Until There Was You (Coming Home, #2) (2 page)

* * *

The formal portion of the evening was about to get started, and Evan found himself regretting that. He was enjoying himself immensely, a feeling both surprising and unexpected. Claire Montoya was proving a sexy detour for the night, and while Evan didn’t do one-night stands, he was not above taking her to a quiet corner of the bar. Her mouth drew him. She had the kind of wide, full lips that were made for kissing.

He wondered how his big platoon sergeant knew her, but couldn’t drum up the energy to ask. He simply hoped he wasn’t spending the evening flirting with one of Reza’s castoffs. It hadn’t taken him long to learn that Sergeant Iaconelli spent his free time curled up with a bottle or a woman.

“So other than unprotected sex, what do you think about being a commander?” Claire asked. Her breath kissed his skin as she leaned close enough so she didn’t have to shout.

Evan leaned in, fighting the urge to lift her hair away from her ear. “I love it. It’s the best job I’ve ever had. But it’s the most stressful, too.”

“You don’t seem like you relax very often.”

He shrugged, sipping his beer. “I don’t. There’s not a lot of time for relaxing when you’re getting ready to take a company downrange into combat.”

“Guess they’re getting ready to do the introductions.” Claire tipped her chin toward the stage. “Guess I need to get ready to smile and wave for the crowd.”

Evan frowned. “You’re a soldier?”

She smiled, and her green eyes glittered in the smoky bar. “Yeah.”

There was a sinking feeling in Evan’s stomach. “What rank are you?”

She frowned. “Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

She grinned, and it was wicked. “What, afraid you’ve spent the evening flirting with an enlisted woman?”

“I don’t date army women as a rule.” Evan breathed out sharply. “Dirt and dust on deployments aren’t exactly great conditions for love and sex.”

“Pretty stiff restrictions on letting yourself relax, huh?”

“Everything in my life comes with conditions,” he said softly. “Besides, you don’t look like you’d be in the army.” He felt a flush creep up his neck as he heard the rudeness of his own words, but Claire didn’t look offended. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that how it sounded.”

“Relax. I’m a captain.” She looked up at him, studying him quietly. “You should see your face. You were really worried, weren’t you?”

Evan couldn’t get the tight knot in his chest to relax. She had stunning red hair and green eyes cast in dark, smoky shadows. A body that took Evan to a dark and primal place. Her dark red hair tumbled down her back and she looked like a woman who spent more time at the mall than on the weapons range. He couldn’t picture her in uniform.
Thankfully, she didn’t seem to care that he had been worried about her rank.

“I’m prior service. Did a stint as enlisted before I went to Officer Candidate School down at Fort Benning.”

She bumped her shoulder against his, her eyes sparkling. “You really need to relax. It’s mandatory fun, and you don’t look like you’re having any.”

He turned his attention to the dais, where the brigade commander was introducing new folks to the rest of the brigade.

Her hand on his forearm dragged his attention away from the stage. He glanced down at her fingers, long and slim against his skin, burning him. “This is a really big deal for you, isn’t it?”

“No, just a surprise.”

A big surprise. One that would complicate things tremendously.

“Captain Claire Montoya.” The brigade commander called Claire’s name, and she hopped off the wall without a backwards glance at him. “Claire hails to us from …”

Evan stopped listening, lost in his own thoughts, which were a hell of a lot more than unprofessional. He waited until she was up on the stage before he melted into the dark safety of the bar, putting a stop to what would have been a very big mistake.

* * *

It was better this way. Claire had learned a long time ago that work relationships—hell, any relationship that involved her—never really worked out. She palmed her car keys and walked out of
Ropers
into the intense Texas heat. The sun had gone down hours ago, but the temperature was still set to broil. Sweat trickled down her neck and her hair clung to her scalp.

She rounded the corner of the bar and clicked the key fob, her car lock chirping in the sweltering heat. But that wasn’t what caught her attention.

Evan Loehr was talking to Reza. Arguing, more like. Frowning, Claire hurried over, knowing she had no authority to intervene between a company commander and his subordinate and prepared to do it anyway. But before she crossed the wide gravel parking lot, Reza snatched his keys and dropped them into some cute brunette’s hands, stalking off.

