Tempted by the Soldier

The road.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” he said like it wasn’t a question.

“Fine,” she shot back. “Listen to your honky-tonk torture. But if my ears start bleeding, I’m blaming you.”

“Can’t be any worse than the sound of your voice, Princess, and you live with that every day.”

“Asshole,” she muttered, dropping her feet back into the floorboard and folding her arms across her chest.

He frowned over at her. “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

Lilly stiffened and stared out the window. “My mother’s dead.”

Ah, hell. Nate flickered his gaze across the seat, wishing he could take the words back and make her forget he’d said them.

He knew what it was like to lose a parent. Hell, he’d lost both of his. That shit wasn’t something to be taken lightly. He and Lilly may take jabs at each other for a lot of things, but even he knew he’d crossed a line. The haunted look in her eyes told him he’d just dredged up a memory that cut deep.

Maybe they were more alike than he wanted to admit…

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was a shitty thing to say.”

Her expression turned surprised a second before she answered. “Whatever. You didn’t know.”

He tapped his fingers against the wheel, knowing damn good and well the last thing he should do was dig deeper. Deeper with Lilly wasn’t going to lead to anything good. They were good at pissing each other off, right up to the point of wanting to tear each other’s clothes off. And they were experts at avoiding anything below the surface. They weren’t good at…deeper.

He stole another glance in her direction and caught the sadness in her reflection in the window. The sorrow in her eyes made him feel as though someone had punched him square in the chest. If she knew he’d seen that, she would hate it. She would hate him for getting even a tiny glimpse of the vulnerability she always kept locked up tight.

Before he could stop himself, he found himself asking, “How did she die?”

“She slit her wrists in our bathtub when I was fifteen,” Lilly said matter-of-factly. “How did your mom die?”

He swallowed the thick sensation coating his throat. “Cancer.”

Saying it out loud like that tore down the dam holding back the sea of guilt and grief inside him. Lilly’s mother may have given up, but not Maggie Jennings. She’d fought, and fought hard.

And what had he done? He’d run away. Put an ocean between himself and her life-and-death struggle. It had been too easy to forget that the woman he’d loved more than life was withering away when he was flying loads of bloodied, destroyed soldiers to safety every day. He’d almost been able to justify not being there to help Jace take care of her.

Almost.

Until the day he couldn’t even do that right. After the helicopter crash, and leaving his dead men behind, suddenly none of it felt worth it. He’d sacrificed his chance at saying good-bye to his mother, his chance to take care of her, all for nothing. Worse than nothing.

He swallowed hard and let the chain of his dog tags slide through his fingers, rubbing the thin slivers of metal between his fingers to ground himself.

“Still feel like sharing?” Lilly asked, watching him guardedly from across the seat.

“No.”

After a brief hesitation, she said, “Good,” then closed her eyes and rested her head against the seat back. “Neither do I.”

Chapter Five

Lilly watched the odometer turn over another mile. Virginia seemed to be a never-ending state. A never-ending state filled with windy roads, nightmarish tunnels, and scarily spectacular views. She tensed and squeezed her eyes shut as Nate rounded a curve and the road dropped off into nothing on the passenger side. Beautiful? Yes. Terrifying for someone afraid of heights? Double yes.

Just a few more hours, and they’d be back on level ground where they belonged. She checked the map on her phone just to make sure. Yes. Flat land was where this girl belonged.

The fact that she’d desperately had to pee for at least thirty miles wasn’t helping matters. Her bladder screamed at her to open her stubborn mouth.

She peeked at the clock on the dash. Already past two. They’d left North Carolina and made the turn onto I-81 ages ago. How long did Nate plan to drive before stopping for a bathroom break? She’d watched the man consume two bottles of water and a full cup of coffee. Surely his body had needs.

She wiggled in her seat and peeked over at him. He’d been even more tense and on edge than usual since she’d shut down their little heart-to-heart. So they both had dead mothers. It wasn’t as if they needed to bond over it. She’d already experienced firsthand what happened when you opened up to Nate Jennings, and she didn’t intend to make the same mistake twice. Trusting him would be asking for heartache.

“I have to pee,” she finally said when her bladder reached the point of no return and she spotted an exit up ahead.

“You just went a couple of hours ago,” he said.

“What are you, the pee police?” she retorted. “I wasn’t aware you were keeping a chart of my bladder function. Are you tracking my fluid intake as well?”

His knuckles blanched white around the steering wheel and he blew out a frustrated breath, flipping on his blinker at the next exit. “This is why I travel alone,” he muttered.

She rolled her eyes. “Please. You travel alone because no one is desperate enough to sit in a confined space with your surly ass for an extended period of time.”

“Nobody but you, right, Princess?” He whipped into a truck stop before she could respond—or object—and threw the truck into park at a gas pump. He looked at her expectantly as she took in her surroundings.

“You have got to be kidding me.” She watched a trucker in a flannel lumberjack shirt walk past her window carrying a ginormous soda cup. This was not one of the usual neat and clean freeway rest stops. This was a grungy and oily off-brand service station attached to a questionable diner with yellowing windows that hadn’t been washed in decades, on a no-name exit in the middle of nowhere.

