip, nodded, and focused solely on the road.
 

“I’m hoping to
have someone move in with me very soon.
 
I just have to convince that person. ”

“Oh.
 
Why did you choose to move now?” She was dying
to ask who the person was, but thought it safer to wait to ask until she wasn’t
on the road.

“I need a rest.
 
Plus, Greta thinks that I’m getting old, and
that if I keep going the way I am, I’ll fizzle out and no one will want me. ”

“You’re not that
old.
 
You’re only nine years older than
me. ”

“Ten.
 
I’m ten years older.
 
You just had your birthday, and I turn
thirty-four next week. ”

Bianca shrugged before
silence settled between them once more.

“I was shocked
to read about your parents.
 
I’m sorry. ”

“Don’t be.
 
My parents were miserable together.
 
Mum’s having a ball going on cruise ships with
some of her friends and my sister.
 
Dad…well, I’ve never seen him so in love.
 
He worships Katarina.
 
It did take me a while to get used to it at
first, what with the almost twenty-year age gap, but he’s so happy and she
seems to genuinely love Dad. ”

Bianca relaxed
into her seat.
 
She was happy too. She’d
been on two dates with a wonderful man.
 
Dr.
 
Mathew Ross was a children’s doctor at the
hospital she volunteered at sometimes.
 
An image of Mathew popped into her mind, and
she bit her cheek to hold back a groan.
 
He was everything a woman could ask for—tall, dark,
and handsome.
 
Mathew had been trying to
get her to go on a date with him for months.
 
She’d been putting him off.
 
It wasn’t until recently when she knew she was
ready to move on because it had finally sunk in that Caleb was out of her
league and she’d never be with him, that she agreed to go on a date.
 
It’d been fun, but he just wasn’t what she
wanted.
 
He wasn’t the man currently
sitting beside her.

Maybe she could
let whatever Caleb had in store run its course.
 
When he was finished with her and had his fill,
she hoped she would be too, and she could move on.

“What?
What’s that look
for? You’re not telling me something. ”

She forced a
smile on her face and turned down towards the barracks.
 
“Don’t worry. It was nothing.
 
Look, we’re getting close to the gates.
 
Do you need to get anything out?”

Bianca could
feel his penetrating stare as he seemed to debate whether to ask more questions.
 
She kept the smile in place until he
reached behind them and rummaged through his bag.

He sat back in
his seat with some papers and ID.
 
She
slowed as they reached the gates, and she stopped as two men came over to the
car.
 
Caleb rolled down the window, handed
over the paperwork, and held out his ID.
 
The men came to attention as soon as they read
everything and checked the ID.
 
One
walked away to an office and came back before passing two envelopes to Caleb.
 

“Afternoon, Warrant
Officer Sutten
. ”

Caleb nodded, and
the men returned to their posts.
 
He looked
down at the paper.
 
“Turn left.
 
Our house is down at the end. ”

Bianca ignored
the way he said “our house” and followed his instructions.
 

“Number
thirty-four
. ”

She looked at
the basic houses as she went along.
 
They
got better the farther she went down.
 
At
the end of the street, she pulled into a neat, two-story, cream-colored
weatherboard house.
 

Caleb got out of
the car, grabbed his backpack, opened one of the envelopes, and pulled out a
bunch of keys.
 
He walked to the door and
tried a couple before getting the right one and opening the door.
 

Bianca sat in
the car watching him, unsure of all her plans now.
 
Maybe she’d imagined his kiss.
 
Maybe she’d imagined him caging her against a
car.
 
She debated for a good couple of
minutes while Caleb was in the house.
 

Then her eyes
widened as Caleb came out with no shirt on, wearing only his uniform pants.
 
Oh God.
 
He must have had some spare time in
Afghanistan because he’d bulked up a lot more than she remembered.
 
He was friggin’ huge.
 
And right now he was stalking her way with
determination in his eyes.
 
Crap.
 
What the hell was she supposed to do?

****

Caleb stalked
his prey. For the last six years, he’d received letters every week from Bianca.
 
He knew it was his sister’s doing. Greta
sent over a picture of Bianca on the car her parents had bought her, telling
him about all the antics they were getting up to now that they had wheels and
she didn’t have to beg their parents to borrow the car.
 

He’d needed
something back then, and he let slip in a letter to Greta he wished he got more
mail.
 
She’d sent that picture of Bianca
and something just clicked inside.
 
He
wrote back to ask about Bianca and how she was doing.
 
Next thing he knew, he got a letter from
Bianca.
 
He wrote one to her sugarcoating
the conditions where he was stationed and the danger he was in, and then it
started.
 
