THIRTY-FIVE

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As Clarie leveled her stare on him, Bruce wanted to curse. Way to make her feel uncomfortable, asshole. He thought she was going to get up and leave, but she surprised him by leaning over to undo the other boot, pulling it off, and bringing that foot up to his lap for its turn. 

"Tell me, Major Morgan, do you flirt with all women?"

"Only the pretty ones."

"Is that supposed to flatter me?"

Ah hell, he couldn't get anything right, could he? He shrugged for lack of a better response.

"At least you're honest." She sighed. "Have you ever been in love?"

The question came from so far out in left field it felt like a baseball had actually smacked him in the head.

Bruce braced himself, expecting green eyes to fill his thoughts. But for the first time since he had left, he pictured Virginia and Mark together. How they would stare at each other across a crowded room as if no one else was there. How they couldn't walk by each other without a light touch passing between them. How they just seemed to fit. Effortlessly.

He found himself smiling. Well, isn't this an unexpected turnaround. He was happy for them.

Realizing he had zoned out with a stupid grin, he cleared his throat and answered, "No."

"Had to think about it, huh?"

"I was just thinking about friends of mine. They are my benchmark for being in love, I guess." He shrugged.

"That's so sweet. How come you haven't found that?"

"It's hard to know what women want." That was especially true of the woman in front of him.

"I agree. I feel sorry for men sometimes." She laughed at the surprise that must have shown on his face before adding, "Half the time I don't know what I want. How could I expect a man to?"

Bruce smiled. "At least you're honest."

"Women have it much easier . . . men are much easier to read. After all, they only want one thing."

His smile slid away, his brows dropping low. "That's a little pessimistic and stereotypical, don't you think?"

"Really?" She tilted her head, and he knew she was back in that storage room, with him, in the shadows, his body pressing into hers.

Shit. Just . . . shit. He stared down at the foot he was working on. Wanting to lighten the mood, he tossed the ball in her direction. "How about you? Ever been in love?"

"Yes."

Bruce jerked his head up so fast, he could have gotten whiplash.

"At least I thought I was. It was a long time ago. I had just enlisted when I met this charismatic man. He was older, a captain at the time, and one of my teachers." She dropped her gaze and began to pick at a loose thread on her sleeve. "Things got serious pretty quickly. We talked about moving in together, what kind of house we liked, how many children we might have. He even met my parents, charmed them too." She linked her arms across her chest. "Part of me knew something was wrong. I was stupid or naïve or whatever you want to call it. Alarms bells were going off all over the place. There were so many excuses, why he couldn't go look at a place, why he hadn't put in for that transfer, why . . ." She shook her head like it didn't matter, but Bruce wasn't buying it.

"His teaching took him on temporary assignments all over the country, but he would fly home on weekends, back to Texas. He claimed he had a sick mother to tend to. Turned out he had a wife and two kids to tend to."

"Shit." Bruce could see the sadness on her face.

"Don't feel sorry for me. It was his wife who deserved to be pitied. Ended up he had someone like me at every place he had ever taught."

"Holy shit."

She nodded. "Last I heard, his wife had left him and the Navy wasn't sending him on any more teaching assignments. Word got out somehow." Her sly smile confirmed his suspicions. "It makes me happy to think about him pushing papers all day at some boring desk job back home in good ole Texas."

A sinking feeling deep in Bruce's gut got so strong he was surprised he managed to stay sitting. She had been hurt. Badly. And with that realization, came another: It wasn't just his flirting that irritated her. He wasn't going to be able to win her over by changing tactics.

She disliked all men.

Wonderful.

"You were incredible in there," he said.

He slipped his hands under the cuff of her uniform, working his way upward to massage a calf. She stiffened with a quick inhale. He knew he was taking liberties, but he was driven with a need to touch her skin.

After a moment, she relaxed and offered, "So were you."

"I was scared shitless most of the time."

"You're good with people. The men like you. The sergeant certainly did . . . so does Morris."

His hands stilled. There was an awkward silence during which Bruce knew Claire was expecting an explanation. An explanation he couldn't give.

But she deserved to know something. Given her past, she wasn't a woman who would trust someone blindly. "Remember when you asked me what I did after Tora Bora?"

"Yes . . ."

He started in with the rubbing again, needing a sweet distraction from the horror of his own memories. "We'd set up an outpost, trying to wait the scumbags out. When word came in that intercepted radio transmissions had pinpointed bin Laden's location, we were ordered to wait for more troops. But Steve, being . . . Steve, took off on his own, convinced that he could scout out a route to be ready when reinforcements arrived. He didn't come back."

