Serving the Soldier - Part 4 (An Alpha Military Romance)

Serving the Soldier

PART 4

By Helen Grey

Copyright © 2015 Helen Grey

The "Serving the Soldier" Series

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to get Serving the Soldier – Part 1

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to get Serving the Soldier – Part 2

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to get Serving the Soldier – Part 3

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Book Description

This is Part 4 of "Serving the Soldier" – a five part Hot Alpha Military Romance Series by Helen Grey.

Could things possibly get worse? Angie certainly regretted asking that question now. Once again, her curiosity had knocked her for a loop.

So much had gone wrong, she couldn’t even count that high. A crazy ex, disturbing papers and a mysterious stranger were only the beginning. Now she’s alone and afraid.

She’s in deep. Mired in it, with nowhere to turn. She doesn’t know where to go or who to trust. Is Jax the man she thinks he is, or is he a traitor to his country? Can he keep her safe… or even alive?

Find out in the fourth steamy installment of "Serving the Soldier"!

This book is intended for a mature audience, 18+ only.

I watched them argue for several minutes. Putting my own feelings for Jax’s ex-wife aside, I tried to figure out what it was about her that had attracted a man like Jax to her in the first place. They appeared to be complete opposites in looks and temperament. Then again, wasn’t that how the old saying went? Opposites attract? Still.

I didn't know the woman and had only met her briefly, but from those few moments, I gathered she was a bitch. A spoiled, greedy little bitch. Then again, maybe my hackles had just gone up from the moment I saw them sitting on the couch together, after Stephanie had removed the bandage. My nurse-ly indignation had risen to the surface.

I still couldn't believe how stupid some people were. Jax could've died from his injuries, and the crazy woman had wanted to look at the surgical incision on his spine? Was she really that dense?

Then again, maybe I’d read the situation all wrong. Maybe looking at the incision had made it all real for Stephanie or provided some type of closure. After all, she's been living in Seattle for who knows how long. I didn't know anything about them, how long they had been married, or what had broken it up. Who was I to judge?

I knew Jax was a womanizer, I’d seen it with my own two eyes. Had he strayed? Had she? While waiting for weeks and months on end to receive word about him? Special Forces didn’t exactly make their schedules known to the public at large. My own father had been put on alert once, and for nearly a week my mother and I had nearly gone crazy with worry not knowing where he was; stateside or in a jungle or desert somewhere? As a military brat, I knew the life, at least from a daughter’s perspective. I could only imagine how much worse it might feel from a wife’s point of view.

Still… if I had been married to Jax…

Shut up
, I told myself and pressed a hand over my eyes. I then realized that my initial knee-jerk reaction to her could very well have stemmed out of jealousy and envy. The ugly green monster? That certainly didn't make me feel any better.

I was a nurse, and as soon as this job was over, I'd be moving on to another client. What was I doing getting emotionally involved with him anyway? Not that it’d never happened before; I often got emotionally attached to my elderly clients.

For me anyway, the emotional attachment came with the job. Oh, I had known plenty of nurses who were able to maintain detachment, but in my view, that same detachment also left me feeling they didn’t really, truly, deep-down care. How could anyone take care of someone for days, weeks or even months and not experience
some
feelings for them?

When I had a client or a patient under my charge, I was fully invested in their care. I was a good patient advocate, or so Nancy repeatedly told me. Not that it happened very often, but occasionally I found myself in minor and sometimes major—yet always respectful—disputes with spouses or extended family members regarding a patient's care. Yes, they were family, and they had a right to make decisions, but not medical ones in some circumstances. In many cases, a family member had no idea of the
whys
of certain medical decisions and plans of care. Many had no clue when it came to the day-to-day care of injuries, surgical recoveries, rehabilitation, or what was good for a patient, and what was not.

In the past year, I think Nancy had been forced to see a judge to limit family access to two of our elderly patients. One family wasn’t keeping up with the medication schedule for an elderly grandmother, and the other family wasn’t providing any sort of social interaction for their disabled father, including doctor office visits. Both had suffered from neglect. Having to step into family matters was a difficult decision, but as a nurse, I felt it was my duty to see to the emotional, mental, and physical needs of the people I care for. My job was to improve their conditions, and when possible, their quality of life.

