With a soft sigh, she melted into his arms.
2
THE LAST PERSON SHANE Rafferty expected to see walk through the door of his hospital room was his father. A pang of guilt swept through him. He’d been back in the States for nearly a month while the staff at the U.S. Naval Hospital patched him up, yet he hadn’t talked to his old man. The nurses had told him that his father had kept a near constant vigil at his bedside for the first two weeks that he’d been in the hospital, when Shane had lain in a drug-induced coma. But once he’d turned the corner to recovery, his father had returned to his home in Chatham. He’d left messages on Shane’s cell phone, but Shane hadn’t returned any of his calls. He told himself it was because his father was a busy man and he hadn’t wanted to worry him, but he knew that was a lie.
He hadn’t wanted to see him.
James Rafferty looked older than Shane remembered. His dark hair was liberally streaked with gray and his strong face was lined with deep seams. His expression was wary as he approached Shane’s bed, as if he wasn’t sure he’d be welcome.
“Hello, son.”
His father’s dark eyes swept once over Shane’s body, his gaze touching briefly on the fading cuts and bruises that marred Shane’s face, neck, and arms, before lingering on the cast that enveloped his left leg from the knee down to his toes. His father’s throat worked convulsively, but when he met Shane’s eyes, he schooled his expression.
“How you feeling, boy?”
Like shit, he wanted to respond. It had been nearly four weeks since the incident, and yet Shane’s entire body still ached, and his skin felt as if it had been sandblasted. His newly healed wounds felt pinched and tight. He had a bitch of a headache, and if he didn’t know better, he’d have thought he’d taken a direct hit from a rocket launched missile. But according to reports, it had been a hand grenade, and he’d been lucky—he’d been on the outer edge of the impact radius and might have sustained more serious injuries, but the bullet that had taken him out at the knees had also saved his life. If he hadn’t already been on the ground, he likely would have been killed.
So how was he doing? He shrugged. “I’m okay.”
The doctors had stitched him up and repaired his fractured leg and told him not to worry, he’d make a full recovery. But what they hadn’t warned him about were the nightmares that dragged him out of sleep each night, his heart racing and his body coated in sweat. They were always the same; he was sprinting through the battle to wards Holly. He could see her standing there, staring at him in horror through the smoke and debris, and he was driven by a desperate need to reach her. But he never made it. Each time, he’d watch her die before he could save her. Each time, her death was an agony that tore him apart. Then he’d wake up and realize he’d only been dreaming, but it would be long minutes before his heart rate slowed and his breathing returned to normal. He’d lie in bed and remind himself that Holly was alive, until the words became his mantra. She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive.
He didn’t know what he would do if anything happened to her. He’d spent the better part of the last ten years fighting his powerful attraction to her and telling himself that they had no future together, when the truth was he couldn’t envision a future—any future—without her in it. He might not be the right guy for her, but he wouldn’t hesitate to lay down his life to save hers. She was the reason he’d joined the military in the first place. One, he’d needed to get out of Chatham and away from Holly before he did something completely stupid, like sleep with her. Two, she came from a military family and he knew how much she respected service men and women. Part of him had dared to hope that if he joined the military and if he worked hard to rise through the ranks and if he could distinguish himself somehow, then maybe—just maybe—he could be worthy of her.
But then the unthinkable had happened; Holly had also joined the military and had somehow managed to end up assigned to the same base as himself. He wasn’t naive enough to believe any of it was coincidence, but he had a difficult time figuring out what it was she saw in him that would make her request a deployment to Iraq when she could have had her choice of assignments. Since the day she arrived at Al Asad Air Base, his mission had abruptly switched from combat to keeping her safe.
But he couldn’t escape the fact that his recurring nightmares had almost become reality. Holly had very nearly been killed. He’d read the incident report a dozen times, but the damned thing was he couldn’t recall a single detail of that day, or the attack that had nearly ended his life. The doctors told him the amnesia was temporary; a direct result of the concussion he’d sustained from the grenade. He’d been assured that his memory would return, but Shane had a nagging sense of unease that until it did, he was missing something vital.
“I wanted to come back sooner, but we’ve been busy at the track, what with the Preakness coming up next month,” his father was saying. He shifted uncomfortably. “But I’d have come anyway, if you’d wanted me to.”
Which clearly Shane hadn’t or he would have called him. His father didn’t say the words, but it was all there on his face.
Shane sighed.
“You didn’t need to come all the way up here,” he finally said, referring to the four-hour drive from Chatham, Virginia, to the medical center in Washington, D.C. “They’re releasing me today.”
James Rafferty dragged a hand through his hair and a fleeting frown crossed his face. “But that’s why I came,” he finally said. “To bring you home.”
Home.
pImages** of the three-room apartment over Benjamin’s Drugstore flitted through Shane’s mind. That cramped space had never been home to Shane. He hadn’t had a home since the day his mother had died and he and his father had moved to the pristine community of Chatham. The place may as well have been called Stepford, with its immaculate, white-pillared mansions and perfect, tree-lined streets. He’d fit into the quaint town like a rough-hewn square peg into a neat, round hole.
After the death of his mother, Shane’s father had withdrawn from everyone, including Shane. For nearly two years, he did little except drink and sleep. First he’d lost his job, and then he’d lost the house until, eventually, the only thing his father had left was his reputation—and Shane had known that unless they acted quickly, he’d lose that, too. His father had needed another job and the only thing he really knew was horses. Race horses, to be precise. He’d trained some of the best horses ever to run a racetrack, and once Shane had put the word out that his father was ready to get back into the business, the offers had begun trickling in.
Shane had chosen a job for his father at a stable in Chatham, despite the fact the position was not lead trainer. After two years away from the track, his father had needed to prove himself before anyone would give him that kind of opportunity again. It had taken several years, but James Rafferty was firmly back on his feet and despite the fact he could afford a new home, he hadn’t left the tiny apartment over the drug store, insisting that it suited his needs.
But returning to Chatham was the last thing Shane wanted to do, not because of his father but because of her. She’d be at her parents’ home, recovering from her own injuries and Shane didn’t want to risk running into her. Too much had happened for them to ever go back to the way things had been when they were teenagers.
He’d first seen Holly Durant soon after he’d moved to Chatham. He’d been barely seventeen and he’d taken a job working at the drugstore. Holly and her clique of giggling, sashaying girlfriends from Chatham Hall, the affluent girls’ boarding school in town where she was a day student, had liked to come into the