the rest of the bottle. When he was finished, he peered suspiciously into the blue eyes. “Why?” he asked, searching the stranger for some agenda. “Why would you do all that for me?”
“Could be one of two good reasons. Either because I don’t cotton to the idea of a stranger dying on my land. Or because you’re a walking, talking miracle—my only brother, Captain Ian Rayford, come back from the dead.”
* * *
Andrea Warrington stared down at the file her boss, retired army colonel Julian Ross, had handed her, her throat tightening the moment she read the name Captain Ian Rayford.
What she had to tell the man sitting behind the battered desk, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his tie loosened against the late summer heat, would be awkward enough under any circumstances. But despite the fifteen-year difference in their ages, Andrea had recently accepted the handsome forty-six-year-old’s proposal, so bat-sized butterflies attempted to flap their way free of her stomach.
Telling herself that putting it off was no longer an option, she drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders, just as she would have advised the wounded vets she counseled here at the Marston unit of the Warriors-4-Life Rehabilitation Center. “I—I’m afraid I can’t take this assignment, Julian. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you about myself and Captain Rayford.”
“Sit down, Andrea, please.” He gestured toward one of the mismatched folding chairs in front of his desk, the rich bass of his voice warmed by a gentlemanly Southern accent. Six months after the ribbon cutting that had opened this donation-supported unit, they were still getting by with whatever castoffs they could scrounge, mainly because Julian, who had been named director shortly before the center’s opening, insisted on using every penny of the funds raised to provide services for their growing roster of military veterans. Though many bore physical reminders of the ordeals they had endured, the majority had come to Warriors-4-Life to deal with the fallout of combat-related brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder. The workload kept Andrea, the center’s one practicing psychologist, along with two counselors and a psychiatric nurse-practitioner who worked under her direction, hopping, but she didn’t mind her packed days—not when she knew for a certainty that she was saving lives.
Besides, the crazy hours and emotional challenges had drawn her closer to the handsome older man who had started out as her boss before evolving into much more. She admired him; she respected him, but it was love that was making the words knot in her throat.
She claimed a seat where a rattletrap oscillating fan on the desk could swivel back and forth between them. “I think I mentioned to you I was engaged before,” she admitted, the breeze blowing a strand of long, dark brown hair—an escapee from her clip—into her face. “It was one of those whirlwind affairs, everything moving at light speed.”
She flushed, remembering the heat of it, the passion, how exciting it had felt to be caught up in something so out of her control. But thrilling as they might seem, whirlwinds had the potential to cause a lot of damage. The kind of heartbreak she’d sworn she would never risk again.
“It didn’t take long for me to realize he was lying about his deployments. There were other disappearances as well, with no warning and no explanation. I couldn’t deal with the uncertainty, so I broke it off.”
A smile touched Julian’s brown eyes like a warm breeze from his Savannah boyhood. He’d promised he would take her one day, to see the historic Victorian home where he’d grown up before it had passed out of the family. “Everyone has a past, Andrea. I didn’t imagine you’d lived underneath a bell jar for thirty-one years before you’d met me.”
“Yes, but bizarre as it might seem, it was this man, Ian. Captain Rayford. He was still just a lieutenant then, and I was working on my doctorate. I—I should’ve told you, I know, after the news broke that he was found alive.”
For weeks following his return, the “Texas miracle” was all anyone could talk about on the morning shows and social media. While Ian himself refused all interviews, the army had been left scrambling to explain how one set of charred remains could have been mistaken for another after some overworked soldier in the military’s mortuary center had failed to follow proper DNA procedures to identify the body.
“So why didn’t you say something?” he asked. “Surely, you can’t imagine I’d hold you accountable for any of the suspicions brought up about his escape from the terrorists holding him?”
“No, of course not. It’s just...” Though she couldn’t put an answer into words, she felt it in the warm flush that rose to her face, the aching heaviness in her chest.
“You still have feelings for him,” Julian suggested, though his sharp, brown gaze seemed more curious than judgmental. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, it’s not that.” She raised her hands, not wanting to hurt this good man’s feelings. “It’s only—when he was reported killed in action, it brought back a lot of memories. The good, along with the bad.”
Her gaze dropped, avoiding his, but because she’d learned the hard way that lies of omission could be the worst of all, she forced herself to look up. “I cried a lot at night. For months, I cried for him.” Even after she’d met Julian, she’d come to work some mornings with her eyes red and swollen. His unfailing kindness, his steadiness had planted the first seeds of healing in her.
“I’m sorry for your grief,” he told her. “But I assure you that I understand it. Possibly better than you can imagine. You see, the army personnel who debriefed the captain passed on his full dossier with the referral. I saw your name listed on his contact list, to be notified in case he was killed in action.”
The burning in her face intensified. “He must have added me two years ago, when we were still together.” She still remembered the horrendous shock that had followed the knock at the front door of her apartment back in San Diego.
“That’s not my point, Andrea. My point is, I feel certain—and the army psychologist I consulted is in full agreement on this—that your past connection to Ian Rayford could be the key to recovering his missing memories.”
She shook her head. “You mean he’s still suffering amnesia? Was he found to have a brain injury?”
“If you’ll take a look at the file—” the fan swung around to ruffle Julian’s short, bronze-colored hair, a crop of silver threaded through it “—you’ll see that’s not the case, though he does have some residual scarring. From the torture, they believe, in attempts to extract intelligence on US targets.”
“But he was cleared of those suspicions,” she was quick to say. “And anyway, after a soldier’s captured, codes are changed, right? Sensitive locations scrambled?” She was aware American civilians working in a war zone office had died or disappeared soon after Ian’s capture, but few details had been reported, and surely, the bombing of their building could not be laid at the feet of a man who had suffered heaven only knew what torments.
Julian nodded, but his brown eyes looked troubled. “Officially, he was absolved of any responsibility in the bombing and given a medical discharge. Considering the hero’s welcome drummed up by that Rayford woman’s story—”
“Jessie Layton is his brother Zach’s wife, isn’t she? The journalist?” Andrea narrowed her eyes, trying to get it straight in her mind, since she’d never met Ian’s family. They’d been estranged for years, he’d told her, though he’d avoided going into details—something that should have raised another
