Unexpected Oasis (6 page)

"There it is," Trey says out of the blue, scooping up a tennis ball I hadn't noticed earlier. Frank immediately forgets about his itchy spot and focuses on the dirty green ball in Trey's hand. With a grin, he chucks it out the door and Frank sprints from the barn after it.

I rise from the floor, dusting the new layer of fine black hairs from my pants. Frank comes running back with the tennis ball and Trey greets him enthusiastically. There's something about watching a man lavish adoring attention on a dog that makes my heart weak. Especially this man and especially this dog. The way Trey coos at him as if he just won "Best in Show", ignoring every scar, every imperfection, completely melts my heart.

I mean, if he can love an animal that much, that unconditionally, then a child…

I swallow and force the thoughts away. I can't think like that. It isn't healthy. 

Tears suddenly catch at the back of my throat and I feel them sting my eyes. Before Trey has a chance to catch me getting all emotional, I mumble a quick, "I gotta go," and make a hurried escape through the opposite end of the breezeway. I don't look at Trey. I don't look at Frank. I only focus on the red Mars landscape as I put one foot rapidly in front of the other.

What the hell is wrong with me? Am I seriously lusting after Trey? Picturing what our kids would look like? It may be stupid, but it feels like a betrayal to Jim. A betrayal to the life we shared, the happiness we once had. It's only been seven months for Pete's sake. I've barely gotten past the denial state of grief—and that was only because Courtney's baby bump practically knocked me over when I ran into her at the grocery store. I'm only teetering on the edge of acceptance.

The
betrayal
might have started long ago, but it still feels very raw to me. How can I even consider being attracted to another man when only a few scant months ago the perfect future I'd planned with my seemingly perfect husband was ripped away from me when the doctor very matter of factly told me I would never get pregnant?

I was already mourning the loss of children I would never bear when I lost Jim. Just like that. Out of the blue. No warning. No indication something was wrong. It's why I came her
e. Why I ran here. But that doesn't make me ready to just give my past a big
fuck you
and start flirting with the cute security guard. What kind of awful woman would that make me? How meaningless would that make the last seven years of my life?

One thing is certain; I'm not giving into it. I'm not going to entertain ideas of having a wild, passionate affair with the gorgeous, hunky security guard. I'm not going to pretend that we have any sort of connection or that he finds me remotely attractive.

Even if the latter part were true, it would only be because I'm the only breathing, under fifty, un-burqua'd woman for miles. I don't find myself attractive. There's no way he can. I obviously wasn't attractive enough for Jim, and his sex appeal couldn't hold a candle next to Trey's.

I wander over to the fence behind my building. The security tower looms above me and I think I see Double D perched in it, large machine gun in hand.

Married…with a couple kids. I shake my head in disgust. All the time hitting on me. Are all men pigs? I'm beginning to think so.

I used to silently chastise women who bitterly complain about the lack of moral compass men seem to share, rationalizing how it wasn't fair to lump all men in with a couple of bad seeds. Now I'm becoming one of those bitter women. Correction, I
am
one of those bitter women.

There's a gap in the adobe wall under the guard tower and I peer through it. Though the chain link I can see the Afghan security, guarding a perimeter they'll never be allowed inside. Beyond the guard closest to me, I can just make out a sign. The words are blurry, but as I squint they come into focus.

"Warning. Mine Field."
Below the words is a picture of a stick figure being blown up. One of his pencil arms flies left, one pencil leg flies right.

  Oh fuck. My heart suddenly racing, my stomach tight, I take a few rapid steps back. I'm trapped. I really am trapped.

Panic squeezing me, I turn and run toward my building. I've got to get somewhere quiet, put on some soft music, do a little yoga in the dark, maybe meditate, probably pop a Xanax…

What have I done?
What have I done. What have I—?

The mantra is interrupted as I turn the corner and run smack into Trey's thick chest.

I immediately burst into tears.

He puts a hand on my shoulder. "Hey. Hey, what's wrong?"

All I can do is snivel and shake my head. I'm trying to curb the tears, I really am. I just can't. Weeks of pent up emotion is hell bent on tumbling out straight through my eyeballs.

"Let's take a walk," he says, his voice quiet, authoritative, but somehow calming.

"I—"

"Please? I could use the company."

I'm not sure how I can say no to those gorgeous brown eyes, especially with that concerned furrow between his brows.

God, how can I possibly avoid being attracted to him when he's perfection bundled in tan skin?

Afraid if I open my mouth to talk some weird gagging noise will come out, I simply nod.

