LITMIR.BIZ

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still been a teenager, Riley might have considered having two women in his bed a dream come true. Especially in this room. He’d grown up in this house, had had plenty of fantasies in that very bed. But he was thirty-one now, and with his shoulder throbbing like an abscessed tooth, taking on two women didn’t fall into fantasy territory. More like suicide.

      Besides, man-rule number two applied here: don’t do anything half-assed. Anything he attempted right now would be significantly less than half and would make an ass out of him.

      Who the hell were they?

      And why were they there in his house, in his bed?

      The place was supposed to be empty since he’d called ahead and given the cook and housekeeper the week off. The sisters, Della and Stella, had pretty much run the house since Riley’s folks had been killed in a car wreck thirteen years ago. Clearing out the pair hadn’t been easy, but he’d used his captain’s I’m-giving-the-orders-here voice.

      For once it had worked.

      His kid sister was away at college. His older brother Lucky was God knew where. Lucky’s twin, Logan, was on a business trip and wouldn’t be back for at least another week. Even when Logan returned, he’d be spending far more time running the family’s cattle brokerage company than actually in the house. That lure of emptiness was the only reason Riley had decided to come here for some peace and quiet.

      And so that nobody would see him wincing and grunting in pain.

      Riley glanced around to try to figure out who the women were and why they were there. When he checked the family room, he saw a clue by the fireplace. A banner. Well, sort of. He flicked on the lights to get a better look. It was a ten-foot strip of white crepe paper.

      Welcome Home, Riley, Our Hero, was written on it.

      The black ink had bled, and the tape on one side had given way, and now it dangled and coiled like a soy-sauced ramen noodle.

      There were bowls of chips, salsa and other food on the coffee table next to a picture of him in his uniform. Someone had tossed flag confetti all around the snacks, and some of the red, white and blue sparkles had landed on the floor and sofa. In the salsa, too.

      Apparently, this was supposed to be the makings of a homecoming party for him.

      Whoever had done this probably hadn’t counted on his flight from the base in Germany being delayed nine hours. Riley hadn’t counted on it, either. Now, it was three in the morning, and he darn sure didn’t want to celebrate.

      Or have women in his bed.

      And he hoped it didn’t lower his testosterone a couple of notches to have an unmanly thought like that.

      Riley put his duffel bag on the floor. Not quietly, but the women didn’t stir even an eyelash. He considered just waking them, but heck, that would require talking to them, and the only thing he wanted right now was another hit of pain meds and a place to collapse.

      He went to the bedroom next to his. A guest room. No covers or pillows, which would mean a hunt to find some. That sent him to Lucky’s room on the other side of the hall. Covers, yes, but there was another woman asleep facedown with her sleeve-tattooed arm dangling off the side. There was also a saddle on the foot of the bed. Thankfully, Riley’s mind was too clouded to even want to consider why it was there.

      Getting desperate now and feeling a little like Goldilocks in search of a “just right” place to crash, he went to Logan’s suite, the only other bedroom downstairs. Definitely covers there. He didn’t waste the energy to turn on the light to have a closer look; since this was Logan’s space, it would no doubt be clean enough to pass a military inspection.

      No saddles or women, thank God, and he wouldn’t have to climb the stairs that he wasn’t sure he could climb anyway.

      Riley popped a couple of pain meds and dropped down on the bed, his eyes already closing before his head landed against something soft and crumbly. He considered investigating it. Briefly considered it. But when it didn’t bite, shoot or scald him, he passed on the notion of an investigation.

      Whatever was soft and crumbly would just have to wait.

      * * *

      RILEY JACKKNIFED IN Logan’s bed, the pain knocking the breath right out of him. Without any kind of warning, the nightmare that he’d been having had morphed into a full-fledged flashback.

      Sometimes he could catch the flashback just as it was bubbling to the surface, and he could stomp it back down with his mental steel-toed combat boots. Sometimes humming “Jingle Bells” helped.

      Not this time, though.

      The flashback had him by the throat before Riley could even get out a single note of that stupid song he hated. Why had his brain chosen that little Christmas ditty to blur out the images anyway?

      The smell came first. Always the fucking smell. The dust and debris whipped up by the chopper. The Pave Hawk blades slicing through the dirt-colored smoke. But not drowning out the sounds.

      He wasn’t sure how sounds like that could make it through the thump of the blades, the shouts, screams and the chaos. But they did. The sounds always did.

      Someone was calling for help in a dialect Riley barely understood. But you didn’t need to know the words to hear the fear.

      Or smell it.

      The images came with a vengeance. Like a chopped-up snake crawling and coiling together to form a neat picture of hell. A handful of buildings on fire, others ripped apart from the explosion. Blood on the bleached-out sand. The screams for help. The kids.

      Why the hell were there kids?

      Riley had been trained to rescue military and civilians after the fight, after all hell had broken loose. Had been conditioned to deal with fires, blood, IEDs, gunfire, and being dropped into the middle of it so he could do his job and save lives.

      But nobody had ever been able to tell him how to deal with the kids.

      PTSD. Such a tidy little label. A dialect that civilians understood, or thought they did anyway. But it was just another label for shit. Shit that Riley didn’t want in his head.

      He grabbed his pain meds from the pocket of his uniform and shoved one, then another into his parched mouth. Soon, very soon, he could start stomping the images back into that little shoe box he’d built in his head.

      Soon.

      He closed his eyes, the words finally coming that he needed to hear.

      “Jingle bells, jingle bells...”

      He really did need to come up with a more manly sounding song to kick some flashback ass.

CHAPTER TWO

      “HI DA TOOKIE,” someone whispered.

      Riley was sure he was still dreaming. At least, he was sure of it until someone poked him on the cheek.

      Hell. What now?

      “Hi da tookie,” the voice repeated. Again in a whisper.

      Obviously this was some kind of code or foreign language, but Riley’s head was too foggy to process it. He groaned—and, yeah, it was a groan of pain—and forced his eyelids open so he could try to figure out what the heck was going on.

      Eyeballs stared back at him.

      Eyeballs that were really close. Like, just an inch from his.

      That jolted him fully awake, and Riley automatically reached for his weapon. Which wasn’t there, of course. He wasn’t on assignment in hostile territory. He was in his own family’s home. And the eyes so close to his didn’t belong to the enemy.

      They belonged to a kid.

      A kid with brown eyes and dark brown hair. Maybe two or three years old, and he had a smear of something on his

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