school, little more than a boy to her, a warrant officer doing her final NATO tour before she took early retirement, which had been offered because the military wanted to downsize.
Not that she was old. She just felt old compared to Rick, who was old enough to father her child and yet too young to drink in some provinces.
On an afterthought, she grabbed the tissue. With a mutter of thanks, she snatched the appointment card and strode out of the medical center, refusing to spare a glance at whoever sat patiently in the waiting room behind her, no doubt watching her fight her impending breakdown.
Rick Cahill. Young, bright, handsome. Eager without being naive, he’d been one of her best storesmen. He’d been a good driver, and a sensible soldier for his age.
And he knew his way around a woman’s body.
The last duty she’d performed in Bosnia was to attend his memorial service.
Her eyes stung and her chest burned as she headed toward the drugstore across the street. Think about prenatal vitamins, Sylvie. Nothing else.
What would the other soldiers under her command have said if they’d known she and her youngest stores-man had been together and that she’d sat in the front row of the chapel tent during his memorial service, carrying their dead friend’s baby?
Thank heavens the military wanted to cut its forces. Thank heavens she’d escaped her unit before she discovered she was pregnant. She would have been repatriated immediately anyway, but the rumors would have whipped up like prairie dust.
She couldn’t have looked them in the eye. Not after realizing the mistakes she’d made.
Not after signing the nondisclosure agreement.
Not after killing Rick.
Nausea surged into her throat at the thought of her cowardice. Clamping her hand over her mouth, she threw a wild look up the busy street. She had to make it back across to her car—and fast—if she was to vomit behind it.
Panic seized her. Would she make it? Standing on the curb, holding back bile, she spotted the receptionist from the medical center lead a man out into the brilliant sunshine. The woman scanned the street until her gaze settled on Sylvie. Touching the man’s arm, the receptionist pointed directly at her.
Oh, boy. She wouldn’t make it now. That guy, whoever he was, would intercept her. He was heading straight into disaster—
Striding across the street like he owned the town, the tall man fixed his stare on her. Rooted her to the sidewalk.
Within seconds he reached her. “Warrant Officer Mitchell?”
She stiffened, thankful the six-inch curb brought her eye level with him. “I’m retired now,” she said after a bitter swallow. “Call me Sylvie.”
“Sylvie?” The man tested the name on his tongue, all the while his riveting gaze drilling into her. “Sylvie.”
Good heavens. The way he said her name conjured up warm, moonless nights when crickets provided the music…and someone in the dark provided the silky caresses.
Her bones melted. Were these hormones going to plague her like this for the next six months? Nauseated one minute, aroused the next?
She forced her voice to stay brisk. “What can I do for you?”
He studied her with eyes squinting against the sun. An incredible, body-weakening image of the fantasy from a moment ago wafted in on the warm southerly wind, as vivid as any nightmare her time in Bosnia still produced on those damned sleepless nights she’d had lately.
She didn’t welcome either vision.
The man stepped onto the curb. Sylvie craned her neck to stare up at him. His ebony hair lifted with the breeze, the same breeze that delivered a warm, lingering male scent to her keen nose. She couldn’t help but inhale it, draw it deeply in and hold it.
“Were you recently in Bosnia?” he asked.
Her jaw tightened and she wet her lips. “Yes.” Most soldiers took Bosnia in stride, a tour of duty that was difficult but necessary.
She’d wished, mostly in the dead of night when the horror returned, that she had the same casual outlook.
The government believed the Former Yugoslavia had been stabilized. They wouldn’t give credence to the small pocket of resistance she’d faced that night, a resistance she knew had friends inside her own camp.
Instead, NATO and the new Bosnian government had discounted those who’d ambushed her truck, diplomatically announcing that the group would eventually negotiate or disperse. No, they weren’t associated with any terrorists. They’d see the light as soon as they realized their actions weren’t getting the media’s attention.
Sylvie couldn’t manage the same simplistic view. Too many frightening, conflicting memories. Begging children and mined areas too dangerous to even graze goats, now overgrown with various self-seeded grains. Food for hungry children that was too risky to harvest.
And Rick, killed in an ambush she could never acknowledge because of that damn simplistic view…and a nondisclosure agreement.
The man cut deep into her thoughts with his smooth voice. “You had a young soldier working for you. A Rick Cahill?”
The sun beat hard on her back. With no breakfast to fortify her, her knees weakened to those of a newborn calf. And her everchurning stomach—
She swallowed again, at the same time locking her knees to steady them. “Yes, Rick worked for me.” How did she manage to sound so calm?
The man’s piercing eyes darkened and the creases between his brows deepened. “I’m Jon Cahill. Rick’s brother. I’ve come to find out exactly what happened to Rick the night he died.”
Jon waited for the woman in front of him to answer. All she did was pale dramatically. If he hadn’t seen an obvious faint before, he’d have accused Sylvie Mitchell of offering a distraction to hide something important concerning Rick’s death.
He might still do that.
But her eyes glazed over and one undulating wave wobbled through her body. His wife, no, ex-wife now, had done this exact same damn thing before she’d dropped to the ground. She’d been pregnant with another man’s child.
Jon caught Sylvie Mitchell before she fell. Quickly he wrapped his left arm around her back and bent to shove his right hand under her jean-clad knees. Scooping her up, he marched across the street and straight back into the medical center.
Thankfully, an elderly couple opened all the doors for him, and the startled receptionist who a moment before had pointed out Sylvie, hurried to locate a free bed in the adjoining ward.
“She’s fainted,” he stated, laying her down on the examination bed. A nurse bustled in, shoving him back as she began a quick assessment.
A movement caught his attention. The receptionist had opened the door to leave, but not before eyeing him with open curiosity. Did she expect him to follow?
No way. And he told her so with a sharp
