Shared by Her Soldiers (16 page)

“Well, hello to you, too.”

“I’m not staying,” she repeated, as if he possibly could have misinterpreted her the first time. “I wasn’t even going to come at all, but I thought I owed it to myself.”

His brow furrowed at the insanity of the conversation he was being forced to take part in. “Excuse me?”

“You know, I’ve known guys like you my whole life. I’ve dated too many to count. I thought moving back here would give me a new start, but it just figures—it
figures
that the one scumbag in the bunch would somehow be set up with
me
.”

Puzzlement was quickly turning to indignation. “I beg your pardon?”

Either she didn’t notice the warning in his voice, or she didn’t care to heed it. “I did my research on you. I asked around, and you know, I think it just sucks that you’re cheating on your girlfriend.”

Now he really was lost. “Look, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but maybe we could sit down and talk about this a little more quietly.”

Her fists clenched at her sides and she stood up straighter, as if she could make herself taller. He would have found it amusing, if he hadn’t been on the verge of getting very, very irate. “Thank you,
no
. I don’t want to sit down, but I do want to tell you that what you’re doing is despicable. I know General McCoy very well, and I know he never would have suggested we go out if he’d known you’re seeing someone else.”

“I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not seeing anyone.”

“Oh, sure.” She gave a short, hard laugh. “You would say that, and meanwhile poor Kate is what? Sitting at home, waiting for the phone to ring?”

“What?” He couldn’t be more dumbfounded. Sure, he’d thought the date might be a bit boring, but this certainly wasn’t the kind of excitement he was into. It felt like a cruel joke. Worse, his staying-not-staying date was starting to draw attention from the patrons scattered throughout the restaurant.

“Like I said, I wouldn’t have even come, but I’ve been in Kate’s shoes one time too many myself and I wish
those
girls had known about me, or that if they did, they’d done something about it. So there it is. At least now you know, you
will
get caught. And if you’re going to cheat, it’s not going to be with me. I hope that poor Kate finds out about all this. If I knew who she was, I’d tell her myself.”

“Please, have a seat, order a drink and we can figure out—”

“No.” She lifted her chin higher. “I don’t want to sit down with you and I don’t need a drink. I’ve said what I came to say.” With that, she whirled on her heel and stomped out as loudly as possible, as if her heels hitting the floorboards would scold him further.

Jarrod sank back into his chair, his head bowed. He could feel the stares, hear the whispers that had begun once the door had closed behind his date that had refused to eat with him. He raised a hand, signaling for the check.

What the hell
? It was the only thing he could think, the question that reverberated through his mind again and again. What had just happened? He didn’t have a clue.

Obviously, whoever she’d been talking to—she hadn’t left a name, and for the life of him, he couldn’t remember it with his brain so clouded—had given her a barrel of lies about him. But why? Who would do that? As far as he knew, he was a pretty liked guy. It just didn’t make any sense. And maybe he could have found out, had she stopped ranting at him long enough for him to talk some sense into her.

He didn’t look up as the bill was placed on his table, instead reaching for his glass. He emptied it in one swallow, enjoying the feeling as the whiskey burned its way down his throat. He just couldn’t understand why she would walk in here, spitting nails over someone called Kate.

Kate
. It hit him so fast and so hard that for a minute he thought the whiskey he’d just swallowed might come back up. There was only one woman he knew by that name. A name that only he called her. His fingers tightened around the glass as he thought it over. It didn’t make any sense, but the more he pondered it the more certain he was that that was what had happened. He didn’t have the faintest idea why she would have done it—the only thing he knew for sure was that he needed to make a house call.

But first, he picked up the phone and dialed the familiar number. “Sergeant Green, please.”

* * *

Kaitlyn had just piled the laundry she’d folded back in the basket when she heard a sharp knock at the door. She paused, trying to figure out who it might be. Sean was at work, and he would have let himself in, anyway. She and Candice didn’t have a cooking lesson today, which just left those Jehovah’s Witnesses who’d been dropping by. They’d kept her standing on the doorstep for over half an hour last time before she’d been able to get rid of them. With that in mind, she decided to continue her chores. They’d go away in a few minutes.

