Because of You: A Loveswept Contemporary Military Romance (12 page)

Reclining in the chair, Carponti kicked his feet up on the edge of Shane’s bed. “You’re still in the hospital? Legs get blown all to hell and suddenly you can’t walk. What the hell is the army coming to?”

Shane finally thought to close his mouth, then struggled to smile at his best squad leader. The last time he saw him—“You survived that explosion?”

“Nice to see you, too. Asshole,” Carponti said with a grin. “You tried to send me out on the MEDEVAC. I ended up dragging your heavy ass onto that bird instead.
With
my arm half torn to hell, I might add.”

Carponti continued, oblivious to Shane’s silence. “Is this what you’ve been doing for the past month? Sitting back here relaxing? And you still have all your limbs? That is such bullshit! Put a Band-Aid on that shit and get your happy ass back over to the sandbox.”

“What are you on?” Shane was reasonably certain Carponti had lost his mind.

“Me?” Carponti’s eyes widened in pure innocence, an expression that was both familiar and unsettling. It meant he was into something. Something bound to get Shane’s ass in a sling one way or another. “Nothing. Well, nothing much.” He held up his bandaged arm and waved it around like a flag. “Check this out. Makes buttoning up shirts a whole new adventure. The only thing that sucks is that sometimes my fingers still itch. And the docs don’t have a pill for that. At least not one that works.”

Shane could barely form a complete sentence as deep disquiet crawled over his skin. “When did you get hit?”

“There was another IED after you went down. My arm got pinned in between one of those heavy armored doors, and the truck. By the time they got me out, the arm was pretty much dead. So the docs over in Germany did a quick little nip and tuck and sent me on my way.” Carponti was chomping on mint gum, like a Valley girl at the mall. “Boy, I’m sure glad they didn’t stop my combat pay right away. I took Nikki shopping in Italy so she’d stop hovering over me. Man that woman can
shop
.”

Shane struggled to smile. To do something other than gape at his friend. The guy had lost part of his arm, and he made it sound like nothing.

“CID gave her leave?” Shane asked, struggling to pull his thoughts together to form at least one coherent thought. Carponti had swaggered into the company tactical operations center about four months back, bragging that his wife was now a full-time investigator at the Fort Hood Criminal Investigations Division and that everyone had better watch their asses. He’d had a feeling that Carponti hadn’t been kidding when he’d mentioned it to LT Randall.

“Yeah. She’s working gangs in Killeen and the Central Texas area with the feds. Man, you’d be shocked at how many gangs send guys into the military. They try to buy people off, too, especially armorers and guys with access to weapons repair parts. You’d be amazed at what she can’t tell me.”

Shane struggled to keep up with Carponti’s stream-of-consciousness dialogue. Damn it, but his brain was clouded. Carponti continued, oblivious. “We thought we’d lost you. But I knew it was going to take a whole lot more than a couple of bombs to knock your disgruntled old ass off the planet.”

Finally, Shane’s thoughts cleared as his lips cracked into an awkward smile. “I’m only five years older than you, dickhead.”

“I rest my case. So anyway, when are they sending you home?”

Shane didn’t want to talk about home or his lack thereof. His mom had been more of an incubator than a parent. His dad? Well, he assumed his dad was one of the random truckers his mom had pretended Shane didn’t know about. And he’d closed out his apartment when he’d deployed, never dreaming he’d need to have a place to stay before the end of the tour. No, home was the last thing Shane wanted to think about.

Carponti was fine, cracking darkly inappropriate jokes as always. Suddenly that was the most important thing in the world to him. Why was he freaking out if Carponti wasn’t?

“I have no idea. Who else got hit?” Who else had he let down when he’d been taken out of the fight?

“Adkins broke his arm in like four places, but he pissed and moaned so much the docs let him stay. He’s riding the rest of the rotation out in the orderly room, but he’s
happy because he’s still with the boys.”

Shane’s smile slipped more firmly into place. The knot around his heart loosened. Just a little. It was so good to hear Carponti’s voice. To hear about his men.

“How’s Captain Davila doing over there?”