He places his hand on my elbow briefly to guide me in the right direction—which happens to be toward my room—but then puts his hands into the pockets of his khaki cargo pants.

I want him to touch me again. When you're married you don't realize how much your body craves the touch of another human. After I lost Jim, I was so touch deprived I had to get a weekly massage just to feel human. Right now, I want nothing more than to bury my head into Trey's chest and sob while he caresses my back. Fuck the guilty conscience.

Suddenly he stops and turns to me. We're inches from my door. "What's wrong, Andrea? Talk to me."

"I—" I glance over at him. He looks sincerely interested and concerned. And gorgeous. God, it would be so nice to unload some of this drama weighing me down, but I'm not sure I'm ready to spill my guts to him yet. It's such a humiliating and pathetic tale.

It suddenly dawns on me; Trey
is
actually interested in me. In a non-professional, he'd be asking me on a date if we weren't stuck in a three-acre walled compound, sort of way.

I'm speechless. All I can do is stare into those gorgeous pools of brown. My breath feels labored, the air like molasses as it strains to move in and out of my chest. He's so incredibly beautiful. And smells like…like pure masculinity. I just want to swim in
his eyes and drown in his scent.

His gaze travels over my face, lingering on my mouth for a few moments before returning to my eyes. I feel my tongue wet my lips, though I'm barely aware of the command made by my brain.

He leans close to me for what might be a kiss and I jerk away startled, my back hitting the door behind me.

"I'm sorry," he says, taking a quick step back. "I misread…sorry."

My tongue is still frozen in shock. He frowns, tips his head to me, turns, and marches away. I fall onto the door, pressing my palm and forehead against the metal.

God, I'm such a wreck. First it gets too heavy for me at the barn and I turn tail and run. Then I decide I want nothing more than to drown my troubled heart in his strong arms. And then, when he indicates he might like being my life preserver, I panic. I really have turned into that sixteen-year-old girl. I like the boy. I don't like the boy
. I wonder if said boy likes me. He does? I don't know if I want boy to like me.

At this point, I have no idea how to fix it. Or what to even do about it.

Shaking my head in frustration, I unlock the door to my room and push it open. Before stepping inside I glance over my shoulder. Across the grass courtyard, Trey stands on the sidewalk, smoking a cigarette. Gaze hidden behind mirrored lenses, he glances toward me, takes a draw from his cigarette, and then turns and walks away.

With a sigh, I step into the cool, dark room. I'm not ready. Not yet.

CHAPTER FIVE

I
nstead of dealing with it like a grown-up, I immediately go back into hibernation mode. I avoid anyone and everyone. When I actually eat, it's alone in my room. I quit going to the gym. I put on my headphones the moment I get into the office, turning the music up loud enough I'm sure others can hear it. I might as well hang a do not disturb sign on my back.

It seems to be working. The few people I do see avoid me like I have weeping lesions.

Once again, the only person who doesn't seem to get the memo is Double D.

About a week into my hibernation, I forget my brain as I'm heading
home
from the office, and walk past the pool on a hot, Thursday afternoon. The sound of male laughter should be like a warning siren—
danger, danger, turn back!
—but for some reason I ignore it and keep trudging forward.

Splashing proceeds a, "Hey!" followed by the sound of bare feet on concrete.

Shit. From my peripheral vision, I see Double D jogging toward me. I keep moving.

"H.C.! Hey! Damn girl, slow down!"

With an inward sigh I turn and wait. He stops at the chain link fence surrounding the pool. Dripping wet, water runs down the rivulets of the cut muscles of his abdomen. There isn't a drop of hair to slow it down.

Since I have a pulse, I should find him attractive. I don't.

He flashes a grin at me. "Where ya been hiding?"

I don't have much of a desire to explain anything to him. "Just busy," I say.

"You don't look busy now. Why don't you grab a suit and join us?"

Oh God, is that Trey I see sitting at the bar behind the pool? Rippling muscles cover a massive back that transitions from impossibly broad shoulders to a rather narrow waist in one smooth swoop. I swallow. He has exactly the opposite affect on my pulse that D has. Twisting on the seat, he starts to turn toward me. I immediately cast my gaze elsewhere.

"No thanks," I say to D.

"Then how do you feel about drinks tonight? None of that Pakistani piss this time. I promise."

Making sure I don't accidentally look toward the bar, I focus on D's face. "Aren't you married?"

His grin doesn't drop. "Well, yeah. But she isn't here. And as long as I send her the Benjamins, she doesn't care what I do." He leans against the fence, the muscles in his chest popping. "I just figured, I'm here, you're here, maybe we could have a little…fun."

