A Bride Worth Fighting For (14 page)

Chapter One

“You should be walking with a cane within a week, Sergeant.”

Justin Lawson didn’t recoil when facing enemy fire or when refusing another dose of pain medication, but the word
cane
made him flinch. “How long before I’m back in the field with my team?”

The doctor darted his gaze at the sterile hospital walls and the bland privacy curtain then focused on the chart in his hand. “You took a bullet to the knee, sir. We had to rebuild—”

“I’m aware of what you did.” Instead of a recap of everything that made him less than whole, he needed a timeline for when he could return to the one thing at which he excelled. “How long?”

“You won’t be back.”

“The hell I won’t.” He’d worked on the top-secret paranormal team since its inception. The threat to the human world from rogue para assassins had never been higher. “Of course I’ll be back. My people need me.”

“You’ll be helping them from a desk.” Running a hand through his thinning hair, the doctor finally met his gaze. “I’m sorry. We’ve done the best we can with the knee. The limp will become less noticeable over time, but it will always exist. Running, jumping, and overextending yourself will aggravate the injury and increase the chances you’ll need more surgery.”

“I’ll take the chance. I’d rather die defending my country than limp off into a life of uselessness.”

“Are you willing to put your team in jeopardy because you’re slowing them down and forcing them to pick up your slack?”

Hell, he was finished. He would risk his own life but not the guys who trusted him with theirs.

“Do you have family who can help you out for a while?” the doctor asked.

“No family.” The thought would have been laughable if the situation held any humor. No one had wanted him when he’d been a cute kid with fully functional limbs. He hadn’t been cute in decades, and although he had yet to lift the sheet, the need for a cane left no doubt of the dysfunctional status of his leg.

“Got a girlfriend?”

Clenching the sheet, he tried not to think about Holly. If he called, she would be on the first plane to see him. She deserved better than the snatches of leave time he’d offered throughout the past year and certainly deserved better than a cripple with no job and no prospects mooching off her. “No girlfriend. Send in my team. They’re the only people in my life.”

The doctor tucked away the chart then strode to the side of the bed, the compassion in his eyes less tolerable than accepting pain medication or walking assistance. “Sergeant, I’m going to be frank. The Army will not coddle you and play nursemaid while you heal. You need a civilian support system.”

He had no use for coddling, and neither did his paranormal special-ops team. Together they would dissect what had gone wrong on the mission and strategize the next step.

The doctor departed, and Corporal Tom Smith knocked on the open door.

Justin waved him in.

The man’s combat boots clipped across the linoleum in a precise rhythm, a sound Justin had taken for granted until the doctor announced the death knell of a cane as if it were good news.

Tom stood at ease at the end of the bed. “It’s good to see you awake, sir. How’s the knee?”

“Perfect,” he lied over a stab of pain so sharp he almost regretted refusing the morphine drip. “Where’s everyone else?”

His most trusted colleague hesitated, staring beyond his shoulder. “No one told you yet?”

His stomach plunged. Someone had died. He thought he’d taken the only hit, but he knew his people well enough to understand when they couldn’t look him in the eye. Robby Vickers, still prone to panicking under fire, hadn’t been ready to handle the stress of their missions, but Justin had pushed him to suck it up. If something had happened to the kid, he deserved the blame. “No one’s told me shit. Whatever it is, say it.”

“The bullet didn’t come from a rogue assassin. It came from one of our rifles.”

Icy sweat engulfed him, congealing on his skin. Not even Robby would make the mistake of shooting his superior. “Someone sabotaged the mission.”

“That’s the consensus. The higher-ups have suspended the operation so they can investigate. The way I see it, Mike and Dale are the only ones with good enough aim to land a dead shot in the middle of your kneecap while you rolled for cover.”

He’d never before questioned the loyalty of the best snipers in the division and hated himself for doing it now. “So, if the shot came from anyone else, they were probably aiming for my head.”

Sure, he could be a hard ass at times and had taken anyone to task who didn’t give 100 percent. But the duty of protecting their lives fell to him. They understood and respected him. Or so he thought.