Only the knocking didn’t stop. She could still hear it when she was in the bedroom putting the laundry away and it was becoming louder and more persistent.

“Alright already!” she called out in frustration, dropping the basket on the floor and beginning to march to the door. They had some nerve, disturbing her in the middle of the day like this. She threw open the door, glaring. “Where’s the fire?”

“It’s about to be tearin’ over your ass,” a familiar voice growled.

She stepped back, her mouth dropping open as she saw Jarrod towering over her. “Hi! What are you doing here?” she asked, forgetting his sharp tone. “It’s been awhile.”

“And it’s apparently been too long since my hand has warmed that butt of yours,” he pronounced, not even waiting to be invited in. Instead, he stomped inside and closed the door behind him none too quietly.

Only when he was inside, staring down at her with a look that could only be called searing did she realize that this probably wasn’t a social call. She’d just been so surprised and delighted to see him that she had neglected to note that he didn’t look nearly as happy to see her.

“Would you mind telling me
why
you’d go around spreading lies about me?”

“W-what?” she stammered, still caught off guard by his unannounced visit.

“I had a lunch date today. Or, rather, I was supposed to. I was pretty sure she was standing me up, to tell you the truth, but then she showed. Only, she wouldn’t stay.”

“I see,” Kaitlyn answered, a lump beginning to form in her throat.

“She said she only came to tell me what a scumbag I was.
Her
words. So, would you mind telling me why I was standing in a restaurant being called names by someone I don’t even know?”

His voice was becoming more heated by the moment and as it did, the lump in her throat grew. “How should I know?” she offered weakly.

Jarrod’s eyes narrowed. Of course, she shouldn’t be surprised. She’d momentarily forgotten that he could see right through her. “For some reason, she thought you might be able to. Was it you, or my girlfriend,
Kate
? I get confused sometimes.”

She swallowed hard and painfully. “Jarrod, I…”

“But then again, maybe that’s because you’re the same person.”

She quaked under his glare. Oh, she was in for it now. Her backside was already quivering in anticipation and that was just from a look.

“I just don’t understand.” He ran a hand through his black hair. “What did I do? The last time I checked, I didn’t think I’d done anything to make you hate me.”

“Hate you?” she echoed, feeling like she’d been punched. “Jarrod, I could never
hate
you.”

“Then why?” he implored, his brown eyes full of confusion that tore at her heart. “I don’t understand why you’d do something like this.”

“Yes, that makes two of us.”

She and Jarrod turned as one at the sound of the voice. They’d been so deep in an admittedly loud conversation—well, he had been loud, but she hadn’t had the gall to raise her voice—that neither of them had heard the door open. Seeing Sean standing in the doorway, giving her a frown just as stern as Jarrod’s, made her go from nervous to panicked faster than you could say
spanking
.

“Hello, Jarrod. Long time no see,” Sean said as he closed the door behind him.

“Hey, battle. You didn’t have to come home. I’ve got it handled.”

“I have complete faith in that, but if my wife is going around spreading lies, I’d like to hear why for myself.”

Jarrod nodded, and they turned to her as one, both wearing impenetrable masks of disapproval.

Kaitlyn couldn’t think of a word to say in her defense, so she burst into tears. She was soon sobbing, tears coming so quickly that she didn’t even see when Sean walked toward her. She felt it when he took her by the arm and led her to the couch. He gently pushed her down so that she sat, and then she listened, crying, as Jarrod told Sean exactly what happened.

She didn’t think she’d ever felt so awful. It certainly tied for first place with anything else she’d ever done, anyway.

“I just don’t get it,” Jarrod was saying, his voice mystified. “I don’t know why she’d tell someone I don’t even know that I’m dating. And dating
her
, no less!”

“That is an interesting question.” Although she could tell when Sean said it that he wasn’t so much interested as angry. “Kaitlyn?”

