A Few Good Men

Never again allow herself to love a man whose job it was to put his life on the line for his country. She’d already lost one. Losing another would destroy her.

Gertrude was looking at her oddly again. Sara forced a smile. “I was thinking that I’d like for you and Howard to come over for dinner this Sunday,” she said. “I could make that pot roast he likes so much.”

“Andy’s favorite.” Gertrude immediately relaxed. “We’d like that. It’s when we’re at your house that…Well, that both of us feel the most like Andy might walk through the door any moment.”

And therein lay the rub…

Chapter 2

IT WAS ONE OF THOSE rare winter days when the sun slanted in just such a way that it was easy to be lured into believing it might be July instead of January. Temperatures were mild, the scent of the Atlantic Ocean permeated the air, and Sara’s small house in Virginia Beach looked welcoming rather than foreboding.

She let herself into the one-story, two-bedroom bungalow she and Andy had bought five years ago and accepted the excited welcome and face wash she received from Truman, her four-year-old golden retriever.

“Oh, yes, you missed me, didn’t you, boy? Yes, you did.”

She let Tru out into the backyard to do his business, then put food out for him in the kitchen before going into her bedroom to change into sneakers and a sweat-shirt so she might take Truman to the beach and enjoy the early sunset. It was only five o’clock and the rest of the dark night stretched in front of her like a black wall she couldn’t figure out how to scale. As she slipped out of her low-heeled shoes and knee-highs, she reached out with her right hand to boot up her laptop, as was her normal routine. She took off her blouse and put on a T-shirt, then pulled the sweatshirt on over it, shaking out her shoulder-length brown hair before clicking to check for e-mail.

Her hand hovered over the mouse as she realized what she was doing. She was looking for a message from Eric.

How much she’d come to rely on those daily exchanges. It had been over a week since she’d been in contact with him. Worse, ten days since she’d deleted the e-mail account she’d used to communicate with him and, in essence, erased a part of herself.

She moved her hand from the mouse to the top of the screen and closed the laptop.

A moment later she had Truman on his leash, had filled a bottle of water, and left the house for the brisk, quarter of a mile walk to the beach, determined to forget that there would be no more e-mails from Eric waiting for her.

ERIC HAD HIS HAND on the door handle. He’d watched Sara pull her eight-year-old compact car into the drive-way of the small house he’d visited on countless occasions, then go inside. It was the first time he’d seen her since before Andy’s death. And the reality hit him full force, like the forceful butt of a weapon to the stomach.

He had the hots for his best friend’s girl…

It was the first thought that went through his mind. A thought he’d never expected to have. Sure, Sara had always been attractive, but she’d always been Andy’s girl. Off-limits. It had never even crossed his mind to think of the possibility of anything more. Partly because marines didn’t go screwing around with other marines’ women. (Well, good marines didn’t, anyway.) Mostly because Andy and Sara had been so much in love that it had sometimes been awkward to be around them.

He hadn’t gone to Andy’s funeral. The Corps had offered to fly him back for the event, but he’d refused. He’d lost his best friend, but he still had friends in his unit that depended on him. And the enemy that had taken Andy’s life was still a threat to the others. He couldn’t leave them behind.

Eric closed his eyes and bounced the back of his head against the seat. Who was he shitting? He hadn’t had the guts to face Sara or Andy’s parents. Had been too big of a coward to admit that despite everything he’d done, he had been unable to save Andy.

And now here he sat, trying to reconcile that life then with life in the here and now. Remembering how happy the couple had been…and how hot he’d been for the woman named Samantha with whom he’d shared a closeness he’d never had with another human being outside the brotherhood of the marines.

He forced his thoughts outward.

Sara looked so much like the woman he remem-bered, yet not at all. He supposed the new filter he viewed her through was to credit. But there were physical changes, as well. For one, she’d cut her hair. Where the honey-brown strands had been almost waist-length before, now the ends barely touched her shoulders. And he could tell even under her loose clothing that she’d gotten thinner. Her once va-va-voom curves were now almost girlishly slight. She even seemed to hold herself differently, as if she no longer had the strength to hold herself upright, as if her shoulders bore the weight of the world and she was a straw away from collapsing altogether.

During his conversations with Samantha, he’d never really imagined what she’d looked like beyond the little tidbits she fed him, which could or could not have been the truth. He’d look at female marines and wonder, when any of them bore the same physical traits. Take in women who passed during shore leave and contemplate any possible similarities. So sitting there in his car now, he didn’t experience disappointment. If anything, seeing her in person, despite the truth of her identity, merely made him want her more.

