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‘What’s going on, Matz?’
It was there, bursting to get out of her. He could read it in every exquisite line of her body. And how he wanted to press that body to his again.
‘I already went to my CO to resign my commission to be with you.’
Of all the things he’d considered she could have said, that wasn’t one of them.
‘Say again?’ He heard the anger threaded through his tone before he felt it.
‘I decided the same thing that you have. That I wasn’t willing to sacrifice a relationship with you for a career in the army. Not when I could still do the thing I really love—being a doctor—in the civilian world.’
‘You love being an army doctor, though,’ he ground out.
‘I do. And you love being an infantry man.’
‘Not as much as I love you.’
She faltered. He saw it. She almost circled the desk back to him but caught herself, and Kane was glad. He wasn’t sure he’d have had the self-control to resist if she’d done that.
‘So...you really quit?’ he demanded. And it didn’t make him anywhere near happy. ‘You can’t. I don’t ever want you to grow to resent me because you lost the career you love.’
‘I wouldn’t have. As much as I love being an army doctor, I know people are what matter more. You matter more.’
‘No, Mattie, I won’t accept that.’
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‘Well, we can debate that another time, but look at it this way instead. In the end I didn’t resign.’
For the second time is as many moments he felt winded. So she had loved him enough to leave but had then changed her mind?
‘You don’t know why your CO has called you, do you?’ she asked with a soft laugh.
‘I don’t care,’ he told her, his expression intense and serious, making her sober instantly.
‘You should,’ she chastised him. ‘And I shouldn’t tell you this, but I don’t want you to blow it by asking to buy yourself out. You know Percy will jump at the chance, and then everything everyone else is doing will be for nothing.’
He shouldn’t be curious, yet he was.
‘What do you mean, everything everyone else is doing?’
‘I mean, your former CO put you forward for a recommendation as an LE. And my CO, following my report on our working relationship during Operation Strikethrough, has completed a second recommendation. Of course, it’s no guarantee, especially as Percy is trying to talk us all down, but two recommendations don’t come around very often, Kane. And they have for you.’
He didn’t answer. It was impossible to know what to think, let alone what to say.
‘We can have it all, Kane. Our army careers and each other.’
‘I don’t care, you know. I’m happy with my decision to give it up for you. For us.’
‘As am I. And maybe we’ll still choose to do that one day. But right now that isn’t a decision we have to make, so why not take the opportunity being offered?’
She was trembling, he could see it from here. And he’d never wanted so much to take her in his arms and hold her. Kane had no idea how he held himself back. He dropped his hands to brace them on the cool surfaces of the desks, his fingers brushing hers.
She stared at them then back up at him, her expression so charged he thought the air around them should crackle with its intensity.
‘It means waiting, though, Matz. We still can’t be together until I’m a commissioned officer.’
With another glance down at his hands Mattie slowly—as if it was painful for her to do—lifted her own hands from the desk and took a half-step back.