Evan saw Claire approaching before she could veer off and pretend she’d been walking toward her own car.

“What was that all about?” she asked, tucking her hands into the back pocket of her jeans.

“Work.” She could hear the lie as it rolled off his tongue. “You always walk up to strange men in dark parking lots?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Yes, it’s a regular habit of mine. How did you think I earn extra money?”

Silence, thick and sweaty, hung between them for a long moment. Then a slow smile spread across Evan’s mouth, followed by an easy laugh. “You’ve got one hell of a way with words.”

“I try.” She pointed to her car over her shoulder. “Guess I’ll see you at work?”

“Probably not. I don’t get up to brigade very often.”

“On purpose?”

“Yeah. It isn’t on my top-ten list of places to hang out.”

She laughed. “Yeah, all we do at brigade is come up with good ideas to screw with you down in the companies.” She studied him, the dark shadows cast beneath his eyes, the tight lines around his mouth. Tension wound its way around her, radiating from him with the same power and confidence he wore like a shield. “Well, then I won’t see you around.”

“No. Probably not.”

Hesitant, unsure of her reception, she took a step forward. Close enough that she
could see the faint shadow against his jaw. “Do you ever relax?”

His only movement was a slight flare of his nostrils. “No.”

She took another step. Reached up and placed her hand on the solid wall of muscle over his heart. “Never?”

His lips parted, just a hint. “No.”

His scent was dark and arousing. Making this big man go still and quiet? Powerful. He was wound so tight, tension burned beneath her touch. “So you think this would be a mistake, don’t you?”

“Yes.” His voice was rough.

“Do you ever make mistakes, Evan?” she whispered, her mouth a breath from his.

“Mistakes get people killed.” His words traced over her lips, sending a hot spike of arousal racing through her blood.

“Hmmm.” It was nothing to brush her top lip against his. His chest stopped moving beneath her palm.

His mouth opened, until she could feel his breath mingling with hers. Her blood sang with thick and heavy sensual need. His tongue flicked against hers, an open, hot invitation.

* * *

Evan had no idea what the hell he was thinking, but this woman had struck a chord inside him, awakened a hunger that refused to be ignored. Kissing her was a mistake, a sensuous, gorgeous mistake.

He gave over to the temptation he’d fought earlier and lifted his hands to her neck, sliding his palms over her skin to thread them into her hair. It was warm silk against the back of his hands, a raw, simple pleasure.

Her mouth opened beneath his, her tongue sliding against his, signaling a salient
desire that penetrated his defenses and made him no longer care that she was in his brigade. There were no rules against them doing any of this—whatever this was—but he didn’t date at work. As he lost himself in her taste and touch, he seriously reconsidered that personal rule. He captured her quiet gasp against his mouth and felt the locks turning on the chains that held his restraint.

It was a long moment before Claire eased back, nibbling on his bottom lip before she broke the tentative connection between them.

“What was that?” he asked, his voice rough and unfamiliar to his own ears.

She smiled. “A mistake.” She swiped her thumb over his bottom lip. “But one I enjoyed.”

She eased back until he was forced to release her. Regret that this would go no further settled in his belly. “I’ll see you around, Evan.”

He watched her go, the slight sway of her hips more alluring because she did not try to affect any sensuality. She simply walked, cloaked in confidence and sexual appeal.

He let her go. Because Evan Loehr knew all about mistakes, and he wasn’t about to make one with Claire Montoya.

Late 2008

Colorado Springs, Colorado

“So this is hell? Very scenic.” Claire shivered and slouched over a steaming mug of coffee, wishing it were a bathtub she could crawl into. The lobby of the Evergreen Lodge was polished ski-lodge elegance and pretty much guaranteed to give the budget overlords coronaries. A huge stone fireplace in the middle radiated a welcoming heat from all four sides. Overstuffed chairs were intermixed with coffee tables and potted plants. Tiny white lights decorated the rafters and looked like diminutive stars against the dark oak. The dining room took up half the lobby, and dozens of windows let the wild mountain view in while keeping the cold out.

Across the white tablecloth, Claire’s oldest friend and fellow army captain Sarah Anders laughed and stirred her hot cocoa. “You know, if you stopped complaining for a second, you’d realize that it’s called the Garden of the Gods for a reason.”