Carponti’s jaw slowed on the gum and his gaze went a thousand miles away to the Iraqi desert. “He’s holding up, I guess. There were rumors flying around that someone in our battalion had killed some Iraqi civilians. Bad shit, any way you shake it.” And he flipped the switch, and was instantly back to his chipper self, chomping away at the gum. “But you’re back here sitting around staying stoned and getting fat, so what do you have to worry about?”

Brett Michaels wailed about wanting nothin’ but a good time from Carponti’s phone. Carponti glanced at it, then dropped it back into his pocket. “Hey, man, gotta run. Wife’s downstairs. Have you started physical therapy yet?”

“No. Not till this thing comes off.” Shane lifted his casted arm a few inches off the bed. The itch was getting worse.

“Oh, yeah, well. Anyway, I’m going to be in here every day at nine. So anyway, I’ll see you around, okay? Hurry up and get back to work, will ya?”

He swung open the door and Shane heard a loud, “Oh, hey, Jen.”

Jen came walking back in, wheeling a portable blood pressure machine. She barely glanced in his direction, her movements quick and efficient. Shane cleared his throat, trying to tamp down on the emotion churning inside of him. Still, his words came out more gruff than he intended. “How the hell did Carponti know I was here?”

Jen wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm, waiting as it inflated. “I figured
if anyone could annoy you enough to get moving, it would be Vic.”

Shane stared at her, blinking slowly, unable to hide his surprise. He searched her face, stunned to silence. She’d rounded up the one soldier who could be counted on to be a pain in Shane’s ass. It was something Shane would have done to get his guys motivated.

“You did that?”

“Yeah.” She smiled faintly and finally met his gaze. The uncertainty he saw there shamed him. “I thought having Vic around might help.”

She finished taking her notes, then headed from the room before Shane could find the words he needed.

The words to thank her.

Shane was being quiet. Too quiet. She didn’t think his silence could be explained by the recent infection in his abdominal wound, even though the infection and subsequent antibiotic treatment had drained him, physically and mentally. He was still getting fluids pushed through the IV that should have been stinted days ago.

No, Shane’s silence convinced Jen that she’d made a horrible mistake that had nothing to do with physical medicine. Maybe bringing Carponti hadn’t been the right decision after all. Since he’d shown up several days before, Shane hadn’t said a word—to anyone. Hadn’t thrown her out of the room. Hadn’t tried to rip his IV out. He’d sat and watched her, intently. She left like a rabbit entering a wolf’s den every time she went in to check his vitals and to make sure the infection hadn’t spread to the fixators holding his legs together.

It made it worse that she’d been working the night shift this past week. She was alone, or mostly alone, with him on the floor. The other patients weren’t any more mobile than he was. And so she sat at the nurses’ station and studied his chart, wondering if the risk she’d taken had been worth it.

His vital signs were stable. So far, there were no signs of further infection, but that didn’t mean anything. One wrong move in caring for his injuries and they might find themselves fighting a drug-resistant staph.

Shane still had miles to go before he was out of the bed and moving around on his own. One leg was less damaged than the other, but that didn’t mean that he’d be walking on it anytime soon. He needed time, the one thing he wasn’t willing to accept he needed. She glanced toward the door of his room from her seat at the nurses’ station. He was awake. She could hear him flipping through the channels on his TV from down the hall. He didn’t sleep much. She wondered if that was something new or if he’d always had insomnia. She looked down at his chart again. Time to take his vitals once more.

She couldn’t take back her decision to bring Carponti to see him. She’d been so wrong it wasn’t even funny. She’d have to apologize. It wouldn’t make it right, but she needed to do it all the same. She took a deep breath and held it, waiting until her lungs burned to release it. Then, she walked into the darkness.

Gunshots reverberated off the walls, echoing in the dim light. Brilliant explosions pierced the darkness and for a brief moment she thought he was playing a video game. It only took a moment before she realized he was watching the History Channel.

“Not very comforting late-night viewing,” she remarked from the doorway.

He turned and looked at her, his expression dark and unreadable in the dim light. The shadows cut across his cheeks, giving him a harsh look. “Interesting though. For my line of work.”

