In Bed with a Stranger

Five months later.British Military Base, Theatre of Operations.Thursday, 6.15 a. m.

THE sun was rising, turning the sky pink and the sand to gold. Rubbing his hand over eyes that were gritty with sand and exhaustion, Kit looked out across the desert and idly wondered if he’d be alive to watch it set again.

He’d slept for perhaps an hour, maybe two, and dreamed of Sophie. Waking in the dark, his body was taut with thwarted desire, his mind racing, and the scent of her skin was still in his nostrils.

He almost preferred the insomnia.

Five months. Twenty-two weeks. One hundred and fifty-four days. By now the craving for her should have faded, but if anything it had got more intense, more impossible to ignore. He hadn’t phoned her, even though at times the longing to hear her voice burned like a laser inside him, knowing that if he did it would only add fuel to the fire. And knowing that there was nothing that could be said across six thousand miles that would possibly be enough.

Just one more day.

In twenty-four hours he would be flying out of here. Flying home. There was a sense of suppressed excitement amongst

the men in his unit, a mixture of relief and exhilaration that had been building over the last week as the days dwindled.

It was a feeling Kit didn’t share.

He’d been in bomb disposal for a long time. He’d never thought of it as anything other than a job; a dirty, awkward, challenging, exhausting, addictive, necessary job. But that was in the days when he thought rather than felt. When his emotions had been comfortably locked away in some part of him that was buried so deep he didn’t even know it was there.

Everything was different now. He wasn’t who he’d thought he was—quite literally thanks to the lies the man he’d called his father had told him all his life. But also, loving Sophie had blown him wide open, revealing parts of him he hadn’t known existed, and now the job seemed dirtier, the stakes higher, the odds shorter. So much shorter.

One more day. Would his luck last?

‘Major Fitzroy—coffee, sir. We’re almost ready to move out.’

Kit turned. Sapper Lewis had emerged from the mess hut and was walking towards him, spilling most of the coffee. An earnest kid of nineteen, he had the gawky enthusiasm of a Great Dane puppy. It made Kit feel about a thousand years old. He took the enamel mug and grimaced as he swallowed.

‘Thank you, Lewis,’ Kit drawled. ‘Other men I know have curvaceous secretaries to bring them coffee in the morning. I have you to bring me something that tastes like freshly brewed dirt.’

Lewis grinned. ‘You’ll miss me when you get home.’

‘I sincerely doubt it.’ Kit took another mouthful of coffee and chucked the rest into the dust as he began to walk away. Not before he’d seen Lewis’s face fall though.

‘Fortunately you make a far better infantryman than a barista,’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘Bear that in mind when you get home, won’t you?’

‘Yes, sir!’ Lewis hurried after him. ‘And can I just say

how great it’s been working with you, sir? I’ve learned loads. Before this tour I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay in the army, but watching you has made me decide to go into EOD.’

Kit stopped. Rubbing a hand across his jaw, he turned round.

‘Do you have a girlfriend, Sapper?’

Lewis shifted from foot to foot, his face a mixture of pride and embarrassment. His Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘Yeah. Kelly. She’s expecting a baby in two months’ time. I’m going to ask her to marry me this leave.’

Narrowing his eyes as he looked out to the flat horizon, Kit nodded.

‘You love her?’

‘Yes, sir.’ He scuffed the dust with the toe of his boot. ‘We haven’t been together long, but … yeah. I really love her.’

‘Then take my advice. Learn to make a decent coffee and get yourself a job in Starbucks after all, because love and bomb disposal don’t mix.’ With a cool smile Kit handed the enamel mug back to him. ‘Now, let’s get out there and get this done so we can all go home.’

‘Sorry I’m late.’

Smiling broadly in a way that didn’t remotely suggest contrition and trying not to knock over anyone’s designer beer with her shopping bags, Sophie slid into the chair opposite Jasper at the little metal table.

He eyed the bags archly. ‘I take it you were unavoidably detained in …’ His brows shot up another inch as he saw the discreet logo of Covent Garden’s ‘erotic boutique’ on the corner of the biggest bag. ‘Kit’s in for a treat when he gets home.’