Damn. Every time he left on a mission, he expected to be shot at, but not by the guys who had his back.

“The investigation is ongoing. So far, I’m the only one they’ve released from questioning.”

If Tom had been the traitor, he could have put a bullet in Justin’s head before he’d suspected anything. He was a sitting duck—worse, a lying duck—in a hospital bed, waiting for someone he would have taken a bullet for to finish him off. “I’ve got to get out of this death trap.”

“The doctor thinks you need to stay to heal.”

Like he could heal while a guy from his team was gunning for him. If he could sit in on the questioning, he could uncover the traitor, but the Army would never allow it. He doubted he’d be allowed to return to base until the investigation had wrapped up.

Meanwhile, the hospital staff wanted him to rejoice over limping with a freaking cane. “I need a secure location with a staff willing to rehabilitate me until my knee is every bit as strong as it used to be or I’m dead from trying to make it happen.”

“I’ve heard of a place off the coast of Maine called the Wiccan Haus. They’re big into healing your spirit and such.”

“I don’t give a crap about my spirit. I want my knee healed.” Keeping his head from getting blown off would be a plus, too. Who would think to look for him on an island near Maine?

“The doctor might go for it. I bet our superiors would sign off on getting you out of the way and safe until they can weed out the traitor.”

Having a plan invigorated him. He’d rehabilitate his knee and be back in the field by the end of the investigation. The only casualty would be his relationship with Holly. He’d never hold her again, not even to say good-bye. His chest ached almost as much as his knee, but he didn’t have a choice.

If the people he trusted with his life would turn on him, a woman he saw once every couple of months wouldn’t want anything to do with a crippled sergeant who had no future outside of the military. Beyond rejecting her before she could dump his sorry ass, he had to keep her far away from the limping human target he’d become.

As Tom marched away, Justin took out his cell phone and began typing. After reading the short text, he pushed send. Removing her name from his address book and blocking her number, he ended their fun, sexy romance.

Holly would forget him before he checked into the Wiccan Haus.

***

I don’t want to see you anymore. Sorry.

Every time she opened her phone to respond to her work messages, the text from Justin stopped Holly Walters in her tracks. At first she’d assumed a cyber-glitch, but after three weeks of her calls, e-mails, and texts going unanswered or bouncing back as undeliverable, she had to accept he’d meant to end the relationship.

Sighing, she glanced up at the family gathering where her sister stood in the middle of the room, cradling a fussy baby, while her husband attempted to pry a toddler from her leg. During their last weekend together, Holly had asked Justin to come to the reunion with her. Like usual, he’d brushed off the request and changed the subject by seducing her until she’d succumbed to his delicious lovemaking.

“I have an announcement.” Her sister turned in a circle, smiling at everyone.

Holly tensed. She couldn’t be pregnant again so soon. Even if it were physically possible, she couldn’t be happy about it. Not that Holly begrudged her sister for her happy announcements, but she had a new one at every family gathering.

“We’re expecting again. Twins!” Laughing, she hugged her husband then embraced the crowd of relatives swarming her.

“I keep thinking it should be your turn.” Her dad detached himself from the crowd and leaned against the wall next to Holly.

Tucking her phone away, she forced a smile. “You want me to announce I signed a new client this week and gave my assistant a raise? Somehow, I don’t think anyone here cares but me.”

“You know what I mean. Husband and baby announcements.”

If Justin had any inkling of the family pressure to turn their relationship into an announcement, no wonder he’d bolted. “My PR company keeps me plenty busy.”

“I want to see you as happy as she is,” Dad said.

“I can’t imagine how turning my body into a baby factory would make me delirious with happiness.” The mere thought of twins exhausted her.

“Mind boggling, isn’t it? I’m impressed with your business success, but busy doesn’t equal happy,” he pointed out. “What about the military man you’ve been seeing? You always smile when you say his name.”

Instead of smiling, she had to resist the urge to lay her head on her father’s shoulder and cry. To take control of her happiness, she needed to move on. Once she got over Justin, she could concentrate on the good things in her life.

