Her Lone Cowboy by Donna Alward Read Free Book Online

in response. “Is that a good thing?”
    “Very good. I tend to live in my own head a lot. You help me stop doing that when you’re around.”
    “What kind of things do you think about?” All the headlines lately seemed to talk about returning soldiers and posttraumatic stress. Surely losing an arm in a firefight was grounds for some serious trauma. She found herself wondering what things he suffered that she knew nothing about.
    “Oh, you know. What to have for breakfast. What shirt to wear.”
    “In other words, none of my business.” She glued her eyes to the highway, put on her blinker and passed a transport truck as they climbed a hill.
    He still had his eyes closed as he answered. “Stuff that talking won’t solve,” he said, his voice low.
    She risked a glance and saw he still had his eyes closed. “Are you tired?”
    Noah nodded, just a little, opening one eye to squint at her. “A little. I didn’t sleep much last night.”
    “How come?”
    “In my own head again.”
    She had wondered if his arm pained him frequently, but instead now pictured him lying awake thinking. Wondering if he dreaded his doctor’s appointments. Wondering if it was memories of combat that kept him up while the rest of Larch Valley slept.
    Wondering if he’d been thinking about her the way he seemed to sneak into her thoughts lately.
    “Are you worried about today?”
    He shrugged, and she spared another glance sideways, seeing how his eyelashes lay against his tanned cheeks. “What’s in the bag?”
    “Mostly paperwork. The army’s part of the government. There are forms about forms and so on.”
    “About your discharge?”
    “So many questions today,” he replied drily, opening his eyes.
    “We’re going a hundred and ten on the highway. Not like you can get away, is it.”
    That at last got a smile from him. “I can always refuse to answer.”
    “But you won’t because…”
    She was teasing, but when she turned her head at his prolonged silence the mood quieted to nearly somber. She could see the deep blue of his irises and the black pupils within them. Her face heated as she forced her attention back to the road where it belonged.
    “I’ll be damned if I know, Lily. I haven’t spoken to anyone about this unless I was ordered to.”
    She wasn’t sure how to feel about being his confidante, and yet she wanted to know the real Noah. “Maybe it’s easier because you don’t really know me,” she suggested.
    “Maybe,” he agreed. He leaned his head back against the headrest again. “Anyway, I’m not discharged. I’m what they call a temporary category.”
    She hadn’t considered he was still truly in the army. She’d never seen so much as a uniform around his house. “It sounds like they don’t know what to do with you.”
    He chuckled. “Maybe not. The idea isn’t so much to know where I’ll end up, but to give me the time to get there, I suppose. Then figure out where I’ll be sent to next. Right now I’m being paid to get better.” He frowned. “It feels ridiculous.”
    “Why?” She kept her eyes on the road, but she could sense his frustration anyway. “You were hurt doing your job, and it’s only right you don’t suffer financially while you recover, right?”
    “I guess.”
    “So the agenda today is…?”
    “Following up with the doc, talking to a head shrinker, and physio.”
    Lily couldn’t help it; she laughed at the matter-of-fact way he put it. “Psych follow-ups, you mean.”
    “Yes. In case there’s mental and emotional trauma after the fact. And believe me, it’s far nicer when you get debriefed when you’re healthy. It’s a vacation. I missed out on that part when I was in Landstuhl.”
    She swallowed. It was different hearing him verbalize the possibility of PTSD. He’d admitted to internalizing things too much. The Noah she’d seen so far seemed unlikely to have such problems. But maybe he was just good at hiding them. Maybe her impressions were completely