More Than One Night (11 page)

As her body relaxed against his, the tightness in his chest limited his ability to breathe. Not only had he seen death in Afghanistan, but he'd had a front row seat to the mayhem. Wanting to block the painful memories, he forced the air slowly in and out of his lungs. Her delicate scent calmed the racing of his heart, allowing him to compartmentalize the negative emotions threatening to consume him. In and out. Focus on each breath. It wasn't his fault.

Too bad he couldn't make himself believe that, no matter how hard he tried.

Tuesday

Bacon. The hickory smoke flavor filled the air along with the blissful aroma of coffee. Her stomach rumbled, demanding attention. "Daniel?"

"Room service just arrived. Hungry?"

She sat up. The white-covered table boasted a crystal vase with a single red rose.
Straight out of a romance novel.
Even better than the rose were two plates heaping with the ultimate representation of a Southern hospitality breakfast. Her meal included bacon, eggs, hash browns, biscuits, even grits and gravy. She'd never had grits and gravy, but there'd been lots of things she'd tried in the last day or so that were new. So far, so good. "I'm starving. Someone worked up quite an appetite in me last night."

Grabbing his T-shirt—his chest looked even better uncovered—she slipped it on and moved to the table. "No breakfast in bed I guess?" She smiled at the hurt look on his handsome face. "I'm teasing, relax."

His fingers combing through her hair delivered shivers of delight careening down her spine, almost making her forget how hungry she was. Almost.

"If you'd like to crawl back into bed, I'll be happy to serve you. Something tells me we'd skip right to dessert."

As a distraction, she plucked a warm piece of bacon from the plate and bit off a decent amount. "Mmm. As delicious as dessert sounds, I need to eat something to keep my strength up. Sit. Eat."

Soft, coffee-tasting lips covered hers momentarily, ceasing the enjoyment of her bacon. The gentleness of the kiss was distinctly different from the passion they'd shared in the early hours of the morning. She couldn't put her finger on the difference exactly, which reminded her of the pending "how to read people" research. His fingers trailed softly along her cheek and down her throat. Warmth. Gentleness.

"Yes ma'am. Let's eat."

The food tasted better than anything she'd eaten since arriving in the great state of Texas. Maybe her stomach was adjusting to the southwest spices infused in every meal.
Maybe my heart is starting to heal.
After another sip of coffee, she consumed enough food and caffeine to carry on meaningful conversation. "Thank you again for your understanding in the wee hours of the morning. I've been working through my grief and thought I had it under control." She paused, unsure of how much she could say without revealing how hard she'd fallen for him. "Anyway, thanks for listening. What are your plans for today?"

He shrugged and pushed the food on his plate around some more. "Not a problem. As to my plans, I'm not sure."

"What's wrong? You've barely eaten anything."

His face lifted, blue eyes entering her line of vision. Her stomach clenched as recognition dawned. The ice blue eyes displayed the familiar haunted look she'd caught in her own reflection at times. The bacon and biscuits started flip-flopping in her stomach. Did he regret being with her? Had her middle-of-the-night confession changed his mind about her? "Daniel? Please tell me what's wrong."

The table jarred at his abrupt rise from the chair. "I don't want to."

In direct opposition to his movement, her slow rise allowed her hands to grip the edge tightly, a concerted effort to control the trembling—from fear? "I shared intimate details from my heart last night. You can tell me anything. I know about your ex and your mistress—your womanizing ways. Can't be much else to shock me, right?" The pitch of her voice rose with each phrase, amplifying the fear that last night was too good to be true.

"Men, probably a lot like your Tom, died in Afghanistan. Died because of me."

The free fall into the deep end finished with her heart hitting the concrete at the bottom hard, crushing her chest and making it difficult to breathe. The violent shaking of her head confirmed her adamant denial. "What do you mean? You and Tom were on the same side. How could you possibly be responsible for the death of an American soldier?" She'd heard the term friendly fire before but couldn't imagine Daniel, even at his worst, making a mistake and shooting the wrong person.