Disgust forms a bitter layer on my tongue as I tell him, "You figured wrong."

Turning, I march the opposite direction, away from the pool and away from the living quarters. I'll have to double around the backside of the buildings to get back to my room, but I don't care. If I continue on my original path I might be tempted to ogle at Trey, and I don't need that guilt dragging me down.

I should be flattered by D's offer, but I'm more angry than anything. It's none of my business and maybe he does have some sort of
arrangement
with his wife, but the wounds of infidelity are too raw for me to look past it.

I don't leave my room for the rest of the day, ignoring the door when someone knocks. I skip dinner and end up sleeping past noon the following day. I've been a robot for the last week—work, eat, work, eat, read, sleep, rinse, repeat—and I've been able to disappear into the monotony.

That luck has run out. Memories play over and over in my mind, and two seem to be fighting for top billing. One bad, the other…I don't know.

The first memory is where I discovered Courtney was pregnant and Jim was leaving. The one where I realized what a failure I was. And the second is the incident with Trey, where I realized what a pathetic coward I've become. They both gnaw at my fragile self-esteem.

The day after the D's pool proposition—my day off—I only leave my room to grab a quick bite to eat. Not because I'm hungry, but because I realize that weird pain in my stomach is from not eating in the last twenty-four hours. Making sure I go when the mess hall is empty, I take a route that won't put me anywhere near the social areas. If I could have ordered room service I would have. 

I realize I'm truly turning into the hermit of my nickname. Coming here seems to have the opposite effect I was looking for. This was supposed to be my chance to get away, to start over, to put as much distance between Jim and me as possible. To move on.

I'm not. I'm scared of the attraction I have for the most beautiful man I've ever met. I'm scared that he seems attracted to me. I'm dwelling too much on the past.

I want to fix it. I really do. I want to return to the woman I once was. The one that enjoyed socializing, and dressing up for Halloween, and drinking with friends, and working out, and trying out that pottery class. Not this bitter, angry, shy, sullen woman I've become. I'm tired of thinking about what I've lost, about how I lost it, how I failed it. But I can't stop. I don't know what the solution is.

A hot affair? With Trey?

A man is what caused all this nonsense. A man isn't going to fix it.

So when my boss comes to me on Monday with what might be the second distraction I need, I'm ready. The project manager isn't returning to Site J for undisclosed reasons and Conrad is demanding to be relieved. They've hired another manager, but it'll be a few weeks before he arrives. Since the project is on Critical Path, they can't delay it.

I accept. A break from the compound and maybe a chance to get my thoughts in order, focus entirely on work, avoid the security team… Count me in.

Not even two days later I'm heading toward a huge, tan military helicopter parked on a concrete landing pad at the far end of our compound. It honestly doesn't occur to me that I won't be traveling alone until Trey climbs into the chopper with me.

The air bails from my lungs. He nods to me and all I can do is stare at him. My eyebrows strain to meet even as I try to keep my face neutral.

This isn't how it's supposed to go. Leaving the compound is supposed to take me away from temptation. Not throw me into a pool of it.

"Relax, Andrea," he shouts. I can barely hear him, but the words are clear. "I'm not going to bite."

I blink. "I know," I say, my voice echoing strangely in my head. "I'm just—" I'm pretty sure I somehow swallowed a baseball. "I'm nervous about the helicopter," I add. Which
is
true. But I'm more nervous about Trey.

"Don't be. You're in good hands." He slips on a pair of headphones similar to the ones squishing my ears under inches of thick padding and then reaches for me. I flinch as he grabs the safety harness keeping me firmly in my seat and tests its tightness. His brow pushes together as he tightens a strap.

I immediately turn my attention out the window as he buckles himself in. I feel like an idiot. So, he might have wanted to kiss me after I led him to believe that's what I wanted. That doesn’t give me the right to treat him like some sort of predator.

Besides, how arrogant am I to assume he's still interested? Like I hold that kind of appeal…

I keep my gaze locked on the window as the helicopter lurches up and my stomach stays behind on the ground. That familiar feeling of panic begins to spread through my veins. Helicopters crash all the time. And we're about to fly over enemy territory. Where there are groups of people who would love to shoot down an American vessel. Enemies who probably have anti-aircraft guns pointed toward the sky just in case. And today will be their lucky day.

A hand touches my arm. I peel my gaze from where it's plastered to the window and turn. Trey wears a reassuring smile.
Don't worry,
he mouths.
Trust me.

It isn't him I don't trust. Okay maybe it is, but I trust him with this.

