“And are you now?” Avery asked, her light blond eyebrows furrowed.
“Am I what?”
“You know,” she said, as if he held the key to some mystery she didn’t quite dare talk about. “Happy.”
He stopped walking and turned to face her, thinking in silence for a moment, lost in the blue-gray storm clouds in her eyes.
“That’s a complicated question, isn’t it?”
“Not particularly,” she challenged, a twinge of sorrow in her voice.
“Well, then, perhaps it’s the answer that’s complicated.”
“Yes, maybe so, but I still want to know—are you happy, Isaac Meyer?”
In her question, Isaac sensed she was really asking something else—something along the lines of was it possible that she’d ever be happy again?—and he wanted, badly, for her to believe that, yes, she could be. Yes, despite everything that had happened to her, despite all the evil he could assume she’d witnessed, she could indeed find happiness again …
* * *
Peach Leaf, Texas: Where true love blooms
An Officer and Her Gentleman
Amy Woods
AMY WOODS took the scenic route to becoming an author. She’s been a bookkeeper, a high school English teacher and a claims specialist, but now that she makes up stories for a living, she’s never giving it up. She grew up in Austin, Texas, and lives there with her wonderfully goofy, supportive husband and a spoiled rescue dog. Amy can be reached on Facebook, Twitter and her website, www.amywoodsbooks.com.
For Mason Dixon, US Navy, with love and respect.
And to Renee Senn, LCSW, for her generous help with research. Any errors are mine.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
A blast rang out in the still night air, rattling windows and setting off the bark alarm of every canine within a mile radius.
In a small guest room of her younger brother’s ranch-style home, Avery Abbott’s eyes shot open as she was ripped suddenly from what had passed as sleep for the past few months—a shallow, daydream-like consciousness that really didn’t qualify as true rest.
Pulse thumping against her temples, Avery kicked her legs free from tangled sheets and fumbled in the darkness for the baseball bat she kept nearby, cursing when her fingers didn’t grasp it immediately. Her nerves had always been her biggest weakness during army basic training. Even the tiniest spark of fear or anxiety could transform her otherwise capable hands into jelly. The slightest hesitation or worry over a possible imperfection had the potential to eradicate months of training in an instant, leaving Avery, who was at the top of her class, one of only a handful of females in a company dominated by males, frozen and utterly useless. It hadn’t happened often during her service, but the occasion it did stood out in her memory, far above her many accomplishments.
Seconds, Abbott—her sergeant’s voice boomed through her brain as Avery finally gripped solid material and held it poised—seconds mean the difference between the life and death of your comrades.
As she made her way from her room into the hallway, through the house and out the front door into a thick darkness punctuated by only a thin sliver of light from the waning crescent moon, her nightmare blended seamlessly with reality.
Her brother’s small farmhouse and the old red barn disappeared as Avery stalked the grounds, weapon firm and steady against her side, its material solid and reliable in her grip, searching for the source of the noise that had awoken her and threatened the safety of her fellow soldiers.
When the flashback gripped Avery, it was no longer cool, wheat-colored, late-autumn grass her bare feet plodded through, but the warm desert sand of a country in which she’d served three tours.
She wasn’t safe at home in Peach Leaf, Texas, anymore, but a stranger in a foreign land, her vulnerability evident in every accented word she spoke, in her uniform, in the caution she knew flickered behind her eyes each time she faced a potential enemy.
She would be okay, she thought, pacing the too-quiet darkness, so long as she didn’t run into any kids.
The women and children were the worst part of combat. You never knew whose thumb they were under, who controlled their futures...who’d robbed them of their innocence, threatened their families if met with anything but obedience, and turned them into soldiers to be sacrificed without a choice.
Regardless of where their loyalties were planted, they were children... It didn’t make sense to hold them responsible for their misguided actions.
Avery wanted to bring the many homeless ones back with her when she returned to the US. She had something in common with them. She knew what it was like to be an orphan, to feel alone in the world, unprotected.
Once, before she’d been adopted by a loving couple, the birth parents of her brother, Tommy, Avery, too, had known firsthand what it was to be without a family.
But that was a long time ago, and now she needed to focus on the threat at hand. Still holding her weapon, she used her forearm to brush a strand of long blond hair out of her eyes. When she’d tumbled from bed, she hadn’t time to twist her hair into its customary bun. There was only room in her brain for one objective: locate and—if necessary—eradicate the cause of the blast.
She paced silently through the muggy night air, the blanket of darkness hiding any detail so that all she could see were the shapes of unfamiliar objects.
In