"After I retired from the military, I worked for a while as a civilian contractor. Because of my familiarity with the terrain, my job included leading both military and civilian personnel through any number of missions. Humanitarian convoys, like you mentioned with Tom, or strategic ops to gain intel. Really, anything my employer ordered. Once a soldier, always a soldier."

With each word, the beating of her heart gained momentum. She forced thoughts of Tom to the back of her mind. It was evident Daniel was suffering. He'd helped her through the pain last night. She would do the same for him. "Tell me what happened. I may not be able to fully understand, but sometimes talking things out is good for you. Telling you about what happened to Tom last night proved very therapeutic for me. Let me do the same for you."

Strong hands—hands that had brought her so much pleasure over the past several hours—held her arms in a vice-like grip. "No. No one, especially a woman, wants to hear about my mistakes and failures. Hell, I'm tired of thinking about them myself." He released her and sunk onto the bed, his hands holding his head. "All you need to know is you deserve better, so much better. For a moment I allowed myself to believe… But I was wrong." Unshed tears glinted in the troubled depths.

Way out of my depth, but I have to try.
"I don't believe that for a minute, but if you feel that way, tell me why. Help me understand."

He patted the space on the bed next to him, but her feet refused to move. Instead, she knelt down in front of him and rested her hands on his knees. His eyes closed for a moment while his chest contracted and expanded, breath struggling to enter and leave his lungs. She refused to focus on how well the muscles framing his chest and abs felt pressed against her body. How safe she'd been in his arms.

When he opened his eyes and stared directly at her gaze, she saw it. The guilt, the pain, the regret—she could almost see the heavy weight of emotion pulling him down. He'd been able to keep this hidden from her, only glimpses of the pain coming through. But now, after all they had shared, maybe he would let her completely in—see who he really was. His head moved slowly and it took her a moment to realize he was shaking it. "I don't want to talk about this. I want to forget it and move forward."

Her hands squeezed his thigh tighter, trying to offer reassurance. "Daniel, you obviously can't move forward. I know
we
can't move forward until you deal with this." She leaned in closer and kissed him on the cheek. "I really like you and want to explore…how did you phrase it? Whatever this is. I'm a good listener. Let's work through this together."

The faraway look on his face intensified the pain in her heart. "This was another in a long line of mistakes I've made. I'm sorry." The finality in his voice saddened her. He was giving up. On himself and, by shutting her out, on further exploration between the two of them.

All of the negative emotions settled in the center of her heart. "I was nothing more than a mistake to you? I don't really believe you mean it, but if that's how you want to play this, I don't know what more to say." She kissed him on the cheek again and searched his face for any sign of a change of heart. Nothing. Not even a glance from those gorgeous blue eyes. Nothing but the downward tilt of those beautiful lips—lips that had made her smile and brought so much pleasure. The transformation was heartbreaking. She sighed and started to pack her things, time to go home.

Melodie stumbled into her drab, one bedroom apartment, praying the comfort of home would ease the heart-wrenching pain tormenting her from the moment she stepped outside of her hotel room. She'd left Daniel, hurting and hiding behind his pain. She'd wanted him to explain, practically begged him to share with her. He'd made love to her, made her feel like the most amazing woman in the world and shut her out precisely at the moment she'd been willing to step outside the pages of the books she'd been hiding behind.

She flung herself onto the couch, tears falling unhindered. Every muscle, every inch of her body hurt. The strain from the emotional roller coaster she'd been on for months now begged for release. She cursed the war, cursed Tom for leaving her to serve, and cursed Daniel for showing her a side of herself she didn't realize existed. Damn them all!

Exhaustion won the battle over emotion, and she succumbed to sleep once the supply of tears dried up. The cycle started over as her eyes slowly opened. This time, however, the focus had changed. Images of Daniel flashed through her mind and left her with one resounding stream of thought. Daniel needed her as much as she needed him. The war hurt them both, in similar yet different ways.