She gasped and Bruce kept his focus on his hands as they switched to her other calf. "By the next morning, I was going crazy. My commander was sympathetic, but his hands were tied. Again, he told me to wait"—Bruce inhaled deeply, remembering the desperation he felt—"but there is no waiting when it comes to al-Qaeda. They don't treat prisoners the way we do. It wasn't his brother up in those hills. I couldn't wait. Not after promising my parents I'd watch over him.

"It took me two days to find him." He closed his eyes, thinking darkness would wash out the vivid picture in his mind. It didn't. "There was a pit dug into the ground with about twenty men in it, mostly Afghan military. Dead bodies had been stacked up against one side. The men huddled in the opposite corner, as far away as possible from the stench. Steve was there . . . I still remember how his hair made him stand out. They were naked, filthy, and bloody, but that blonde head was a goddamn sight for sore eyes."

"There weren't any guards?"

Bruce opened his eyes to hers, wondering if his next words would throw a barrier between them that could never be breached. "Two. I dealt with them. Quietly."

Her eyes flared wide, and his gaze drifted down to the ground. "There was no way to avoid it," he mumbled.

"You do what you have to in war."

He smiled a little, grateful for her understanding. But he wasn't done with the story yet. "Steve was in bad shape. The men in the pit helped me get him out of there. They begged me to take them too, but I couldn't. Not if I was to make it down the mountain unseen. I promised to return for them—with an army." But you didn't.

"We dressed in the guards' clothing. It was a slow and torturous decent. Ended up, Steve's leg was broken in two places. It took six hours to get back down to the outpost. For me, it was six hours of terror, wondering if each step would be our last. For Steve, it was six hours of excruciating pain, along with six hours of me giving him shit."

"You're a hero."

Bruce felt the heaviness in his chest, a crushing weight that squeezed his lungs and stole his breath. "Not really," he said harshly.

She raised her brows.

"By the time we'd made it down, they had called for an air strike. I told them there were Afghan prisoners up there, but it was too late. Afterwards as we pressed ahead, we found the pit. It was intact, unscathed by the bombing."

"That's good," she chirped.

"They'd all been shot."

Her face fell. "Oh . . ."

God, he felt like he always did when thinking back on that day—like a failure. "I can still picture their faces as they stared up at me from that hole," he muttered.

"It wasn't your fault. You only told them what you thought to be true."

"I put Steve's safety above theirs."

"He's your brother, of course you did."

"I'm not sure that's a good enough reason." He shook his head as other memories began vying for his attention. There were too many stories like this. A man could go insane revisiting and second guessing every move made in combat.

He let out a chuckle, more sardonic than joyful. "I figured that would be the end of our military careers, both of us having violated direct orders. Luckily, our story caught the attention of someone high up. Once back in the States, we were brought into Headquarters and asked a lot of questions: How did I get up and down those hills without being seen? How did I know where to find him?"

"How did you?"

"In all honesty, I don't know. I was acting mostly on instinct, but a lot of it was patience and a hell of a lot of luck." He pulled his hands out from beneath the leg of her pants to straighten the bunching. "They were building a team—a team that flies under the radar so to speak. They asked us if we'd be interested."

"You're Special Ops," she breathed.

He lowered his head. "Something like that." Only much deeper.

There was only silence. And how could he blame her? She was a doctor—saving people was what she did day in, day out. After what he had just confessed, he wouldn't blame her if she—

"I won't tell Morris," she said. "The man kind of gives me the creeps anyway."

Bruce glanced at her. She seemed both stunned and appreciative at the same time.

"I won't ask you what you are doing either. I . . . I do trust you." She frowned at her own admission, pulling her feet away to stick them back into her boots.

He stared down at his palms, missing the warmth of her skin up against them. The scrape of the curtain along its rail drew his head up just in time to see her tying it off to the pole, getting ready for the next day.

She looked over her shoulder. "Goodnight, Major."

"Goodnight, Doc."

She rolled her eyes before tossing him a glorious smile. Heading across the lab to her quarters, her boots dragged along the floor without the support of tightened laces.

A grin stretched Bruce's mouth so wide, his cheeks started to hurt.

END OF CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Coming up: Virginia has a visitor. And in a moment of weakness, Claire turns to Bruce for comfort.

The next two chapters are PRIVATE. You know what to do.😉 Please refer to Fine Facts at the front of this book otherwise. Thank you for understanding the need to protect my work.

Dedicated to @subeaury ,who has been with me since early on (Janurary 16, 2018 precisely; she remembers the date ❤️) Thank you, my dear, for reading, rereading, commenting, and doing great things for my ego! Your support is greatly appreciated!

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