He started to pull the handle to get out of the car, unsure of what he might say or do when he came face-to-face with her, but sure that he had to do something.

Instead, he watched as Sara exited the house again, this time wearing sneakers and a USMC sweatshirt, patting a panting golden retriever before jogging down the block in the opposite direction.

Eric waited until she was out of sight and then scrubbed his hands against his face. What in the hell was he doing?

He didn’t have clue. But what ever it was, he had to do it now. Fast. Before he was faced with another sleepless, endless night that was worse than anything he’d experienced except during a lull on the battlefield…

THE BEACH WAS ALMOST empty, a person here and there apparently out for the same reason Sara was, to enjoy the unseasonably warm evening and take in the sun setting in the west. She tossed a piece of driftwood and Truman took off after it, leaving her to stare out into the dark horizon of the Atlantic. Waves crashed against the shore, the roar drowning out most of her own thoughts and spraying the hem of her jeans with salt water. Truman brought the stick back and she bent to pet him, talking to the only male who had shared her bed in the past eighteen months.

“Good boy.” She scratched him under the chin and then raised the wood above her head. He barked, ran a couple of feet, and then turned back and barked again, ready for the next round.

It was getting dark fast, the sun already having sunk below the fence of stout buildings lining the beach. The instant it did, the air seemed ten degrees cooler. She threw the wood and then pulled the sleeves of her sweat-shirt down to cover her hands and crossed her arms.

She’d long ago forced herself not to think about how many times she and Andy had walked this same stretch of beach, in the beginning alone and arm in arm as a couple, then later with Truman. She’d come to under-stand that if she stopped doing everything that they used to do together, then she would stay locked up in the house and do nothing at all.

She squinted into the growing dusk, trying to make out Truman in the distance. She hadn’t thrown the stick that far, had she?

There. There he was. Standing by the dunes some hundred feet up, his tail wagging a million miles a minute. She moved closer, thinking he might have found a bird’s nest or a crab or other small animal.

Then she saw him.

The man in fatigues who was crouched down petting the retriever.

Sara’s heart hiccupped in her chest.

Andy…

How many times had she dreamed scenes like this? Of Andy popping back up into her life as if he’d never been gone? As if he’d never shipped out to serve first in Afghanistan and then later in Iraq? Too many to count. But none of them had ever been this vivid. This real.

The man spotted her and gave Truman a final pat before rising to his feet. The heart that had hiccupped now surged up into her throat, threatening to choke her. She wasn’t losing her mind. There was a man there. A man in fatigues. But it wasn’t Andy. On closer inspection, he looked nothing like her late husband.

Where Andy had been short and stocky, this man was tall and lean, although no less powerful. Where Andy had had blond hair, this man’s close-cropped cut was dark. Where Andy had always been ready with a smile, this man had frown lines etched deep into his striking face.

Sara’s footsteps slowed and then stopped altogether three feet from him, shimmering need pooling low in her stomach.

“Hi, Sara,” Eric Armstrong said, the greeting nearly lost in the sound of the surf. “Or should I say Samantha?”

Chapter 3

ERIC STOOD STOCK-STILL, staring into Sara’s confused face, watching emotions slide like clouds across the setting sun. When she hadn’t immediately returned to her house, he’d shadowed her footsteps, following her to the beach. There, he’d found her hugging her arms around her slender body, looking so small against the endless sea that he wanted to encircle her with his own arms.

Now, her lips popped open, as if needing to say something, but without the words to say it.

God, he’d never really realized how tantalizing her mouth was before. How downright naughty. Her lips were provocatively full, the upper larger than the lower. He couldn’t seem to drag his gaze from them, wanting to trace the lines with his tongue.

The minute he’d come face-to-face with Sara, she’d stopped being merely “Samantha” or Andy’s widow…she’d become a woman to whom he felt an irresistible attachment. With whom he’d joined virtual hands when he’d most desperately needed human touch.

The waves crashing against the beach mimicked the need surging within him.

“Eric…”

The wind snatched the softly said name from her even as he leaned forward to claim what it seemed he’d been waiting his entire life to have.

Her lips were moist and cool, the tang of seawater only adding to their appeal. Eric groaned and curved his hand around to the back of her neck, pulling her closer, demanding a deeper meeting. Sara complied, parting her lips to allow him to plunder the depths of her mouth with his tongue.