Bound by Honor: Mercenary's Woman

“You wanted to get rid of me…”

He put his thumb over her soft mouth. “I wanted you,” he whispered huskily. “But a seventeen-year-old isn’t mature enough for a love affair. And that would have been impossible in Jacobsville, even if I’d been crazy enough to go all the way with you that day. You were almost thirteen years my junior.”

She was beginning to see things from his point of view. She hadn’t tried before. There had been so much resentment, so much bitterness, so much hurt. She looked at him and saw, for the first time, the pain of the memory in his face.

“I was desperate,” she said, speaking softly. “They told me out of the blue that they were divorcing each other. They were selling the house and moving out of town. Dad was going to marry Beverly, this girl he’d met at the college where he taught. Mom couldn’t live in the same town with everybody knowing that Dad had thrown her over for someone younger. She married a man she hardly knew shortly afterward, just to save her pride.” She stared at his mouth with more hunger than she realized. “I knew that I’d never see you again. I only wanted you to kiss me.” She swallowed, averting her eyes. “I must have been crazy.”

“We both were.” He cupped her face in his hands and lifted it to his quiet eyes. “For what it’s worth, I never meant it to go further than a kiss. A very chaste kiss, at that.” His eyes drifted down involuntarily to the soft thrust of her breasts almost touching his shirt. He raised an eyebrow at the obvious points. “That’s why it wasn’t chaste.”

She didn’t understand. “What is?”

He looked absolutely exasperated. “How can you be that old and know nothing?” he asked. He glanced over her shoulder at Stevie, who was facing the other way and giving the punching bag hell. He took Sally’s own finger and drew it across her taut breast. He looked straight into her eyes as he said softly, “That’s why.”

She realized that it must have something to do with being aroused, but no one had ever told her blatantly that it was a visible sign of desire. She went scarlet.

“You greenhorn,” he murmured indulgently. “What a babe in arms.”

“I don’t read those sort of books,” she said haughtily.

“You should. In fact, I’ll buy you a set of them. Maybe a few videos, too,” he murmured absently, watching the expressions come and go on her face.

“You varmint…!”

He caught her top lip in both of his and ran his tongue lazily under it. She stiffened, but her hands were clinging to him, not pushing.

“You remember that, don’t you, Sally?” he murmured with a smile. “Do you remember what comes next?”

She jerked back from him, staggering. Her eyes found Stevie, still oblivious to the adults.

Eb’s eyes were blatant on the thrust of her breasts and he was smiling.

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared up at him. “You just stop that,” she gritted. “I’ll bet you weren’t born knowing everything!”

He chuckled. “No, I wasn’t. But I didn’t have a mother to keep my nose clean, either,” he said. “My old man was military down to his toenails, and he didn’t believe in gentle handling or delicacy. He used women until the day he died.” He laughed coldly. “He told me that there was no such thing as a good woman, that they were to be enjoyed and put aside.”

She was appalled. “Didn’t he love your mother?”

“He wanted her, and she wouldn’t be with him until they got married,” he said simply. “So they got married. She died having me. They were living in a small town outside the military base where he was stationed. He was overseas on assignment and she lived alone, isolated. She went into labor and there were complications. There was nothing that could have been done for her by the time she was found. If a neighbor hadn’t come to look in on us, I’d have died with her.”

“It must have been a shock for your father,” she said.

“If it was, it never showed. He left me with a cousin until I was old enough to obey orders, then I went to live with him. I learned a lot from him, but he wasn’t a loving man.” His eyes narrowed on her soft face. “I followed his example and joined the army. I was lucky enough to get into the Green Berets. Then when I was due for discharge, a man approached me about a top secret assignment and told me what it would pay.” He shrugged. “Money is a great temptation for a young man with a domineering father. I said yes and he never spoke to me again. He said that what I was doing was a perversion of the military, and that I wasn’t fit to be any officer’s son. He disowned me on the spot. I didn’t hear from him again. A few years later, I got a letter from his post commander, stating that he’d died in combat. He had a military funeral with full honors.”

The pain of those years was in his lean, hard face. Impulsively she put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry,” she told him quietly. “He must have been the sort of man who only sees one side of any argument.”

He was surprised by her compassion. “Don’t you think mercenaries are evil, Miss Purity?” he asked sarcastically.

CHAPTER THREE

SALLY LOOKED UP INTO PAIN-LACED green eyes and without thinking, she lifted her hand from his arm and raised it toward his hard cheek. But when she realized what she was doing, she drew it back at once.

“No, I don’t think mercenaries are evil,” she said quickly, embarrassed by the impulsive gesture that, thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice. “There are a lot of countries where atrocities are committed, whose governments don’t have the manpower or resources to protect their people. So, someone else gets hired to do it. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, when there’s a legitimate cause.”

He was surprised by her matter-of-fact manner. He’d wondered for years how she might react when she learned about what he did for a living. He’d expected everything from revulsion to shock, especially when he remembered how his former fiancée had reacted to the news. But Sally wasn’t squeamish or judgmental.

He’d seen her hand jerk back and it had wounded him. But now, on hearing her opinion of his work, his heart lifted. “I didn’t expect you to credit me with noble motives.”

“They are, though, aren’t they?” she asked confidently.

“As a matter of fact, in my case, they are,” he replied. “Even in my green days, I never did it just for the money. I had to believe in what I was risking my life for.”

She grinned. “I thought maybe it was like on television,” she confessed. “But Jess said it was nothing like fiction.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he mused. “Parts of it are.”

“Such as?”

“We had a guy like ‘B.A. Barrabas’ in one unit I led,” he said. “We really did have to knock him out to get him on a plane. But he quit the group before we got inventive.”

She laughed. “Too bad. You’d have had plenty of stories to tell about him.”

He was quiet for a moment, studying her.

“Do I have a zit on my nose?” she asked pleasantly.

He reached out and caught the hand she’d started to lift toward him earlier and kissed its soft palm. “Let’s get to work,” he said, pulling her along to the mat. “I’ll change into my sweats and we’ll cover the basics. We won’t have a lot of time,” he added dryly. “I expect Jess to call very soon with an ultimatum about Dallas.”

JESS AND DALLAS HAD SQUARED OFF, in fact, the minute they heard the truck crank and pull out of the yard.

Dallas glared at her from his superior height, leaning heavily on his cane. He wished she could see him, because his eyes were full of anger and bitterness.

“Did you think I wouldn’t see that Stevie is the living image of me? My son,” he growled at her. “You had my son! And you lied to me about it and wouldn’t ask Hank for a divorce!”

“I couldn’t!” she exclaimed. “For heaven’s sake, he adored me. He’d never have cheated on me. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I’d had an affair with his best friend!”

“I could have told him,” he returned furiously. “He was no angel, Jess, despite the wings you’re trying to paint on him. Or do you think he never strayed on those overseas jaunts?” he chided.

She stiffened. “That’s not true!”

“It is true!” he replied angrily. “He knew he couldn’t get anybody pregnant, and he was sure you’d never find out.”

She put a hand to her head. She’d never dreamed that Hank had cheated on her. She’d felt so guilty, when all the time, he was doing the same thing—and then judging her brutally for what she’d done. “I didn’t know,” she said miserably.

“Would it have made a difference?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it would have.” She smoothed the dress over her legs. “You thought Stevie was yours from the beginning, didn’t you?”

“No. I didn’t know Hank was sterile until later on. You told me the child was Hank’s and I believed you. Hell, by then, I couldn’t even be sure that it was his.”