He held up his left hand, pulling back the sleeve on his jacket, revealing the thin crisscross of white scars from that day. “You took care of me? Tore up part of your T-shirt to make a bandage out of it to wrap my bleeding arm?”
She looked down at her feet, her mouth softening. “Yes, of course, I remember.”
To hell with it. Kyle stepped forward, placing his finger beneath her chin, making eye contact with Anna. There was such longing in her eyes that it momentarily shocked him. Longing for him? Could it be? Dropping his finger, he rasped, “Well, you’ve just fallen into another kind of barbed wire, Anna. And I want to be here for you if you want me.”
Above all, Kyle didn’t want to stay if she didn’t want him around. The years between them had been long and desolate, but dammit, he felt that same warm, powerful connection with her right now. His feelings had never dimmed through the years. Not once. Now he felt an amplified intensity to them.
She lifted her head a little more confidently, held his gray gaze. “It’s...just that it’s a shock to see you, is all, Kyle. I never really expected you to come home even though you were my POA.”
That hurt worse than a bullet going through his leg, which it had. Trying not to wince at her barely spoken words, Kyle saw how changed Anna was from before. It had to be due to the concussion. “I’m here,” he told her firmly. “I’ve got thirty days of medical leave, Anna. There’s no other place I’d rather be.”
“That sounds good,” she whispered unsteadily, searching his eyes. “I know it’s hard for you to leave your SEAL family.”
Kyle wanted to deny all of that right now. Instead, he rasped, “Right now, you’re the center of my universe, Anna. Just you. Okay?” He forced himself not to lift his hand and caress her pale cheek. For a moment, he saw hope flare in her dark eyes. And then, it vanished. He swore he could feel Anna’s yearning for him as much as he felt for her right now. But it was all water under the bridge.
“Are you hungry? You’ve been traveling. I made a pot of vegetable beef soup earlier today. Why don’t you come into the kitchen and eat? We can talk there.”
Kyle watched her walk. Anna wasn’t steady and he slipped his hand beneath her left elbow, cutting his long stride for her sake.
“It smells great,” he offered. “Are you okay?” He searched her profile. Anna was a cattleman’s daughter. She was the only child of Paul and Nancy Campbell. The family had a hundred-year ranching history in this part of Montana. Anna had always been strong and confident, but now she seemed just the opposite to Kyle. And it scared him.
She grimaced. “My head.” She pointed to the scar above her left ear. “The neurologists are telling me with a grade-three concussion I’ll have some dizziness and maybe other symptoms for a while. Eventually, they said, they’d go away.” She opened her hand. “Right now, since being released, I deal with dizziness. It just comes and goes. I don’t have any control over it, and I wish I did.” She looked up, no doubt seeing his concern. “I’ll be okay, Kyle.”
“You’ve been out of the hospital how long?”
“Three days. Every day is better,” she assured him, stopping at the entrance to the kitchen. “I’m going to let you get the bowl down from the cupboard and take as much soup as you want.” She gestured toward the gas stove, where a five-quart pot sat. “I don’t trust my equilibrium that much tonight.”
Kyle guided Anna to one of the heavy oak chairs and pulled it out for her. His fingers tingled where they met her elbow. “Do you remember where everything is?” she asked.
He smiled and shrugged out of his coat, placing it over the chair next to Anna. “I think I do. Are you hungry? Can you eat a little something, too?”
Anna had become thin, and it pained him. He knew her parents had died in an auto wreck a year ago. Running a huge ranch like this took more than one person. All the weight of responsibility had fallen on Anna’s slender shoulders. Automatically, Kyle found himself wanting to protect her, lift her burden, give her the time she needed to heal herself.
“Maybe I’ll try just a little.”
Kyle moved to the drain board and opened up a cupboard where the blue-and-white Delft-patterned bowls were kept. It was so easy to fall back into the routine of how they’d grown up together. He and his parents had eaten with Anna’s parents every night. His father had been the foreman for the ranch. They were like extended family, and damned if anything had ever felt so fitting as this right now. “You’re thin, Anna.”
Walking to the stove, Kyle unhooked a metal ladle from the wall, opened the lid and inhaled the flavorful scents of the soup. He piled his bowl high with beef chunks, potatoes, carrots, onions and peas and put about a third as much in a bowl for Anna.
“It’s the work,” she admitted, resting her hands on the long, rectangular oak table.
“Don’t you have a foreman?” he asked, handing her the bowl and giving her a soup spoon. And then Kyle remembered that Jepson had told him Trevor Bates, the foreman, had been driving the truck to Great Falls with Anna when the accident had occurred. It had killed Bates outright and damned near killed Anna. As he sat down at her left elbow, he noticed how her eyes darkened with grief.
“I did...but Trevor died in the accident.” She dragged in a ragged breath and slowly moved her spoon through the thick, hearty soup. “I still don’t remember the accident. Nothing.... I couldn’t even be there for his funeral.”
“I’m sorry,” Kyle murmured, reaching out and briefly touching her arm.
“There’s a lot to do around here,” Anna uttered tiredly before sipping the soup.
Kyle hungrily dug into the beef and veggies. He watched her eat, and she seemed tentative about the food. Between bites he asked, “Are you not hungry?”
“I am.” Then Anna shrugged. “I get nauseated off and on. Sometimes, food triggers it. The doctors said in time that will go away, too.”
Which was why she was so pathetically thin, Kyle thought. He smiled into her eyes. “Can I give you my appetite? I can guarantee you, I’m going back for another bowl here in a few minutes.” He was starved for good home cooking. Anna had cut up the vegetables and added the spices, and this soup had been made with love as far as Kyle was concerned.
She seemed to rally beneath his teasing and picked at her clothes. “I lost twelve pounds in two weeks. Can you believe that?”
“Yeah,” he said bluntly. “You look like a toothpick, Anna. And that worries me.” He motioned to her bowl. “Come on, get some of the meat into you. I’ll even spoon-feed you if you want.”
Her cheeks suddenly flushed pink. Anna was blushing. She used to do that all the time when they were growing up. The first time Kyle had leaned over on his horse and given Anna a peck on the cheek when they were thirteen, her cheeks turned as red as an apple.
Giving him a wry look, Anna said, “No, I can feed myself. You’re wolfing down your food.”
Kyle felt heat steal into his cheeks as he looked down at his nearly emptied bowl. “That’s what we do. When I first joined the Navy, I learned to eat fast.”
There was that sadness in her eyes again. Anna had once dreamed of them being married,
