and my father was on active duty. She, like most spouses, found a place to tuck away the fear of losing her husband to combat. But her son, or sons, rather, were another story. She struggled to deal with the potential loss of her boys.”
“I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for her.”
“My father saw her distress and tried to talk me into waiting a few years to enter the army,” he said. “He figured that would give my mother time to get used to my brother serving. I didn’t think that was the answer. I thought my mother needed to go ahead and get past her fear because the army was going to be my future. Eventually, she and I talked about it, and she gave me her blessing.”
“So you went ahead and enlisted.”
He nodded. “And then ended up in a fluffy desk job I didn’t want. I’m pretty sure my father pulled a lot of rank to make it happen, too, though he never admitted it. Able-bodied young men do not end up at desk jobs in the army.”
“I’m surprised,” she said. “With him serving himself, I’d have thought he would have supported you.”
“He was trying to protect my mother and he really wanted me to finish college to be eligible for officer training, which my brother rejected.”
“From what I know of you, a desk job must have been hard for you to deal with.”
“Oh yeah. It drove me crazy. I felt guilty for sitting at a desk while my own father and brother, and plenty of others with them, were fighting to protect our country.
I would have gotten out of that desk job if I could have and I tried. It worked out though in the end. By twenty-one I’d completed my degree and I entered the officers’ program, then Special Forces.”
“Why Special Forces?”
“I was in for life,” he said. “I wanted to be challenged and contribute everything I could, on every level possible.”
Meagan absorbed those words thoughtfully, captured by him in ways she didn’t want to be, didn’t expect to be when she’d first met him. He was just so much more than she’d expected he’d be. This man had seen war, he’d fought to survive, and fought for the lives of others. “But you weren’t in for life,” she finally commented, hoping he’d explain why, nervous she might be in choppy waters he didn’t want to enter.
“No,” he said a bit too softly. “I wasn’t in for life.” He inhaled and let it out. “A few bullets in my leg took care of that.”
“Oh, God, Sam,” she said and added, “I’m sorry.” She wanted to pull back these last words, knowing from her own injury how much she didn’t like hearing them.
“Yeah, me too, because even if I could have gotten a doctor’s release, which was doubtful, I knew I wasn’t one hundred percent. And I wasn’t willing to risk other people’s lives by ignoring the reality of what I had to face.”
Suddenly, her lost dream, her knee injury, felt tiny, inconsequential. “That was brave, Sam. It was very brave.”
He glanced at her, surprise etched on his handsome face. “No. Those men and women out there on the front lines are the brave ones. I refused to let my ego put them at risk.”
“Yes,” she conceded. “They are.” And he’d been one of them, he still wanted to be one of them, and couldn’t. She knew how that felt, as well. How it hurt to want things you could no longer have. “Where are your parents? Are they here? Is that how you ended up in L.A.?”
“No,” he said. “This is technically my home, but as a military brat, I traveled all over the place. My parents spent a good number of the last ten years in Germany, but managed to end up back in Japan just in time for the recent tsunami. Both me and my brother got a good dose of the kind of worry my mother has for her sons and her husband. We couldn’t reach my parents for days. Jake—that’s my brother—was on a mission overseas, and he was in rare completely freaked-out mode.”
“But they’re okay, right?”
He gave a quick nod of his head. “Yes. They’re fine. My mother’s a nurse. She was working at a Red Cross shelter at the time and refused to leave when the military families were evacuated. My father’s still on active duty, and as a high-ranking officer, he had his hands full.”
“I think I mentioned that my father’s a preacher in a small Texas town and my mother helps with the church’s volunteer efforts. We aren’t really close, but I am their only child and they love me, just like I love them.” She cringed at her confession, one she normally wouldn’t have given, not sure why she had, and quickly moved on, “I would have gone crazy, too, not knowing if they were all right during the tsunami, or hurricane or whatever.”
He glanced at her. His gaze too knowing, too aware of what she’d shared. She expected him to push her for more detail, but surprisingly, he seemed to sense she was uncomfortable, and let it pass, saying only, “Maybe you’ll tell me more about them one day.”
His sensitivity really floored her. “Maybe I will,” she said, surprised at how much she meant it. “Tell me more about Japan and your parents.”
“There’s not a lot more to tell,” he said. “They’re fine and involved in clean-up efforts that will take years and years to complete. I went to see them right after I left the army and spent a few months helping.”
There were tiny telling cracks in his voice at several places during his story. Sam wasn’t at all what she’d assumed. “How’d you get hired at the studio?”
“My uncle, a retired SEAL, works for the studio. He hounded me for months to take the security job. I didn’t want it. I wanted back in the army.” He rubbed his right leg a bit too deeply, and she wondered just how bad his injury was, both physically and emotionally.
She opened her mouth to tell him how much she understood, and quickly snapped it shut. She didn’t talk about the past. She focused on the future, like what he seemed to be doing. And my gosh, how shallow would she sound anyway? He was talking about war and sacrifice and she was upset she wasn’t able to perform anymore.
“We’re here,” he announced, turning into a long driveway, but trees blocked her view of the house.
The ride was over and she didn’t want it to be. She had enjoyed learning about Sam, which defied the idea of sex being a path to getting him out of her system. Suddenly, she felt confused. She knew Sam was a distraction she didn’t need, knew he was the kind of man that took you by storm and took over your life. Yet, on some level he was exactly what she needed. And that absolutely terrified her. She couldn’t lose herself again. She couldn’t. Been there, done that, didn’t like it.
As soon as the truck stopped in the driveway of the two-story, towering mansion of a house, she lunged for the door handle, intending to get out as quickly as possible. She needed some distance from Sam to process her feelings.
Sam gently shackled her arm, the touch of his hand searing her skin, melting her resolve to escape him. “Hey,” he said softly. “What just happened?”
He read her too easily, which only rattled her more. “Nothing. Nothing, I just—”
“Got spooked.”
She hesitated, and then
