Heart of a Hero: The Soldier's Seduction / The Heart of a Mercenary / Straight Through the Heart

“There’s a man sitting on the front porch. In the swing.”

The news was almost anticlimactic, considering that she’d been fearing a high fever, blood or broken bones.

“Sitting? And what else?”

“Nothing else.” Phoebe realized Angie wasn’t breathless; she was whispering. “He came to the door but I didn’t answer, so he sat down on the swing and I thought I’d better call you.” Her voice quavered a little.

Phoebe remembered how young her sitter was, newly graduated from high school and still living with her parents on the next street over, taking evening classes at a local community college. Phoebe had met Angie’s mother in her Sunday-school class and had felt lucky to find Angie.

“You did exactly right,” she assured the younger woman. “If all he’s doing is sitting there, just stay inside with the doors closed. I’m only a few blocks from home.”

She pulled into her driveway a few minutes later, the cell phone’s line still open. There was a gray sedan with a rental tag parked in front of her house. Maybe it belonged to whoever was waiting on her front porch.

“Okay, Angie,” she said. “I’m home. You stay right where you are until I come inside.”

She took a deep breath. Should she call the police? Common sense told her whoever was waiting on her porch probably wasn’t a criminal. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be here in the middle of the day, unconcerned about the neighbors taking down his license plate or identifying him. She positioned her keys between her fingers with one key thrust outward, as she’d learned in the self-defense class she’d taken when she’d first started college. Then she pivoted on her heel and headed up her front walk.

She started up the porch steps, unable to see the swing because of the trellis of roses blooming across the front of the porch. She knew from experience that a person sitting there on the swing could see out much more easily than anyone could see in.

As she reached the porch, a very large man came into view. Adrenaline rushed through her as he began to rise from the swing. She angled her body to confront him.

“What are—Wade!”

As the man’s identity registered, a wave of shock slammed into her. It couldn’t be.

Wade was dead.

Her knees felt as if they might buckle and she groped for the railing behind her. The keys fell to the floor with a loud jangle. “You—you’re Wade.” An inane statement. Of course it was Wade.

He was smiling but his eyes were watchful as he took a step forward. “Yeah. Hi, Phoebe.”

“B-b-but…”

His smile faded as she took a step backward. One eyebrow rose in a quirk as familiar to her as her own smile in the mirror. That quizzical expression had been only one of the things she’d loved about Wade Donnelly. “But what?” he asked quietly.

“I thought you were dead!” She blurted out the words as her legs gave way and she sank to the top step, dropping her head onto her knees as incredulity warred with a strong desire to cry hysterically.

Footsteps rang out as Wade crossed the porch and then the boards of the top step depressed as he sat down beside her. One large hand touched her back. “My God,” she said, the words muffled. “You really are here, aren’t you?”

“I’m really here.” It was definitely Wade, his distinctly masculine tone one she would recognize anywhere. He touched her back again, just one small uncertain touch, and she had to fight the urge to throw herself into his arms.

He never really belonged to me, she reminded herself.

“I’m sorry it’s such a shock.” His voice was quiet and deep and rang with sincerity. “I was presumed to be dead for a couple of days until I could get back to my unit. But that was months ago.”

“How long have you been home?” He’d been deployed right after Melanie’s funeral. The memory brought back others she’d tried to forget, as well, and she focused on his answer, trying to ignore the past.

“About five weeks. I’ve been trying to find you.” He hesitated for a moment. “June gave me your address and she knew I survived. I assumed she—or someone back home—had told you.”

“No.” She shook her head without lifting it. She’d stopped reading the news from home the day she’d read his obituary. And though she’d sent June a Christmas card this year, they hadn’t exchanged more than signatures since she’d moved.

Silence fell. She sensed that he didn’t know what to say any more than she did—

Bridget! Shocked that she could have forgotten her own child for a moment—particularly this moment—Phoebe leaped to her feet, ignoring Wade’s startled exclamation. “Just—ah, just let me put my things inside,” she said. “Then we can talk.”

Her hands trembled as she turned away from the man she’d loved throughout her adolescent years and into young womanhood. The keys were slippery in her sweaty grasp and she dropped them again. Before she could react, Wade came to her side and stretched down for the keys.

“Here.”

“Thank you.” She took the keys carefully, without touching his hand, fumbled the correct one into the lock and opened her front door.