“Get with the right century, Dad.” She injected as much lightness and teasing in her tone as she could muster. “I don’t need a man to be happy.”

“Maybe you don’t, but your mother made all the difference in my life and your sister would say the same thing about her husband if you can manage to pull her aside before they run off to practice making more babies.”

Dad strolled over to join the family hug, and Holly slipped from the room. Like with her business, she needed a detailed plan of action to reach her goal of moving on. First, she’d figure out what Justin had found so repulsive he’d not only dumped her but cut off all contact. Washing his white socks with her red sweater had annoyed him. When she’d freaked out over the ginormous spider in the bathtub, he’d laughed but then heroically disposed of it for her. Those couldn’t be breakup-worthy incidents, but she couldn’t think of a time where they’d been more at odds.

Despite never giving her an alternate way to contact him, he had revealed the base where he was stationed. Leaving the family gathering, she marched to her car and drove to her office. Pacing the floor, she talked her way through the dispatcher and lower-ranked servicemen with polite, grateful insistence. Connected to a Corporal Tom Smith, she once again explained, “I’m trying to get in touch with Sergeant Justin Lawson.”

“He’s out indefinitely. What can I help you with, ma’am?”

Out indefinitely? He’d not only dropped out of her life, he’d dropped off the face of the Earth. “Is there a way I can get a hold of him? It’s personal.”

“What’s your name?”

“Holly Walters.” She held her breath, hoping he wouldn’t hang up on her. “Justin is—was—my boyfriend.”

“Your boyfriend? Since when has he had a girlfriend?”

Her heart sank. The guy acted like he knew Justin, but maybe they weren’t close. She’d never heard of Corporal Smith either. “We’d been going out for a year.”

“A year?” His voice rang with skepticism.

Between the military sending Justin on missions he could never tell her about and her demanding work schedule, the time they’d spent together and talked to each other only added up to a month scattered throughout the year. But from the moment she’d met him, she hadn’t looked twice at anyone else. “Yes, a year,” she said in her most firm, professional tone. “And I deserve more than an eight word text to end our relationship.”

Corporal Smith’s silence stretched for so long she feared he’d hung up on her. “When did he send the text?”

“Three weeks ago. I need to understand what happened to make him change his mind about us.”

More nerve-racking silence filled her ears, not broken by so much as a crackle of static. Then he said, “I don’t know why he broke up with you. Hell, I’m the sergeant’s best friend and didn’t know he had a girlfriend. But you’re getting nowhere by asking for him here. He’s taken leave and is staying at the Wiccan Haus.”

“The what?”

“A spa on an island off the coast of Maine.”

Holly shook her head. Justin at a spa? Yeah, she didn’t know him as well as she thought she did. “Do you have a number for it?”

After Corporal Smith recited the phone number, she thanked him and hung up, tapping her fingers on a report detailing the security lapses at the pop star Sweet Sadie’s fan meet-and-greet. One more phone call and then she could move on from Justin, giving her clients and their concerns her complete attention.

“Wiccan Haus Resort and Spa,” the woman on the other end of the line greeted her. “I’m Myron, and I’m ready to start you down the path to spiritual and emotional healing.”

The unique introduction tempted her to snatch up the offer, no questions asked about the too-good-to-be-true impossibility of delivering on the marketing premise. She shook her head. She would create her own healing by hashing out the breakup with Justin, the last guy who would go for such a touchy-feely approach. “I’m calling to speak to a guest at your establishment, Sergeant Justin Lawson.”

“Our guests come to the Wiccan Haus to get away from the outside world. I can’t put you through to anyone.”

She understood the need to protect the guests’ privacy, but the woman didn’t even offer to let her leave a message. “Can you at least tell me if he’s a current guest?”

“The only thing I can confirm is the cards tell me you need to be here.”

“Excuse me? The cards?”

“Yes. What’s your name?”

“Holly Walters.” Switching the phone to speaker, she pulled her laptop closer and googled the Wiccan Haus. The place existed, and was apparently an island accessible solely by ferry boat.

“The fates are with you, Holly. We have a week at the main house available starting tomorrow. You’ll need to be at the ferry dock at—”