Because of You: A Loveswept Contemporary Military Romance by Jessica Scott Read Free Book Online Page A

hidden by the rest of his T-shirt and the waistband of his pants. She reached behind her for a clean bandage, but Shane snagged her wrists.
    “Please keep this quiet, Jen. I know it looks bad, but really I’m fine. If I need to sign something to get you to agree to let me go, I will, but I’m asking you to pretend you didn’t see this.”
    The silence grew and still she didn’t speak as she pulled her wrists free and replaced the bandage. Finally, she looked directly at him, refusing to look away from the plea in his eyes. “Let me see your other stitches.”
    Shane lifted the rest of his shirt free from his pants, revealing his hard stomach, covered with a dark swirl of hair. Another white patch stood out against the dark hair at the bottom of his navel. And just like before, a bright red splotch of blood seeped through.
    “Oh, Shane,” she whispered as she reached and peeled the bandage back from the incision. Fortunately, it wasn’t as bad as she feared. The stitches hadn’t ripped, just stretched enough to leak. With an alcohol pad, she wiped the blood from the clean-shaven skin around his wound. She tried not to notice warm, smooth heat radiating from his skin. Thankfully, it was the warmth of a healthy male, not the intense heat that suggestedinfection. Gently, she pressed a clean bandage over the stitches. “They’re not ripped, but they easily could have been.”
    Sighing, she looked up at him, immediately noticing that his cheeks were clean-shaven, in stark contrast to the night before. Hidden behind the white curtain, a barrier had grown between them. A wall made of two blood-soaked bandages and a missing appendix.
    She swallowed and studied him closely, hating her next words. “Shane, you can’t deploy today. You’re days out of surgery. Technically, you should be on convalescent leave.”
    “Obviously, I’m not. I’m here and I’m getting ready to get on a plane for an eighteen-hour flight to the sandbox. With. My. Men.” He never raised his voice, but the intensity ratcheted up with each word.
    He
was
serious. He was trying to deploy. Today. “You could die.”
    “Jen, I’m going to run combat patrols in northern Baghdad. I figure my odds are fifty-fifty at best anyway.”
    She took a step backward and folded her arms across her chest. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you deploy. The risk of infection alone …”
    Shane stood and stepped into her space, close like he had been last night only this time his voice was low and rough. Ragged. “Do you know what it feels like to have a kid die on patrol because his squad leader did something stupid? Something you could have prevented if you’d been there? Jen, this is the Surge. The last big push to try and stop the violence and stabilize Iraq. This is going to be worse than any year since the supposed end of combat operations. Don’t send my men to war without me. Please, Jen.”
    “You won’t do a damn bit of good if you’re laid up with an infection.” She tried to step back, away from the intensity in his words, the plea that was in his voice. But she didn’t. She’d never seen this kind of concern before.
    “Then I won’t get an infection. Tell me whatever I have to do, whatever pills I have to take to prevent it, and I’ll do it.” He glanced around, like he was searching for something, then he picked up a syringe to help him make his point, holding it in the palm of his hand. “You wouldn’t send the guys over there without their shots, right?”
    She tried to take the syringe from him and he closed his hand over hers. Jen shook her head and tried to free her hand … “Shane, that makes no sense and has nothing to do with you, but no, of course not. They need the immunizations to stay healthy.”
    He squeezed her fingers beneath his and grinned down at her, his eyes warm like they’d been last night. “Think of me as part of their stay-healthy plan.” He slid his fingers over the back of her knuckles, the gesture too