No actions limiting family access were ever taken lightly, and only in the most extreme and serious circumstances. Sometimes families did more harm than good, but this was mainly caused by their lack of knowledge. Maybe Stephanie had not thought of the repercussions of removing the bandage from Jax’s back. If I tried really hard, I suppose I could understand her curiosity. I wasn't the only one who sometimes allowed my curiosity to override my better judgment.

Maybe I had been judging Stephanie too harshly. I glanced back down at them, standing on the deck surrounding the pool. I saw Jax laugh, and then I gasped in dismay when Stephanie slapped him. He laughed again. My blood boiled. What the hell? To my surprise, Jax merely placed his hands on Stephanie's shoulders and pulled her toward him. He began to kiss the living daylights out of her, or at least that's how it looked from my perspective.

My heart sank. He still had feelings for her. Shit. I turned away from the window. I didn't want to witness another display of affection, animal attraction, or whatever those two called it.

I paced my room for several minutes, and then my curiosity got the better of me. moved out into the hallway. From the window at the end, I could see the driveway, her fancy-smancy car parked in the middle, nose end pointing toward the street. I stood beside the window and glanced outside, trying to keep myself hidden so that on the off chance that Jax looked up, he wouldn't see me spying on them. They were getting into her car. He was getting into the passenger seat. Good. At least he was using his head for a change. Once again, I wondered what had attracted Jax to Stephanie, other than her beauty, because her personality sucked.

I had no idea how long they'd be gone and I told myself that I didn’t care. I didn't really have anything to do, so I meandered around the house, straightening up. I started in the kitchen, washing the dishes and then putting them away. Of course he had a dishwasher, but I'd never gotten used to using one so it wasn’t a big deal for me to wash dishes by hand. It was actually kind of calming and therapeutic.

After the dishes were done, I looked under the kitchen sink and found an old feather duster and some furniture polish. There wasn't that much polish left in the can, but I would do what I could. Might as well make myself useful, I thought. Besides, I needed something to distract myself anyway.

I took a quick turn around the living room and then headed into the den across the hall, the cozy, lived in room with the television set. Plenty of wood work to dust in here. In addition to the entertainment center, a wall of cabinets, broken up by a wooden shelf that might have served as a bar in times gone by, took up the short wall. I straightened it up, dusted, and then accidentally bumped my knee into one of the lower cabinets. One of the doors popped open.

I crouched down and peeked inside. Stacks of what looked like bound reports and papers. Reams of them. By the dust on the top layers, it looked as if they had been accumulating and been added to for some time. They didn't seem to be in any particular order. I reached in and pulled out about five inches worth of paper and balanced them on my knee. A lot of them look to be of military origin; on-base housing information, copies of orders, payment statements, and so forth. It wasn't like I was looking through every single document, but just shuffling through the stack.

About halfway down, I came across a stapled set of papers that look like divorce documents. I paused, knowing I had no business to be snooping again, especially through what looked to be more of Jax’s personal paperwork. But once again, and inevitably, my innate nosiness was going to kick me in the ass.

I carefully read through the divorce papers. He had filed for divorce from Stephanie a little over a year ago. They had been married less than four years. He had listed ‘irreconcilable differences’ as the reason, which sounded perfectly reasonable to me, knowing Stephanie the little bit that I do.

I wondered if she was rich like Jax, but had no way of knowing. Her attitude of entitlement indicated that she might be, but then again, there was no telling. Then I spied the pre-nup. Nope.

Browsing through the documents, I found the final decree, listing a division of property, if division was the right word, that is. It appeared that Jax had no trouble agreeing to most of Stephanie’s stipulations, including the fact that, in another month, she would take full ownership of this house.

I stared in amazement. He had given her the house? It must have cost millions! My mouth dropped open when I saw her demand for spousal support for the term of three years. I couldn’t earn that in ten years’ time. Unbidden jealousy burned inside me.

