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She needed to collect herself. Get herself straight. Mattie forced herself to focus on her colleague, her tone as light as she could manage.
‘Thank you, Sergeant. We’ll be in my office but unless it’s urgent I don’t want to be disturbed.’ She turned stiffly to Kane, careful to afford him the courtesy her soldiers would expect from her to do with any warrant officer and company sergeant major. ‘Mr Wheeler, come through.’
Then, without waiting to see him follow, she forced her wooden legs to turn and step through the doors, concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other as she made her way down the corridor and into her office. She made her way around the desk as though it was the only thing protecting her from the enemy.
As Kane followed her in, he closed the door carefully behind them without waiting for her to instruct him to do so. His one indication that whilst he might have followed protocol out there in front of her men, he wasn’t about to in here, away from prying eyes.
And she wasn’t about to pull him up over it.
‘What the hell, Kane?’ Mattie choked out instead, her throat constricted and painful. ‘You’re a WO2? In fact, you’re Percy’s CSM? You never once mentioned it...that night.’
Everything inside her screamed and railed but she stoutly quashed it. They couldn’t afford for anyone else to hear even a raised voice, certainly not the actual subject matter.
‘And you’re not just Dr Brigham. You’re Major Brigham. In fact, as I understand it, you’re Acting Colonel Brigham, Commanding Officer for this Three Medical Regiment. You never thought to mention that.’
Vaguely she recognised that he was making some point, but she didn’t know what it was. And she was too caught up in the heat flooding her body to press him. The inconvenient truth was that whilst they’d...she refused to say made love again and again that night, neither of them had done a whole lot of talking.
‘Did you know?’ she pressed instead.
‘Of course I didn’t know.’ Kane’s voice cracked through the air like a whip. Low and powerful.
‘You must have,’ she insisted desperately, because they were in an impossible situation and it couldn’t merely be coincidence. Or fate. That felt somehow...inadequate. ‘You knew I always intended to join the army as a doctor, whereas I had no idea you’d even contemplated joining the military.’
‘If you’re looking to lay the blame somewhere, Mattie,’ he growled, ‘I suggest you stop now. There is nothing to be gained by it. But, for the record, I told you I’d heard you left the army a few years ago. I even told you that...the day we met at the hospital.’
Oh, Lord, how she didn’t want this to be happening. A perverse part of her wanted him to tell her it was all a bad dream, take her in his arms, and make love to her the way he had, over and over, the previous weekend.
But she didn’t want that, she reminded herself quickly. And even if a weak part of her did want that, he couldn’t do it. Not here.
Not ever.
She was a major in the army, and he was a warrant officer. He might be one of the highest-ranking, most respected non-commissioned officers in the British Army, but he was still non-commissioned. And she was commissioned.
A relationship between them simply couldn’t happen. Not if they both wanted to keep their careers in the army.
It shouldn’t have happened that night, then.
A fresh wave of grief swelled and crested above her, then crashed. As destructive and terrifying as the one that had engulfed her fourteen years ago. It was all she could do to fight not to be dragged under.
‘You told me you’d heard a rumour,’ she muttered thickly.
‘And you never corrected me.’ He gritted his teeth. ‘You never told me you were still in.’
‘I assumed you’d realised.’
And, if she was honest, she hadn’t discussed it because she hadn’t wanted to resurrect an old row. It was also the reason why she’d hadn’t told him the celebration in the nightclub had been about her promotion. She’d just been holding her breath, expecting someone to say anything at any moment. But they hadn’t, they’d already done the congratulatory part by the time Kane had arrived, and they had just been enjoying the evening.
It had felt as though she’d managed to get away with it. Like meeting Kane that day had been fate and that they were meant to have that one night together.
Now she just felt guilty...and maybe a little ashamed. But why should she? It wasn’t as though she could ever have anticipated that, of all people, anti-establishment Kane—the boy who had wondered time and again why she had wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps—could have ended up joining the army himself.
Fourteen years ago the idea would have been preposterous to him.
In fact, it had been preposterous to him.
‘How could I have possibly known that it mattered?’ she hissed. ‘You’d always known I wanted to be an army doctor—ever since we were kids it was all I ever wanted to do.’
‘I know that.’