He got a letter from her almost
every week.
 

His mates were
jealous.
 
She would send him things like
care packages with men’s shower items, candy, and chocolates.
 
But the best things she sent were her biscuits.
 
They never lasted long, and he became
the most popular man when they came in.
 

He’d started
asking for photos, but she wouldn’t give them.
 
So Caleb asked his sister
Greta for more pictures of Bianca, and she sent one every couple of months.

Over the last
year the letters dwindled, and then six months ago, Greta stopped sending
pictures and talking about Bianca.
 
He’d
asked if something had happened between them, and she’d written back they were
better than ever.
 
Then Greta added that
Bianca was getting a lot of attention from a nice guy, and she was seeing him a
lot.
 
Greta said that was probably why he
wasn’t receiving letters anymore.
 

Caleb thought
back to their last phone conversation.
 
“You didn’t think just because she’s had a
huge crush on you since she was little that she would wait for you forever?”

That sentence
had him thinking for weeks.
 
He was
coming up for leave.
 
He had one last
mission, and then he was going home for a couple of months.
 
When he got back from his mission to find only
one short letter from Bianca, he knew he had some decisions to make.
 

He didn’t want
to come back for just a couple of months and have what he’d had every other
time he’d returned home, which was Bianca going into hiding. The last time he’d
come home had been the worst. He’d almost become a stalker.
 
He knew every weekday morning she dropped off
her baked goods at four coffee shops.
 
She then went to the little cake shop where
she worked.
 

He’d sat out in
front of the shop so many times, sometimes even getting out of the car to go
talk to her, only to get back in and drive away.
 
He would always laugh at himself that he could
go on covert missions, kill bad guys, be tortured, have bones broken, but he
couldn’t go to the woman he’d come to love, tell her how he felt, and ask her
to be with him.
 

So based on what
Greta had said, he’d asked to be transferred for a while to his hometown, be
put on something easy.
 
When he’d started
to organize to come home, the Army asked about housing.
 
He knew he was probably being premature, but
he told them he was engaged, and she would be living with him so he’d need a
house.
 

Then he told his
sister, who promised to help him anyway she could to get them together.
 
She told him her plan, and he now prayed it
worked.
 
But when Bianca didn’t follow
him into the house, he hoped Greta wasn’t wrong about Bianca’s feelings for him.
 

Not willing to
give up, he put his backpack down and checked his sister had made the room like
she told him she would.
 
Finding
everything as he wanted, he took his boots off, chucked his shirt into the
bathroom, and jogged down the stairs to get the woman he loved.
 

She sat watching
him in her car.
 
He opened her door, leaned
over her, and undid her seatbelt before he pulled her out of the car and threw
her over his shoulder.
 
She let out a
squeal and gripped his bare waist.

“Hey, put me
down.
 
You’ll hurt yourself.
 
I weigh too much. ”

He walked
through the door, kicked it shut with his foot, strolled straight up the stairs
to the main bedroom, and laid her on the bed.
 
“Clothes.
Off.
Now.
”

He tried to tell
himself to slow down, but at this moment, his brain wasn’t in control.
 
Another part of him was.
 

Bianca’s hazel
eyes widened, and her mouth hung open as he leaned down, pulled her boots off, chucked
them behind him, undid her jeans, and yanked them off.
 
She helped him and lifted her top over her
head, leaving her in a black-and-red lacy number.
 
Her hands moved to cover her stomach as she
stared up at him.
 
Gently he moved her
hands away.

“Don’t cover
yourself.
 
You are gorgeous.
 
My beautiful Bianca.
I’ve
fantasized about this moment with you so many times.
 
You’re even better than I imagined.

He took off his
pants and studied the stunning woman before him.
 
Her dark brown hair lay sprawled out behind
her, her greenish blue eyes shone bright, her full plump lips were parted with
each indrawn breath, and her body…wow. Large breasts overflowed her bra, her
stomach flared out into a little belly, and she was shapely in all the right
places.
 
She was the perfect kind of
woman to go all night, to ride him with her thick, strong thighs until the
early hour of dawn.

This was the
woman he would marry.
 
He now just had to
convince her that she wanted to marry him.
 

Climbing back on
the bed again, he slid the panties down her legs and threw them in the corner.
 
“Oh, look at that.
 
Smooth. ” He leaned down and licked her from
the top of her pussy to the base.
 

He looked up to
see her turn a pretty pink and close her eyes. Bianca opened her eyes, grabbed
a hold of him, and pulled him up to her mouth.
 
She wrapped her arms and legs around him as
their tongues tangled together in heated desire.