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Charlie shook her head. “No. It’s too valuable.”
“It’s so dumb. All those eggs do is sit in that cabinet in the drawing room. Nobody hardly looks at them anymore. Nobody hardly enjoys them.” She kept her back to Charlie, busy with her work.
“No. And I’d appreciate it if you came inside now. You’re going to ruin that dress.”
Jenny tossed back her hair. “Can we do something tonight? Rent a movie or something?”
Charlie closed her eyes. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to make Jenny’s life the way Jenny wanted it. “Not tonight,” she answered. “Your father and I have a cocktail party to attend.”
Jenny didn’t respond, but Charlie noticed a flush of pale crimson sear her daughter’s pale cheeks.
“The party is business,” Charlie continued, though she knew it sounded weak, a halfhearted excuse. “A company from China.”
Jenny set down the horse’s brush. “I’d better finish packing anyway. My bus leaves at seven in the morning.”
“We’ll miss you.”
“Sure.” Jenny whisked past her mother and headed out of the barn.
Charlie remained standing in the stall. The horse nudged her side. She stroked its forehead. “What are we going to do with her, Bluebell?” she whispered. She ran her hand down the silky coat of the horse’s neck and thought of the tender, sensitive care that Jenny gave Bluebell. And then Charlie realized that Jenny—like the Fabergé egg she’d just inherited—was not only beautiful, but also very fragile. She wondered if, in a few years, Jenny would go to Smith. If she did, Charlie would have to insist that she not live off campus with Tess. Because whether her daughter liked it or not, the artsy, bohemian life that her old friend lived was simply not in Jenny’s genes.
Charlie slowly left the stall and went through the barn. She thought of Tess. She thought of Marina. And then Char lie wondered if what had seemed so right so long ago, had in fact, been very, very wrong.
Read on for an excerpt from Jessica Scott’s Because of You
Chapter 1
“What crawled up your ass?”
Shane shoved his last Ziploc bag of T-shirts into his army-issued duffel bag and tried to smother his rising irritation. “What part of no don’t you understand?”
Carponti—aka the most annoying soldier in Shane’s entire platoon—picked up Shane’s grey ACU pattern patrol cap and put it on, strutting around like he owned the place. Then he puffed out his chest and swung his arms wide, like a bad caricature of an angry gorilla. Sometimes Shane wished he didn’t let Carponti into his apartment as often as he did. But Carponti had recently turned into a permanent fixture in Shane’s after-duty life. Shane wasn’t sure what that said about the state of his affairs. As if Carponti mocking him in the empty apartment wasn’t enough of an indicator. “I’m Sarn’t Garrison. I’m too badass to relax and have a good time.”
“Piss off.”
“Did your wife take your sense of humor in the divorce, too?” Carponti asked, flopping into Shane’s chair. “Come on, man, it’s just a few hours and a couple of beers. The whole platoon is going to be there.”
Shane sighed and hooked his duffel bag shut, tossing it into the corner of his apartment near the front door. He flinched as the sudden movement stretched the fresh stitches that were holding two tiny holes in his abdominal wall closed. Carponti didn’t know about Shane’s recent brush with death and Shane intended to keep it that way. If Carponti wanted to believe the divorce was keeping him from going out, then so be it. But the truth was that Shane had been too busy, over the past five months, to dwell on the end of his marriage. Of course, he missed feeling like he had a home, but he couldn’t lie to himself—Tatiana hadn’t made their life together a home any more than he had. She’d been familiar, though, and he missed that. At least, that’s what he told himself when he had time to think about it. So many of his guys were having problems in the lead-up to this deployment that Shane had barely seen the air mattress on the floor of the apartment they’d shared, let alone slept on it. And tomorrow he was leaving for good.
Shane shoved his body armor into a second duffel bag, then stuffed socks and more T-shirts into the gaps. It was a pain in the ass packing for deployment. It was easier just being deployed.
“The whole platoon being there is the problem. Makes it kind of hard to explain why the platoon sergeant is in jail with the platoon if you guys get too fired up tonight. Someone has to be around to bail your sorry asses out of Bell County tomorrow.”
Carponti rolled his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck, serious for one hot second. “Look, just come out with us. You’ve been a real asshole since your wife left; you need to unwind, or we might just shoot your ass when we’re in country for being such a dick.”
Shane rested his hand over his heart and blinked rapidly. “God, I’m so touched by the depth of your concern. I can drink beer here. Alone. Quietly.”
“Sissy.”
Shane laughed and the feeling caught him off guard. If it had been that long since he’d laughed, maybe his wife had taken his sense of humor along with all of his furniture.
He shook his head at Carponti’s relentless nagging and finally surrendered. Under duress, but still. “All right, fine. But I swear, if a single one of you miss movement tomorrow …”
Carponti made the sign of the cross over his heart. “Promise. Let’s go. I’m picking up Nikki on the way.”
Shane stuffed his wallet into his back pocket and grabbed the keys to his truck. At least he didn’t have to change. Killeen, Texas, didn’t exactly sport any high-class bars. The place they were headed to, Ropers, was only moderately slimy, meaning that he wasn’t likely to die of dysentery from the beer glasses and he was just fine in his T-shirt and jeans. They were clothes he didn’t care if he ruined if—scratch that, when—he had to drag one of his soldiers out of a brawl.
Truth be told, he didn’t have any problem with the boys going out. Shane just didn’t want to watch them say good-bye to their wives and girlfriends, and it had nothing to do with his own divorce. Shane hated the knowledge that he might not be bringing everyone home to their families.