“I… I just…”

“Out with it. The sooner you tell us what you were thinking, the sooner we can get this over with.”

“But… but you have to go back to work.”

“No, I don’t, actually. After Jarrod called me and shared his suspicions, I took a personal day. I had a strong suspicion that I had some things to deal with at home.”

She ducked her head to avoid the heat of his hard stare.

“Now, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll start talking.”

So she did. Haltingly, crying through it all, she explained everything. She told him how she’d felt abandoned by Jarrod, how she hadn’t been able to bear the idea of him seeing someone else, so she’d lied to scare Jamie off. She confessed every single awful thing she’d said about him. She cried harder through those, but finally she managed to get everything out.

She didn’t know what was worse—feeling their shocked stares or the silence that followed her confession. Other than her sniffling, no one else was making a sound.

“You did this because you wanted to see me?” Jarrod asked at last, his tone disbelieving.

Miserable, she nodded.

“Have you ever heard of a phone?”

“But, I don’t know, I didn’t think…”

“You certainly didn’t,” Sean chimed in. “I suspect very shortly you’ll understand why they say to be careful what you wish for. Jarrod, how would you like to proceed?”

She’d truly never felt so wretched. She hadn’t wanted any of this to happen. Now that it had, she felt even more awful than she had when she’d been telling the lies. Jarrod was a wonderful guy—he didn’t deserve to have anyone thinking such terrible things about him.

She squirmed as she waited for him to carry out his sentence. She held her breath, not wanting to miss a word. For a minute she thought he would just turn and walk away, ready to wash his hands of her. She wouldn’t blame him, and yet, she didn’t know which was scarier: the punishment he could order and mete out, or having him refuse to talk to her again.

“I want you to undress and kneel in the corner,” he ordered with steel in his voice.

“You heard him, Kaitlyn,” Sean chimed in when her feet didn’t move.

She leapt up and set into motion, stripping faster than she probably ever had in her life. It didn’t matter that she’d never been made to kneel in the corner, much less nude. She did it, because Jarrod had ordered her to, and because she deserved whatever punishment he had in mind.

“Do you want a drink?” she heard Sean ask.

“I would love one.”

“I’ll be right back.”

She heard the sound of Sean’s footsteps as he retreated. She could feel the weight of Jarrod’s stare, and as much as she would have loved for him to say something, he didn’t oblige. She just wanted to know that he didn’t hate her. He had every right to, and she certainly deserved it, but she would have been grateful to hear to the contrary.

While she hadn’t thought twice about his order for her to kneel in the corner, Kaitlyn was quickly finding it to be worse than she’d thought it would be. She’d always hated to stand in the corner—it was boring and embarrassing, being treated like a toddler. But this was something else altogether. The longer she was forced to perch on her knees, the more she noticed the carpet beneath them. Before now, she would have assumed that it was soft. It had always felt that way underfoot, but she was quickly learning to the contrary. The longer that she was forced to stay like this, the more it felt like the threads were biting into her tender skin. She tried to shift her weight, but that only helped for a moment, and then it was worse than before.

Initially it was just annoying, but the longer she waited the more it became painful. And coupled with that pain was the fact that she was stripped from head to toe, available for anyone to see. She’d never been embarrassed by her nakedness before, but that had been when she was in the midst of sensual pleasures. Being bared and put on display for punishment felt very different. Between the silence and the cool whisper of air across her skin she became truly aware of her nakedness, and it felt far from sexual. In fact, for a reason she couldn’t quite explain, she felt ashamed. The only thing that took her mind off her humiliation was the pain in her knees, and vice versa. She didn’t know how much more of this she could take.

She froze when she heard the sound of ice clinking against glass. She knew they were behind her, allowing their eyes free all-access passes to the sight of her kneeling in chastisement. It irritated her to no end, but she knew if she were to turn around and let them have it—which was what her quick temper called for her to do—that she would only makes things worse. She could barely handle the punishment being dished out, so the idea of making it worse was cringe-inducing.