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

“Children? As in more than our one?” She slid her arms up around his neck and toyed with the collar of his shirt.

“Definitely more. Bridget would be spoiled stinking rotten if she was an only.” He paused. “When did you realize…?”

“That I loved you?” She laughed. “At the risk of inflating your ego to an unforgivable level, I’ll tell you. I can’t remember when I didn’t love you. I worshipped you when I was eight, nine, ten. I idolized you at eleven and twelve. By thirteen I was hopelessly infatuated. It tore me to pieces when you dated Mel.”

“I never knew.” His tone was wondering. “How could I not have known?”

“I wasn’t exactly the most outgoing kid,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, but you were always comfortable with me. You were—in love with me,” he said ruefully. His expression changed. “God, I could really have blown it, couldn’t I?”

She shrugged. “Doubt it.”

Within ten minutes, he had her flat on her back in the big bed in her room. Their room, she amended silently. Soon she’d be giving herself and everything she had into his care.

Her attention abruptly veered back to the present as one warm, hairy leg pressed between her own legs and Wade’s weight pressed her into the bed. She wriggled beneath him and he growled. “Wait.”

“For what?” she teased, slipping her hands between them and rubbing his small, flat nipples into hard points.

“Tell me,” he demanded, holding himself above her on his forearms, “that you felt it, too, that night we danced. Tell me it wasn’t just me.”

She slipped her hands down his back and he shuddered when he felt them moving lower, trying to pull him closer. Drawing back, he pushed slowly into the welcoming heat of her body, already soft and slick.

She murmured a sound of pleasure as she shifted her hips to accommodate him. “It wasn’t just you.” Then he lowered his head and claimed her mouth and she lost track of anything she’d intended to say as he began to move against her.

A short while later, she lay cuddled against his side. Wade was on his back, his arm around her idly caressing the ball of her shoulder, as another thought struck her. “Holy cow. I forgot all about your interview. How did it go?”

His hand stilled for a moment, then resumed its hypnotic rhythm. “Great!” She tilted her head back to see his face and he grinned at her. “I was offered the job.”

“And you said yes.” It was rhetorical and she was shocked when he shook his head in the negative.

“I said maybe,” he said. His expression sobered, a sheepish quality creeping across his face. “I might have fibbed to you a little bit.”

“Fibbed?” She was flabbergasted. “You made up the job?”

“No, no,” he said hastily. “The job is real, and it’s mine if I want it. But it’s not in New York. In fact, it’s not even on the East Coast.”

“Where—? It’s in California!” Could she get any more surprised? “Isn’t it?”

“Southern California,” he specified. “We’d have to move to San Diego if—”

“Yes!” She nearly shouted it in a totally un-Phoebe-like burst of enthusiasm as she pounded on his chest with her free hand. “You said yes, didn’t you? We’re going back?”

“I said it depended on my wife.” He caught her and held her with ease as she flung herself atop him and wound her arms about his neck. “We wouldn’t be in Carlsbad,” he warned her. “I’d probably need to live somewhere closer to Mission Bay.”

“Call them and tell them you’ll take it!” She wriggled out of his arms and snatched up the portable telephone, thrusting the handset at him.

Wade laughed. “All right, all right. I’ll do it in a few minutes.” He paused, setting aside the phone and drawing her back into his arms. “Are you sure? I mean, I know you wanted to stay here and get tenure, and I can keep looking for a job around here if you’d rather not leave.”

She detected the slightest trace of diffidence in his tone and her heart melted all over again. “You’d really do that for me?”

“For us,” he qualified. “Wherever we decide to live, I want you to be completely happy with the decision.”

She sighed, sliding her hands into his hair and drawing his head down to hers. “Silly man. Don’t you know I’d be happy anywhere with you?” She kissed him tenderly. “All I need is you, and our family. Going back to California would be wonderful, but all I really want is to spend the rest of my life with you.”

And as he drew her back down to the bed, she realized the dream she’d had for so many years had truly become a reality. “I love you,” she murmured.

“And I love you.” He kissed her, then slid his hands down her body. “But I have to confess, that’s not the only thing I want to do with you.”

She laughed, too happy for words. Wade, the child they’d made together in love, and a future that looked as rosy as Bridget’s cheeks. She thought of Melanie, and for the first time a true sense of peace filtered into Phoebe’s heart. She had a hunch that wherever she was, Mel was doing a happy angel dance for her. And charming every male angel within sight.

* * *

THE HEART OF A MERCENARY

LORETH ANNE WHITE

About the Author

LORETH ANNE WHITE was born and raised in southern Africa, but now lives in Whistler, a ski resort in the moody British Columbia Coast Mountain range. It’s a place of vast, wild and often dangerous mountains, larger-than-life characters, epic adventure and romance —the perfect place to escape reality. It’s no wonder it was here she was inspired to abandon a sixteen-year career as a journalist, features writer and editor to escape into the world of romance fiction.

When she’s not writing, you will fine her long-distance running, skiing on the trails, and generally trying to avoid the bears. She calls this work, because it’s when some of the best ideas come. Loreth loves to hear from readers. Visit her website at www.lorethannewhite.com.

As always, to Susan Litman. Without her I wouldn’t be here.

To Marlin, who keeps me focused on the importance of story in our world.

To the rest of my family for too many reasons to mention.

And to Maretta and Toni, for just being there.

Prologue

18:27 Alpha. Republic of the Congo. Sunday, September 21

The doctor’s head sagged sideways. His eyes glazed into a fixed stare behind his protective goggles, and blood dribbled slowly down from the corner of his mouth, soaking into the white surgical mask bunched beneath his chin.

Sarah Burdett wriggled out of the coffin-size hole in the floor and scrambled frantically over the packed red dirt to where the doctor lay slumped against the leg of his autopsy bench.

She grabbed his shoulders. “Dr. Regnaud!” she whispered, her breath hot and damp under her own mask, sweat trickling down between her breasts. She tried to move him, to get a sense of his injuries, but as she did, his body flopped back onto the dirt and she caught sight of the dark crimson stain blossoming out over the fabric of his lab coat. Her breath caught sharply in her throat.

With shaking fingers she ripped off the clumsy plastic bags that covered the surgical gloves on her hands. There were no neoprene or rubber gloves in the makeshift clinic, no proper biosafety gear. They’d had to make do with what they had. “Doctor…” She felt his wrist through her latex gloves. Nothing.

She yanked at his mask, searching for the carotid arteries at his neck, praying to find the faint beat of a pulse under her gloved fingertips. There was none.

Her heart plummeted. Dr. Guy Regnaud, a brilliant, kind, generous, warm-hearted man…was dead.

She was alone.