I nod. He squeezes my arm before turning his attention to the ground below.

My idiot factor shoots up another twenty points. I wish I could blink three times and erase all the doubt, the distrust, the pain… I can't. I need to find a way to change it.

I follow Trey's lead. The ground whizzes past below us. Brown, lifeless, flat. It isn't long before jagged rocks begin jutting up from the ground like stalagmites rising from a cave floor. From here the mountains have an alien beauty. Maybe it's the distance, but for the first time since I arrived in this barren country I can actually describe the landscape as beautiful.

The helicopter lurches up again, and my stomach once again goes the opposite direction, smashing on the rocks below.

We skim the edge of the mountain range for a few hours. From what I know about Site J, it sits near the base of the mountains at the edge of a reservoir. I assume we're flying on this route to avoid being attacked. Not so far into the mountains where the enemy is suspecting of hiding, and not in the open plains where we're an easy target. The realization doesn't make me feel better.

I decide to shift my gaze to the other window, where the plains stretch out to the horizon. The monotony of endless brown is like a lullaby, soothing me into calm with its trance-like repetitiveness. Occassionally, a homestead whizzes by, but more frequently, we fly over lines of perfect circles surrounded by mounds of dirt extending past the foothills, far out into the plains.

I don't pay much attention to the first one, but the second and then the third? Leaning forward, I try to get a better look. The holes remind me of the pockmarks seen in the deserts of Nevada, left over from nuclear bomb testing. But the lines are too straight to be random bomb sites. They look more like bore pits. But for what? And what would they be boring for? There's nothing around for miles.

"Qanats," Trey's voice suddenly sounds in my earphones. I turn to him, startled. The microphone should have given it away, but I assumed the headphones were just for noise cancelling. "It's a watering system."

I glance at a line of Qanats disappearing behind the chopper. "Like wells?" I feel like I should know this but I don't.

"Sort-of. They dig a vertical well until they hit the water table and then dig horizontally. Each pit you see intersects the horizontal shaft below. It's an ancient way of bringing water from the mountains to the settlements out there." He gestures toward the plains.

"Ancient and ingenious."

He smiles. "You can cool a home with it, too, since the temperature that deep is what, fifty degrees or so? You have to hand it to these people, they come up with some amazing ways of coping with living in a less than ideal environment."

"No doubt. I could learn a thing or two from them."

Like, how to accept my fate and move on. I might be working on it, but it's slow going.

The chopper rises abruptly and I have to cover my mouth to keep my breakfast in my stomach. When it banks sharply to the left, I nearly lose it—coughing as I'm forced to swallow a little bile.

"Hey, you want to take it easy," Trey says sharply into the headset. "We're not all seasoned flyers back here."

"Sorry, Trey," one of the pilots replies.

The chopper smooths out and with a few deep breaths I'm able to coax my breakfast back down my throat.

We lift over the edge of a rocky peak and I see it: a vast pool of blue surrounded by mountains. If I didn't know where we are heading I'd think it was a mirage. Not just because the reservoir is a fountain of life in an otherwise lifeless land, but it shimmers with unearthly beauty. The mountains curl around it, their red and brown jagged edges press harshly into its soft blue depths.

The window is cool as I press my fingers against it and lean forward. So perfect, so pristine…

"Breathtaking," Trey's deep voice murmurs in my ear.

My gaze flicks over to him. He's staring out the window toward the lake. He must've been talking to himself.

Or about himself. Brown eyes focused on the landscape below, a small smile on his lips, his strong jaw covered in a layer of salt and pepper gray stubble…I didn't realize real men came in such perfect packages. 

He catches me staring and somehow I manage to smile. "It is beautiful," I say into my microphone. My voice sounds foreign, tinny, as it plays back in my ears. "Haven't you seen it before?"

"Only in pictures."

The helicopter begins a slow descent. We cross over the dam, a simple earthen structure, and continue skirting the water's edge for a good fifteen minutes, arriving finally at our destination.

At least a dozen shipping containers are lined up on a patch of barren red dirt that has been leveled. Construction equipment—a large backhoe, a bulldozer, and what I think is a scraper…all looking like they rolled out of the cold war—sit idle a few hundred feet away.

Having spent my entire career as a design engineer at a consulting firm, I've never actually spent any time on a construction site. This promises to be interesting. And by interesting I mean a complete disaster.

Especially considering I took the assignment to put some air between myself and the hunk sitting across from me.

The chopper lands in a cloud of powder fine dust that refuses to settle even as the blades of the helicopter slow to a crawl.