She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. He clicked the remote and turned down the sounds of battle. “Look, Shane, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For Carponti. I thought bringing him here would help you realize that being hurt wasn’t the end of the world. I didn’t mean to upset you or make you worry more.”

He shook his head slowly. “You didn’t. You did exactly the right thing.”

“Then why have you been so quiet since he was here? You haven’t said two words to—” She was going to say
to me
, but she stopped herself. “To anyone.”

The muscle in his jaw worked for a long moment. The silence broken only by the occasional round of gunfire from the television. “I hate it here. I hate being broken and useless and dependent on everyone.” Finally he looked at her. “I need to get back to my team.”

What could she say to that? She stopped at the edge of his bed. The rails were up, his legs concealed as always by a blanket. She could see the outlines of the fixators that held his bones together. But it was his eyes that held her. Dark and shadowed, the torment there not masked by the drugs that kept his pain at bay.

“Some of your team is here. They need you, too.” She didn’t know if it was the right thing to say. She searched the depths of his soul in those dark grey eyes, looking for the man who’d pulled her out of the middle of a bar fight. Who’d kissed her and made her feel like a real and sensual woman if only for a moment.

“I don’t know where to start.” The confession ripped from his throat.

“Start by giving yourself time to heal,” she said quietly. “Then you can get back in the fight.” He looked at her sharply and she smiled. “I’m trying to learn to speak your language.”

A faint smile broke the edge of his lips. “That’s not infantry. But it’s a start.”

* * *

Shane watched as Jen scribbled on his chart and he braced himself as she prepared to clean the fixator pins on his legs. He watched her move, trying to find a way to bridge
the chasm that stood between them. He missed the easy connection they’d had on that night before he’d deployed. And at the medical processing the next morning, she’d been so strict and so completely sexy. She’d told him to sit that day and he’d sat. Being on the receiving end of her directives had been one hell of a turn-on. He’d never been one to entertain fantasies but he knew he would never look at a nurse’s scrubs the same way.

He’d been entranced when she’d run her fingers over his stomach, changing the bandages on his appendectomy incisions. Watching her now, she was a study of quick efficiency and professional distance. She was also sexy as hell. That much hadn’t changed.

Then there was nothing but pain. It felt like she was pouring molten lava on open wounds. The fire spread from his flesh into his bones, and traveled through his veins. It was as close to physical hell as he could imagine getting without actually being dead.

He gripped the bed rail with his one good hand and ground his teeth to bite back a groan. It might have been a scream. It was the second time the pins had been cleaned that day and it made him seriously reconsider his stance on pain medication. A good dose of morphine straight into his vein would work wonders right now. Hell, he’d take a shot in the ass at the moment. His jaw popped and he was sure he’d snapped bone. If this was what it took to keep infection at bay, amputation might not have been such a bad idea. It probably would have hurt less.

“Almost done,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. He latched on to her voice like a dying man following a white light.

Maybe if he hadn’t been such a dickhead, he could have asked her to flash him before she started. Or give him a kiss. Yeah, one kiss from Jen would make everything
better. He sucked in a hard breath as she adjusted one of the pins.

He’d had a brigade commander once who said hope was a weak word.

Shane could relate to weak right about now. And hope, fragile though it was, was all he had. The hell retreated in waves as the pain rolled back, slowly lessening. He’d have to find a way to ask her about that kiss. Maybe after the fire stopped burning and he could see straight again.

“You can breathe.”

He forced out an exhale. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath in until Jen had pointed it out. He rubbed his hand over his chin again and tried to focus on anything other than the pounding echo of pain running through his veins.

He stopped when he noticed the stillness in the room.

Jen looked up at him as she gathered her supplies, a quiet calm in her light eyes. “I could shave you, if you want.”

The hesitation he heard in her words nearly broke him. He’d done that. Damn it. He had to fix this.

But the offer was too good to pass up. No matter how tentative the olive branch, he was going to take it. Now he just needed to find a way to make up for being a complete douche bag.

He swallowed and nodded and took one more thing from her even though he’d given nothing in return.