LITMIR.BIZ

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That’s life.” Helen leaned a little closer to the screen and lowered her voice. “Tom’s family isn’t easy to deal with, I have to say, but my parents love Tom and he loves them. He says that’s icing on the wedding cake. He gets an extended family along with a bride. You’ve been with Gerard-Pierre for a year. Why not meet his family? If you love someone, you’ll probably love the family that made him who he is.”

      Ah, Bernardo. Before Adolphus, there’d been Bernardo. He’d been loud but affectionate, and when she’d met his family, she’d immediately seen why he was the way he was. The Italian language had stormed all around her as his extended family talked over one another, cheered for one another, cooked for one another. They’d been appalled she was an only child, but they’d lovingly demanded that she bring her parents with her on the next visit. Since Italian wasn’t one of her languages, she’d awkwardly and accidentally said she’d become an orphan that year, when what she’d meant was that her mother had left her for her first trip around the world that year. Bernardo had cleared up the misunderstanding, but his family had kept their real concern whether or not a girl who had no family would know how to make a family with their precious son. Bernardo had started worrying, too.

       They were right. I wouldn’t know how.

      “I enjoy being just two adults who share some time together, you know? Nice and simple. Meeting the family is always the kiss of death. I’d rather not go there with Gerard-Pierre.”

      “It’s just sad that you’re breaking up with a man you enjoy sharing time with just because his family is visiting for Christmas.”

      “We haven’t shared a lot of time. Not lately. We were going to try to get to Paris for the holidays, but now that his family’s here, I’m guessing that’s off.” She waved the note again. “That’s probably what he wants to talk about after dinner, which could be midnight, by the way. I wish he’d just say he has to cancel Paris. It’s not a big deal.”

      In fact, it was a relief. The prospect of reviving their sex life in a hotel near the Eiffel Tower had been a little intimidating. She didn’t know why he’d lost interest, but she’d had a feeling Gerard-Pierre was going to use this trip to list all of her shortcomings as a sexual partner—neatly, and in French.

      “Canceling plans for a romantic trip to Paris is no big deal to you? I’d be weeping.”

      “It’s only a train ride from here. Maybe an hour and a half. Maybe a hundred bucks. I didn’t really want to go.”

      “Honest, roomie?” Helen pointed at her through the screen, wagging her finger in warning. “Are you telling the truth? I don’t have to worry about you being lonely at the holidays?”

      “Honest, roomie.” But as India looked at the extra sparkle in her friend’s eyes and that sparkle on her ring finger, that pang of longing for that something sharpened.

      * * *

      Aiden folded his sister’s note and slipped it into one of the pockets of his camouflage uniform. Two pennies in the pocket jingled together, one from Olympia, one from Poppy. He used to carry a penny from their mother. There would never be another penny from her; it made the other two pennies all the more priceless.

      There would never be another penny from any woman. He dated now and then, when there was some event that was clearly for adults only: a rock concert, a wine tasting. But he couldn’t imagine loving another woman enough to turn his little family of three into a family of four. She’d have to be so special, impossibly special, someone he wanted very badly, someone who loved his daughters as much as she loved him.

      He stood and shoved in his desk chair, then left his office to head for the battalion headquarters conference room.

      He couldn’t imagine it...but if he could, what would that be like?

      The pang of longing that hit his heart was sharp.

      Unexpected.

      There was plenty of love in his life. He’d be a greedy man to want more.

      He strode into the conference room, tossed his binder onto his seat near the head of the table, then headed for the window. He had four minutes to get his mind back on work before the battalion commander arrived and expected him to conduct the meeting.

      The view was boring: square army buildings on flat Texas land. The grass had turned brown for the winter, but there was no snow. They never got more than flurries in Central Texas. It was just as well; there was nothing to remind him how close to Christmas they were.

      The reason his sister had been able to take his daughters for a week of fun was that her employer had given her the time off for the Christmas holiday. The reason Aiden had watched them leave for the airport without him was because he was an officer in the army; he didn’t get to decide when he got time off with his family.

      That came with the job. In his twelve years of service, he’d missed family holidays before, twice while deployed to combat theaters. But today, it chafed. The reason he had to be parted from his family wasn’t something critical, like combat overseas. It wasn’t an essential task, like security or law enforcement here on post. There was no natural disaster to respond to, no citizens who needed immediate help.

      Instead, Aiden was looking at a week without his girls because of a training exercise. A pretend deployment. That was what the army did when they weren’t at war: they pretended they were at war.

       Bad attitude, Nord. Check yourself.

      They rehearsed their wartime missions.

       Better.

      But the week before Christmas was just about the worst time to schedule a monster-sized training exercise that could have been scheduled for any other week of the year.

       That’s not a bad attitude. That’s a fact.

      It wasn’t his call to make. The schedule had been set by someone much higher up. He would stand at this window and get his head in the game because today’s meeting mattered. It was their last opportunity to fine-tune their plans before the simulation began tomorrow at dawn.

      Those plans were Aiden’s responsibility. He was the battalion operations officer, known as the S-3. The S-3 wrote the orders. The S-3 designed the training that kept the entire battalion in readiness for future missions, and the purpose of this week’s exercise was to test that training.

      The battalion consisted of four military police companies here at Fort Hood, including the 584th MP Company, where Aiden had first served as a young lieutenant. Back then, he’d led a platoon of thirty soldiers. Now, twelve years and six other posts later, he was once more at Fort Hood, serving as the operations officer for roughly six hundred soldiers.

      Out of six hundred soldiers, the order of command responsibility went from the battalion commander to the executive officer to him, the operations officer. The CO to the XO to the S-3. Put bluntly, if the commander and the executive officer were to die, Aiden took over command of the battalion. That had never happened, never come close to happening in real life, but during these training exercises? Yeah. They’d pretend to kill off the CO or the XO at some point, and Aiden would take over the battalion.

      In other words, he had to be here.

      His children did not. It was better for them to go have fun with his sister than it would be for them to stay in the house with a sitter, wondering why Daddy didn’t come home for ninety-six hours straight. He’d done the right thing by letting his sister take them away.

      Aiden looked out the window at the dead grass and jingled the two pennies in his pocket.

       Chapter Two

      “Okay.”

      “Okay?” India asked, just to be sure Helen meant it.

      “I agree you should break up with Gérard-Depardieu-Pepé-Le-Pew,

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