Hot tears, a fresh supply from somewhere, burned her cheeks as realization slammed into her. His pain, the cocky arrogance, the haunted look in his eyes, each and every one a signal his wounds ran as deep as hers—mostly likely even deeper. The war may not have taken his life, but it robbed him of the belief he deserved happiness. And what had she done? Let a lifetime of messed-up relationships make her leave before she could force him to explain, to talk things through, to kiss and makeup.

She hugged the pillow tighter, grief consuming her to the depths of her soul. Minutes morphed into hours until the waterworks, as her mother termed them, dried up. Thankfully, no one knew she'd come home early, so they'd leave her alone until she could pull herself together enough to face them, their criticism, and their instruction on how to "fix" her life.

Work. Work would help her find the balance in her life again. The children. The books.
The escape.
Daniel's presence challenged everything she thought she knew about herself, her choices, and her wants.
I want him.
She pulled her sorry butt off the bed and lumbered into the bathroom. Some cold water on her face and a hot shower for her body—just what the doctor ordered.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The cold water from the sink spelled relief to her red, puffy eyes. Hopefully, the swelling and discoloration would disappear. Otherwise, the children would be frightened. They'd probably tell her she looked like a character from
The Spooky Series
she read to them each Halloween. A glimpse of red with a white, weird shaped "X" on it caught her eye—Daniel's shirt. She'd been wearing it as they ate breakfast this morning—before everything went horribly wrong.

Inhaling deeply, she smelled his cologne. A spicy, manly scent, but the name escaped her. There were too many memories from their all-night adventure to remember such a detail.
More research to add to the list.
She removed it carefully before running a hot bath. The shirt and the faint scent were all that remained of the man who'd snuck in and stolen her heart right from underneath her nose.

Slipping under the bubbles, her eyes closed. Images of Daniel's smile, the cocky way he held his head, and the intensity in those cerulean depths as he peered into her very soul flooded her mind, making relaxation impossible. She drew a deep breath. Enough of the pity party. She'd learned enough about herself over the past few days to know she'd changed…for the good. The corners of her mouth turned upward in a small smile. Though she had no reason to believe it, no way to reach him, nothing but a T-shirt to hold onto, something inside her romance-novel-loving heart told her their story wasn't quite finished.

Thursday

Thank God his dream girl's occupation was a children's librarian and not an employee of the secret service. Finding her required some time but posed little difficulty. The last few days had been pure hell as he fought his greatest enemy—himself.

When she left, hurt and upset at his refusal to talk about
that
day, his first inclination had been to hit the bar. He'd let the first good thing in his life, outside of Annie, walk right out the door with so little a fight the soldier in him was ashamed. Instead of drowning his sorrows in the bottle, he'd submerged them with his tears. Hot tears of grief for the men whose lives had been lost, guilt for the role he'd played in their deaths, and anger that no one had blamed him. No one but himself. After leaving the war zone, he'd visited the families of each of the three men. Not only did they not yell or scream at him, they'd forgiven him.

Despite countless hours of self-reflection, he couldn't understand their forgiveness. If anyone ever played a part in something bad happening to Annie…

Annie. She was the reason he kept holding on despite the blackness in his heart and soul. Her innocence and love gave him hope that maybe, just maybe, he could be redeemed even though he didn't see how. And now Melodie, in her quiet reserved nature and smile that cut through all his bullshit, had found a way to bring a little more light into the darkness.

 He'd left the hotel room that afternoon with a purpose. He would find Melodie and give her the explanation she'd asked for. Even if she wouldn't give him another chance to pursue whatever it was they were starting, he'd still tell her the truth. He owed her that. Maybe through dealing with his grief, he could help her deal with her own.

Thankfully, Melodie had mentioned at least the geographical area of Chicago she lived in, and he'd operated under the assumption she worked in the same area. Risky, but gotta start somewhere. With no cell phone number or address to go from, he sketched together a plan from her name, occupation, and his one additional detail. She'd told him she lived in the southwest suburbs of Chicago.