They hadn’t even opened the truck doors yet and the cab was already inundated with the disgusting aroma of diesel fumes and fryer grease. Crinkling her nose, she held a hand over her nose to block the stench. There was no telling what kinds of poor defenseless animals were being slaughtered and fried in that place. Visions of Deliverance danced through her mind.

Nate unbuckled his seat belt and raised a brow. “You said you needed to use the bathroom. I provided you one.”

“I said I wanted a bathroom, not a place where I have to wear a biohazard suit just to touch a door handle,” she said, eyes wide with horror.

He popped his door open and climbed out, stretching his arms above his head. A sliver of tanned, scarred skin peeked out where his shirt rode up, and she averted her gaze.

“You’ll survive,” he said, dropping his hands to his sides.

He slammed the door shut, and Lilly watched his perfect backside, encased in snug denim, waltz into the truck stop.

Damn that ass. No. Damn her and her weak willpower for being unable to stop salivating over it.

She whacked the visor back into place and groaned. She had to stop letting him get to her. She was allowing him to win. That wasn’t an option.

She hopped out onto the parking lot and hurried into the store, ignoring the leering looks from a couple of creeps she passed on the way. Sweet Jesus. If possible, the smell was even worse inside. She hurried to the counter and wanted to weep at the menu hanging from the ceiling. Frog legs. Double bacon cheeseburger. Shredded pork sliders. Her stomach rolled and she clutched her abdomen, trying not to envision Babe being fried up and served on a paper plate. She loved living in the South, but some things a vegetarian just never got used to.

“Can I help you, darlin’?”

She turned to the cashier, who had a gravelly smoker’s voice and a name tag that read Doris. “Yes, where is your restroom, please?”

Doris dug for something under the counter and came back up holding a key…with a dingy, chipped, toilet seat attached to it with a chain.

“What is that?”

“The key.” Doris dropped the toilet seat–key combo onto the counter and sighed. “Bathroom’s outside, around the side of the building.”

Lilly stared at the toilet seat in disgust. “Can you take the toilet seat off?”

“It’s a safety measure,” Doris said evenly. “Take it or leave it.”

“Do I look like someone who would steal your disgusting bathroom key?”

The cashier shrugged, and Nate reached over Lilly’s shoulder, grabbing the key. “She’ll take it. Thanks.”

Lilly spun around, nearly colliding with his broad chest, and glared up at him. He dangled the key in front of her and scowled.

She snatched it out of his hand and scowled right back. “I was handling it.”

“You were being a prissy brat,” he reprimanded her. “Haven’t you ever been in a truck stop?”

She stepped out of the line of people who were starting to stare at them. “No.”

He followed her out the door into the misting rain. “How is that possible?”

“I’ve never traveled,” she said. “Didn’t do a lot of family road trips when I was a kid.”

She rounded the corner of the dilapidated building and groaned when she spotted the bathroom. Was he really going to follow her all the way to the door? She turned on him and he stopped, a curious expression on his face.

“You’re telling me you’ve never been out of the state of North Carolina before?” he asked. “Not even once?”

“Not even once, Soldier Boy.”

He slammed his hand against the door to keep her from shutting it, and his nostrils flared.

“Isn’t there anything else you could call me other than that stupid, fucking nickname?”

She reached up and patted his cheek when he scowled. “Oh, honey. You really don’t want to hear the other names I have for you.”

She removed his hand, then slammed the bathroom door in his face and turned to catalog the tiny room. Questionable-looking toilet, broken mirror, out-of-order condom machine, and an empty paper towel holder. Dear God. It was even worse than she’d expected. She inspected the menagerie of phone numbers and perverse messages scrawled across the walls and an idea began to form.

If Nate wanted to play dirty, she was game. This was war, after all. She dug a pen out of her purse and scrawled Nate’s number across the wall under her carefully composed ad.

Burly truckers looking for a fine piece of man meat and a good time call Nate.

Satisfied with her handiwork, she conducted the rest of her business and escaped the bathroom as quickly as possible. She went back inside the diner and tossed the key onto the counter.

“See? The toilet seat worked,” Doris drawled. “You didn’t steal it.”

“It was tempting,” Lilly deadpanned. “Thanks.”

She hurried back to the truck and climbed into the euphoric scent of sun-warmed leather and Nate. He raised a brow, watching her slather her hands with antibacterial gel from her purse, then took a bite of the hot dog dripping ketchup all over his hand. He pulled away from the gas pumps one-handed, and found a parking spot that overlooked the freeway to finish his meal.

“You hungry?” he asked.

She cringed at the smell of the mystery meat on a bun. “I can’t eat that.”

He set a paper bag in her lap and took another bite. “Which is why I got you that.”

She dug through the bag and pulled out a plastic fruit cup, a packaged salad, and a bottle of water. She looked up at him, surprised. “How did you know I was a vegetarian?”