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“Tell me about your husband,” he said, unable to resist. He had to know if she had experienced PTSD before.
With a sigh, she gazed out at the darkened road and the moon shining. It was such a perfect night and he had to resist the urge to pull her snug against his body. Cicadas chirped their lonely sound, searching for a mate.
“Why can’t we just sit out here and enjoy the night breeze? Enjoy being with one another, looking at the stars.”
It was strange that she would even want to spend time with him after the way he’d treated her these last few days.
“Because I don’t know how to do that,” he said quietly. “And regardless of how much I want to keep you away, I’m drawn to you. Those are the things that lovers do.”
She turned and smiled at him. “Well, thank you. But you’ve made it clear you don’t want to be with me. I just want to enjoy the evening breeze.”
He deserved that. She’d been nothing but kind and he’d been trying to run her off the ranch. Even now, he believed she would be better off not here.
“Since you don’t seem to want to talk about your husband, I’ll be honest with you.”
Her brows rose in the dark and she leaned her chin on her hand, her elbow braced on her knee as she turned and stared at him.
“I suffer from PTSD,” he said.
“Yes, you told me.” She responded like it didn’t matter to her.
“And you told me that at least I was alive,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied. “John is dead and he had PTSD.”
It was all he could do to keep from asking her how he died. Was it in battle or had he come home and succumbed to this disease and killed himself? So many soldiers died fighting the war inside their heads.
“For two years,” Tanner continued, “I’ve battled this horrible sense of fear of returning to battle at any moment. It’s not something you want to subject someone you care about. I’m doing much better, and even the doctor at the VA hospital keeps telling me that I may be one of the lucky ones who eventually puts this behind him. But until then, I can’t be with a woman.”
Even her. Especially her.
“Except for sex,” she said. “That you’re very capable of doing. It’s the hard part – the being with someone on a regular day-to-day basis – that you fear.”
He didn’t even know what that was like. The only relationship he’d been in had been back in high school and that ended before he left for college.
“You were the first since I’ve returned,” he said softly. “And it was special. But you’re right. At any moment, something may send me hurtling back in time to a battlefield and I fear what I will do. What if I hurt you or a family member?”
She glanced at him and he could see her eyes were wide and innocent in the darkness.
“Maybe you should stop living in fear,” she said. “It’s why I moved to Texas. To start over. To begin again. You were my first since John,” she said. “And I didn’t expect anything more. But when you tried to have me removed from the new job I’d just driven over twelve hundred miles to reach, it kind of pissed me off.”
A grin spread across his face. “Yeah, that would make me angry too.”
“Why couldn’t we be friends? I would never have made you feel like you had to date me or anything else when I arrived. I would have said ‘hello, Tanner. Good to see you’ and walked on.”
“But I couldn’t,” he said and instantly regretted it.
The woman just didn’t get it. Even though she wanted to be friends, he wanted more than that, and if she was here, she would be too much of an enticement. Just like now, sitting out here in the dark in her pajamas with him, it was everything he could do not to kiss her.
And, God, he wanted to.
Oh, hell with it. He was tired of fighting this attraction.
He grabbed her face and brought her lips to his. At first, she was pliant, her mouth conforming to his as his lips moved over hers. At first, she returned his kiss, her lips moving over his, her mouth opening to receive his tongue as he delved into her mouth, pulling her body close to his.
At first, she molded her body against his like she wanted him. But then, suddenly, she pushed him away.
“We can’t,” she gasped. “I like this job. I can’t get involved with you.”
Rising, she hurried into the cabin and closed the door behind her. He heard the lock click and knew she was done.
And still, she had not talked to him about her husband. What was she hiding?
