LITMIR.BIZ

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abounded in Anais. Tender heart. Soft, free-flowing wavy strawberry-blonde hair. Curves that bewitched him. Gentle aqua eyes. Youthfully plump cheeks and lips... Soft.

      A red mark darkened that formerly plump cheek, outside the blush that had already faded. She’d had her ear to the door listening when he’d slammed it open. Not locking it. Or maybe not locking it yet, whatever she’d claimed.

      She made herself sound even harder than she appeared. That physical angularity was by far the biggest change, and the one that had momentarily thrown him when she’d come into Ben’s quarters. Not her hair color, her eye color, the glasses, or that suspicious tan... It was how square her jaw seemed now, the gauntness of her cheeks, and the now slender but apparently strong body supporting it all. Anna Kincaid was hard.

      He didn’t know what else to say.

      For seven years, he’d had a million questions for her—mostly in the first couple of years when everything was hardest. But now, standing here, he didn’t want to ask her why she’d gone. Those old wounds could pop back open with the slightest prod. His chest already ached just looking at this shadow of his brightly colored Anais.

      “Are you living back in Easton?”

      “No. Are you still at the penthouse?”

      “Yes,” he answered. Why it had been so important to him to come find her after speaking with Ben? “Is there something you want to say to me?”

      Like I’m sorry?

      She shook her head, then seemed to change her mind as the shaking turned into a nod, her voice going quieter. “How do you know Lieutenant Nettle?”

      “Served together. First tour,” Quinn answered again. Did she feel anything for him anymore? Besides anger? Somehow, he’d earned her anger? Her anger, and the fact that she wanted him gone was all he could make out. Her eyes used to sparkle when she saw him, even the last time she’d seen him—which she’d no doubt known would be the last time—they’d still sparkled. But with them hidden under those unremarkable brown contacts, he couldn’t see it. Or it wasn’t there. A wife who had feelings for her husband...her ex-husband even...wouldn’t look so hard when he’d never wronged her. Never done anything wrong but love her. Even a friend would look kindly upon a soldier returning home after seven years in a war zone, but she just wanted him gone.

      Over the course of his tours, he’d learned to fight his way out of dodgy situations. Fight and survive first, complete the mission second. He couldn’t fight his way out of this. He didn’t even know where to start.

      He could make her feel anger, maybe some polite curiosity, but nothing else. Touching her would just hurt him; there was no Braille hidden on her flesh that would tell him the truth, or what he wanted to hear: that she regretted leaving, that she’d suffered because of it, that she was sorry.

      He forced his arms to relax, then thought better of it and wrenched his mangled left hand from his pocket to present to her.

      “Ben was there to help when my fingers were shot off.” Seeing her blanch only emboldened him. With as much detail as he could summon from that day, he described the way the wedding band he’d still worn had become platinum shrapnel Ben had to pull from the remains of his palm. The way Ben had to cut away his dangling finger. “And that still hurt less than you.”

      Her eyes went round, with his hand held up for her inspection, and her breathing increased in speed and force; soon the heated air fanned his hand across the distance. The two fingers, thumb, and partial palm felt the flutter like the barest breeze.

      “Get used to seeing me around here. I’ll try to keep the cameras away, for Ben’s sake.”

      Her open-mouthed breathing turned to choking, and he realized she was going to be sick a half-second before she turned and flung herself over her office trash bin and retched. Her whole body convulsed with the force of each spasm.

      His stomach lurched too.

      Damn.

      They’d both changed. The last vestiges of the man who’d married her, who’d loved her, felt sick too, wanted to look away.

      But the realist he’d had to become couldn’t feel too badly. What had even made her sick? Hearing how he’d lost his fingers, or the idea the cameras that invariably ended up following him might catch sight of her?

      As if it mattered. He should leave her there, let her get on with it, savor the little thrill of revenge that had run through him at her visceral reaction.

      He wouldn’t pull her hair aside and soothe her back. He wouldn’t apologize for not softening the brutality of that situation for her, the way he’d softened it for his family.

      She wasn’t his family anymore. She’d been the one to leave. And he’d never gotten to say anything to her about it, since his family had shipped him off to boot camp directly afterward.

      What was a little vomiting in that context?

       CHAPTER TWO

      NEVER BEFORE IN his homeland had Quinn felt so tense while riding in the back of a car. Every prior leave, he’d been able to disconnect that hyper-alert state traveling in a Humvee usually triggered while on duty.

      First Ben, then Anais—both wrecked him. But going home for real—not just another leave—was the cherry on top of a terrible day.

      Despite his late arrival—and he hadn’t missed the fact that it had grown dark—Quinn had been requested to arrive by the main entrance. Usually he’d have gone around to a smaller, more private entrance.

      It was showtime for the press.

      But it looked relatively empty now, only a few cameras lingering to the side.

      If he had to climb the grand entrance to go inside, he’d let himself out of the car. Quinn jumped from the back as soon as it stopped, thanking the driver over the seats, closed the door and jogged up, waving in passing at the few tenacious photographers who’d waited. No talking. No posing. He barely smiled.

      Once inside, he bypassed servants, ignoring the familiar opulence he’d been raised in, and hurried across the foyer to the King’s wing. Within two minutes, he knocked and opened the door to the King’s study, but found Philip sitting behind the desk.

      “You’re not the King,” Quinn murmured, making sure to gently close that door too.

      His youthful habit had always been to bound through doors and expect them to close behind him—the same tactic he’d used with nearly everything: bound through, expect it to get sorted out in his wake. A tactic his family had spent years trying to talk him out of, and which his divorce and sudden soldier status had actually accomplished. Now he paid attention to doors. It was something small he could always control, and doors often presented a hazard or added protection. Doors now mattered.

      Philip rose, checking his watch, but smiling anyway. “And you’re not here at noon.”

      “No, I’m not.” He should try to be amiable, but at that precise moment all he could hear was Anais’s confession that Philip had changed her name. “Why didn’t you tell me Anais was back in the country?”

      He tried to sound calm, but even a dead man would’ve heard the bitterness in his voice.

      Philip had rounded the desk, hand out to shake Quinn’s, but he dropped it to his side with the question. “I was going to tell you when you got here. It seemed like an in-person kind of conversation to have. You’ve seen her already?”

      “She’s working at Almsford Castle with amputees. I went there to visit my friend, Ben Nettle; I told you about him. And that’s...a story I really would rather not get into right now. But you know she’s not fooling anyone by dipping herself in brown dye.”

      “She fooled me.” Philip shrugged, and then reached out to grab Quinn

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