Then again, I suppose someone as rich as Jax could easily buy another house and pay such outrageous alimony. Even so, it irked me, but I couldn't quite figure out why. I had no idea what their marriage had been like. That Jax was difficult and stubborn was an understatement. I knew what it was like to grow up around the military. My own father had been gone for months at a time. Deployments were hard on families, and I could imagine that a Special Forces deployment, or two or three —or more—wouldn’t be any cake walk, either. Maybe Stephanie just hadn't been able to handle the worry.

I made a face. While I didn't know Stephanie and I could very well be pigeonholing her into something that she wasn't. I had a feeling that Stephanie was only worried about Stephanie. The fact that she had taken off his bandage "just to look" had given me an insight into her personality. What Stephanie wanted, Stephanie got. Damned the consequences.

I wondered what she was doing in Seattle, and whether she had been living there since their official separation, or whether she had moved away while Jax had been on his last deployment. I had to wonder why she wouldn't have stayed here, on Hilton Head, in this house.

Maybe he had kicked her out. Perhaps she had family in Seattle, or a boyfriend.

Who knew?

I shrugged, deciding that I didn't care. Really, I didn't. At least that's what I kept telling myself.

I put the stack of papers on the floor and then tried another cabinet door. I saw lock mechanisms on the doors that required keys, but when I tried the next cabinet, it opened easily. I decided that there was nothing top-secret in the cupboards and returned to snooping.

I told myself to stop it, but my hands ignored my orders. In the second cabinet, I found a shoebox. It sat atop a stack of papers which looked a lot like bills or credit card statements. I carefully took the shoebox out of the cabinet and then swore when I noticed that the outside was coated with dust. Shit. I was going to leave fingerprints.

The only way around that would be to dust everything in the cabinet and hope that Jax didn't notice, if and when he decided to open it, that is. Maybe he wouldn't open it until he had to move out, and by that time more dust will have accumulated.

My hesitance of leaving evidence of my snooping was overridden once again by my curiosity. I placed the cardboard shoebox on the floor and lifted the lid by the edges.

My eyes widened in surprise. Military ribbons and medals. Two purple hearts? I picked through them, and due to my own familiarity with a number of Army decorations, noticed overseas service ribbons, a Bronze Star, and numerous meritorious service awards. I nudged several aside and spied three or four sharpshooter badges, along with a number of decorations that I didn't recognize offhand.

Just the sight of them brought me a surge of pride in Jax. I could just imagine him in his combat fatigues, face painted with camouflage, sneaking up on an enemy encampment with his friends and buddies right beside him every step of the way. In fact, just the thought made me hot. Now here was a man that I could admire, through and through.

Oh, I knew that Jax had his warts, all guys did. To be fair, so did I, and most women, even if they were loath to admit it. I made a face, thinking of Stephanie. Then again, who was I to point fingers? I guess I wasn't that easy to get along with sometimes either. I could be stubborn, and I was so used to being in control of my patients that, maybe, I could be a little overbearing.

I didn't know how long Jax had been in the military, but it must've been quite a while for him to amass such a collection. Why hide the medals and commendations in a cardboard shoebox? Then again, I also understood the mindset of many military service members. It was their job. Most didn't go around bragging of their exploits. This was especially true of those who had seen combat. Not that they weren’t proud of their service, nothing like that, but very few went around announcing it or bragging about it.

I continued to stare at all the medals, fingering a few before finally putting the lid back on the box, dusting it off, and placing it back on the shelf atop the papers where it had sat, undisturbed for who knew how long.

I shut the cupboard door. Looking at Jackson's awards and decorations made me feel a bit like a voyeur. I was snooping into a very personal aspect of his life. One that he obviously wanted to keep tucked away, safe from prying eyes, and here I was, prying.

That was enough snooping for one day.

I had just turned back to the stack of papers that I had left on the floor when another paper on top of the stack remaining in the cupboard drew my attention. It was an official looking military document, but it didn't look like the others that I had been browsing through. I pulled another couple of inches off the stack that remained in the cupboard and stared at the sheet of paper on top.

Disciplinary action?

No, disciplinary leave?

I quickly scanned through the document and my eyes widened when I read the charges…
consorting with the enemy
.