“There is not enough cold-weather gear in the entire army inventory to make me stop complaining. I’ve never been so cold in my life,” Claire grumbled. “I can’t believe I’m saying this but I’d rather be in Iraq right now. At least I’d be warm.”

“It doesn’t help that you get to stay in this beautiful ski lodge because the budget people screwed up?”

“Not a bit. They could have us at the swankiest place in Colorado Springs and I’d still complain about the cold.”

“But you love me, which is why you’re here.” Sarah’s flip remark belied the serious edge to her words. Claire had been friends with Sarah far too long to miss the fact that she was, in fact, deeply worried.

“I’m here because my brigade commander ordered me here,” Claire said as she cradled her coffee mug. “The only good thing about it is being stuck with you. Why did you have to be the one tapped for this mission?”

Sarah shrugged and sipped her hot chocolate. “I’m the only company commander who hasn’t deployed recently. It’s my turn.”

A shadow fell across her friend’s face and Claire reached across the table to squeeze her friend’s hand. “We’ll get your team ready, Sarah.”

In truth, nothing they did in training could prepare Sarah for the mission she was about to command. She was leading a logistics company into the tail end of the Surge, the buildup of American forces designed to stabilize Iraq. As someone who had recently returned from Iraq, Claire knew Sarah’s mission intimately.

Nothing was going to help take a company of combat-inexperienced soldiers and turn them into steely-eyed killers inside of a month. But Claire said none of that. It was the dead last thing that Sarah needed to hear right now.

Sarah tucked a stray lock of hair behind one ear and slid her water to one side of the table to make room for a briefing folder. “Okay, so let’s talk about the mission, because I’m in way over my head and I could use your expertise.”

Claire mirrored Sarah’s movement and leaned forward to look at the timeline of events Sarah had slid in front of her. “Inspections, mission briefings, ranges,” Claire read. She glanced over at Sarah. “What’s the problem?”

“Look at the first three days.” Sarah flipped the page over. “We’re shipping our equipment in exactly five weeks. We have a sixteen-day training exercise to get our crap together because at the end of this exercise, we are shipping out our equipment, then we’re going on leave. All told, five weeks start to finish. And the brigade commander … Claire, he doesn’t understand our mission.”

“Wow.” Claire let out a low whistle. The training timeline was packed full of events that no one who’d deployed would waste time with. “Equal opportunity training?
The only thing equal opportunity about this war is the roadside bombs that don’t care who they kill. Whose good-idea fairy was this training plan?”

“Someone who’s not paying attention to the fact that we are in no way ready for this mission. My company is full of supply clerks and the commander has us training mostly on shoot houses and hand-to-hand combat instead of convoy training. We don’t do convoy training until the last two days of the exercise … But that decision is way over my head. My focus right now is getting my team ready for running the roads in Iraq.”

“Then I’m your gal. I’ve got more than thirty thousand miles under my belt on the roads in combat.” Three tours to Iraq, one as a young enlisted soldier, two as an officer. She was all too familiar with the threat that was buried beneath Iraq’s roads. Sarah hadn’t deployed in almost four years. She
should
be nervous. The war had changed a lot since the first troops went in back in ’03. It changed every time Claire went back.

Sarah glanced over Claire’s shoulder and perked up. Claire twisted in the plush leather chair and groaned.

“Who is that?” Sarah murmured.

Claire sighed. “You’re just like every other female on the planet,” Claire said, ignoring the flip of her stomach. Evan Loehr was giving her an ulcer. Lovely. One kiss and it would freaking haunt her forever. She regretted ever touching him. “Sarah Anders, get ready to meet Captain America himself.”

“You know him?”

Oh yes, she knew him. Many a long night in the tactical operations center downrange had been spent fantasizing about those shoulders, along with other parts of his anatomy.

Stupid hormones.

“Wring out your panties, honey, he’s not someone you want knocking on your door.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Sarah said. Claire laughed quietly. It was good to see Sarah show some interest in a man—she hadn’t dated much since her husband’s death in Iraq four years ago. Claire wasn’t sure how Evan would react to Sarah’s appraisal, but she wasn’t about to tell him. That man’s ego did not need any stroking.