Reality hit her in the face again. Wade Donnelly was alive and waiting to talk to her. And she had to tell him she’d borne his child.

Angie rushed forward as Phoebe came through the door and closed it firmly behind herself. Before the sitter could speak, Phoebe put her finger to her lips to indicate silence. She walked through the front rooms toward the back of the little house and dropped her things onto the kitchen table. “Listen,” she said to Angie in a quiet tone, “there’s nothing to worry about. He’s an old friend I haven’t seen in a long time. Can you stay a little longer in case Bridget wakes up?”

Angie nodded, her eyes wide. “Sure.”

“We’re going to talk outside. “I don’t—I’m not inviting him in and I don’t particularly want him to know about Bridget, so please don’t come out.”

Angie nodded, an uncharacteristically knowing smile crossing her face. “No problem. I wouldn’t want to cause trouble for you.”

Phoebe paused in the act of walking back through the living room. “Cause trouble for me?”

“With people back where you came from.” Angie gestured vaguely. “I mean, I know everybody has babies without getting married these days, but if you don’t want anyone back home to know, that’s your business.”

Phoebe felt her eyebrows rising practically to her hairline. She opened her mouth, then closed it abruptly before hysterical laughter could bubble out. Dear innocent Angie thought she was hiding Bridget because she was ashamed of having an illegitimate child. If only it were that simple!

She swallowed as she slipped through the front door again, closing it securely behind her. Wade was standing now, leaning against one of the porch posts, dwarfing the small space. Lord, she’d forgotten how big he really was.

She drank in his appearance, trying to reconcile the grief she’d carried for the past six months with the reality of seeing him alive and apparently well. His dark, wavy hair was conservatively short compared to the out-of-control locks he’d sported in high school, but quite a bit longer than the last time she’d seen him, when he’d had a high and tight military cut that had stripped every bit of curl away. If he weighed an ounce more than he had then, it wasn’t noticeable; his shoulders were still wide and heavily muscled, his hips narrow and his belly flat, his legs still as powerful looking as they’d been when he’d been a running back for the high school football team. That had been almost a dozen years ago, and she’d been a silly middle-school teen at the time, already pathetically infatuated with her older, totally hot neighbor.

Then she realized he was watching her stare at him, his gray eyes as clear and piercing as always beneath the black slashes of his eyebrows. She felt her cheeks heat and she crossed her arms over her chest.

Taking a deep breath, she voiced the question burning in her mind. “Why were you reported dead if they weren’t sure?” Her voice shook with the remembered agony of learning that Wade was gone forever. “I read about your funeral…” The sentence died unfinished as she realized she’d read about the plans for his funeral. In his obituary.

Wade blinked, but before his gaze slid away from hers, she caught a glimpse of a haunting pain. “Battlefield mistake,” he said. “They found my dog tags but not my body. By the time the mistake was corrected, word had already gone out that I’d been KIA.”

She put a hand to her mouth, fighting the tears that desperately wanted to escape. All these months she’d thought he was dead….

“I was injured,” he said. “In the chaos that followed the explosion, a friendly Afghani hid me. It took the guy three days to make contact with American troops, and it wasn’t until then that the mistake was caught. The fellow who died whom they’d assumed was me had already been shipped to Germany for autopsy. They’d have caught the mistake eventually, but I sure gave a lot of people a shock. And just for the record,” he added, “Mom and Dad didn’t actually have a funeral. It was planned, then canceled. I guess you didn’t attend or you’d have found out.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again and simply shook her head. She still wanted to cry. Badly. I was having your baby at the time was so not the thing to say.

She risked a glance at him and was almost undone by the pain in his eyes.

Unable to bear being the cause of that pain, she said, “I couldn’t come back for the funeral.” She turned away and settled on the porch swing. “It took every penny I had to move here.” Well, that wasn’t a lie. She’d been lucky to find this place, luckier still that, although she had few assets, her credit history was good and with the teachers’ credit union behind her, she’d been able to qualify for a mortgage. It hadn’t hurt that the cost of living in California was so much higher than it was here. She’d never have been able to afford even this modest little home if she’d stayed on the West Coast.

“Why did you move?” he asked suddenly. “All the way across the country? I know you don’t have any family to keep you in California, but that’s where you grew up, where your roots are. Don’t you miss it?”