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She didn’t quite recognise the look that danced over his striking features. And then it was gone and he was back to chastising her.
‘Fine, then for the sake of accuracy,’ he underscored, his jaw locked in disapproval, ‘you still deliberately concealed the fact that you were an army doctor. Nor, when I told you I was being deployed, did you admit that you were in the middle of your own deployment.’
Elle sucked in a sharp breath. When he put it that way it did look bad, but then she already knew that, and while she was prepared to hold her hands up to some of it, she’d be damned if she was going to take the blame for the part for which she was actually innocent.
‘You’re right. I knew you were an army colonel and I knew you were leaving on a tour of duty, but I didn’t say anything. For that, I’m sorry. In my defence, though, how could I possibly have guessed we’d end up in the same place? It isn’t like I knew where you deploying to. It could have been different areas, different regions, even different countries.’
‘Razorwire’s a big camp. Plenty of soldiers end up there, you knew it was a possibility,’ he bit out, his glare hurled at her with all the pinpoint accuracy of a top athlete throwing a javelin.
Rooted in place, Elle had no choice but to stand her ground, but she knew she was clinging to very shaky distinctions. Still, they were all she had.
‘But we aren’t actually at Razorwire, are we? I couldn’t have foreseen that.’
‘You lied to me.’
/> ‘No,’ she began, then stopped abruptly. ‘Maybe.’
Elle exhaled heavily, the fight unexpectedly sucked out of her. He was right. She had lied to him. Not for the reasons he assumed, but if they were to work efficiently together for the remainder of her tour, then they were going to need some kind of trust.
And he certainly didn’t trust her right now.
‘Fitz, I honestly didn’t intend to deceive you but I really didn’t want to talk green, or compare tours, or analyse postings. I didn’t want to be Major Gabriella Caplin, heck, I didn’t even want to be Elle Caplin that night. Like I told you, I’d just left my ex-fiancé who’d been cheating on me and I wanted one night—just one—where I did something a little crazy and out of character. Something Major Caplin would never have done.’
The silence was so thick, so cloying that Elle felt like she was suffocating.
‘But, at the risk of repeating myself, you’re acting as though it’s a big deal when it doesn’t have to be. We were perfectly entitled to sleep with each other and even now there’s no conflict of interest.’
‘I’m a colonel,’ he bit out, for the first time appearing less sure of himself.
It might be only the merest hint of a chink in his impermeable armour but Elle wasn’t about to let that stop her.
‘But you’re not my colonel,’ she pointed out. ‘You’re not my CO. Colonel Duggan is. So a relationship between you and me isn’t against the rules, but of course you already know that. So what’s this about, Fitz?’
She eyed him speculatively. The look of fury in his black eyes didn’t make any sense. Quickly, she ran through anything she might be missing.
‘Colonel Duggan has administrative and operational command for the running of this hospital, and therefore I do when he leaves the site. You have operational command for the construction of the hospital, and therefore Major Howes does when you’re not here. You can’t re-task me, or tell me how to do my job. And it’s not even a combat environment—we’re on a peacetime hearts-and-minds mission, so it isn’t as though things could suddenly get hostile.’
‘It crosses a line,’ he ground out.
‘Which line?’ She threw up her hands, exasperated.
And then an almost paralysing nausea snaked through her mind. She could barely bring herself to ask the question, but she knew she had to.
‘Unless you’re not single.’ The words tasted acrid on her tongue. ‘If you’re married then it would have crossed a line, it would have contravened army rules.’
‘Of course I’m not married,’ he bit out instantly.
Elle grabbed the back of the chair, relief making her knees wobble. After what Stevie had done, she couldn’t have endured to be the other woman herself. She couldn’t have withstood the idea that Fitz had made her that person.
‘So which line?’ she repeated shakily.
His pulse leapt beneath his jaw. Evidence, not that she needed it, of his irritation. But she couldn’t step back; he’d started this personal attack and now she had to know.
‘My line,’ he spat out, at length.
She had no idea whether his disgust was at her or himself.
‘I have my professional life and I have my personal one, and I don’t blur the lines between the two.’