Shoving the bags under the table, Sophie tucked the great big bunch of vibrantly coloured flowers she’d just bought into the empty chair beside her and tried to stop herself from grinning like a love-struck loon.

‘I’ve just spent an indecent amount of money,’ she admitted,snatching up a menu and sliding her sunglasses onto the top of her head to read it. The table Jasper had chosen was in the shade of a red awning, which gave a healthy glow to his poetic pallor. He was so different from Kit it was incredible that they’d believed they were brothers for so long.

‘On some pretty indecent stuff, if I know that shop.’ Jasper peered into a corner of the bag.

‘It’s just a nightdress thing,’ Sophie said hastily, hoping he wouldn’t take out the wicked little slip of silvery-grey silk and display it in front of the lunch crowd outside Covent Garden’s busiest restaurant. ‘I was passing, and as I just got paid for the vampire movie, and Kit is coming home tomorrow I thought, What the hell? But really, it was way too expensive.’

‘Don’t be daft. Your days of buying clothes from charity shops and bread from the reduced shelf in the supermarket are over now, darling.’ Jasper looked around to catch the eye of the waiter, then turned back to her and rubbed his hands together as if in anticipation. ‘Just a few hours left of singlegirldom before Kits gets home and you become a full-time fiancée. Planning any wild parties?’

‘I’m saving that for when he gets back, in about …’ Sophie checked the time on her phone ‘… twenty-eight hours. Let’s see … they’re five hours ahead of us, so he should be just finishing his last shift about now.’

Jasper must have caught the note of anxiety in her voice because he covered her hand with his. ‘Don’t think about it,’ he said firmly. ‘You’ve done brilliantly—I’d have gone out of my mind with worry if it had been Sergio out there, dicing with death every day. You’re very brave.’

‘Hardly, compared to Kit.’ Her throat dried and she looked down at the menu as the waiter made his way towards them. She tried to picture Kit now—hot, dirty, exhausted. For five months he had been looking after a battalion of men, putting

their needs above his own. She wanted him home so she could look after him.

Amongst other things.

‘Soph?’

‘What? Oh, sorry.’ Realising the waiter’s pen was poised for her to give her order, Sophie asked for a Salade Niçoise, which was the first thing that caught her eye. Scribbling it down, the waiter moved away, his slim hips swaying as he wove through the tables.

‘Kit’s used to it,’ Jasper said absently, watching him go. ‘He’s been doing it for years. How is he, anyway?’

‘Oh … you know … he sounds OK,’ she lied vaguely. ‘But I want to hear about you. Are you and Sergio all packed and ready to hit tinseltown?’

Jasper leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hands over his face. ‘The packing’s ongoing, but, believe me, I have never been more ready for anything in my life. After everything that’s happened in the last six months—Dad dying, the whole coming-out thing, Alnburgh turning out to be mine and not Kit’s—I can’t wait to get on that plane and just leave it all behind. I intend to spend the next three months lying by the pool drinking cocktails while Sergio’s at work.’

‘If I didn’t know you better I’d say you were ruthlessly attempting to make me wild with envy.’

‘Rumbled.’ Jasper grinned as the waiter arrived, his tray held high. ‘Is it working?’

‘Nope.’ The waiter placed a large gin and tonic clinking with ice in front of her. ‘The pool and the cocktails sound lovely, but honestly for the first time in my life I have no desire to be anywhere other than here. Well, not here, obviously,’ she said, nodding towards one of Covent Garden’s famous street performers, ‘since there’s only so long I could watch a poncey out-of-work actor juggle with knives. But at home. With Kit.’

Jasper eyed her narrowly, tapping his pursed lips thoughtfully with a finger.

‘I’m thinking alien abduction. I know there should be a more logical explanation for this complete character transformation from the girl who still has a phone on pay-as-you-go because a contract is too much commitment, to the woman whose idea of excitement is …’ he waved a dismissive hand ‘… pegging out washing or something, but I just can’t think what it could be …’